Chapter 21 New discovery

1. The difference between "E-students" and other students is not whether they have their own interests or whether they want the best grades, but that the former puts interest more important, while the latter puts grades more important.Once you reverse this order, it is possible to become an "E student". 2. Abandon the "queuing culture" and "worship of champions".In fact, there are two types of excellent students, some are able to become "E students" and grow like geniuses, and some are not.The latter will never sacrifice "first" for a goal

They will never devote their enthusiasm and ambition to something more attractive and of long-term value. For these people, the most important thing is to surpass others, to be number one, and to be a prestigious university. The most surprising of these is that the desire that drives people to be number one runs counter to the qualities of an "E student". When you connect this phenomenon with the expectations of parents and teachers, and the "number one experience" celebrated in newspapers , you will know why most of our 30 research objects are not "first". 3. Everyone can fully display their potential only after they really grasp what they want.This link is crucial.Therefore, the first impetus to become an "E-student" is not talent, intelligence, key schools, "famous tutors", parents' staring eyes, or any "pressure from the outside world". All that counts is "desire and love from the heart".

4. Abandon the old concept of "not being biased". "One skill" is more likely to make a student an "E student" than "equal share", especially at the college level. 5. Children's "enlightenment" is more related to the educational environment, not just related to the age of the child as we usually think.In 90% of cases, the child's "enlightenment period" occurs from the second year to the third year of university, regardless of whether he is 14 years old (such as Zhang Yaqin and Shen Xiangyang) or 20 years old (all other students who go to school at normal ages) people).

6. Students who really know "what I want" are usually happier than those students who have excellent academic performance. I am very surprised, now children go to college when they are eighteen or nineteen years old, and their mothers still have to accompany them. ——Zhang Yaqin In the midsummer of 1978, a railway station in the center of a city in central China. On that day, there were many people on the station, which was dirty and messy.Surrounded by adults, Yaqin was sandwiched between them, looking very short and thin, with a stunted appearance.It's not his fault either, he's only 12 years old.

But from now on, he will leave home and leave his mother.He is already a college student. For him, the university campus is an unknown world. He used to only know that it was a place for young people, but he has not left his childhood yet. There were crowds of people around, and someone bumped into him.The bag he was carrying fell to the ground.At that moment, the child was a little flustered, and tightened his mother's hand, feeling that he had caught a support.It was strange to say that when he was with his mother, he never felt any special feeling. Now that he was about to leave his mother, he felt safe from that hand for the first time.But he knew that his mother would not accompany him.His mother had already said when he walked out of the house: "Your future journey must be done alone."

He looked up and looked at his mother.Mom looked at him with a strange brilliance in her eyes, which is not so much affection as encouragement. "Go ahead, you can do it," Mom said. These words sounded so familiar to Yaqin.In the past few years, at every critical moment, his mother said in his ear: "Go, you can do it." Time and time again when skipping grades to go to school, when traveling alone, when participating in math competitions, got it My mother said this when I went to the hospital with hepatitis and when I wrote my name on the registration form of the University of Science and Technology of China.At that time, the brilliance in my mother's eyes was the same as it is now.

Rob McNamara once said, "The human brain, like the human heart, is directed toward being admired." And it is true.Surrounding every exceptional child is a world of encouragement and praise.When many people see this situation, they will have a misunderstanding, thinking that a child is worthy of praise because he is smart, but in fact, the opposite is often the case, and the child becomes smart because he is praised. Grandma always praised Yaqin for his talent, and always said to him, "That is the best gift your mother and father gave you, don't waste it." Run, I still remember my grandma often said: "Go, you can do it." Later, every time his mother said these words to him, he would think: "Mom must have learned it from her mother."

There is a special tacit understanding between Yaqin and her mother: there is never any special intimacy, but they trust each other.Mother always said: "A good child is praised." She also likes to say: "Let the child know that he is smart, and he will really become smart." Mothers all over the world like to praise their children, and they all know that parents' praise Recognition and recognition are of great significance to children's psychological development.What sets this mother apart is that she knows the art of praise.Know when to let children realize their abilities and when to let children realize their shortcomings.Her praises were often unexpected, and whenever her son showed cowardice, hesitation, or frustration, her encouragement was particularly tenacious.But when everyone was praising her son, she believed that his son no longer needed praise.

When Yaqin was in middle school in Taiyuan, the whole city was talking about him, and he wanted to "start a wave of learning from Zhang Yaqin".When we mentioned this story earlier, we missed one of the plots, and we have to say it now.When Yaqin saw this slogan that day, he thought it was very interesting. He ran home happily and told his mother that he wanted her to be happy with him. Unexpectedly, his mother just said lightly: "There is nothing for others to learn. You are like other people's children." In the summer of 1978, the day Yaqin received the admission letter from the University of Science and Technology of China, the school was full of excitement, the students were very happy, the teachers were even more excited, the neighbors came to congratulate, and many reporters came to interview.Yaqin couldn't help but feel complacent and ready to fight hard."My goal has been achieved," he told his mother.

The mother was also very happy, but this woman who never hesitated to encourage her children did not say a word of praise now. "Maybe she praised me in front of others, but she was relatively calm in front of me," Yaqin said many years later when recalling the scene of that day, "I don't remember what my mother said to me at that time, and I just talked with her." Almost every time after the exam." Every mother hopes to give birth to a genius, but the mothers of real geniuses will say that their child is an ordinary person.This is not modesty, because they know their children too well, and know that their children all have those things in human nature.So Yaqin's mother hardly ever praised him face to face.For a few days, he became the target of reporters. The reporters all said that he was a "child prodigy" and wanted to promote his deeds in newspapers so that children all over the country could learn from him.At this time, his mother asked him not to be interviewed by the reporter and not to let the reporter publish his name in the newspaper.

"Remember, son," said Ma, "fame and what the papers say is nothing. Besides, you're a boy and you can't tell success from failure." Now, the son is about to go to college, and there is still only a faint expression on the mother's face.The air in the train compartment was cloudy and noisy.This is the noise of the autumn of 1978, which is different from the noise of the 1980s, and even more different from the noise of the 90s.At that time, the college entrance examination in our country had just resumed after a 12-year hiatus, and "going to university" became synonymous with "getting rid of the vast world" and "going back to the city", which excited hundreds of millions of children and their parents."High school graduates" for 12 consecutive years sat in the same examination room. In addition, there was a large group of children like Yaqin. The newspapers kept saying that they were "prodigy children", all gathered in the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China.Now, the place Yaqin is going to is the "Junior Class". As we said earlier, traveling alone was not the first time for him.He felt that the time of acting like a baby in front of his mother ended very early. He remembered that when he was a child, he ran around, and his mother never followed him inseparably. "I have been very independent since I was a child." He recalled his childhood: "I am very strange. Now children go to college at the age of eighteen or nineteen, and their mothers still have to accompany them." Now, the mother is gone again, leaving her son alone on the train heading south.Where is this train going?Yaqin still couldn't figure it out.At that time, he only knew that the journey in front of him was more than a thousand kilometers, from Taiyuan to Hefei. After experiencing the initial fear, Yaqin calmed down, looked left and right, and received the adult's gaze.Few people believed that this thin and small child was actually a college student. The train moved on.Yaqin left his home in Taiyuan, this time for good, and as his mother said, he went on a "journey to the future" alone. Parents are children's first idols. --Kai-fu Lee Seeing Dad's work over the years gives you a better understanding of why the son puts so much intellect and passion into his studies.In fact, the influence of fathers on sons is not limited to these. After Kaifu became an adult, he tried to weave together the sporadic memories of his father, and found that his father spent very little time with him, and "he didn't like to talk very much, and just buried himself in writing his things." When he was a child, Kaifu would go to his father's study every night to watch him write at his desk.The man was not tall, he was reticent, calm and calm, and he rarely smiled. Even when he was happy, he only put a faint smile on the corner of his mouth.But my father's pen seems to never stop, and there is endless wisdom and passion flowing in it.Kaifu was still young and couldn't understand the mystery, but he already felt that there was an endless force supporting his father, which made him very curious. For most children, the influence of parents is usually not what they say, but what they do.In Kaifu's mind, his father is the embodiment of morality and justice, leaving him with a lasting imprint.Looking back on that day many years later, he gradually realized that it was his father who taught him a valuable first lesson and gave him the first inspiration in life.That is not the achievement of the father, but the character of the father. The Greek tragic poet Sophocles said: "A father's achievement is the son's greatest glory; a son's good deeds are the father's greatest pride." But in this family, both the father and the son always regard character as the first priority in life. top priority.Many years later, Kai-fu has become a computer scientist with outstanding talents, but he still believes that the most important quality of a person is not intelligence, but character.Once he was discussing the quality of students on television with Chen Zhangliang, the vice-president of Peking University, who shocked him by ranking "character" after "intelligence," which led to a public debate.His seriousness and dedication to human character surprised even the Chinese students in front of the TV.That's because they didn't understand that his family had one of the most important inheritances, which came from his father. My father was very focused when he was working.Every morning, he always starts working as fast as a man in his 60s can do.He almost loves the manuscript paper and materials on the table. The higher the pile, the more chaotic it is, the more excited he is, and he often even says some words to the table that others cannot understand.Whenever he finished writing a book and let out a long sigh of relief, Kai Fu would go over and secretly see what his father had written.There is a book called "The Biography of Liu Shaoqi", another called "The Biography of Lin Biao", and "The Biography of Zhou Enlai".It was difficult for a boy who had just started school and had absolutely no experience of living in the mainland to understand these things.He only felt that the world in his father's mind was so broad and colorful, boundless, stretching to distant places. He would secretly reach out and touch the words written by his father.It was in that room that he saw his father's most cherished banner for the first time and recognized the words on it.The words were written by Qian Mu, vigorous and calm: It is great to have tolerance and virtue, and to be self-exalted without seeking quality. When the father's friends saw it, they all said that this was the father; later, the son's colleagues saw it, and said that this was the son.Li Kaifu himself said that the first sentence is like him, but the realm of the second sentence is far behind his father.Maybe he was really half father and half himself.But no matter how you look at the meaning of this couplet, you can feel the influence of the father on the son.From the perspective of big history, although the temperament and thinking of Chinese young people may seem novel to you, they are actually the result of the continuation and development of several generations.On them, there is a deep imprint of their parents. Back then, my father was an official, but he hated official customs.The Kuomintang was defeated like a mountain, and the regime collapsed in an instant. He left the mainland and came to Taiwan, completely disappointed in politics.He resigned and went home to write desperately.He is one of the rare people who was born in the officialdom and has not been contaminated by the bad habits of the officialdom. He has an independent spirit and insists on being frank and frank in his dealings with others. He is neither pompous nor kitsch.He is passionate about writing to express his ideas. At that time, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were at odds with each other, and there were no political, economic, or even non-governmental exchanges.Taiwan does not have a visiting delegation from the mainland.The mainland side is the same, there are no Taiwanese tourists, no Taiwanese companies, and no Taiwanese investors.Police openly monitored those with relatives and friends in Taiwan, saying they were "suspected spies."Mainland newspapers always say "liberate Taiwan".Taiwan's newspapers always talk about "counterattacking the mainland", boasting how wise "President Chiang" is, or cursing the mainland as a "communist bandit".Both sides of the strait cultivated hostility among their children, but Kai-fu's father was an exception. He never said such things, and he never disparaged the mainland in front of his son.In fact, my father had a deep understanding of the top leaders of the Communist Party. In his later years, he wrote books one after another, almost all of which involved the leaders of the Communist Party.He is lonely and arrogant by nature, never drifts with the crowd, and echoes what others say.It is always said that one should be impartial and upright, and that every country, every political party, and everyone has good and bad sides.It is from this point of view that he evaluates right and wrong on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.Therefore, most of his works cannot be accommodated in Taiwan and the mainland, and only Hong Kong is willing to publish them.But these things can only be realized after Kaifu grows up.As for that time, Kaifu was just wondering why his father kept writing but never published it? When Kaifu was 11 years old, there was an extra topic in the family, that is, whether the child should be allowed to study in the United States.At the time the little boy had no idea what this meant.If his father stopped him, he would be happy to stay by his side, but his father didn't say anything.The father never said what he expected from his son, and now he just watched his son leave him calmly. In this way, the son left his father and crossed the vast Pacific Ocean to a foreign country.Most children have a psychological tendency, the farther they are from their parents, the more attachment to their parents will be aroused deep in their hearts, and the same is true for Kaifu.When he was free, he couldn't help looking towards the east. He could feel his home and his mother whispering in his ears, but he couldn't hear his father's voice. However, the image of his father is still in his heart, subtly affecting him.He later said, "When I was in middle school in the United States, I just wanted to follow my father's footsteps, because I knew he was an amazing person." A heartfelt exchange like this rarely happens between the father and son.Just like many fathers and sons, they also have too many emotions and too many words in their hearts, and they want to tell each other but they still refuse to speak, and they dare not guess what the other person really thinks under the surface. Farther and farther away, until one day after a long, long time, I suddenly discovered that There is such a bond between father and son. In 1990, after 40 years of leaving the mainland, my father finally had the opportunity to return to his hometown of Sichuan.This was "a very shocking trip, and I couldn't calm down for a long time after returning." On the night when he returned to Taiwan, the 81-year-old took out the photos he took in the mainland, asked his family to look at them, and pointed out which one was the grave of his grandmother and which one was Wenshu Monastery in my hometown.He also told his family that after his death, his ashes must be sent home and buried beside his grandmother.In the end, he took out a stone seal, which was a souvenir given to him by a Sichuan gold and stone seal carver.The old man silently recited the poems on the stone seal, and when he read "The young man left home and the eldest returned", he couldn't help losing his voice. All this was told to Kaifu by his mother on the phone. At that time, Kaifu was working hard day and night at Apple for his first voice recognition product.The son and his father kept in touch by phone until one morning in 1994, when the phone rang. This time it was not the father. He heard his sister's voice and felt a tremor in his heart.My sister told him in her saddest, quietest, gentlest voice that he would never be able to talk to his father on the phone again. When his father finally died of illness, his face was serene, with a smile on his mouth, but all the family members knew that there must be great regret in his heart.When he was dying, he told his children that he had a dream.He came to the beach in a dream, and picked up a piece of white paper on a rock, on which was written: "Love of China." He also said that he had a plan that could not be realized, and that was to write another book called "Hope for the Future of the Chinese".Of course, he also inherited and restored his most cherished things, which showed that he had great expectations for his son many years ago.My father's legacy is those ten words: "There is virtue to be great, and there is no pursuit of self-exaltation." When holding this banner, Kaifu felt his father's strength.He felt that he was the loneliest man in the world and at the same time the richest man.From then on, wherever he went, he took it with him.It was hung on the wall of his house when he returned to China, and it was still hung on the wall of his house when he returned to the United States.Looking back on the past and the future, he gradually understood that his father was using himself as an example for his son, guiding his son's future with a silent authority.The father's character enriches the son's life, and the son's character is the continuation of the father's life.It's not about wisdom, it's not about wealth, it's not about power. My father never asked me about my studies, and even seldom talked at home, but he stayed up all night and made a decision that changed my life ever since. ——Shen Xiangyang In Microsoft Asia Research Institute, there is no one who works harder than Shen Xiangyang.When a colleague said he worked "like a wolf" At that time, he said: "It's not a wolf, it's a hungry wolf." Each of his string of achievements has surprised his colleagues all over the world, but he is also a happy man, his hearty, rich Infectious laughter always echoes on the third floor of Sigma Building.In the past 36 years, he has walked step by step from a poor village at the junction of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to this sapphire-like mansion. The most crucial step was taken by his father with his help. At the age of 11, Xiang Yang left his hometown and went to the county town to study in high school.The county seat is far away from home, and it takes more than an hour to walk by bus.Along the way, the mother tried her best to encourage her son to learn to live independently and take care of himself, but when it came time to break up, this always strict woman cried. It was a very difficult decision for this family to send their son to high school.The father has always been indifferent to his son's studies, but he stayed up all night to make this decision. The situation in this case must be connected with the general trend of our country at that time in order to understand it. In the 1970s, it was very rare for a farm boy to enter high school, which meant that his future path would lead to a college campus.Not to mention that the college entrance examination system had not yet been restored at that time. Even if the door to university was completely opened, only 1% of the hundreds of millions of children in rural areas the size of Shen Xiangyang could embark on this path, and most of the rest could only complete junior high school or elementary school. Education, in addition, there are at least 100 million rural children who do not have the opportunity to study. Regardless of the law or the education system, China does not prohibit rural children from going to college.They can take college exams like city kids, and if they pass, they can enter a university.However, the road to college for rural children is more difficult than that of urban children, and there are more obstacles.Half of this obstacle is due to the lack of knowledge and narrow vision in rural areas. Children who grow up in this environment cannot compete with urban children in the same examination room.The other half of the obstacles come from the father and mother.Generally, farmers are struggling financially, and most parents want their children to work in the fields as soon as possible to help the adults support the family.Under such circumstances, it is rare for a child to complete junior high school. Even those families with far-sighted parents and children with excellent character and learning only require their children to complete secondary colleges after junior high school. Today's college students are everywhere, and they still worry about finding a job after graduation.It was different at that time. There were no college graduates for 10 consecutive years. No matter in the city or in the countryside, the most favored were technical secondary school graduates.When a child who is good at learning comes out of a rural family, he rushes to study in a technical secondary school.From an institutional point of view, obtaining a diploma from a technical secondary school is the most effective way for a child from a rural family to change his identity and obtain an urban hukou. This can become the glory of the village and his family can get more income, so it is very beautiful.Take Shen Xiangyang as an example. His junior high school graduation grades were quite good, so his parents chose a nearby technical secondary school for him according to the fashion of the day. "He won't be a great scientist in the future," said the neighbors. "You don't need to go to college. You only need to study in a technical secondary school for two years, and you can get a city hukou, find a good job, be decent, and have money." My father is an excellent teacher, and he also presides over the enrollment of junior high school graduates in the commune, so of course he knows all about it.But that night, when all the students' registration materials were about to be sealed.He suddenly became uneasy.He took out his son's registration form, thought about it, and felt more and more that he couldn't just let his son work and support the family early, so he erased the word "technical secondary school" and changed it to "commune high school". Lying on the bed after changing, I still feel that something is wrong.In fact, he understands better than anyone in this family that this form determines the fate of his son. Potential, only by letting him go away can he fly high.So the father pulled out his son's registration form again, erased "Commune High School" and changed it to "County High School", the best school in the area. What happened that night is indeed somewhat memorable in today's view.The fate of a person's life depends on a watch.This seems unbelievable to Westerners, but in China, everyone is used to it, even my father himself has little association.So far, he has seldom worried about his son's studies, and he rarely even asks how many points his son got in the exam.In fact, he seldom spoke at home, but when he did speak, he was very forceful.His most powerful words were uttered that day: "The value of my son is not just an urban hukou and a good job." Now, the mother sent her son to the county high school, and saw that the room where the son would live was a large classroom, with more than 30 classmates crowded together, with beds next to each other.The other children are all 15 years old, and there are 16 years old, but her son is only 11 years old. For a moment, the mother cried, hesitated, and wanted to take her son home, "He is still too young after all."At this time, a teacher came over, looked at the child, then looked at the mother, and then asked questions, with a pleasant face and a gentle voice: "It doesn't matter, I treat this child just like my own son." The mother gritted her teeth and finally left her son behind. "There are some things in a person's life that he will never forget no matter where he goes," Xiang Yang said when he grew up.The sleepless night of his father, and the moment when his mother turned to leave, until many years later, Xiang Yang can still remember: The fate of people, sometimes it is just a difference of thought.You can't say which step is right and which step is wrong, you're just making different choices.Although my current achievements have reached the world level, it does not necessarily prove that I am on the right path.Looking back at history, one choice determines your life.Our family background required me to study hard, but at that time, from the perspective of the whole society, going to university was not very important, and the college entrance examination was not resumed until I was in my first year of high school.Before that, I went to technical secondary school, which was also a path, and it was logical for me.I'm just a country boy.What if I didn't go to high school, didn't go to college?Now it is very different, maybe I am a migrant worker, so what else is there to "follow wisdom"?What is "world class"?