——(continued from the previous articleCasual Reminiscences of My Growth Experience (Part One: Before Fourth Grade of Elementary School))—————
At the beginning of the first semester of fourth grade, the math-competition training for cross-grade participation gradually began to intensify. (Students like me who relied on competition math to dodge the pressure of the lower-stakes exams, the middle school entrance exam, and the college entrance exam may have borne less spiritual pressure when facing the big exams, but the academic pressure was by no means light; this bowl of rice was not eaten for nothing, after all…) Naturally, this would have some effect on regular schoolwork. In fact, from a certain point on, I went to school normally less and less often; I’d go one day, skip the next, and in the end I simply stopped going at all. Since my academic level at the time was still quite good, and the teaching level at Sinan did not seem to be very high.
As I faded out of Sinan, I gradually began to consider transferring schools. At first the principal of Sinan was not very willing to let me go; after all, every school hopes that the students it has cultivated can bring honor to it, and Cao Guangbiao Primary School’s method of rapidly improving its strength by importing outside reinforcements was not something other schools could accept without a second thought. The final result of the negotiation was: I would begin attending classes at Cao Guangbiao Primary School in the latter half of fourth grade, but my student registration would still remain with Sinan; the honors I earned by competing across grades in fourth grade would go to Sinan, and only in fifth grade would I formally transfer to Cao Guangbiao…
Actually, fourth-grade me could not bring much honor to Sinan. My cross-grade competition result in the end was nothing more than a third prize, and although that result was already very rare and impressive, it was still, when all was said and done, only a third prize. Even if I had won first prize, so what? It was only when Cao Guangbiao later racked up a string of five first prizes (six?) that it truly made a name for itself.
For me, Cao Guangbiao Primary School was a “perfect” school. Whether it was Sinan, or later middle school, high school, and even university, my impression of them was always mixed, with good and bad together, always some aspect that fell short of perfection; but in my year and a half at Cao Guangbiao, it left me practically no bad impression at all! Whether classmates, teachers, the principal, or the campus, there was nothing to criticize.
Cao Guangbiao established an “experimental class,” with just over thirty students, carrying out small-class education. As for the pros and cons of small-class education, I do have definite views, and I also have enough firsthand experience to qualify me to speak on the matter. Since the time I entered Cao Guangbiao, I had always grown up in an “experimental class,” “trial class,” and I have a deep understanding of it. Now, how much actual experience do those policy-makers who are hurling abuse at top classes, and even at Olympiad math, really have?
The biggest, and seemingly most reasonable, argument against top classes is this: the school gives too much special attention to the top class, and pours too many educational resources into it; that’s unfair! —A fine “unfairness.” I once wrote a piece on “keyword-induced fever,” and the word fairness is also one of the important terms that often trigger fever. The moment “unfairness” is mentioned, a whole crowd of people immediately get flushed with agitation, leap up, and speak with great fervor, righteous indignation, grand momentum, and ready-made arguments about lofty principles. Is things really that simple? Fairness is not “leveling things out,” and pursuing fairness does not mean egalitarianism! Yet the general guiding principle of the current reform of the education system is precisely egalitarianism, a “level-it-all” doctrine. Abolishing key middle schools, abolishing experimental classes, and even abolishing Olympiad math—this reform has simply gone to the point of insanity and exasperation!
I seem to be getting a bit worked up while talking about these things. After all, my feelings for Olympiad math and for top classes run too deep, and I’m also the one who best understands their merits, so it is unavoidable that I feel dissatisfied with the current reforms. I remember that some time ago, when I went back to visit Principal Jin, he had just come back from a meeting and was also so angry that he was panting: “They say doing Olympiad math makes us executioners! I’ve become an executioner! You’ve made your Principal Jin into an executioner…”
Education itself has two meanings. One is universal education and basic education, ensuring that a society as a whole reaches a certain level of cultural attainment; that is the first thing that must be done. However, when this basic work is being carried out well, the other meaning of education comes to the fore, and that is the cultivation of elites. Perhaps the word elite will offend some people, so let us say instead “cultivating people with special talents.” In short, a sound society cannot have everyone become a scientist, cannot have everyone become an entrepreneur, cannot have everyone become a politician. There will always be, and there ought to be, some people who are superior in certain respects, such as mathematics; only in this way can society possibly be healthy. It is perfectly normal for some people to perform better and show greater potential than other peers of the same age in certain areas. The saying “by age seven, you can tell what sort of person they will be” points to just this. To some extent, it is also perfectly normal—and entirely proper—to get an understanding at the age of twelve or thirteen of a student’s possible developmental trajectory. If a fifth-grade teacher cannot see which of his students have higher learning ability and which have unique potential, and instead tells us: all the students in our class are the same, everyone has equally good potential in math, and equally great potential in Chinese… then we would probably have to regard him as a failed teacher.
The principle of “teaching according to aptitude,” which Confucius had already explicitly named long ago, is still something many people cannot accept. Why is it such a monstrous sin to put together and concentrate educational resources on students who have special potential in some area of study? The advantages of small-class education have already been fully demonstrated by the achievements of our group. And why did so many later copycat experimental classes fail to be run well, why did they end up as crude imitations that merely made a dog’s head on a tiger’s body? The reasons should be sought among the people who ran those classes. Top classes are not something that any school can set up at will. Cao Guangbiao could run them, but a school like Sinan could not. Some schools that cannot afford to do so still have to follow the fashion and join in the excitement, and in the end they ruin the reputation of top classes; that should not be blamed on the teaching method of the top class itself. Olympiad math is the same. Our generations made a big splash with Olympiad math, schools gained plenty of glory, and students could skip exams, which was so appealing it made one’s mouth water; thus many schools that did not teach Olympiad math at all began teaching Olympiad math, and many students who had no potential at all were also forced to learn Olympiad math. In this way, Olympiad math’s reputation naturally became rotten, but is that Olympiad math’s fault? Or is it a problem of the current impatient education system itself? Education officials will not attribute the responsibility to the imperfections of the education system, especially the bombast of the education-evaluation system. They only know the “if your foot hurts, cut off the foot; if your head hurts, cut off the head” approach—simply cancel the Olympiad math competitions altogether, and that would be easier on everyone!
As for another argument often used against top classes: that ordinary-class students feel it is unfair, feel inferior, and lose interest in learning—that is even more of a blatant lie. Have the people who make such a fuss ever really observed how many students truly feel inferior simply because they did not get into the top class? Or rather, if some students do feel inferior or feel it is unfair, where does that feeling come from? Competing to be better than others, caring about face, shouting about fairness and unfairness—these are all things that belong to the adult world. Top classes are about strength; the math strength of Olympiad top students is far beyond that of parallel classes, and even the math ability of Olympiad top students in middle school is stronger than that of most ordinary math teachers. These abilities, when displayed, are enough to convince people wholeheartedly. Unless “woken up” by parents, ordinary students will not feel indignant about this, because the higher the grade level, the more Olympiad top classes and parallel classes become two different worlds. Even the students with the strongest math in the parallel classes have a hard time keeping up with the Olympiad class; among the parallel classes, only extremely rare exceptions can achieve top Olympiad results. This is especially true in regions where Olympiad math is held from primary school onward: those students with potential are discovered early and absorbed into the Olympiad top classes. The gap is simply too large; inserting an Olympiad top student into an ordinary class and letting him stand out all by himself is almost equivalent to ruining his prospects, and it is not necessarily a good thing for the students in the ordinary class either—if students who feel inferior merely because they are studying math in another world are so sensitive, then would they not feel even more inferior with a classmate sitting beside them whose math is stronger than the teacher’s? Are we supposed to drag the top students down into mediocrity before that counts as “fair”? If one thinks it is unfair to provide better teaching to Olympiad top students, then fine, let the students who want to enjoy that kind of education come and sit in on the classes as well—can they keep up? To imagine that “as long as they are in the same environment, my child can learn as well as they do” is only the naive wishful thinking of some parents. They really cannot keep up. Wouldn’t it be better to settle down and study in an ordinary class? They clearly cannot keep up, yet still insist on forcing it, and even using money and political means to get my child into the top class—that kind of behavior has ruined many children’s normal schooling, and it has also ruined the good reputation of top classes as places where strength speaks.
Sigh… I had originally been recalling old times, and suddenly I got carried away and began writing all this. It seems I still have not cultivated myself enough; there is still some impatience in me as well. But there is no helping it—young people will always be a bit impatient. I have always criticized the impatience of this age, even though that impatience sometimes shows itself in me too. Let my agitation be a little better than the agitation of those I am mocking, then. But let us return to the main point and speak of my own experiences:
After entering Cao Guangbiao, my personality can be said to have changed dramatically. One could say that my transformation was made almost the moment I entered Cao Guangbiao. If there was any transition period, at most it was that wasted time at home in the first half of fourth grade. This was the first time I consciously and actively adjusted my own style according to my own wishes. Generally speaking, the transformation in the way one conducts oneself and deals with others is something that runs “in the background,” implicit, and passive. My second active adjustment of style was probably after entering university. Even now, I am in the process of making my style a bit deeper, more restrained, and more composed…
After entering Cao Guangbiao, I also gradually began to be able to—at least spiritually—break away from dependence on my parents. An independent personality began to take shape.
One event that I often wrote into my compositions was my first time going home by myself. This happened in the latter half of fourth grade, or maybe the beginning of fifth grade… Friends who have been capable since childhood, please do not laugh at me; if my parents insist on pampering me, there was nothing I could do about it either—at least before my independent personality matured, there was absolutely no way around it. But my first time going home by myself was indeed rather difficult: the real reason was that Cao Guangbiao Primary School was not close to my home, and usually it was always my mother who used an electric scooter to take me to and from school (carrying passengers on a non-motor vehicle is illegal, hush…). An electric scooter ride must have taken about fifteen minutes. In the end, one day, for various reasons, no one came to pick me up. Although in first grade, once when my grandfather came to pick me up half an hour late, it had made me cry as if the sky had fallen, by the time I was at Cao Guangbiao everything was completely different. After waiting a long time, I simply made my way back along the “vehicle” route in my memory all by myself. (This really was not much to write about—how did I manage to write several hundred words about it at the time?) To be honest, as my first solo trip, I did fairly bravely, because Shanghai’s streets there were really tangled and intricate. Usually I only traveled along a straight line between two points, and only remembered the correct route; take one wrong turn and that would be the end of it. Once I got lost, I could only go find a policeman. Fortunately, my memory was rather good. Although I took quite a few wrong turns, I still made it home safely…
From this tiny, insignificant experience onward, I at least understood one thing on my own: although there were many things my parents were always helping me with, I mean that I could separate from them if I wanted to. In fact, even up to high school graduation, I had never once lived alone by myself—not even during the day, because my grandparents were always with me—yet when I entered university, I am confident that no one adapted to the environment faster than I did (because the time I needed to adapt was zero; I was almost immediately like a fish back in water). This is a “cat’s style” of living—when someone is taking care of you, you happily enjoy laziness and ease, and everyone is pleased; but when it is time to walk alone, you do not beat around the bush or drag things out.
At Cao Guangbiao I met many lovely classmates; many of them were still classmates in middle school, one was still a classmate in high school, and the other two are now at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University. Many other classmates later went on to Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong, and other famous universities as well. As a primary school class, our rate of admission to universities and to key universities was probably comparable to that of any ordinary high school; it was truly remarkable. Although those at the very top—such as the classmates who later won first prize in the primary-school math competition—were almost all “outside reinforcements,” we all knew that without Cao Guangbiao bringing us together, we would absolutely not have achieved what we did later on. Truth be told, we were Cao Guangbiao’s pride, and I will always be proud of being a Cao Guangbiao person. Our group can be called Cao Guangbiao’s golden generation. No wonder it is said that from the very beginning Principal Jin told our homeroom teacher: treasure this cohort of students; you may never encounter a class like this again… By the way, Cao Guangbiao’s homeroom teacher is the loveliest math teacher I have ever met; she is getting prettier and prettier now.
My experience at Cao Guangbiao was perhaps too perfect, truly calm and unruffled, leaving no rich experiences worth recording. What followed began after the “Singapore Primary School Mathematics Olympiad” ended. I scored 108 points out of 120, ranked 14th in Shanghai, and won first prize (the top ten received special prize, and scores above 111 got special prize). I had the best score in Cao Guangbiao; there were apparently nine special-prize winners, and all of them were from Zhabei District—Zhabei District is roughly Shanghai’s “Hubei,” the legendary place where Olympiad math strength is godlike and Olympiad training is as grueling as the devil himself. Some of those Zhabei prodigies would become my high-school classmates, but that is a story for later.
We happened to catch Shanghai’s first round of abolishing key junior middle schools (keeping only a few, such as the Second High School Affiliated to East China Normal University), abolishing the entrance exam for junior middle school, and implementing neighborhood enrollment. But this was also the rise of private junior middle schools, because private schools had the right to bypass neighborhood-based admission and could continue gathering top students together. At that time, through the active efforts of Teacher Cao and others at the Young Scientists Station, two private junior middle schools became options for our batch of Huangpu District Olympiad math top students. One was near the famous Gezhi Middle School and seemed to have a direct relationship with it; the other was located in Pudong New Area (administratively under Huangpu District). Apart from the fact that its principal had once been vice-principal of Gezhi Middle School, it had no connection with Gezhi Middle School, yet its name was—“East Gezhi Middle School”!
In the end, although the journey was a little farther, the vast majority of us ended up concentrated at East Gezhi Middle School. A considerable part of the credit for this must go to my mother. She was the “leader” among parents at the time, incredibly formidable. She joined forces with Teacher Cao and, with a wave of the arm, of course everyone responded in droves and rushed in together… Hmm… actually, our family had decided at the time to buy a house in Pudong, so going to East Gezhi would be more convenient, yes.
As a private middle school (actually “privately run with public assistance,” as I’ll explain later), East Gezhi’s tuition was expensive—something like over four thousand a semester or a year, I think. But in our group, third prize exempted one semester, second prize exempted one year, first prize exempted two years, and special prize was fully exempt. Because of my mother’s outstanding contribution, my tuition was also fully exempted. Of course, compared with the investment in competition training classes and so on, it cannot really be said that we saved that much. But compared with those people who had to pay tens of thousands in extra sponsorship fees just to get through the school gate, our parents truly had much less to worry about.
In short, we entered the top class at East Gezhi—at which point I could finally say: eight or nine out of ten of Huangpu District’s Olympiad math top students were my classmates! Here I would stay for four years…
——————————————(to be continued)——————————————2006-07-13
Latest comments
- kaikair
2006-07-13 11:12:38 http://www.magicofsarah.com
“Although there were many things my parents were always helping me with, I mean that I could separate from them if I wanted to”
Very interesting line - 随缘
2008-07-12 22:12:17 Anonymous 222.29.26.136
Do you still think of yourself as impatient now? Still, in any case, being stricter with yourself is not wrong, but do not be too harsh on yourself either. However, philosophically, I still recommend opening yourself up to the harshest criticism—for example, reading the most important core foreign-language professional texts, and comparing your own breadth and depth of thought with that of the entire historical tradition on a certain issue; taking courses in Western philosophy from Mr. Sun YongPing, Mr Xu Xiangdong, Mr Liu Zhe, and others, and accepting their rigorous criticism of your thinking.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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