Chapter 29 5.Learn not to "work hard"

What I want to talk about under this topic is exactly how to train children to study hard. One of the most popular concepts about learning has always been "study hard".Many parents have instilled this concept in their children since they were young, asking young children to "hard work".Many parents have been nagging their children before they go to school, saying that they can't play to their heart's content after school, and have to study hard.After the child goes to school, he will continue to teach the child to "work hard" in his studies, and ask him to do so in specific learning activities, in order to cultivate a good learning attitude in the child.

I think it is necessary to train children to be diligent in their studies, but using "hard" words and ideas to ask children is often doing the opposite. When it comes to learning attitudes such as "hard work" or "hardship", we are used to admiring the perseverance it expresses, and always ignore the unpleasant taste of "bitterness" contained in it.As adults, when considering the cause and effect of a problem, we will endure the pain of the process for the result.Extending this kind of experience to children, requiring him to accept the bitterness of the learning process in exchange for the sweetness of academic performance-this kind of thinking is logically flawless, but it can easily become a bad suggestion when it reaches children.

Associating "learning" with an uncomfortable feeling of "bitterness" will make children feel slightly uncomfortable when they think about learning.Who would like to suffer?A person's "hardship" for a certain goal must be based on his sufficient rationality and perseverance.This kind of rationality and perseverance, not everyone has or can pay for everything even adults, it is even more inappropriate to use it to demand children. It is human nature to avoid suffering and seek pleasure, especially for children.He likes things that feel "sweet", and he hates things that feel "bitter".

We originally wanted children to like learning, but we made the learning process into bitter buns, and only imagined the results as sweet pies. We asked children to eat bitter buns every day to think about sweet pies—the process is accompanied by concrete and real every day. My child, the goal is so far away and illusory.When he got tired of swallowing bitter buns, he was criticized for "not working hard" and asked to suppress the real "bitterness" with the imaginary "sweetness".The child does not have the ability to refute the teachings of adults. He just feels the disharmony inside, his own powerlessness, and his disgust for "bitterness" deep in his heart.

It is impossible for a person to hate one thing and do one thing well. It is said that during World War II, one of the best Swiss watchmakers was coerced into making a batch of high-quality timepieces for the Nazis.Despite his considerable efforts, he was still unable to reach the pre-war level.He himself didn't know why.Later, a psychologist analyzed that this was because he was in a different state of mind when making watches.This is the power of emotions. American educator Dewey believes that in education, "to the extent that the purpose and the means are separated, the meaning of the activity will be reduced to the extent that the activity becomes a kind of hard work, and a person will escape as long as he can escape."This can explain why the more parents ask their children to study hard, the less interested their children are in learning.

It is very easy for an adult to accuse a child of "not working hard", and it is accompanied by criticizing the child for "not being sensible".It seems that children don't know the benefits of working hard, so they are told over and over again that they should study hard. This is really underestimating children.It's not that a child doesn't know that hard work can pay off in getting good grades, he just can't.When learning activities do not arouse his pleasant experience, he will be unable to mobilize his initiative, and will involuntarily show laziness, lack of hard work, lack of seriousness, etc.-many people think this is the nature of some "incompetent" children, In fact, his motivated nature has been distorted.

"Not hardworking" children seem to often forget about studying. They always spend their time watching TV, playing games, playing football, making phone calls, and even sitting around doing nothing. Show a particularly "not motivated" look.Adults say him, he has a thick skin and doesn't care.For this situation, parents should not look at it in isolation, and do not simply put the responsibility on the child alone. The fact is that every child is willing to do better in their studies, to satisfy their parents, and to be praised by adults.Because there is another nature of human beings, that is self-motivated.If some children show that they are not self-motivated in learning, it is not a lack of nature, but a gradual loss in the growth of the day after tomorrow.

Dewey believes that for children, play and learning are not in conflict, and under normal conditions children have the ability to coordinate the relationship between the two.If a child only wants to play and doesn't want to learn, so that the two conflict, it must mean that there is something bad in his educational environment that is affecting him.He notes that "wherever something is done that borders on drudgery, or where externally imposed work tasks need to be done, the requirement for play exists".Therefore, it is precisely because adults imply that learning is a "hard work" or use various incorrect methods to destroy children's interest in learning, making learning a "hard work" that children want to escape and want to avoid. Playing excessively and wasting time has become "not sensible".

Parents and teachers should study children's characteristics, be sympathetic to children's psychology, and pay attention to cultivating children's eagerness to learn from the aspect of "learning emotion".Children are fragile and helpless. Don't treat your child as a hero who can overcome difficulties and keep demanding, and don't bother him with "hard work" again and again.Wishful thinking to require children to have the spirit of "striving courage" is equivalent to asking a bird that has just hatched to soar in the blue sky; not paying attention to the cultivation elements in the environment, but subjectively requiring children to have "spirit of hard work" is like It is a typical idealistic approach to think that a wad of banknotes can be grabbed from the air for no reason.

"Hard work" is a mature learning character, it will not be born out of thin air, it will grow on the soil of reason and interest.Some children are in middle school and are unwilling to study hard when they are about to take the college entrance examination. This shows that their learning character has always remained at a young stage. Never developed rationality.The stagnation of these developments must be related to the parents' educational attitudes and methods. The main contradictions that children have to solve in different learning periods are different. As far as my country's education system is concerned at the present stage, I think that the primary school stage mainly solves the problem of learning interest, the junior high school stage mainly solves the problem of learning methods, and the high school stage is hard work. .

From interest, method to diligence, it is a causal relationship. If the former does not exist, the latter cannot be well realized.In each learning process, they cannot be completely separated, but coexist in each stage; from a horizontal perspective, this is also the order.Therefore, in every learning activity, "interest" is always important. Only when interest is taken care of can there be methods, and only with interest and methods can there be diligence. The rationality of learning is gradually formed. Only when the main contradictions in each period are resolved can the learning character be in a good state. Of course, the ability of parents is also limited. We may not be able to make children feel that learning is "interesting", but at least we must use our eyes and actions to tell him that learning is "not hard".We may not be able to make children as enthusiastic about homework as they are about playing ball or computer games, at least we must make him feel that this is as normal and necessary as sleeping and eating.This requires us to keep thinking in the management of children, pay attention to our own subtext when talking to children, and understand what information our words convey to children. In terms of cultivating children to study hard, it is precisely not to strengthen "suffering", but to eliminate "suffering" as much as possible-don't remind the child that learning is bitter, and don't put pressure on the child to prevent him from feeling depressed during learning activities. After Yuanyuan went to high school, she was very tired from studying, and occasionally she complained that she was too tired and showed slack.The child already feels bitter, and at this time, parents should not make her suffer more with positive preaching such as "know how to endure hardship". At this time, we should find ways to reduce her experience of suffering and remind her that "learning is not enough". bitter". I took two steps to help her. One is to find some information about the experience of the top students in the college entrance examination, especially those who talk about hard work, and let her know that all the students who get good grades are not hardworking.On the surface, this strengthened the need to study hard, but actually relieved her feeling of suffering.Since the champions all work so hard, it is normal for them to work hard by themselves.During this process, I noticed that I didn't ask her to ask her to work hard. The second is to read "The Story of Science" with her. Although she was very busy studying in high school, I still suggested that she read this book.This book is very well compiled. It presents the general development of various disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, physics, and medicine, and tells the difficult journey through many vivid stories.From here, Yuanyuan saw that the accumulation of human scientific knowledge is not easy. The discovery of oxygen alone has gone through so many years and so many ups and downs.Thinking that she can easily survey every amazing achievement of her predecessors with a thin textbook, she feels very lucky—she is just a enjoyer of these great achievements, so why bother? What I do is to let Yuanyuan look at things from a high position, so that she can study hard without feeling bitter.A high school student has a relatively mature rationality, and her knowledge can arouse her perseverance, which can reduce the pain. Yuanyuan studied more than ten hours a day in her second and third year of high school. She was very conscious and never wasted time for no reason.She slept an average of six hours a day, and she had to drink coffee to refresh herself in the third year of high school.After the college entrance examination, I asked her if she felt that studying like this was too hard. She said that it was interesting to have such an opportunity to do one thing with all her strength, and to be able to understand so much knowledge thoroughly; feel. After the college entrance examination, many children seemed to have emerged from hell, and some wanted to tear up their books.Yuanyuan was a little surprised why she didn't feel this way, her life seemed to be similar to before, it was just that the content of her life was different.This may be because she has never felt particularly depressed and tired before the college entrance examination. I found that generally speaking, parents are willing to accept telling parents to tell their children to "hard work"; if they are told not to tell their children "hard work", parents often don't like to listen to it, and even feel disgusted. It may be because the idea of ​​"study hard" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and everyone has been thinking this way for many years; while the saying "don't work hard" is too new, people often reject it based on their feelings without understanding it carefully.Another reason is that talking about "study hard" is to unilaterally change the child, which is what the parents are willing to do; but if you don't talk about "hard work" but let the child achieve hard work, the first thing that will change is the parents, and the parents will generally reject it. , because people do not like to be changed by others. A middle school teacher told me such a thing.A boy in her school got very good grades in the college entrance examination. The boy's parents were invited to tell the parents of the students at school how they raised their children.The experience summed up by this parent is: "Nothing else, just force him to work hard."She said that there are also English books in the bathroom at home, so that the children should not waste their time going to the bathroom.This parent's experience is well recognized by other parents. As a result, many parents go home and force their children to study hard, and force their children to stuff a book when they go to the toilet. Many parents have done a very detailed and distinctive education for their children, and it is those daily details that make their children complete.But when summing up experience, many parents are not good at grasping the details, fail to discover the essence of their own actions, and often can only talk about some superficial things according to the cliché.I believe what this parent said about "just forcing him to work hard" is true, but she just stated a situation in isolation.I'm almost sure that she must have had a really smart approach that surpassed this means, otherwise, the child's study has gone all the way for more than ten years, and there will be no results today. It's not that she doesn't want to tell everyone, maybe she doesn't know how to summarize.This is the same as some books on family education that are sold by successful parents on the market today. The "success" of parents is true, and the methods mentioned in the book are not false. The original and core methods are refined and displayed, but more superficial and non-essential things are presented.These things have no reference significance for other parents, and may even be misleading.If the parents just learn a little superficially and simply "work hard" when they come back, and catch up with the time their children go to the toilet, they may be disappointed in the end. There is another reason why people are particularly willing to tell their children about suffering, because there are too many examples to prove the causal relationship between "hardship" and "success". We often read stories about how great scientists and artists from all over the world worked and studied without sleep and food. These stories are often used as examples of "hard work" to inspire future generations.They convince people that it is the truth that "you can be the best if you suffer from hardships". In fact, every person who devotes selflessly to study and work must have established interest or sense of responsibility in study and work. This interest and sense of responsibility are so powerful that they often exceed physiological needs.What ordinary people see is their "bitterness" in daily life, but they don't see the "joy" of being in the things they like, so they think that they achieve success through "bitterness".In fact, they are not "bitter", they are just "crazy", and the fun of it is beyond the reach of others. Just as some children are obsessed with computer games, they can also do not sleep or eat when they are on the computer-is this called "hard work", or is it more appropriate to call it "hard work"? "Hard work" and "hard work" both mean physical and mental effort, but the feelings they bring to the parties are completely different. Although we don't need to distinguish the similarities and differences between "hard work" and "hard work" in life, we must realize that different feelings will have completely different effects on children in education. If you want your child to do a good job, you must first let him like it, at least not be disgusted, and avoid adding factors that make him feel unhappy in this thing-study don't "work hard", that is to say That's the reason. ●It is necessary to train children to be diligent in their studies, but to demand children with "hard work" words and ideas is often doing the opposite. ●It is precisely because adults imply that learning is a "hard work", or use various incorrect methods to destroy children's interest in learning, making learning a "hard work", and children want to avoid it and want to spend too much time Playing and wasting time, becoming "not sensible". ●The primary school stage mainly solves the problem of learning interest, the junior high school stage mainly solves the problem of learning methods, and the high school stage focuses on hard work. ●In terms of cultivating children to study diligently, it is precisely not to strengthen "suffering", but to eliminate "suffering" as much as possible-don't remind the child that learning is bitter, and don't put pressure on the child to prevent him from feeling depressed during the learning activities.