Chapter 33 Joyful Memories Evoked on Teachers' Day

The comrades from the Chinese Women's Magazine came to ask me to write an article for Teacher's Day. I have only taught books for eight years in my life, and it was half a century ago. For readers in the 1980s, these are really ancient rags.But I enjoyed the "friendship" between teacher and student to the fullest during those years, and whenever I think about it, it brings a tearful smile to my face. It was 1926. I returned from studying in the United States and applied to teach at my alma mater, Yenching University.I was also twenty-six years old that year. I took two electives: "European Drama" and "Projects".Those who take these two courses are all students who are in their second year or above.But what I like to teach most is the compulsory course "Chinese" in the first grade.This is the first year of Yenching University's new campus in the suburbs. There are also a large number of first-year male and female students, almost two hundred, from all over the country. Professor Gu Suizhu's class.These "old gentlemen" are all from Jiangnan, and the students from Fujian and Cantonese can't understand their accents, so the Academic Affairs Office put these students in my class.As soon as they entered the classroom, they stood up in unison, looking from the podium, with red smiling faces, staring curiously at me, the "little gentleman" - at that time, the students called the teacher "sir" - and They were only between seventeen and nineteen years old.Same age as my own brothers!I picked up the roll call and asked them to report their names. After correcting their accents, amidst the laughter, we seemed to be very familiar and friendly!

The first composition topic I gave them was "Autobiography". I wanted to understand their family background, habits, hobbies and everything else through their self-reports.The dozens of volumes recovered are really like biographical novels, extremely lively, sincere and very long—for example, Comrade Weng Dujian wrote more than 40,000 characters!After I read the papers, I only marked the grades and did not write comments. I only paid attention to the extracurricular conversations within half an hour of each person: how did they write?And my opinion on their articles and so on.Such extracurricular conversations deepened our mutual sympathy and understanding.At that time, we both lived on campus, and we had frequent contact outside of class, and the scope of conversation was also very wide. We rowed boats on the Weiming Lake, and had discussions on the stone boat by the lake island. We fully enjoyed our friendship.At that time, we did not have the concept of "respecting teachers and loving students", and we were equal as brothers and friends.I feel like I not only love them, but respect them.Not only do they respect me, but they love me too!

I think not only between teachers and students who are similar in age, but also between older teachers and primary and secondary school students can have a deep friendship.I often feel that the self-esteem of primary school students is very strong. The less you look at them from a "condescending" perspective, the more self-esteem and self-love they will have, and they will be more kind and trustworthy to their teachers, and they will say anything and dare to say it. When we have intimate student friends, our teaching work is not a burden but a joy.