Well-known principal reminds: Several misunderstandings about family education

Attributing cleverness or attributing hard work? Exploit strengths or make up for weaknesses? Are living habits and study habits completely separate… Is writing homework fast and good, or good and fast? A young parent asked me, for a first-grade child who has just entered school, should he be required to write homework quickly and well, or well and quickly? Some parents first require their children to write well and neatly, which is of course good. But if you look at the ranking of beauty, accuracy, and speed, there may be a better choice. Some parents place special emphasis on the beauty and neatness of their children\’s homework, but ignore speed and efficiency. As a result, the child may write very slowly, writing stroke by stroke. When he feels that it doesn\’t look good or he makes a mistake, he must erase it and start over again, or even write it all over again. Therefore, he spends more time on homework than others, takes exams much slower than others, and even fails to finish the questions. If a child pays special attention to the beauty and neatness of writing, it will inevitably affect the speed and efficiency of homework or exams, and he will spend more time writing every day. Some students have developed a perfectionist habit since childhood and cannot allow themselves to make any mistakes or look bad. Over time, they may develop a slight psychological disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. If a child pays attention to speed and efficiency in homework since childhood, he may have more time to rest, exercise or read every day. There will also be more time for checking during the exam to ensure a higher accuracy rate. Speed ​​and efficiency can win more time, and time is always the most important resource. Therefore, I personally think that the first thing is to be accurate, for example, you have to do the questions correctly and write without typos; the second thing is speed, that is, the pursuit of efficiency; finally, under the premise of a certain speed, you can pursue the beauty of the form. This is actually about the ranking of content, form and efficiency. Of course we should not put form before content and efficiency. Otherwise, we may pursue the beauty of the form, but ignore the correctness of the content, sacrificing speed and efficiency. That would be putting the cart before the horse and not worth it, so this is a very important value orientation regarding learning habits. Are living habits and study habits completely separate? Related to the first question, children\’s living habits and study habits are inseparable, and the two are consistent. If we want to cultivate good study habits in children, we also need to start by cultivating his living habits. We hope that children should pay attention to efficiency when doing homework, so we should also pay attention to speed and efficiency when doing other things in life. Some children take a long time to eat breakfast and several minutes to peel an egg, so their learning habits may also be slow. If his room and desk are particularly messy, his writing is unlikely to be very neat. Therefore, children\’s living habits and study habits are connected and influence each other. However, some parents think these are two different things. They often have very low or even no requirements for their children in life, and are more laissez-faire, but they have strict requirements on their children\’s study habits. Such an approach may achieve twice the result with half the effort. Because a person\’s behavioral habits and behavior patterns will transfer. We cannot expect a child who does not pay attention to efficiency, precision and beauty in his living habits to pay special attention to efficiency, precision and beauty in his studies.and beautiful. Therefore, Mr. Dewey and Mr. Tao Xingzhi both emphasized that education is life, or life is education. Attributing cleverness or attributing hard work? A person\’s growth and success are nothing more than two aspects, one is intellectual factors, and the other is non-intellectual factors. Intelligence mainly refers to a person\’s observation, concentration, memory, thinking, imagination, etc. It is more of an innate element, which is relatively stable and can be developed the day after tomorrow, but the changes are minor. Non-intellectual factors refer to those factors other than intellectual factors, such as emotion, perseverance, perseverance, strength, interest, motivation, etc. Most of these factors are cultivated and developed and have strong plasticity. Of course, a person\’s growth is the combined result of these two aspects, and so is children\’s learning. But in view of the innate nature of intellectual factors and the acquired nature of non-intellectual factors, from an educational perspective, we should attribute more to non-intellectual factors. That is, we attribute more to factors that can be changed. Therefore, when a child succeeds or fails, we should not attribute too much to his intelligence or stupidity, but help him attribute it to his own efforts and investment. When praising your child, don\’t say you are so smart, but say that you succeeded this time, which shows that your efforts are effective. When criticizing a child, never say he is stupid, but guide him to analyze whether he is careless, whether he does not work hard enough, etc. Different attributions are also different ways of thinking. If we attribute too much to children\’s intelligence, we are actually attributing it to factors that cannot be changed. This is a fixed way of thinking, which can easily lead to negative evaluations of children such as disappointment and low self-esteem. On the contrary, if we guide children to attribute non-intellectual factors and attribute more to factors that can be changed, this will help guide children to continuously improve their behavior and thus achieve continuous progress. This is a growth mindset. From an educational perspective, parents should pay more attention to their children\’s non-intellectual factors and their cultivation, as well as those factors that can be changed. A person\’s intelligence can determine how high he can go, and a person\’s non-intellectual factors can determine how far he can go. Intellectual deficiencies can be compensated for by non-intelligence, but non-intellectual deficiencies are difficult to compensate for by intelligence. This is what the ancients said: \”Diligence can make up for weakness.\” On the other hand, in the long run, intelligence cannot make up for a person\’s shortcomings in non-intellectual factors. The ancients also said: \”Intelligence and agility can be relied on, but not in others; those who rely on their intelligence and agility without learning will lose themselves.\” Yea.\” Exploiting strengths or making up for weaknesses? A popular theory in the past was called the barrel theory, which held that how much water a barrel can hold depends on the shortest board on the barrel wall; a person\’s development depends on his short board. Therefore, education should focus on children’s shortcomings and focus on making up for them. In fact, no one is perfect. A person\’s foothold and development in society depend on his advantages and strengths, and on his longest board. This is called the long board theory. Starting from this theory, it is believed that the focus of education is to focus on children\’s strengths and promote their strengths rather than making up for their weaknesses. Education should start from strengths. According to the theory of multiple intelligences, everyone is born with certain dominant intelligences. Education is about discovering a child’s superior intelligence, discovering his talents, and discovering his strengths., and then cultivate his superior intelligence and make his longboard appear longer, which is an important direction for his future development. Education is about discovering yourself, awakening yourself, and finally becoming the best version of yourself. In the Internet age, one\’s shortcomings can be solved by grafting on others\’ strong points, and there is no need to make up for all one\’s own shortcomings. Moreover, logically speaking, a person\’s shortcomings often have innate components. Spending a lifetime of energy to make up for that shortcoming may not necessarily be effective. Often, half the result will be achieved with twice the effort, and it may be lost because of it. It is better to use this time to develop your strengths and develop your strengths and intelligence. It is more efficient and easier to achieve success. A person\’s future foothold and growth in society always depends on his strengths, not his weaknesses. Of course, this involves another issue, which is how to discover children\’s strengths. In the past, people had a misunderstanding that human intelligence mainly consisted of language intelligence and mathematical logic intelligence, which are the Dali and Dali in school curricula. Gardner\’s theory of multiple intelligences believes that human intelligence is diverse and can be divided into 7 to 9 types. Each person has his or her own dominant intelligence. In addition to language intelligence and mathematical logic intelligence, there are also visual-spatial intelligence, interpersonal communication intelligence, Self-cognitive intelligence, etc. Therefore, the process of education is actually the process of discovering and cultivating children\’s superior intelligence. It should not be simply limited to language and mathematical logic, but should allow children to have more experiences and discover their own advantages and strengths in diverse experiences. The average fallacy means that among a group of people, more than half of the people think that they are above the average. That is to say, there are many more people who think that they are above the average than actually above the average. This is a sociological phenomenon. I call it the fallacy of averages. A survey showed that 82% of people believe that their driving skills are better than average. Obviously, many of them are wrong in their judgment. This fallacy is even more exaggerated in the stock market. Everyone who trades in stocks thinks that they can make money. No one trades in stocks thinking that they will lose money. In fact, more than half of people cannot outperform the market. The same is true for parents. Almost most parents think that their children are at least average or above average among their peers. But in fact, we know that in any group, only half of the people are above the average. In other words, we have to accept the fact that half of the children must be below average. But we often cannot understand this objectively, and we cannot objectively recognize our children. Sometimes we have unrealistic expectations for our children, which brings invisible pressure to our children. Therefore, no matter how good a school or class is, half of its students must be below average. No matter how good the teacher is, it is impossible for every child to reach a level above the average level of the class, and parents cannot expect or require this. What the school has to do is to continuously improve the level at the bottom. \”Losing\” at the starting line The so-called starting line theory is completely wrong from an educational point of view, and it is also incorrect from a person\’s growth point of view. Education and life, if we must compare them with runningMetaphorically, that is also a long-distance marathon. The starting line of a long-distance marathon is not as precise as that of a 100-meter race. They are all standing together loosely. The role of the starting line in the marathon is almost negligible. Some parents feel that it is extremely unfair because their children were born in the second half of the year and cannot go to school under the age of 6. They are afraid that their children will lose at the starting line. In fact, when he is 40 or 50 years old, his growth and development will not depend on him going to school one year earlier or working one year earlier than others. When we extend the time scale and extend it to decades to look at education and life, we will gain another perspective and we will be able to see the truth. A person\’s growth ultimately depends on the individual\’s sustained efforts. Time allows us to see the truth clearly, and we can look at many things more calmly, thereby alleviating some unnecessary anxiety. Many parents like to compare their children with other people\’s children: Look at other people\’s children… the implication is that other people\’s children are better. This is a very common but very wrong practice. First of all, it is a disservice to children to not be able to make this comparison. The child will feel that you don\’t really love him, accept him and tolerate him from the heart, and he will be very sad. Secondly, what you see may be just an appearance. Maybe your child, in the eyes of other parents, is also a good child from other families. Thirdly, how would you feel if your children looked at you as \”other people\’s parents\”? There is a well-drawn cartoon. A mother is scrolling on her mobile phone, and her child is also playing with her mobile phone; another mother is reading, and her child is also reading quietly. They only ask their children to compare with other people’s children, but they don’t reflect on whether they are also comparing themselves with other people’s parents. Parents who are teachers often behave more prominently in holding their children to the standards of other people\’s children. Because he has seen many outstanding students, he often unconsciously measures his own children by the best students he has ever taught. This is unfair to the child. Therefore, children of teachers tend to be more stressed, perhaps for this reason. Related to this, there are also some parents who hope that their children can achieve goals that they did not achieve back then. In fact, from a narrow genetic perspective, it is often difficult for your children to achieve what you have not achieved. Your defects and shortcomings may also be passed on to your children. Such parents verbally say I am doing it for your own good, but in fact it may be just for their own ideals and face. What you want to achieve is your own inner goal, not necessarily the child\’s own goal. In a sense, this is selfishness on the part of the parents. The Lebanese poet Gibran wrote a poem \”To Our Children\”, which put it very well. He said that our children are not actually ours. \”Your children are not your children. They are children born of life\’s desire for itself. They come to this world through you, but they do not come because of you. They accompany you, but they do not belong to you. You can give They love, but you cannot give them thoughts, because they have their own thoughts. You can shelter their bodies, but you cannot shelter their souls, because their souls belong to tomorrow., belongs to a tomorrow that you cannot reach even in your dreams. You can try your best to become like them, but don\’t let them become like you, because life will not go back, nor can it stay in the past. …”