How to understand the "involution" of education

? Involution (Involution) originally appeared in the form of the word involution in the book "Agricultural Involution-The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia" by American anthropologist Giltz. According to Giltz According to Mr. Ci's definition, "involution" refers to the phenomenon that after a social or cultural model reaches a certain form at a certain stage of development, it stagnates or cannot be transformed into another advanced model.

?In the middle of the last century, an American anthropologist was conducting field research on the Indonesian island of Java and found that in order to increase rice yields, local farmers invested more and more time and energy in farming. Failed to significantly increase rice production.

The anthropologist calls this phenomenon "agricultural involution." This is a closed agricultural system. The production methods have never been improved. New agricultural technologies have not been introduced. The only way to increase output is to increase human input. However, after the output reaches a certain value, increasing human input will have no effect on increasing output. Very little.

? The same is true in rural China. Since there are generally more people and less land, there is only a certain amount of land per person. In order to increase grain production, farmers work from dawn to dusk, fertilize and irrigate, and cultivate intensively. However, after reaching a certain output, no matter how much hard work is put into it, it is difficult to continue to increase the output per mu. After a year of hard work, it is still only enough to maintain food and clothing, with a slight surplus. At this time, the best choice is to transform the original relatively primitive agricultural model into a new model, improve production methods, and introduce and apply new technologies. However, the local closed agricultural system has failed to achieve this transformation and has been stuck in an inherent model of low efficiency, high labor input, and low returns.

?So, involution is an academic term, and its meaning includes keywords such as "closed, inefficient, high human input, low profit". In the conference venue, thousands of teacups are lined up horizontally, vertically, and sideways, which is a spectacular and amazing sight! How many staff members and how much time did it take to calibrate it bit by bit with a rope? This is called involution. This kind of beauty can only last for a moment, because everything will be messed up when you have a meeting or drink tea.

? When watching a movie, in order to get a better view, one person stood up to watch first, and the people blocked by him had to stand up too. In the end, everyone had to stand up to watch the movie, and only the first person stood up to watch the movie. People in the row were sitting, and the phenomenon got worse, and eventually no one could sit down.

?Playing games, in order to have better entertainment, one person first adds money to beat others, and the person who is abused by him has to also add money. In the end, everyone either adds money hard or is beaten. beat. When chasing a girl, in order to better express his feelings, a man's diamond will be passed down forever, and other people will have to follow suit and everyone will spend more money. To grab train tickets, one person first uses the ticket grabbing software, forcing others to also use the ticket grabbing software. Because the number of tickets does not increase, everyone returns to the starting line in the end, but the developer of the ticket grabbing software makes money. When other people saw someone working overtime, they also worked overtime and paddled in order not to fall behind. Gradually, it became an atmosphere and a so-called culture. In the end, work output did not improve and everyone worked overtime.

? A relatively simple explanation is that in a closed environment with limited resources, the more effort a group puts in, the more competition will intensify. At the same time, the benefits will not increase, or even decrease. In short, "involution" is disorderly, meaningless, worthless and chaotic competition. This kind of competition is extremely utilitarian and puts a lot of pressure on those involved.

What is "education involution"? Some media pointed out:

"Education involution" refers to the continuous increase in teaching labor input within the education system to achieve performance growth, but there is no significant improvement in teaching efficiency and results.

? There is a metaphor on the Internet, there is a Sunflower Book in the world, everyone wants to get it, and whoever gets it can dominate the world, but if one day the Sunflower Book is made public, everyone will have the opportunity to practice. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? When a person has it, it is up to him whether he practices it or not. Everyone has it, and it’s not up to you to decide whether you want to practice it or not.

If you don't practice, your enemies will practice and then come to kill you, so they force you to practice.

?Ultimately, everyone in the world will be able to practice the Sunflower Manual and will be invincible. But because everyone has mastered it, there will be no such thing as invincibility. On the contrary, if you want to practice this skill, you must first commit suicide. All the people in the world have become eunuchs. This is a lose-lose ending.

Similarly, training institutions are like public sunflower manuals. If you don't learn, other children will get better grades than you. Some training institutions even have slogans like "If you don't succeed, then we will train your competitors"! Anyone who sees such slogans is horrified. However, the number of places to go to college has not changed. In fact, no one has benefited from it. It is just that everyone involved has been forced to attend various training classes and lost the happiness of childhood. Educational involution means that everyone can improve their performance through training courses. It seems that education is equal, but in fact it is serious internal friction.

? Some time ago, I didn’t see a Tsinghua top student writing a paper on the computer while riding a bicycle. If he studies to this extent, whoever doesn’t get first will get first. Affected by the top student, other students had no choice but to imitate him in order to gain a foothold. When the academic competition reaches a certain level, it becomes a competition of trying harder and risking one's life, which becomes meaningless internal friction, and the beneficial competition becomes unhelpful and even harmful.

This phenomenon of "educational involution" is prevalent in our education system at all levels, and it is becoming increasingly younger and excessive. All schools, teachers, parents, and students are ruthlessly involved in this competition.

? This inherent disordered competition results in "schools need to be ranked - teachers assign question-based tactics - parents assume part of the teaching tasks" and "correct some homework - students are under pressure to study" Increasing - there is no substantial improvement in performance - - schools are demanding more, teachers are intensifying their workload and assigning homework, parents are worried, and students are suffering - a vicious cycle of student performance deterioration. Entering deep involution, everyone can recognize the problem of involution, but no one can struggle out of this circle.

? After involution, this education system will bring about several disadvantages. If the investment is too high, studies will take up too much of students' time, and their childhood wrapped up in learning will become a nightmare. However, the efficiency is low, people have limited energy and abilities, and when the learning time is increased to a certain level, it will not help much in improving the learning effect. This is the "diminishing marginal effect". In addition, spoon-feeding and tricking have occurred, and students are required to acquire more and more extensive and profound knowledge in order to become more competitive with others. Others also plan to do the same, so the academic burden increases in a spiral. In order to let children "become dragons" and "phoenixes" and surpass others, schools go to off-campus training classes instead of providing supplementary classes, and continue to increase financial investment and the number of tutoring classes. There is even a situation where "8-year-old primary school students attend 11-year-old students during the summer vacation." News like "Tutorial Class".

?At the same time, our schools are constantly intensifying this competition in pursuit of higher levels of education. The refinement of teaching, the gridding of time, and the refinement of management have reached an unparalleled level. In order to compete for admission to higher schools, methods such as overtime work, make-up tutoring, problem-solving tactics, a large amount of time investment, repeated mechanical training, etc. are adopted. It may be very effective in the early stage, but after reaching a certain limit, the marginal benefit will be diminishing and it will be difficult to continue to be effective. Instead, it will bring negative consequences. The possible harm is to damage students' enthusiasm for learning and stifle students' creativity.

Therefore, in many cases, people adopt this brutal training method to buy peace of mind. Teachers, parents and students all feel that we have tried our best. However, the boundaries of this method have not been explored in detail, and the efficiency, effectiveness, effects and possible negative effects of this method have not been studied. When this approach exceeds a certain level, it is not only unhelpful, but harmful.

? Suhomlinsky once said: "There is not a minute wasted in the classroom, there is not a moment where active mental work is not performed. In the delicate work of educating people, there is nothing better than this. This approach is even more harmful.

"For individual students, the potential negative consequences are long-term.

For a region, the involution of education manifests itself as unhealthy competition within the system, and its negative effects are also obvious. In When the total amount of education supply remains unchanged, internal competition will not bring about an increase in the overall income of students. Instead, it will form a theater effect. When one person stands up to watch the show, everyone behind him is forced to stand up, and the overall viewing effect On the contrary, it is worse.

? This kind of involution leads to collective irrationality, which ultimately damages the overall educational ecology of this region.

? There is no way out for the involution of education. It will be unsustainable.

We must think about how to reverse the involution of education. The English word for involution is evolution (evolution) and revolution (change).

What this tells us is that change and innovation are the path to anti-involution in education. We should never expect to use the existing system to change reality. If we want to change, we must create new models.

?The replacement of carriages by cars is a kind of change and innovation. The speed and comfort of carriages have limits. If we only study how to improve the speed of carriages, we can only hope to have a faster horse, and there will be no cars. Invention; the automatic flushing toilet is an iteration of toilet paper. If you only consider how to improve the quality of toilet paper, there will be no innovation in automatic flushing.

Education must also use iteration and innovation to resist involution in schools. At the level of education, judging from the currently observable educational innovations, the path of anti-involution is unfolding sequentially and becoming clearer:

? The marginal benefits of changing from focusing on teaching to focusing on teaching have been lost. to the limit, and the energy contained in learning is waiting to be developed. We must shift from teaching design to independent learning design, focusing on the cultivation of students' learning quality and learning ability; because the dividends of teaching are limited, and the momentum of learning ability is limited. Endless.

? Transforming from external control to internal motivation, allowing students to activate their own systems in the interest, challenge and meaning of learning, is the eternal engine. Move the accelerator instead of pushing the wheel. External force can only be pressure or push, and internal force is the driving force.

From unified management to flexible teaching organization. , respect each student's personalized learning path, provide flexible teaching time and space and optional courses, moderately break internal boundaries, cultivate self-discipline in freedom, and move from self-discipline to independence.

From diversion and elimination to independence. Inclusive education. Run an imperfect school, cultivate a group of students with shortcomings, and use inclusive growth to eliminate and offset utilitarian selection and elimination.