When a person does something, if there is no "big skill" only "small skill", he is neither good nor interested in doing it.
Once I went to a friend's house, she was worried that her son, who was in his second year of junior high school, could not write, and asked me how she could make her child learn to write. I said first look at the child's composition book. The boy was very reluctant, and I could see that he was ashamed to show his essay to anyone. It was not until the boy and his buddies went to play soccer that his mother quietly brought his composition book.
The first essay is titled "Remember a funny thing". The boy loves soccer, and he begins by saying that he thinks playing soccer is the most fun thing he can do, and then describes how much fun he has playing soccer, some exciting details on the field, and intersperses them with two soccer stars he admires. It looks like he knows all about these players and writes about them with great interest.
The boy's essay is long, with fluent, heartfelt language and some vivid metaphors. You can see that he has put his own feelings into his writing. Although the content of the whole article is slightly different from the outline of the title, but in general it is a good work. I was about to applaud it when I saw that the teacher gave him a grade of "zero" and instructed him to rewrite it.
I was amazed, I couldn't believe that the essay could be scored zero, and it was such a great piece of work.
I quickly went back and saw that the boy had written another one on the same topic. His mother told me that this was the essay that was rewritten at the request of the teacher.
This time, "a funny thing" became this: a classmate hurt his leg while playing soccer, so he stopped playing and escorted the classmate to the infirmary to dress the wound, and then sent the classmate home, feeling that he had done a good deed and thought it was a funny thing. The essay was written in a relatively small number of words, with a rough narrative and a kind of sickly artifice. The teacher gave it a grade of 72.
My friend told me that my son had made up this piece of content because he couldn't think of anything to write about. He thought the teacher couldn't let him write about those things, so he made up a "funny story".
I felt a vague pain in my heart, as if I saw someone using a hammer to brutally smash a round, crystal pearl, and then pick up a stone and tell the child that it was a pearl.
Since I can't go and suggest to the school that such a teacher be laid off, I can only hope that the boy is lucky enough to meet a good language teacher in the future, and that will mean a lot to him.
Once, I listened to a lecture by Mr. Rao Kaisheng, a professor at the Northern Normal University and a famous expert in education law in China. He told me about an incident: when he was a child, his mother took him to Hangzhou, and he saw a train for the first time and was so amazed that he came back and wrote an essay with great enthusiasm, in which he said, "The train crawls like a snake" - what an image, that is the true feeling in a child's eyes! --but was criticized by the teacher for the inappropriate metaphor. This frustrated him so much that he stopped enjoying writing for a long time. It wasn't until another teacher came along that things changed. This teacher happened to see one of his poems, praised it, read it in front of the class, and recommended it to a publication. This incident gave him confidence and rekindled his interest in language classes and writing essays.
The scholar's childhood had such vulnerability, and it is clear that all children need the care of a proper education. If the next teacher Mr. Rao met had been like the previous one, there might be one less academic leader in our current education.
Would this boy have had Mr. Rao's luck?
There is a saying that the two most terrible things in the world are "a quack doctor's life and a layman's discussion of an article". The former can kill a person's life, while the latter can stifle his passion and creativity.
Nowadays, there are many children who are afraid of writing and can't write, and teachers and parents are always worried about this. In addition to complaining and criticizing children, how many people can reflect on the teaching of composition itself and look for the root cause of the problem from the teachers or parents?
There is a girl in the third grade, her parents are very busy at work, the family hired a nanny. Once the teacher assigned the essay topic "I help my mother with housework", asking the children to help their mother with some housework at home and then write out their experience of doing it.
The girl did what the teacher told her to do and went home and scrubbed the floor and then washed the dishes, and then wrote in her essay that she felt tired and uninterested in doing housework. Usually my mother told me to study hard, afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a good job in the future if I didn't study hard, so I didn't care about her words. Now, through doing housework, I feel that I should study hard and worry that when I grow up, I won't be able to find a job and will have to work as a nanny for someone else.
This little girl, who has just started to learn how to write essays, does not speak "noble", but she is sincere in her words. But this essay was criticized by the teacher, saying that the content of the idea is problematic, should not be so despised nanny, and asked to rewrite.
The girl didn't know how to rewrite it, so she asked her mother, who said: you should write that you know how hard your mother works every day by doing housework, and that you should study hard to repay your mother. The girl said: But you never do housework, our family work is all aunts are doing, you come home every day just eat, watch TV, not hard at all ah. The mother said: you can assume that our family does not have a nanny, all the housework is done by the mother. You need to write an essay to have imagination, you can fictionalize it.
Both the teacher and the mother seem to be right on the surface, but they do not value "truth" and misinterpret "imagination" and "fiction" in writing, which is actually teaching children to tell Falsehoods. Although the subjective intention is to make children write good essays, they do not realize that their instructions to children are undermining one of the greatest "skills" needed in writing essays - "telling the truth The reason for this is to say "tell the truth".
The reason why "telling the truth" is the biggest skill in writing is that telling the truth can make people interested in writing, discovering what to write, that is, wanting to write, and having something to write about - without these two things, writing is an unthinkable thing.
The passion for writing comes from the desire to express, and it is only by writing the truth that one knows exactly what one wants to express, that one has something to express, and that one can bring the satisfaction of expression. No one wants to write to tell lies. Whether in everyday life or in writing, telling lies is always more laborious and difficult than telling the truth, and falsehoods only bring satisfaction in terms of need, not pleasure in terms of beauty.
Children's minds are confused when they are asked to write false words and express their non-existent "thoughts and feelings" during writing training. They are overwhelmed by such demands and lose their sense and judgment in writing and their ability to find material. So the biggest problem they encounter is - they don't know what to write about.
When faced with a proposition, students can't help but bypass the people and events they know best, give up their most real emotions and experiences, and inadvertently search for some unbearable material to write about something they don't feel and can't grasp as a "positive" point of view. This can explain why primary and secondary school students have this common problem: when writing essays, they have nothing to write about, they can't find material and ideas, and they try desperately to make up the word count.
The essay that comes out of this may meet the "rules", but its negative effects will soon become apparent - unpleasant and pretentious writing makes children feel embarrassed and bored, and their enthusiasm and confidence in writing is destroyed. This can explain why so many children hate writing nowadays.
Nowadays, there are so many fancy ways to teach composition in primary and secondary schools, and in composition classes, teachers tell children many "writing skills". But those belong to the category of "small skills", the biggest skill "telling the truth" is always ignored, or even artificially destroyed. When a person does a job, if there is no "big skills" only "small skills", he is neither good nor interested in doing it. If you lose the "big skills", it is actually difficult to get even the "small skills".
Although teachers talk about "composition techniques" when they talk about writing with "true feelings", students are rarely encouraged to tell the truth in their actual writing. The sense of "moral preaching" from teachers, parents and society still strongly controls school education, and from the day children begin to express themselves, they are eager to learn to speak the "mainstream language", but never dare to leave them the space for self-reflection and self-expression. The space for self-reflection and self-expression is never given. Teachers' guidance and judgment of essays make students apprehensive about telling the truth, and they are trained to face the essay book with false feelings inside, so where can they find the truth?
The essay can reflect a person's state of mind and moral sentiments, and composition training for primary and secondary school students should really take on the responsibility of building children's moral character. This is why the essay training for elementary and middle school students should first teach children to express themselves authentically and freely, and then talk about the "level of words" and "level of thought". The children will not be able to write good essays, nor will they be able to achieve the purpose of ideological education.
When the child changes the real expression into a pretentious expression, he will start to say things that are not true; when the child is bound to free expression in the box proposed by adults, his heart will start to grow slavish thoughts; when he bends to meet the essay results, he is wearing out his personality, slipping into utilitarianism and mediocrity ...... These are not destructive to a person's moral character The construction is not destructive!
Lu Xun said, the rogue is no own fixed opinion, today can be this, tomorrow can be that, no conduct can be said. The language training of hooligans from childhood will breed hooligans.
Normal writing is actually a process of self-reflection, and so is the process of self-growth in thought. A child facing a proposition can think independently, his thinking is free and honest, he will find what he wants to express, he will have a lot of things he wants to say in his heart, do not have to write some empty words to make up the number of words, move the pen will not be fretful. If a person's upbringing does not degrade him, he will never become unhealthy in his thinking because he can express himself freely in his essay; and maturity of thought can naturally bring decency in writing.
I have always instilled this point of honest writing in Yuan Yuan's essay tutoring, so she has always been able to reveal her true nature in her essays.
I remember when she was in junior high school, the school once held a Mother's Day thanksgiving activity, asking each child to wash her mother's feet once when she came home over the weekend, and then come back to write an essay about how she felt about washing her mother's feet.
The intention of this "proposition" was clear, and it was clear what the students were being asked to write about. I've heard of other schools doing this before, and I've heard of some schools doing it since.
Why are people so eager to "wash their feet"? I think of the previous years to "learn Lei Feng" days, there are people on the street to give people free shoe shine, enjoy the service of most people are to take advantage of the small price, by the shoe shine to maintain the livelihood of people are poorly watching the business was robbed - this is simply the blasphemy of the spirit of Lei Feng! This is a desecration of the spirit of Lei Feng!
I feel that behind the two "ideas" of "foot washing" and "shoe shining", there is always something the same, something that makes me feel uncomfortable.
When Yuan Yuan came home and told me about it, I could see that she was in a bit of a bind too.
Usually we are very willing to cooperate with the school to do something, but this time this thing is more awkward, we unspokenly do not want to do some. I said to Yuan Yuan: Mom is still so young and healthy, why do you have to wash her feet? Even if I'm old, as long as I can do it myself, I don't want others to do it for me. People can help each other and care for each other, but only when a person needs help is it necessary for us to provide help. The proper way of caring can bring happiness to the person being cared for, otherwise it is better not to do it.
The small heart of the circle may still be a little confused and difficult. I analyzed it with her and said: If mom needs to walk over the mountains a lot in her work or life, the labor of her feet has a special meaning, and she is too tired to move when she comes home, it makes sense for you to wash mom's feet; now mom takes the car to the office every day and sits in a chair most of the time, her feet do not work harder than my hands, nor does she experience more wind and rain than my face. So it seems that washing mom's feet is better than washing her hands and face - but does it make sense?
Yuan Yuan thought I had a point, but she was still concerned about what to write in her essay. I asked her: What do you think is the purpose of such an activity at school?
She said it was to let children understand and appreciate their mothers, and to show their love for them by doing things for them. I asked her again, "Do you want to do something to show your mom your love? She nodded her head.
I laughed, and as I often do, I took her face in both hands and squeezed it into the middle so hard that her nose sank into the two bulging cheeks and her mouth arched up like a pig's snout. I kissed her little pig mouth and said, tonight mom and dad are not working overtime, now I want the three of us to go for a walk together, you have not walked with mom and dad for a long time, right? The three of us were very busy during that time. The three of us were very busy during that period of time, such leisure is really rare, so you can take a walk while talking about the words that have accumulated during this period of time.
When I got back, I said to Yuan Yuan, if everyone writes that they wash their mother's feet and thus feel that they should be filial to her, it would be too uninspiring. You actually obeyed your mom tonight because you put down your homework, weren't afraid to waste time, and took a walk with your mom and dad, which was the most enjoyable for her and what I wanted the most right now, which is really much better than washing your feet.
This is really better than washing your feet. From this, Yuan Yuan realized that there are many different ways to be filial to your mother, but the important thing is to have true feelings.
I always tell Yuan Yuan that when writing an essay, especially when faced with a proposed essay, you have to mobilize your sincerity. The first time you look at the topic, you may not be able to find a sense of what to write, so before you start writing, you must ask yourself: how do I understand this topic or this aspect, what do I want to say most, do I have a different idea from others, what is my most real idea.
Out of the habit of thinking, she quickly found the content and ideas to write about. When I read her essay later, she wrote honestly about how she felt in the face of the topic, about her mother's conversation with her, about our walks instead of washing her feet and what she had learned about herself, and about the respect and love she had for her mother that was expressed in the essay. She wrote honestly and fluently.
Later, when the school called a meeting with parents, the head teacher talked about the event and spoke very movingly about the transformation that occurred through the event for two naughty children to illustrate how well the event had worked. Both children wrote that they washed their mother's feet and found that her feet were so rough and full of thick calluses, so they felt sorry for their mother and resolved to love her well and repay her with good studies.
I didn't get the full picture of the children's essays because the teacher read only a fragment of the two children's essays. I think, if the two children's mothers are for special reasons, for work or family let their feet suffer a lot, grow such a pair of feet, that should be moved children, children write is also true feelings; but if their mothers and other people's mothers are no different, just because they like to wear high heels, like sports or do not pay attention to foot care, then the mother's feet on what basis can inspire children What makes a mother's feet inspire that kind of affection in a child? What do calluses on the feet have to do with motherhood, and is a mother who takes good care of her feet not a hard-working mother? I'm worried that the children are moaning and talking about false emotions.
Mr. Qian Liqun, a famous contemporary scholar and professor of Chinese at Peking University, believes that the training of speaking and writing skills should first cultivate an attitude of sincerely expressing one's true thoughts and emotions. He criticized that the "old eight-legged" and "party eight-legged" are still rampant in education nowadays, and that they have infiltrated into language education in primary and secondary schools, poisoning young people from their childhood, which will have endless consequences. He believes that this is not only a matter of literary style, but also a matter of the quality of a person and the spiritual and moral state of the nation. He pointed out with concern that students make up nonsense in their writing and speak against their hearts, and over time, they become accustomed to it and their minds are distorted.
Fiction and falsehood in writing are two completely different things; it is essentially the difference between having imagination and lacking imagination. Fiction based on truth is something of beauty with imagination; false writing is a reluctant work that lacks truth and imagination and will not have beauty in it.
"When you ask children to speak their minds, be careful and attentive ...... Children should be taught to experience and treasure their feelings, not taught to find words to speak of feelings that do not exist."
"Truth-telling" in writing begins as a matter of awareness and eventually becomes a matter of habit and competence. If a person has been surrounded by false training since childhood, he may lose the habit and ability to tell the truth, not because he doesn't want to, but because he no longer knows how to. To restore this ability, it also requires a lot of effort. The famous contemporary writer Bi Feiyu said that writing "is first of all a matter of courage, and then a matter of technique". The courage to tell the truth in writing is easier to cultivate when children are young, but if it is delayed, it may not be recovered for life.
While we struggle to find "writing skills," the trick is simple - when writing, remember to "tell the truth" first. Instilling this in children is more than writing itself. As Mr. Qian Liqun said, "To train a person how to write is in another sense to train a person how to be a human being.
Special Tips
Speaking the truth can make people interested in writing, discovering what to write, wanting to write, and having something to write about-without these two things, writing is an unthinkable thing.
The main reason for students to "tell the truth" is the "moral preaching" of teachers, parents, and society, which makes us so eager to plant all kinds of noble sentiments in children's hearts and make them learn to speak We are so eager to plant all kinds of noble sentiments in our children's minds and make them learn to speak the "mainstream language", but never give them room for self-reflection and self-expression.
● When writing an essay, especially when faced with a proposed essay, mobilize your own sincerity. Before you start writing, you must ask yourself: How do I understand this topic or this aspect of it, what do I want to say most, do I think differently from others, and what is my truest thought?
It is essentially the difference between imagination and lack of imagination.