Chapter 61 2. Arriving in the United States for the first time

Brother Kang De: I want to write overseas correspondence, because the style is more free.Boxu wrote a letter from Biguo, saying that he had sent a letter to ask Lian'er to accompany him. He remembered that he was in a good mood during the trip, and advised him to write about his miscellaneous feelings during the trip and send it to "Cosmic Wind".After coming to the United States, I have been busy for a month, and now I have a little leisure time to write this first long letter.I lived in the countryside of Svenia for the first time for the first month, enjoying the flavor of exotic villages, picking apples in the garden, catching fish and shrimps in the Xingfa Stream, and coming to New York to attend meetings from time to time. After being so busy for more than a month, I finally moved in. A new home in New York... I once stayed in Hollywood for four days, let me talk about it in detail...

I live on the seventh floor of New York's Central Park West, which is a failure of ideals.I originally wanted to live near Princeton University, because I planned to live in the countryside this year, travel barefoot in the mountains and forests with my children, and exercise my body-what a beautiful ideal!Every dream is beautiful.However, firstly, there are no Chinese restaurants, and secondly, New York dramas, fine arts, and music cannot be seen or heard.This is the same as when I lived in Shanghai for ten years.Now I plan to go back to China, but I can’t settle in Shanghai—but I’m afraid I’ll end up living in Shanghai again.

Zhu'er didn't go to school this season, and he couldn't learn Chinese when he went to school, so the class problem happened.The wife cooks by herself, and the children share the dishes, which is not easy to do in China.The eldest daughter came to the United States to learn how to fry chicken for the first time. Are you joking?We don't have a single servant, only a middle-aged woman who comes to clean the house and do laundry twice a week (paid by the hour).But in the United States, the housekeeper is extremely convenient. The shopping phone is delivered, the mail is put into the mailbox upstairs, and the telegram is also dialed to tell the telegraph office to finish (the account is settled at the end of the month and the phone account is sent)... so Zhuer is quite happy. real education.Wushuang got up at seven and went outside to get milk and newspapers, tidy up the house, wipe the chairs and tables, the three girls poured out cigarette ash like this, made coffee and baked bread like this. I got up at about eight, had breakfast, and read the newspapers. Go to China news (quite well-informed, AP and UP news agencies, and special correspondents of various newspapers stationed in China call every day), and start reading with Zhuer at about 9:30.

It is right to study with Zhuer, teaching characters is not as good as learning characters.It doesn't matter what the reader is, but how to read it.To teach how to read, I had to read with them.How to absorb words and phrases, how to guess the meaning of words carefully, how to delete and omit at will, do not know the meaning of the words, how to determine the pronunciation of the words, how to check the dictionary... because I don't tell Zhuer that I know all the characters in the "Kangxi Dictionary", or say they are new. The phonetic pronunciation of each word in the dictionary, and the distribution of the entering tone characters in the Jingyin, I am the omniscient God.Even when Genghis Khan entered the Central Plains and when Napoleon died, I said I didn't know, and told them that the school teachers didn't remember either.They don't wait for me to tell, they also know what class the teacher taught, and they only remember it after reading the book, and sometimes they have to turn the pages of the book to make a pair when grading papers-in short, I am not an encyclopedia.But since you don't know it, you have to find it.Where to find it?Here comes the knowledge.They know that there are "Chronology of Celebrities and Deaths in Past Dynasties", "List of World Events", "Etymology", and more shallowly, "Student Dictionary".What is more important is to let them develop the habit of being precise in pronunciation and meaning, and clear in outline.It doesn't matter whether Napoleon died in 1812 or 1815. He probably caused troubles in Europe in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. It needs to be clarified.The sequence of Song and Yuan and Ming needs to be clarified.The four tones of Ping and Ping have only been learned recently. They have studied in Shanghai for five or six years, but no one has taught them Ping and Ping.Most importantly, I am still pointing out the fun in the book and enjoying the joy of reading.

What to teach?It's a joke, there are no rules at all.English today, Chinese tomorrow, Tang poetry today, Liaozhai tomorrow--the wonders of the past and the present, the cosmic wind, Bingying's autobiography, Shen Congwen's autobiography, the newspaper of the day!It doesn't matter if you talk about history, the US presidential election, or calligraphy.Each of them brought the textbook prescribed by the school.Several kinds are shelved for me.A thin book of geography, let them see the map clearly, and I guarantee that when they return to China for the exam, they can pass in two days if they read it;And watching the scenery of various places in the movie is to read geography. …I mean, I talk to them about learning for an hour every day, nonsense, nonsense, I also read a little of Yuanqu, and I have also read Pipaxing, and I copy a few of Li Bai's poems according to the day.If they like it, they choose to read it, and if they don’t like it, they drop it—but if they like it, they really like it in their hearts. This liking, this "goodness" of "earning to learn", is the source of all future learning.The second half of the day is free reading, follow them to read novels, cosmic wind, west wind.

I am behind.Teach them to choose and read "Five Legacy Rules".Among them, such as Cheng Weizhai's "Reading Schedule by Year", Bai Juyi's "Yan Poetry Shows Old Man Liu", Lu Fangweng's "Feelings of Eating Oranges in the Yellow Forest", Zhu Zi's "Adages of Family Management", and Lu Xinwu's "Songs of Good People" are all kind and interesting. The text is easy to understand.The principle of being a human being is also in it, confusing being a human being with reading.Even the "Governor's Legacy" is also taught, so they know what the attitude towards women was in ancient times.Good or bad, you can criticize as much as possible.For ancient Chinese, I like the selection of "Yu Chu Xin Zhi" and "Wen Zhi" the most. Because I get the "Zhi", I can know its taste, and I won't be dizzy when I open the book.

I am nasty.Zhuangzi and the West Chamber treat each other equally.Hangeul and cosmic style are treated equally, and in my opinion, it is better to read less Korean than to read less modern articles.Teaching children to read should not be too far away from their ideas and knowledge.It is easy to make progress in reading popular magazines, but it is difficult to make progress in reading ancient prose.It's late to get famous posts, and it's faster to get letters from friends.I don't know how many letters from your friends have been copied by the children.Whichever is closest to anything is easy to understand.This principle is seldom understood by ordinary people, and the failure of education often lies in this.Moreover, the letters are authentic, no matter how good the famous post is, it is already distorted, and if it is distorted, it will lack air, and it is not as vivid as the usual Zhang Jun and Li Jun's handwriting.

English is also obscene.I don't teach the works of famous writers, but I only read with them the daily records of President Roosevelt's wife in the evening paper (My Day, by Eleanor Roo-sevelt, in N.Y. World-Telegram)-very obscene, very ordinary.All they talk about is who will be meeting in the morning, where to go to the meeting in the afternoon, trivial household matters, whether the weather is sunny or rainy, and there is no high-level discussion or witty remarks at all.For example, the sentence they were asked to recite today is "There are so many people standing at the station, when the train is about to leave, Roosevelt had to ask everyone to take a few steps back, for fear that someone will be hurt when the train is moving."And "children are looking out the window".What literary value does this have?Not at all.But the basics of English can be read well.I asked them to try to explain the meaning of the whole sentence in English. If they couldn't explain it, they would read the book again, and then try to explain it again, until the whole sentence is smooth.There is no score at all, no A, B, C, D.The rest go out, walk, watch theaters, and read and study indiscriminately, literature?Not literary either.What they learn is not literature, but the life that literature draws from.It is also my purpose not to separate the reading time from the non-reading time.The universe is a big book, let them read it.

The composition title is also obscene.There is no theory of saving the country, "capital sanctions" (this phrase was once seen in a primary school citizen reader compiled by the Institute of Commerce), "self-improvement" (the topic of a composition in a primary school in Shanghai).They only keep a diary, one entry per day, and the scope is absolutely free—narration, travel notes, discussions, prejudices, memories, lyricism, descriptions of conversations, and depictions of characters can all be included without limitation.strangeness!The grades are better than what is taught in school.Why? "True" is just the word.Why are the essays written in elementary school today all fake baby talk? "However, playing every day and disregarding your studies, wouldn't it be a pity to waste your time?" Where does this stereotyped and fake children's saying come from?From textbooks.In textbooks, adults write fake baby talk for real children to read, so real children have to learn the fake baby talk of adults and copy it into the article.The quotation in the previous paragraph is found in the new ruler slips of the students of the World Book Company.It gave me the impression that the real Chinese priests in Xiamen learned to speak the fake Xiamen dialect of Western priests when they prayed, and pretended to be romantic.

Readers probably thought I was crazy.Otherwise, I think Lin is prone to making strange remarks.In a country, many education experts, education officials, and special committee members have accumulated years of experience and professional knowledge to determine today's educational system.Who is the son?And only dissent!Either the education experts went crazy, or Lin went crazy.It is impossible to determine whether Lin is crazy or not.There are so many crazy things in the world, and there is no big difference between wisdom, foolishness and virtuousness.Lin saw that Ernstein's educational opinions in the New York newspaper were the same as his own, and Le and Ernstein were among the same madmen.Ernstein's speech on October 15th at the University of New York's Higher Education Commemoration 10th Week said:

"The most important motivation for life and school work lies in the joy of work and knowing the value of this work in society. In my opinion, the most important work of schools is to inspire and strengthen young people. "This kind of school expects the teacher to be an artist in this field. This kind of teacher should enjoy as much freedom as possible in the choice of teaching materials and teaching methods. Because the same is true for teachers, they lose the joy of their work due to external constraints and pressures. "I want to oppose a concept that schools must directly teach students useful knowledge and various arts in the future. It is not that simple to adapt to the world, and it can be learned through the school's professional training. A certain successful person will study and analyze the elements of his success, how many are trained by specialist training?) "Besides, I think it is objectionable to treat a person as a dead machine. "The purpose of a school should be to expect young people to leave school with harmonious personalities, not specialists. In a way, I think that is the case even with preparatory vocational schools. "The most important goal is not to acquire specialized knowledge, but the general ability to distinguish right from wrong and to think independently. … "If a youth trains his muscles and stamina by walking gymnastics, he will be able to do any later laborious work. So it is with the training of mental skills. "So the famous quote of a certain funnyman is good. Education is that which remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. Educator, what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." (See October 16 The New York Times)