Since this word is so popular recently, let's follow the trend and talk about what involution is. And what are the aspects of involution in education?
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0 1 What is involution?
Involution, also translated as "over-densification", originated from "Agricultural Involution-The Process of Indonesian Ecological Change" by American anthropologist Gilte. Gilder put forward that "under the pressure of population, farmers are increasing their labor input in the process of rice planting in order to obtain higher yield." However, the over-intensive input of labor has not brought about a proportional increase in output, and the marginal return of unit labor has decreased, which is an over-intensive phenomenon. " This phenomenon is called involution.
In the academic definition, involution refers to the phenomenon that a social model or cultural model stagnates after reaching a certain mode at a certain stage, and it is difficult to transform it into another advanced model, thus locking itself in a low-level state and cycling.
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In other words, involution means that there are too many people sharing a cake, and the people inside will constantly innovate to get more cakes, and then the skills of sharing cakes will be enhanced. But the last question is, no matter how superb the technique of dividing cakes is, with the enhancement of the technique of dividing cakes in groups, we find that our technique of dividing cakes is much better than that of our parents, but we may not get as many cakes as our parents.
Simply put, day after day, the more mixed the pit.
02 Facing the involution of education
We have learned about involution. Let's look at what is the "involution" of education.
As the name implies, of course, it is: the education industry, there is no substantial reform in all aspects (education system, knowledge innovation, etc. ), there is only quantitative change, but there is no development and growth. This is called "involution of education".
The essence of involution in education is to give up paying attention to social practical problems, but to excavate circularly within liberal arts and create useless "knowledge".
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Remember the incident in Zhai Tianlin last year. Because of the phrase "What is HowNet" in the live broadcast, Zhai Tianlin, who has always been a highly educated person in the entertainment circle, became the focus of public opinion overnight.
What set off Zhai Tianlin's academic misconduct was his published paper "On the Performance Creation of the TV Series Bai Xiaowen".
This paper proved to be plagiarized. However, after reading it, I deeply feel that even if it is not plagiarism, this article is worthless, has no positive significance for social development, will not increase our knowledge, will not let us have a deeper understanding of society, and will only waste our time.
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Look at this passage in the article and feel it-
In actual creation, the author divides Bai Xiaowen's role into two parts: past and present. Although it is not uncommon that Bai Xiaowen described in the script and the novel looks different, it is rare that Bai Xiaowen described by the original author of the novel not only shows people the appearance, but also links the changes of characters with the inner evolution, showing the contradictory development and inevitable outcome of a character's soul, which also fundamentally changes his world outlook and the composition of human nature.
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What makes people feel mixed feelings more than academic misconduct is the "easy" for Zhai Tianlin to get a doctorate, which is in sharp contrast with the "difficult" for doctors in public understanding. "There are loquat trees in the imperial court, which were planted by hands in the first year of Boyi, and now they are graceful." This online joke describes the difficulty of doctoral graduation.
According to the research data of China Education Statistical Yearbook in recent years, the delayed graduation rate of doctors is higher than 56%, that is, more than half of doctors can't graduate normally. One of the reasons is the high demand for papers, and many doctoral theses are even a book.
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In a word, the topic of "Zhai Tianlin Incident" is not only academic misconduct, but also educational quality and fairness beyond the academic itself. We believe there will be a fair conclusion, because both Beiying and Peking University have issued statements to investigate. At the same time, it is expected that this incident will arouse people's reflection on higher education to a greater extent and scope.
Zhai Tianlin incident makes us face the problem of involution in education, which is a deeper, less noticeable and more harmful corruption.
03 Education and teaching have fallen into a strange circle of involution.
The hardware conditions of schools are getting better and better, the usability is getting lower and lower, and the school construction is "involuted".
Shangluo County, Shaanxi Province, which has just got rid of poverty, has built a school with an annual income of less than 200 million, but it is 71000,000, which is very luxurious and almost reaches the standard of 5 years scenic spot. For such a luxurious school, parents don't buy it, thinking that the consumption is too high and too remote to accept. "No matter how poor you are, you can't be poor in education." That's true, but is it necessary for schools to be so luxurious? Obviously not.
But look at the schools, libraries, reading rooms, laboratories, sports fields, gymnasiums and so on built in recent years. Almost all the high buildings are idle; The electronic reading equipment in libraries and reading rooms is almost useless-because students really don't have time to use it; In the laboratory, due to the curriculum reform, almost all the experimental courses of physics, chemistry and biology were abandoned. Everyone has seen this, but the high-standard and over-required school hardware construction is still in full swing.
The lack of innovation in education and teaching methods has become the normal state of teaching, and the teaching form is "involuted".
In recent years, the examination reform has been carried out many times, and the burden reduction documents have been issued one after another. However, students' schoolbags are getting heavier and heavier, but the methods of education and teaching are not very innovative. This is a manifestation of the "involution" of teaching form.
Nowadays, whether it is a famous school or an ordinary school, teaching has a "theater effect", and everyone is "grasping hard and squeezing hard".
First, squeeze time. According to the regulations, students should not spend more than 6 hours in primary school and 7 hours in junior high school every day. 20 18 issued another notice: from September 20 18, classes in primary and secondary schools should not be earlier than 8: 00; Students in grade one and grade two of primary school should not arrive at school earlier than 8:00, and the class time should not be earlier than 8:30.
But some places and schools just don't implement the regulations of their superiors. According to the above report, the school runs a standardized school and has a private timetable for Yin and Yang in the school. In some places, it is common for school students to arrive at school at six o'clock in the morning, and it is also common for them to study by themselves at one o'clock at noon (euphemistically called "lunch break"). In some places, junior high school students definitely spend more time in school than 1 1 hour.
Besides, it's crowded on weekends. So, do students have free time?
Secondly, to extract the labor force, no matter what level of schools, teachers' labor force is extracted, weekends and legal holidays are extracted, and it is very justified-all the money is given!
Thirdly, in order to extract money, some schools or teachers ask students to attend "cram schools" on weekends under the guise of being good for students, and treat students who do not participate differently-this is no longer news. The teaching task can't be completed normally within the specified teaching time, and it depends on various ways to achieve the goal. The "involution" in teaching is quite serious.
The proliferation of training institutions has increased the educational cost of parents, and the learning form has been "involuted".
Education and training institutions are everywhere, and the good and the bad are mixed. These institutions use various tricks to lure parents to send their children to training. Parents are forced to tighten their belts and send their children to training.
The vast majority of training structures have no new teaching methods, and they are all teaching modes of time and sweat. Students just sacrifice their rest time and change their learning form to another place.
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It can be seen that the reform of primary and secondary schools that has been called for many years has not changed much in essence; Loud quality education has not really been realized; Shouted for many years to reduce the burden, and there was no substantial change.
Therefore, it is urgent to solve the involution problem in primary and secondary education. How to solve it? Xiao Yi believes that the following needs to be done:
First of all, the education reform policy should be implemented to avoid showing off; School construction is enough, and it is necessary to avoid building for beauty.
Secondly, we should balance educational resources, control the trend of "private schools" encroaching on "public schools", and distinguish between public and private schools, and we should not invade the public with private ones.
Thirdly, it is necessary to prevent public-private partnerships, secretly privatize public resources, and weaken control over public resources.
At the very least, the same river should increase revenue and reduce expenditure, but one river should not increase revenue and flood, and the other river should cut expenditure and dry up to the bottom.