The elite education pursued by the middle class has actually become a social problem of national anxiety, and a series of other social contradictions have been derived from it.
I have just read a book, excellent sheep, which fits this topic very well. The writer is William Deresiewicz, a tenured professor at Yale University. He feels that the current elite education has fallen into a misunderstanding.
I myself, after a long learning process, finally ended the application season for undergraduate courses in the United States in April. Along the way, there are pains and hardships, longings and longings, joys and helplessness, which can be said to be a process of laughter and tears.
So today I want to talk to you about elite education.
Part? 1 What are we afraid of?
Anxiety about elite education is mostly concentrated in middle-class families. Like the family in "The Starting Line", they were born in a bad family and squeezed into the middle and high class from the bottom by their parents' own efforts. This type often includes nouveau riche and rich generation (self-made entrepreneurs).
However, because there is no family-style accumulation of wealth and resources, they cannot integrate into the upper class. And they desperately get rid of the lower class, because of contempt, they are also out of place.
Therefore, they are full of anxiety about their children's future. Put all the hopes of entering the first class of senior high school on the children. I'm afraid their children will be despised by the upper class and not respected by the lower class.
In addition to this new middle-class family like movies, old middle-class families and upper-class families also pursue elite education, even more persistent and hard.
Because they are constantly under the pressure of the impact of the new middle class, they are unwilling to compare with them. Moreover, the new middle class has taken away the limited quality education resources. Therefore, they have to work harder to seize the few resources left. Therefore, the old middle-class families are most afraid of being robbed of their due resources, so that their families go from bad to worse.
On the contrary, the bottom families are not as anxious and fearful as middle-class families. Because there is nothing to lose, everything you get is equivalent to extra money. Therefore, there are many successful examples of poor students, and their mentality is mostly more advantageous than that of middle-class families.
The second part of those elite students
Elite students, including students from Tsinghua Peking University, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Their resumes can't pick out any flaws, even dazzling. Many people have done charitable activities for more than ten years, published books, participated in scientific research activities in Africa and the Arctic, worked as interns at NASA, and even held many invention patents.
Most of these students are smart, talented and high-spirited, but at the same time, they are full of anxiety and timidity, and they are at a loss for the future and extremely lack of sense of purpose. They are wrapped in a huge privilege bubble, and all of them are honestly moving in the same direction. They are good at solving the problem at hand, but they don't know why.
In "Excellent Sheep", there is such a passage:
They have reached the point where they can't stand the cold. Any slight blow will be the last straw to crush camels, and the accumulated pressure and collapse will even make them give up their lives. Because they are too used to success, elite students are very afraid of failure, very afraid.
The third part is the road of elite education
Whether preparing for the college entrance examination or studying abroad is a long and arduous process. Everyone is pursuing elite education, and everyone is trying desperately.
For example, applying for American universities, excellent GPA and standardized language test scores, such as the social practice activities mentioned above, are all essential. During this period, I was very confused. This high threshold often makes people sigh, not to mention what the university can learn, just the threshold for entering the university and the admission ticket is so difficult. Sometimes, you try your best, but you will still find that there will always be better people than you.
From the choice of kindergarten and primary school, parents began to be anxious. Their children can enter key schools by buying real estate or paying sponsorship fees to schools. Then for junior high school, parents let their children learn all kinds of talents and participate in all kinds of competitions. Then in high school, there are thousands of troops, and the wooden bridge sprints for the college entrance examination, or both sides are ready to go abroad.
Especially the college entrance examination and studying abroad. How many days and nights of suffering and anxiety of the whole family.
(SAT candidates line up to enter the examination room)
Many families are not rich, but they have to scrimp and save and let their children study abroad. At the Asian Expo, thousands of candidates are trying to write at the SAT (American College Entrance Examination) test center in Hong Kong, which is known as the "mass grave". Their parents are sitting on the ground outside the examination room, eating a cold breakfast, just to wait for the exam for five hours.
However, many people simply don't know why they should be admitted to key schools. They only know that they will be appreciated and gratified by their parents when they are admitted to key schools, or they will have glamorous resumes and labels. However, along the way, in fact, parents have paid far more than them. One day, when children enter the society, they no longer have the goal of "key schools", but only feel confused and confused.
Part? 4 elite education model on the impact of the family
What makes me think deeply in the movie The Starting Line is not only the pursuit of elite education, but also how parents can realize their own value after raising their children. In the movie, the husband and wife give up their jobs, move or pretend to be poor to trick poor students into entering school. I'm not here to emphasize that it's wrong for parents to accommodate and help. I just want to say that in some aspects, there is really no need to care too much.
Parents plan for their children from the moment they are born, and always prepare PlanB, step by step. From a small point of view, this has a strong conflict with their careers, and it is difficult to realize their self-worth, and their happiness in life is greatly reduced, so that some anxiety and anger are often borne by children.
Generally speaking, it is not a sustainable trend for society.
Many people think that the realization of their own value will be terminated when they have children, so Dink family and unmarried doctrine are derived.
But in fact, parents' own value pursuit and children's growth are completely in conflict. Referring to many foreign families, many families even have three or four children, but their parents are not crazy and anxious, but they are very harmonious and happy.
They didn't stop at their own pace, but guided their children properly in their growth. More importantly, they left space for their children to explore what they really loved. Because of this, children have the motivation to learn. Instead of a vicious circle in which parents force their children to learn things they don't like, children lose the motivation to learn, which in turn makes parents more anxious.
Although the social welfare system in foreign countries is more perfect than that in China, domestic prices are low, and they are often only children. So this is not a reasonable excuse.
Part? Where should we go?
"Excellent Sheep" wrote:
But there is no difference between winning and losing, because the elements and backgrounds gathered by everyone are completely different. Bill Gates and Jobs didn't drop out of college because they failed and then attacked the winners in life. On the contrary, they can be said to be one of the few successful people in elite education because they know exactly what they want. Does elite education in universities help me now? What can I gain and lose by dropping out of school? They must have weighed these problems repeatedly and then made a firm decision.
In fact, what is wrong is not the elite education itself, but those students who blindly pursue elite education without exploring who they really are.
Some extreme people think elite education is useful.
For example, a girl who dropped out of college thought, "After graduating from college, no one cares whether you are proficient in the works of the Scottish philosopher david hume or have read Kant."
But to quote another student: "Maybe. But by studying and understanding these giants in human history and intensively reading their works of art, literature and philosophy, I am forced to think about the most difficult problems in human history every day, so I have mastered the most effective expression and thinking ability. "
Neither the Scottish philosopher david hume nor Kant's works have anything to do with you. You definitely don't need trigonometry and calculus to go out to buy food.
But in my opinion, the ability of "the most effective expression and thinking ability" is indeed acquired through learning, and many of these abilities have built a complete self. So the real elite should always ask themselves three questions:
What am I doing?
Why would I do that?
What can this bring me?
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