A few words | A girl drowned after getting first place in the exam and being questioned by her teacher. Adversity education is essential

2021.1.4 Hot Topics:

On January 3, Ms. Li from Qianshan City, Anhui Province reported that her 13-year-old niece ranked first in the school in the monthly exam and scored 100 points in Taoism and Law. However, her class teacher questioned her for buying the test papers in advance and arranged a make-up exam. On the second day of the make-up exam, Ms. Li's niece drowned in a pond.

What do you think of the scientific voices? Niu Xiaobian: This teacher is really wrong. Is it wrong for the little girl to get first place in the exam? Why question it?

Ice otaku: We don’t understand the situation, and there is information asymmetry. To be honest, if a student who ranks low in the class suddenly gets first place in an exam, and we don’t know how he reviewed, it’s normal to have doubts. It’s also normal to arrange a repeat exam to verify the level.

Editor Niu: You have to pay attention to the method and approach. The girl must have suffered a lot of injustice, which is why she behaved like this.

Bing Zhainan: You are right, we should pay attention to the method and approach. But whether it is true grievance or cheating, it is not advisable to do extreme behavior for such a small matter. Many children nowadays cannot stand setbacks and are too fragile.

Niu Xiaobian: I disagree with this view! You can't just blame the little girl for being fragile. Many things that seem unimportant to us adults are simply too important from a child's perspective. You are not an adult when you are born.

Ice Houseman: Don't get excited, maybe I expressed it in an ambiguous way. I'm not saying that I only blame the little girl, nor am I saying that the teacher's methods are absolutely correct. I'm just saying that we should look at the problem more comprehensively and understand more about all aspects of the matter. The most important thing is that there may be multiple causes and one effect. The teacher's methods should be more advanced. We can't think that the teacher's education has no room for improvement based on the standards we used when we were young. Children also need to be educated in adversity. Who hasn't suffered a little grievance during the process of growing up?

Editor Niu: Well, when I see many people arguing online, they simply attribute the reason to one of these points.

Ice Houseman: I personally think that this is a manifestation of being too lazy to think and only focusing on one's position. The less one thinks, the easier it is to attribute complex causal relationships to a single cause, as if finding a single cause has found the crux of the problem. And solving a single cause can solve all complex educational problems.

Editor Niu: In fact, it is very difficult for parents to change the overall environment of social education. In this case, it is very necessary to provide children with some necessary adversity education.

Bing Zhainan: Then tell me, what kind of education can be considered as education in adversity?

Wang Lixing: Adversity education is not about deliberately setting difficult goals for children and then comforting them desperately when they fail. The starting point of adversity education is to teach children to acknowledge and express their feelings, whether they are happy, sad, frustrated, or even desperate. This requires parents to spend effort to communicate well with their children, rather than just hoping that their children will live up to their pride.

Ice Otaku: What if the child says, “I am in so much pain and I don’t want to go to school anymore?” What should I do?

Wang Lixing: Actually, there are many things we can do. For example

Let your child calm down and sort out his or her own feelings first;

Let them relax and get some sleep, as lack of sleep can increase frustration;

During communication, we should constantly and clearly tell our children that setbacks are only temporary and that we should not magnify small things.

Let the children rethink this big and difficult problem in their eyes after they calm down;

Help your child think about ways to solve this problem;

By solving this problem, help your child build up the confidence to be able to solve more problems next time.

Editor Niu: It sounds reasonable, but some parents may not have the professional ability to counsel others.

Wang Lixing: If parents find that their child’s major problem is really serious after listening to the situation, they should seek help from a psychologist.

Bing Zhainan: What about teachers? A simple and rude teacher is also a cancer.

Wang Lixing: Think about it first, why is the teacher so simple and rude?

Bing Zhainan: Because they want to establish their authority, make the children listen to them, and make it easier to manage. Many such teachers only care about "grades".

Wang Lixing: This is indeed a very important reason. Simple and rough education is more likely to make children timid and inferior. If there is no way to change the external environment, such as changing a teacher, a school, or a city, what parents can do is to pay more attention to their children and let them learn to face the setbacks of the big environment. This is also a kind of adversity education. The educational philosophy of our society is constantly improving, and the simple and rough education and score-first views are changing.

Bing Zhainan: Niu, what was the biggest setback you encountered in elementary school?

Niu Xiaobian: I had a mother who forced me to get full marks in the exam. I still remember the sadness of not daring to go home after getting 94 marks.

Ice Otaku: So you still blame your mother?

Niu Xiaobian: No wonder. But I always think that parents should be more of a safe haven. If parents are stricter than outsiders, children really have nothing to rely on.

Wang Lixing: OK. What I learned today is that social problems often have multiple causes and one result. We cannot simply attribute them or blindly stand on the same side. And many problems require us to update our understanding at any time based on new evidence.

Editor Niu: I personally despise the simplistic and crude theory of focusing only on scores. I want to learn more about education in adversity and share more if I have the opportunity.