Chapter 48 3.Violent homework is an "educational accident"

People always think that the homework assigned by the teacher is correct and useful for learning, and children should complete it seriously.The truth is, kids are writing way too much useless homework these days.Not only is it ineffective, it is simply negative.These homework is so boring, judging from its damage to children's learning interest and hindrance to children's intellectual development, it has come to the opposite of learning and has become an anti-learning thing.I call this kind of work "violent work".There are three main types of violence. The first is large quantity.

Please take a look at a very common Chinese homework for a first-grade child. 5 new characters plus pinyin, each word is written 20 times, A and B are written once each, totaling 200 pinyin and 200 Chinese characters.In addition, there are three sentences.If there is a typo in the new word book on the first day, it is necessary to write three more lines of the typo, that is, if one word is wrong, 30 pinyin and 30 Chinese characters will be added. 60 Chinese characters - this is just a Chinese homework.There will be no shortage of math and English homework, and the number is by no means inferior.Think about how long a child has to write in one night, he just entered the first grade.

The second is punitive. I saw a Chinese standard test paper for a second-year junior high school student, and there were some mistakes on it. The Chinese homework of the day was to correct all the mistakes on the paper, and write each corrected answer 20 times.For example, if a word is not written correctly, it is okay to rewrite the word 20 times. If an idiom is interpreted wrongly, it is necessary to copy the idiom 20 times.If there are more than two sentences in a paragraph of dictation that are not completely written correctly, or there are more than five typos, even if they are all wrong, the text must be written 20 times.There is a huge difference in the workload of students with good grades and those with poor grades.Obviously, the teacher's intention is mainly to let the students know that if they fail the exam, there will be no good fruit to eat.

The third is malicious evaluation. When Yuanyuan was in junior high school, one of her English teachers gave "zero" points to students who wrote a wrong word every time they took a word test.Yuanyuan also scored zero points.The teacher may want to use this method to let the children know that they can only strive for 100 points if they don't want to get zero points.But isn't that a paranoid way of thinking?It's more like a clever trick played by a man with a wicked heart.Educator Suhomlinski said: "Only when the relationship between teachers and children is based on mutual trust and good intentions, can grading become a stimulus to promote students' active mental work." Malicious evaluation can only cause students to be less serious in the test.The students found that in such a test, the score for writing a wrong word is the same as for writing only one word correctly, and everyone doesn't care how many are right or wrong.

These three aspects of violence often go hand in hand, just as greed, selfishness, and jealousy often go hand in hand.It not only brings pain to children's current life, but also destroys children's interest and willpower in learning, and has a negative impact on their lifelong learning emotions and attitudes. Every child is full of longing for school life when they first enter school, full of curiosity and desire for learning. You can see how excited and proud they are when they first come into contact with "homework". impossible.But, soon, they got bored-some characters would have been written long ago, and they had to write them over and over again, and they had no time to play or go to bed early.No matter how seriously you write, there will always be mistakes. If you make a mistake, you will be punished by the teacher to write more, and you will even have to write a word 100 times... "Learning" seems to be against yourself everywhere.His little heart began to resent learning, and he began to hate learning.

Boredom is the most ferocious and terrifying enemy encountered in learning, and violent homework is the fastest vehicle to transport such an enemy to children's hearts.A sad fact about education is that how many teachers skillfully use such "transportation tools", they think that knowledge is transported into the hearts of children, and they don't know that what is loaded on the car has become an "enemy".At this time, many parents are helping, forcing children to accept these violent homework, which accelerates children's boredom of learning. There are two immediate reasons why some teachers and parents prefer violent homework.

One is that they have a set of logic in their minds, here I call it "stupid logic" unceremoniously-they think that writing more and memorizing can learn more knowledge.They think that writing a word 20 times is better than writing it twice, and doing a question 5 times is better than doing it once.This is really equating learning this complex intellectual activity with an old woman's iron rod grinding a needle.They don't know that brain cognition is a wonderful process with its own laws, in which the participation of emotions plays an extremely important role.So writing homework is not the more the better, but the right one.We must have had the experience of writing a word three times and still knowing it, but after writing it 30 times, it may feel like it’s getting worse and worse, and after writing it 100 times, we almost don’t know it anymore.Those teachers and parents with a set of stupid logic are all using their skills in those quantifiable and superficial aspects.They don't know how to use various methods to stimulate children's interest in learning, but use heavy homework to fix the children's limbs on the bench and in front of the desk; they don't know that the consequence of doing this is that a chemical change will occur in the child's heart A substance called "weariness" will be generated.

The second reason is that teachers are eager for quick success. I met a few Chinese teachers at random in a certain elementary school in Beijing.A teacher, when she assigns homework for students to write new characters, she always asks the students to break a complete character into several parts and write it first. Five", and then write a line of "mouth", and finally synthesize a word "language", write two lines.Pinyin is also written in three parts: initials, finals, and tone signatures, and then written together—for this one character, a total of 9 lines are written.By doing this, she can indeed make the students remember the words written in a short period of time, and the unit tests can always get good results, which makes the parents very happy.And another teacher, she engages in reading activities in the class, leaving little homework every day, and let the children go home to read extracurricular books. The students not only improved their Chinese level in reading, but also felt happy.Her approach has a good and long-term impact on both the protection of children's learning interest and the improvement of their learning ability.

However, because the unified examination papers issued by the school only test the contents of the textbooks, which are basically things memorized by rote, the test scores of the children in the "reading teacher" class are often not as good as those of the "chaizi teacher".In addition to the pressure of school rankings, there is also pressure from parents. Some parents' comments to "reading teachers" are that there are too few homework assignments, and it is a waste of time for students to go home and read extracurricular books.This teacher has been under pressure to do so.Her students can't see much in the lower grades of elementary school, but in the upper grades of elementary school, especially in some knowledge tests at the junior high school, they obviously surpass those students who study textbooks by death.She said that she herself conducted some follow-up surveys on students, and the students she taught were all relatively good at the middle school stage, and there were almost no so-called "problem students".However, the grades of the students of the "Teacher of Kaizi" are actually very illusory, and there are many follow-up questions. There are many problems.The findings strengthened her conviction to do so.However, she also lamented that after entering middle school, who can associate the quality of students' academic performance and interest in learning with primary school teachers?People just say that a certain child is getting more and more sensible, or getting less and less sensible.One can only think that the child has a good teacher in middle school, or a bad teacher.

I also chatted with the "teacher who split characters", it's not that this teacher didn't know the disadvantages of what she did.She said, anyway, I only teach them for the past few years, as long as their grades are better than other classes in these two years, what happens in the future is not my business.This teacher who makes students drink poison to quench their thirst in teaching is a "famous teacher" in the school. Parents always try their best to send their children to her class.What you can see is that during her teaching time, more than half of the students in the class scored 100 in the Chinese test.

The two reasons for violent homework reflect two macro issues in my country's current education. One is the orientation of teaching evaluation; the other is the quality of teachers.I think these two issues are the key to the current educational reform in our country and the entry point to solve a series of educational problems.But now all kinds of censures are pinned on the "college entrance examination", which has become the chief culprit of all educational problems; and all the so-called "education reforms" are just to gouge out new flesh to mend old sores, or to treat a headache. It's such a big topic that I can't comment on it here. What should we do if our children encounter violent homework?On this point, I talked about some ideas and practices in the other two articles "Doing Homework for Children" and "Don't Write "Violent Homework"".I think the most important thing is for parents to be aware of violent homework. If you are always conscious and carefully protect your children's interest in learning, then the way to deal with violent homework will naturally come out. Sometimes children suffer from violent homework, but they don't tell their parents or ask their parents for help. It is still necessary to find the reason from the parents. There was a child in the first grade of junior high school who was fined by the teacher to copy ten texts because he messed up in class. This child really copied all ten texts in one night.The child would rather accept the "punishment" than tell the parents that this situation should be related to the child's premonition of the parent's attitude.If parents don’t understand their children well when they encounter problems, criticize them casually, and are full of blind reverence for school teaching, then children will intuitively think that talking to parents is useless, not only will not help, but may also be punished , to make matters worse.The child suffered violent homework. He copied ten texts in one night, and went to school the next day, as if nothing was damaged or missing.In this situation, some parents even secretly rejoice when they know about it, thinking that if their children copy more texts, they will learn more than other children.They did not see that the child suffered internal injuries, even internal injuries that would never heal for life. Violent homework has a comprehensive negative impact on children's confidence, will, and character.Its bad effect is far from being as simple as wearing one more piece of clothing to make it hotter, or eating one more steamed bun to make it feel a little stuffy.It can change the whole state of things, make children suffer from a chronic disease of "study weariness", destroy their self-motivation, devour their creativity, and kill their sense of happiness. The "violence" in it can even destroy their Morality.So it is not a trivial matter, it is an "educational accident". Sadly, such accidents happen every day in large areas of the country.As long as you talk to elementary and middle school students or their parents, you will find that there are not only many "accidents", but also in various ways, which are breathtaking.Over the years, whether a child will encounter violent homework depends entirely on luck, depending on what kind of teachers he meets in various subjects.As long as teachers of all subjects do not like violent homework, it is already a blessing.The state spends a huge amount of money on education and scientific research every year.Normal colleges and educational research institutes are constantly doing research projects, and primary and secondary schools are also doing "projects" now, as if everyone in the education circle is concentrating on researching problems.Why did no one pay attention to such a specific and urgent matter?Educational experts and scholars with the most scientific research funding like to discuss from a high-level perspective, but they are always absent when it comes to issues related to children's daily study and life. One of my middle school classmates is an excellent primary school teacher and has won the title of National Special Grade Teacher.She said that based on her work experience over the years, it is best for children to write new characters and write each character three times.Such a simple and effective experience—I think this is called "academic achievement"—if it is promoted, it will relieve the pain of homework for many children across the country, and even become fond of learning from then on.It seems to be so simple that there is no technical content, but it actually contains a very complete set of pedagogy, psychology and cognitive science theories.Compared with those "educational research results" that have nothing to do with school life, are presented in thick books, and always rank high in the temple, the experience of this special teacher is so simple, but so valuable, what a pity Unfortunately, the results were not promoted, and too few people benefited. Besides, the educational administrative department always uses "administrative thinking" to manage schools from top to bottom, and seldom considers using "educational science concepts" to serve schools in a nuanced manner.This makes some educational administrative measures not only ineffective, but also a new burden for teachers and students. In 2007, I read from the newspaper that the education administration department of a certain place issued a "burden reduction" plan for elementary school students, requiring that school bags for elementary school students should not exceed six catties.After the regulations were issued to each school, personnel were sent to each school for spot checks and supervision.As a result, the students had no choice but to break it up into pieces, first carry a four-pound schoolbag in and put it down, and then go to the school gate to pick up a five-pound schoolbag from their mothers and carry it in.Reminiscent of the fact that the education administrative departments have either not acted or acted indiscriminately for so many years, it can only be said that some bureaucrats have lost their minds this time.No matter how long it took for this "burden reduction plan" to come out, the brewing process has not exceeded the time and level of "brain-slapping". "Reducing the weight of students' schoolbags" is actually mostly a metaphor, and "schoolbags" here are just a symbol of schoolwork.There is some superficial relationship between the actual weight of a schoolbag and the degree of a student's academic burden, but they are not equal. "Burden reduction" should be done with thoughts and ideas, how can it be done with scales? "If teachers only think about how to force students to spend more time sitting there picking textbooks and how to attract their attention from all other activities, then the phenomenon of overburden is inevitable." Homlinski's words have told us the source and solution of students' overburden, why not think from here. Putting an end to different levels of violent homework is the most important behavior of reducing the burden.Elevating violent operations to the level of "accidents" can make people see its destructive power and arouse people's vigilance. In order to prevent production accidents in all walks of life, the country has continuously formulated and issued corresponding management standards and management methods.Accidents in coal mines are not allowed to be concealed, and the responsibility of the responsible person must be investigated.However, how many violent work accidents occur in the country every day, but they exist reasonably in a normal state. Who will expose this matter, how many people have heard the groans of millions of children?To put it mildly, it has permanently damaged the enthusiasm and interest in learning for many children; to put it mildly, it is gnawing and distorting the future of our country and nation.When will such a set of scientific "methods" be introduced for children to protect them from violent homework? ●Use heavy homework to fix the child's limbs on the bench and in front of the desk.The consequence of this is that a chemical change will occur in the child's heart, and a substance called "study-weariness" will be generated. ●The most important thing for good parents and good teachers is to prevent children from encountering the enemy of "boredom", so what they do their best is to protect children's interest in learning. ●The most important thing is that parents should be aware of violent homework. If you are always conscious and carefully protect your child's interest in learning, then the way to deal with violent homework will naturally come out. ●The most important way to reduce the burden is to put an end to different levels of violent homework.