Broadly speaking, education is an integral part of society, and education is naturally a social problem, or an educational problem among social problems. In a narrow sense, society and education coexist. For schools, society is a part outside of schools and families. It seems that education is only a problem of education itself. In fact, in a narrow sense, a considerable part of education problems are also social problems. For example, the case of "Professor Fudan Eight can't recruit a genius in Chinese studies" (note) is, at first glance, an educational problem, but in fact it is a social problem.

Sun Jiankun is in the study (network picture)

Sun Jiankun, a senior three student from Xi Gaoxin No.1 Middle School in Shaanxi Province, has passed the independent entrance examinations of Fudan University, Sun Yat-sen University and Sichuan University. Zhang Qing, a professor of history at Fudan University, commented: "He is one of the most energetic and gifted students in Chinese studies. His annotation level and opinions on Shan Hai Jing are even higher than those of graduate students. " Chen Meiyan, the daughter of Chen Yinke, a master of Chinese studies and a professor of chemistry at Sun Yat-sen University, thinks that he is an old scholar and calls him "Mr". He was the only middle school student among the finalists of last year's CCTV large-scale sinology knowledge contest "Happy Sinology". At the scene, his familiarity with ancient books such as The Songs of the South and The Analects of Confucius made several players who were more than ten years older than him express "shame" in unison. Kang Zhen, one of the judges, a professor at the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University and a doctoral supervisor, couldn't help but give a thumbs-up and praised the high school student for being "one in a million". It is such a "rare little genius of Chinese studies" who conquered the professor's heart and touched the door of the university, but "failed" the recruitment seal. Due to the difference of 6 points in the college entrance examination results, the Provincial Admissions Office rejected Fudan University's application. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the provincial recruitment system in this matter. The provincial admissions office is worried that if Sun Jiankun is given this cut, corruption problems such as "striped students" and "related households" will follow one after another, and there will be more special situations in the coming year, but the score will not reach the admission line, but he can enter a famous university through the persistence of schools and professors.

Obviously, the above example involves the reform of college entrance examination, not only the whole education, but also the whole society, so the problem it reflects is not an education problem, but a social problem. Self-enrollment is one of the directions and contents of college entrance examination reform. However, independent enrollment in colleges and universities needs to face or respond to the strong demands of society for fairness, openness and justice in education. Why is this a problem that must be faced or responded? Due to social corruption, rampant unhealthy practices and the failure to establish a credit system, the society does not believe that independent enrollment in colleges and universities can truly achieve meritocracy. On the contrary, quite a few people are more inclined to think that independent enrollment in colleges and universities may make the pursuit of wealth, power and relationships flood. Because of this, the Shaanxi Provincial Admissions Office can't "begin to understand", because this is not just a problem that the Admissions Office can solve, but an extremely complicated social problem, involving the clean construction of the whole society and the reconstruction of the social credit system. This year's enrollment, Peking University has launched the initiative of "direct high school principals". Throughout the whole process, people have also seen sharp social problems that are difficult to avoid. In addition to achieving the goal of "pinching the top", the "direct high school principal" of Peking University has not made any breakthrough in the enrollment reform. The students recommended by middle schools are not "wizards" or "freaks", but they still have to take the college entrance examination, and at most they can enjoy the preferential treatment of dropping points, and almost all the students recommended by each school have the best academic performance in their own schools. Why is this? The reason is that middle schools are also faced with social pressure to recommend openness, fairness and justice, and the fairness here is still "everyone is equal before grades", and there is nothing wrong with even worrying about being accused of corruption and unhealthy practices.

There are many similar problems, such as exam-oriented education, which is not only an educational problem, but also a typical social problem. Exam-oriented education seems to be a problem that the school pursues the enrollment rate, but behind it are many complicated problems, such as social value culture, social employment system, social talent evaluation mechanism, high consumption of social talents, employment department attaching importance to diploma but neglecting ability, and the whole society being impetuous and eager for quick success. Another example is the autonomy of running a school. Why is it difficult to implement the autonomy of running a school? Although there are problems in the school-running system and management system here, we should not simply regard it as related to decentralization, but should see that the higher administrative departments are worried that once decentralization occurs in the context of a relational society, schools will abuse their power. If the unhealthy social atmosphere is combined with school corruption at this time, it will lead to more serious social problems. In fact, many schools are like this. Therefore, in China's educational administration, it is easy to appear that it is better to "die as soon as you control it" than to "mess as soon as you let it go". Of course, for many schools, it may not be a mess.

In short, the proposition that "education is also a social problem" shows that education is the reflection of social problems in the field of education, and the root of education lies in society. This proposition also shows that for many educational problems, we should adopt the strategy of "looking at education outside education", and we can't just talk about education without solving it. Since many educational problems are social problems, we should solve them through ideas, principles, methods and ways to solve social problems. Otherwise, great efforts have been made, but the education problem cannot be fundamentally solved. This proposition also shows that if the society blames education blindly, it will shirk its responsibility, making it more and more difficult to solve problems such as exam-oriented education and college entrance examination reform.