Son, why can't I pay your phone bill?

When leaving Guangxi Nongtang Village, write down your phone number and mailing address on the blackboard with a brush dipped in water. For two weeks, there have been phone calls and text messages from primary school students in Nongtang Village, probably asking where you are and what you are doing. Although touching, it is inevitable that there is no time to care. Children's mobile phones are generally borrowed from their parents, and some are equipped with a simple one because their parents have been working outside for a long time. Recently, a child asked me to help him pay the phone bill. Three transgressions and five times. I don't know what to do with it.

Since I returned to Beijing, I haven't published any summary articles about Guangxi teaching. Apart from many things, the most important thing is that I am still in trouble. On the way there, I imagined that I would enthusiastically encourage all the children to come to Beijing to go to college and work in primary school classrooms in mountainous areas of Guangxi.

Even in a sixth-grade music class, I made corresponding encouragement and attempts. There is a little boy named Wan Kang, naughty and clever, who likes to scare me with bugs. He said in that class, "We want to hear you sing, not preach." The whole class is lonely. I didn't respond at that time, just slightly stunned and said, OK, let's sing.

When I suddenly remembered primary school, a classmate said that she was "particularly self-respecting". She often cries because she feels that her self-esteem has been hurt. Indeed, children in grades five and six need to know how to respect themselves and others. So I was careful not to touch the words "poor", "promising" and "bottom".

In the process of contact with teachers, you can obviously feel the strange distance they set. But once I seriously told a teacher Zhuang: I don't think there is any substantial difference between you and me, and I don't have any sense of superiority. If I can succeed, I must be glad that I have the opportunity to get the favor and help of outstanding people.

Then I stopped talking about the prosperity of Beijing.

I have to admit that since I was a child, I like being noticed, being different, and making trouble to attract my family's attention. However, during the teaching period, I was controlled by an invisible force: I didn't complain, I wasn't picky about food, I didn't coquetry, like any native villager, I silently endured everything that nature gave him: fresh air, sweet mountain springs, barren land and every long night awakened by the storm.

The reason is that I want to integrate into this group. The ideal state is that I don't have any presuppositions and they don't have any precautions. It was in the same life and under the same circumstances that we reached a consensus.

What I can accept is that every time the villagers see me climbing the mountain with my children, they will ask me, "Are you tired?" ; It was when I rubbed my grandmother's back that she shook my hand and said thank you. I painted the child who fell to the ground by bike, and after cutting her nails, she hid behind me and pulled my skirt; It's the rice balls made by grandma, the bananas and loquats given by the children, the tears I don't want to be noticed when I leave, and my clumsy care for the children with high fever. When his family came to meet me, he twisted his little head and looked back at me.

But these are not enough.

Later, I read the story of Lu Anke in Seeing. He is a German and has been a volunteer in Banlie Village, Guangxi for ten years. Many people may not care, because he didn't get a few students from Peking University and Tsinghua in the village. But as the book says, the existence of Lu Anke has its own value. I also realize that education is actually the interaction between two people. Not telling children which way to go, but teaching them the ability and courage to go their own way.

Later, when I bid farewell to the fifth and sixth grades, I said: We are all equal. We should respect ourselves and everyone. Whether your dream is to be an architect in Beijing or an expert in farming in Lane Village, teachers will be very happy. Because that's your dream. I don't think there is any substantial difference between these two dreams. The important thing is that you live a full and happy life every day.

I cried as I talked.

I seem to realize that this statement is too negative, so I added, but the teacher encourages you to look outside. (Tutor m.taiks.com) I can't tell you irresponsibly that the outside world is particularly beautiful. I can only let you feel the influence of the outside world through getting along with you. However, once you like this influence, you will also strongly yearn for the outside world.

Accustomed to hiding tears, I can only finish this sentence with my head down.

In fact, I don't understand such chaotic logic, and so do children. I just believe that they will see what I see.

Leave Nongtang Village and visit Guilin, Yangshuo and Xiamen. After returning to Beijing, I have been neglected in writing and I don't know how to talk about it. It was not until the text message "Teacher, you help me pay the phone bill" appeared repeatedly that I rethought what poverty alleviation brought to my children.

From birth, poverty makes children accustomed to being rescued, given alms and helped. Originally, each person distributed a few books. We will put a long table on the playground, covered with red cloth, and there is a book on each table. In front of the book, there will be a leader of a poverty alleviation working group or the boss of an enterprise. The children lined up in the hot sun, from one end to the other, giving each book as a gift to the guests, no matter how many times, they were especially serious every time.

From then on, they knew that because they were poor, someone came to donate money. Nobody needs them because they are poor. A few days before I left, I received more than 50 handmade "gifts" from my children, including paper windmills, paper flowers, paper guns and paper hats. There was a little girl in preschool who made a simple windmill with yellow stationery. I don't know if it was the first time she heard someone say "thank you" in my mouth, so that day, she gave me four windmills, one at a time. I suddenly feel that she really wants someone to need her so much. Some people affirmed her behavior, and some people said "thank you, it's so beautiful" to her gift.

In the past, it was reported that mountain children who accept donations now are getting less and less grateful, and they don't even write thank-you letters to donors. What I want to say is that children are the most naive, and they don't know how to cater and pretend. If they like you, they will write to you, but if they don't like you, they won't write to someone they've never met, talking about the new teaching building, the crayons at the same table and the pain and joy of growing up for the next donation.

This is natural.

In the contact with children, I try to make my own gifts different from those donated by others. For example, on the last day, I brought more than 150 chocolates from the foot of the mountain. Wan Kang offered to help, so that he could eat one more piece in advance-"Thank you for helping me, this is your labor income".

The problem of "helping to pay the phone bill" today is because you have money. I don't know how to make children understand in a simple sentence that the wealth and strength of others should not be an excuse for you to ask for help frankly. My days in Guangxi have made me understand the difficulty of education. How difficult it is to implant the concepts of "equality and justice, self-improvement, gratitude and feedback" into childish minds.

Here, I want to remind every college student who is teaching seriously not to go to a quiet and simple mountain village with the aura of being cared for by God, with the mentality of longing to be looked up to, and with the belief of changing children's lives. We should consider what vigorous short-term teaching can bring to children's minds. If all you want is vain happiness, please don't go on the road

Son, I can't pay your phone bill. It is definitely not because I am reluctant to give up money, but because I am reluctant to let you have the mentality of relying on others to help you survive. I know it's not all your fault, but we've been ignoring your feelings.

I hope you can understand that the world is not all beautiful. Only self-reliance can be wonderful.