No matter how big a country is, it will never be strong if it is dominated by exam-oriented education.

"Test, test, test, the teacher's magic weapon; points, points, points, the lifeblood of the students." I don't know since what year and month, such a jingle has been circulated in the students' mouths and attached to the students' Physical and mental, precipitated in students’ memories. How many students have been defeated and eliminated in complicated examinations, how many students have been frequently reprimanded and lost their dignity in the face of scores, and how many students cannot bear the pressure of entering higher schools and have committed suicide for the rest of their lives...

All this is related to one word, that is - exam-oriented education.

Refining and sublimating understanding

We may all be able to tell you a thing or two about exam-oriented education, but we may not be able to explain it deeply or thoroughly. On the one hand, it is due to the profound historical inheritance of examination-oriented education and the complexity derived from the variation of practical operations; on the other hand, it is due to the long-standing historical inertia of the long-standing shortcomings of the education system that are chronic and difficult to reverse. Therefore, when examining examination-oriented education, it is necessary to know its origins, gain insight into its essence, and clarify our understanding, so that we can point out the evils and clean up the gloom.

1. Peel off the silk and peel off the bamboo shoots, and go against the current to find the source

In the early days of the selection of talents, the "recruitment system" was adopted in traditional Chinese society. The so-called "conquest" refers to recruitment and recommendation, either "appointed" by the king or recommended by officials below the third Duke. This method of selecting candidates is highly arbitrary and sometimes fails to truly recommend talented candidates. After the Sui Dynasty, the imperial examination system was established, abandoning the previous practice and greatly broadening the selection of talents, allowing a considerable number of common people with real talents and practical knowledge to completely change their destiny through the examination. But it is this method of talent selection that has had a profound impact on Chinese education over the past 1,300 years. Schools have gradually become a vassal of the "imperial examination", and a life of "school-examination-officialdom" has gradually been formed. Aggressive mode. "Plowing means discouragement; learning means salary." This is why we have the values ??of "excellence in learning leads to officialdom" and "everything is of inferior quality, only reading is good". "The book has its own golden house, and the book has its own beauty like jade" has become the source of spiritual motivation for readers.

This life value orientation has been extended to this day, and people have shown extraordinary attention to exams related to their future and destiny, which of course contains the psychological accumulation of advancing through the imperial examination (some people still call getting into college a "carp") Jumping over the dragon gate"). The cognitive evaluation of the merits of students and schools is still based on scores and admissions. The role and "charm" of scores have been exaggerated and mystical without limit, and it has become a way that everyone dares not to worship and bow their heads. Deified symbols. Therefore, tracing back to the source, we can see that the examination-oriented education that appears in today's society and the examination economy that was born from it are both deformed continuations of traditional consciousness and decadent culture.

2. Pull out the thorns and wedges to gain insight into the essence

Exam-oriented education is ultimately an extreme behavior. The specific manifestations are:

① Examination-taking always adheres to the principle of selection and elimination. In exams one after another, the elite are selected and the mediocre are eliminated. Only a few students eventually become the beneficiaries of education, and the majority are just passers-by. , thus causing inequality in educational opportunities and educational discrimination. Under the guidance of this kind of thinking, the teacher's "teaching" cannot take care of those students who have no hope of further education. Many schools are divided into fast, medium and slow classes, which is a reflection of this idea. For most students, they have become the foils of the top students, made the green leaves, held up the red flowers, and the task is considered completed. Therefore, it is not worth making a fuss about a junior high school graduate who cannot speak a few decent sentences or write a fluent article.

②The educational content has a single and narrow goal. We teach those who take entrance exams but not those who don’t. We teach more test-taking skills and less intellectual things, not to mention the cultivation of other qualities such as moral character, physical and mental health, aesthetic perception, and labor skills. Examinations have become everything in school. In order to obtain good scores, college examination questions are delegated to college entrance examination questions, high school examination questions are delegated to junior high school examination questions, and junior high school examination questions are delegated to elementary school examination questions. Layer by layer, classroom teaching means splitting textbook knowledge into a number of cumbersome test questions and practicing them over and over again.

③Students’ academic workload is heavy, and mechanical and repetitive ineffective labor fills the entire learning process.

Teachers who focus on knowledge can draw inferences and draw inferences; teachers who focus on scores are afraid that students will not understand well and draw inferences. If you learn new words in a text for the first time, you need to copy them several times, review them several times in the unit, and repeat them several times in the middle and end of the semester. You can't make mistakes in the middle, and you will be punished if you make a mistake. Li Xingrui, a 12-year-old primary school student in Urumqi, hanged himself because he could not tolerate the punishment given by his teacher to suspend him from class and copy 110 pages of text. Primary school students have ten and a half hours of homework every day. They are so busy and overwhelmed that they have no time to read extracurricular books. There is a song circulating among primary school students: "Going to school is really hard. The schoolbag weighs me down. I go to bed late and wake up early. My homework is never finished. I want to blow up the school." One person has been admitted to college. A student still has lingering fears when recalling his senior year in high school. He said: "The days of senior year were like the lamp in front of the desk that stayed on all night long. I kept doing calculations, as if I was falling into a void, and my heart was filled with inexplicable fear. I don't know what destination the "examination machine" that rotates day and night will turn to. Is it worth it to go to college? But what if I pass the exam? But when I think about my parents being so busy with me, I feel uneasy. I don’t dare to do it. ”

④The evaluation mechanism is rigid. Teachers are walking on thin ice in the face of scores. They can only be reduced to machine operators. As for innovation, they dare not think about it, and their utilitarian thinking is very obvious. It can be said that the rigid educational evaluation mechanism is the direct cause of exam-oriented education. Leaders look at whether a teacher is good or bad - the score; parents look at a teacher - the score; the same goes for students. The calculation of fractions is accurate to two decimal places, and the teacher's name is directly attached to the end of the fraction. Scores have become an important and only reference for teacher assessment, promotion, room assignment, etc.

⑤Vicious cycle leads to waste of resources. In order to catch up with the enrollment rate, many schools have increased the rate of grade repetition, resulting in unnecessary duplication of education. A high enrollment rate means a large number of students, which also leads to blind expansion of infrastructure construction, resulting in tight funding and lower teacher salaries.

⑥ Causes tension between teachers and students, between leaders and teachers, and between teachers and teachers. Teachers treat students as props, and students think they are learning for the teacher. If students do not do well in exams, teachers often ridicule, abuse, or even fight; leaders treat teachers as donkeys, and teachers think leaders are treating themselves like monkeys; let alone colleagues. , there are many people who compete unfairly and poach each other.

⑦Resulting in the unsustainable development of education. The "products" of examination-oriented education at the basic stage are more rough and defective than qualified and high-quality products in every aspect. The elementary school has to repay the debt of the kindergarten, the middle school has to clear the debt of the elementary school, and the university has to fill the vacancy of the high school. Tangible knowledge deficiencies can be mended, but invisible loopholes cannot be plugged.

⑧Distort students’ body and mind, causing students’ personality abnormalities. Many students suffer from exam syndrome, which can range from anxiety, insomnia, anorexia, aversion to learning, and hot temper to severe symptoms of manic psychosis, low self-esteem, claustrophobia, and even suicide. Writer Shu Yun quoted a candidate in "College Entrance Examination Sadness": "I have seen through this world a long time ago. Because of my poor grades, I had no hope of getting into college. At school, teachers ridiculed me, classmates laughed at me, and at home, my parents beat me. I Although I am a human being, they don’t respect my personality and don’t want to give me a smile. I live with low self-esteem every day of the year, what’s the point of living like this?” A 2005 survey by the Health Bureau found that 600,000 people over the age of 15 in Beijing suffered from depression.

......

3. Straightforwardly attack the reality and point out the disadvantages

It should be admitted that the harm of examination-oriented education is known to all women and children, and the disadvantages of examination-oriented education are hated by everyone. , but in reality, exam-oriented education is rigid but not dead, and the more approval it gets, the better it gets. Administrative leaders who have experienced the pain of exam-oriented education, parents who have been eliminated by exam-oriented education or have narrowly escaped from the cracks of exam-oriented education, and new generation teachers who have suffered from exam-oriented education have not lowered their respect for the next generation because they themselves have suffered. On the contrary, there are requirements for test-taking ability. Many of the daughters-in-law who have been married for many years are very tough and will perform the test-taking drills even more heartily and incisively.

The reasons for this are quite complex.

As mentioned above, the profound psychological accumulation of traditional culture, under the influence of strong inertia, has accumulated into a kind of customary value expectations and life expectations. Generations of expectations continue, and the car cannot be stopped for a while. But we believe that the most important reason why exam-oriented education is rigid is that it has fallen into a vicious circle.

One of the strange circles: "evaluation-exam-taking-evaluation". We call it a linear loop. Evaluation requires reference, and there is always an implicit and explicit distinction between any evaluation reference. In the highly variable education system, implicit references sometimes cannot explain the problem, and are easily mixed with human factors, causing unnecessary disputes and troubles, so explicit references are much loved. Quantitative test scores therefore become the best and only means. This leads to the formation that evaluation only relies on test taking (scores), and test taking (scores) can in turn test whether the evaluation is "fair" or not, and provide feedback on the reliability of the evaluation. The two compare each other and suppress each other. In this cycle, "examination-taking" is strengthened, deified and authoritative over and over again.

Weird Circle 2: With "Examination" as the center and the fractional line as the fixed length radius, spin out a closed circle. External factors such as "admission to higher education, honor and disgrace, official position (status), future, value, promotion, success or failure, family interests, welfare benefits" converge and focus, which we call a focusing cycle. As shown in the picture (omitted)

The shadow of the strange circle hangs over four types of people: leaders, parents, teachers and students. The only difference is that they are all controlled by strange circles, but at different levels. Leaders are at the upper level, both the masterminds of the cycle and controlled by it, and the content of test scores is directly related to them; parents are at the middle level and are an indispensable driving force for the operation of the cycle; teachers and students are at the bottom, sympathetic to each other. , "We are all fallen people at the end of the world."

The two strange circles are like two magnetic fields that are difficult to break through. The strength of the field forces cannot be estimated or controlled, and the current reality can continuously replenish them with energy. Exam-oriented education will continue to exist from generation to generation.

Acupuncture Brief

Extended Thoughts

Criticism of examination-oriented education has been a fashionable topic in recent years, pure idea indoctrination in leadership conferences and small meetings, and long-form and short-formatization by scholars. The concept was elaborated, and there was a sound of criticism, and the lingering sound was lingering. But what happens after it’s approved? It is easy to talk about overturning, but the construction of reality seriously deviates from it. An unavoidable problem is that some of the so-called advanced ideas in our education are sometimes not really reflected in how to solve problems. Many people are often keen on selling conceptual games and preaching abstract and useless preaching.

The debate on the "conceptual connotation" of exam-oriented education has been going on for many years, and depending on the situation, it is possible that the debate will continue. The mainstream view is that exam-oriented education is a kind of education that harms the nation, a narrow-minded education that is eager for quick success, and an education that sacrifices the long-term development of one generation or even several generations. Exam-oriented education must be completely swept away and buried in order to A brand new concept - quality education has replaced it. This can be regarded as the understanding that things go smoothly and things go well with the people. However, the education reform only goes so far. Anything that touches the deeper layers of "examination-oriented" (including value recognition and evaluation mechanisms) has not changed. If its foundation is not touched and its lesions are not eradicated, the wind of defiance is howling, and "examination-oriented" remains the same. Unmoved. Among them, some leaders of the education department cheered the loudest. Fashionable ideas have come and they are quick to follow the trend. There is quite a kind of transcendence of "the whole world is turbid and I am alone clear, everyone is drunk and I am alone sober", or someone who suddenly wakes up after years of chaos. Enlightened and wise, I finally have the opportunity to stand up and "remind" everyone who is ignorant, but secretly everyone has regained the "magic weapon" of taking exams.

So it seems that as soon as the concepts are interchanged, the problem is solved. At the practical level, words must be based on "quality" and actions must be based on "quality". The erhu, flute, basketball, etc. that were put aside for a while and became moldy appeared on the stage. The singing of warblers drowned out the sound of the books, and the figures flew away. Sit quietly and think hard. Teachers teach when they are in class, and it is their bounden duty to impart knowledge, but they are fashionably called "quality education demonstration classes and experimental classes."

The classroom is flashy, lively, and full of pretensions. Impetuousness has replaced the down-to-earth style, and the inherent cultivation of the subject has been completely weakened. It is likely that all the achievements of quality education can be achieved in one battle, and all "quality" problems can be conquered in one class. fortress. Quality education is originally a systematic project, a concept that focuses on education as a whole, but for a while it became a dog-skin plaster, plastered everywhere, unfashionable, outdated, and inconsistent with advanced educational ideas. There are a lot of "quality education results" listed, but the students' grades have dropped again. What should we do?

Then the tributary view came into being. It is said that examination-oriented education is also a part of quality-oriented education, and examination-oriented education is also a kind of quality. Quality-oriented education without an admission rate is a failed education. Quality-oriented education is also about letting candidates get high scores. As soon as this theory came out, it was immediately strangled by the mainstream faction. But reality does not hold back. Take Nanjing, Jiangsu, as an example. Nanjing, which has always held high standards for quality education, failed in the college entrance examination in 2004. The Yangtze Evening News specially opened a discussion column titled "The pain of Nanjing's college entrance examination, where is the pain?" ? ”, the mainstream faction stopped speaking out, and the branch factions became more and more prosperous and gloated about misfortunes, which really embarrassed Nanjing. Amid the criticism from the public, Nanjing was embarrassed and had to go to class on Saturdays. It dared not skip self-study at night, but the name still sounds good - it is not called make-up classes, it is called "Quality Education Day".

Completely opposing the cultivation of quality and the imparting of knowledge, one without the other, incompatible with water and fire, going from one extreme to another worse extreme, this has been the style of education for many years. From this point of view, the disadvantages of education are by no means limited to the test-taking aspect.

Exam-oriented education is both a disaster and a pain!