"I walked a long way and endured a lot of hardship before I sent this doctoral dissertation to you. The twenty-two years of study have been a journey of storm and mud, and many are not easy." Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences Huang Guoping wrote in his thanks for his doctoral dissertation.
This acknowledge for becoming popular on the Internet contains his past experiences - he was born in a small valley. His mother left home at the age of 12, and his father and mother-in-law died at the age of 17. Before going to high school, my family's income was that he caught eels at night, fished on weekends, raised pigs and rented buffaloes. "In those years, I have measured the paddy fields and rivers within a radius of ten kilometers with my feet countless times." At night, he could only do his homework or study under the kerosene lamp; when it rained, he would stuff the bamboo shoot shells into the cracks of the tiles to prevent rain from leaking.
"Read the book and then go out and live for a lifetime" has become the belief that supports Huang Guoping in difficulties. From the elementary school in the town to the junior high school in the town, the county and the city’s high school, Huang Guoping finally went to the , Southwest University, in Chongqing and the , Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, becoming a doctor.
Hello Cheng Meng, a lecturer at the Department of Education of Beijing Normal University, studied many poor children who have similar school experiences as Huang Guoping. Since 2014, he has begun to pay attention to poor children like Huang Guoping who have been born in rural areas and achieved high academic achievements, and collects their growth stories of "geting out of the countryside and changing their destiny" through study.
When I was a child, Cheng Meng heard two metaphors about education: those difficult-to-teach and stupid children were ridiculed as "pigments" and seemed to have no bright future; on the contrary, teachable and intelligent children were called "study materials" and were expected to make their mark through education. In Cheng Meng's research, "the material for reading" later became synonymous with these poor children who have achieved high academic achievements.
Since childhood, Cheng Meng has also been regarded as "the material for reading". In the late 1980s, he was born in a remote village at the junction of three counties in Anhui Province. His father was a farmer and his mother was a private teacher at a village primary school. In the first twenty years of life, Cheng Meng's journey of studying started from the village primary school, passed through township central primary schools, district and county high schools, and city key junior high schools, and finally arrived at key universities in Beijing.
In order to convert daily discourse into academic concepts, Cheng Meng added some limitations to the "material for reading": they were born after reform and opening up (1978). Their parents are mainly engaged in manual labor and at least one of them is farming or working outside. They have a relatively long experience in rural life. They clearly feel the limitations of their family background during their growth. High academic achievement refers to entering "985" and "211" and studying in well-known overseas universities at any stage of undergraduate, master and doctoral degree.
Inspiration is not the only background color of life for this group. During the long study journey of poor children, they may be able to find a seemingly ideal job in the city and become a beautiful story of "studying changes destiny", but this is not the whole story.
Just as Cheng Meng said in a speech: "It is not a talented story, nor is it an inspirational story of counterattack. It is a story of poor children moving forward with heavy burdens, full of contradictions, conflicts, confusion and struggles, and it is also a story of getting out of the unrealistic inner projection and rebuilding themselves."
Cheng Meng studied many poor children who have similar school experiences as Huang Guoping. The picture shows Cheng Meng. The picture is provided by the interviewee
The following is Beijing News The conversation between reporters and Cheng Meng:
50 more than "inspirational" stories
Beijing News: How do you define "the material for reading"?
Cheng Meng: "The material for reading" is my hometown and a daily concept that many places already have. To borrow this metaphor, it refers to those poor children who entered the elite university and achieved high academic achievements, because many people in this group may be regarded as "study materials" when they were young.
I regard entering an elite university as a sign of achieving high academic achievement, and it does not mean that entering an elite university means achieving upward mobility. But in most cases, poor children entering elite universities will have a job with higher economic and social status than their parents after leaving campus.
Beijing News: The paper of Huang Guoping, a doctor of Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently hotly discussed, disclosed his study experience. Is he also a "material for studying"?
Cheng Meng: Dr. Huang must be, but I rarely touched on such a difficult academic journey in the interview. Of course, everyone's hardships are different. When I saw this paper, I admired him very much. His story is indeed inspiring. In life, everyone still needs something that can penetrate into their hearts and make them feel tingling.
Some of the acknowledgements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences doctoral thesis that caused heated discussion.
Beijing News: Your research shows that the path of poor children studying is not a simple inspirational story?
Cheng Meng: Of course it can be an inspirational story, but the growth of poor children is complicated.
During the period of writing a doctoral thesis, we collected a total of 23 autobiographies of poor children. After the paper was finished, the research continued. More than 50 autobiography have been collected now.
I will also ask poor children to do interviews. We will talk about our views on rural origin, our understanding of poor life, our difficulties in school life, etc. This will not be a particularly peaceful dialogue journey, which will have a complex impact on researchers and research subjects.
is also because these things are uneven, which will cause disturbances to the heart. Some interviewees may not be willing to talk too deeply about some issues. This also shows that the growth of poor children may still be that we are always difficult to touch.
Learning is a moral matter
Beijing News: You mentioned a point in your research that learning is "not just a personal matter, but a moral matter" for poor children. Why do you say so?
Cheng Meng: Due to the limitations of family economic conditions and living resources, farmers' mentality about their children's study is easy to go to two extremes: on the one hand, it is easy to give up, and think that it is good to let their children learn and fulfill their most basic responsibilities; on the other hand, it is very easy to have too high expectations for them, and even put all the meaning of their lives on their children. Under this circumstance, learning has become the "duty" and "natural duty" of poor children. Only by studying well can you be worthy of your family's efforts and balance your inner strong guilt.
The special attention paid to academic performance will spread to all aspects of life, and even some adolescent poor children will develop a strong moral fear when facing love. For example, a poor girl said that she had a relationship in high school, but later she felt more and more that she was sorry for her parents, so she took the initiative to break up with her boyfriend.
Beijing News: So for poor children, achievements are particularly important?
Cheng Meng: If children from poor families want to gain recognition, they rely more on grades. For them, grades are everything, not only affecting the family's efforts, but also their status in the class and the teacher's love. Grades can give them a sense of security and confidence.
An interviewee wrote in his autobiography: "After the first monthly exam, I ranked seventeenth in the class, and I was in the next few times. This was a heavy blow to me who was always in the front. I even felt inferior when I walked."
"I am no longer the only one who is excellent, nor the best. I was admitted to the best class, but I was only in the 36th place. ...The activities in the class are no longer organized by me. I am no longer organized by me. The teacher also directly chose to be a class leader with better learning. I was insignificant in it, and I couldn’t even find a sense of belonging. "
" There were still grades that I could show off when I was in junior high school, but grades in high school were not my capital anymore. "
" I have no other way to get recognition except for studying."
Beijing News: But it is not easy to go out through reading.
Cheng Meng: Among the poor children I have come into contact with, hard study is common, and few people are truly "reading materials" in the literal sense - they are really talented and can easily achieve good results. Of course, not everyone will achieve high academic achievements after studying hard. The textbooks may be the same when going to school in Haidian and in village primary schools in central and western provinces, but what students really learn will be very different.
For poor families, the ability to resist risks is relatively weak. For example, parents are sick or have emotional problems, their families are very poor or financially difficult, they have no money to pay tuition or support their children to study in better schools; in addition, the phenomenon of "preferring boys over girls" in some areas is still relatively serious, and some girls even go to work after graduating from junior high school and remarrying in a few years, which makes them unable to become "study materials".
Beijing News: Before the “meaning of reading” truly goes out, will poor children and families have a good wish for the mobility of education?
Cheng Meng: Nowadays, many farmers still hope that their children will not repeat their lives, do not farm again, or engage in a temporary and unsecured job in the city. In the imagination of many rural parents, it would be great if their children could have a stable job in the future and could sit in the office. They would not have to be exposed to the sun or the rain, and they would have to be in danger. They would know that they would have income next day and next month. Indeed, many poor children enter higher education and leave campus and do some "ideal" work in the city that seems to be such "ideal". So, we can say that "get out of the countryside and change destiny" is real. But this is just the real side, the truth is three-dimensional. The hardships and pains they endure in urban society are often overlooked.
A few days ago, a senior undergraduate girl told me that she didn’t know what she was studying for a long time, and the teacher gave her little feedback. Because university teachers sometimes don’t care much, and if students are not proactive, the teachers won’t say much. As a result, she was about to graduate and found that she had not studied her major well and could not find an ideal job. In her hometown, she is a very valued child with good grades and is a "material for studying". As a result, I was about to graduate from university, but failed to pass the postgraduate entrance examination, and couldn't find a job, so I fell into a state of disappointment and distress.
"The Hidden Dark Side"
Beijing News: In your research, poor children will also face some impact and discomfort after leaving their hometown to go to university?
Cheng Meng: The impact comes from itself and everything related to family background. Family background is not a simple questionnaire filled in when you are enrolled in school, or telling people what your parents do, it spreads in every aspect of life.
During the PhD, we collected money mentioned 44 times in the 32 autobiography of children from middle- and upper-income families in the city. When they mention money, they rarely mention precise numbers. Generally speaking, "spend money", "have money" and "collect money". For example, "(Dad) doesn't take money very seriously. When he first started working, he paid a salary, put a stack of 100-yuan bills into a plastic bag, threw them into a bicycle basket, and rode home safely... My father was worried that my life was going to save money and gave me the impression that I was stingy on other classmates, so he generously gave me living expenses and always motivated me to spend money as much as I want."
But in 23 autobiographies of poor children, money was mentioned 92 times, and the words that often appeared were "no money", "final saving enough money", "need money", "can't have money", "borrow money", and "for money". For example, "The only source of income for the whole family is that my father earns more than 1,000 yuan per month when he sends LPG . My father's work is very hard. Whether it is windy, rainy or holidays, he always rides a bicycle and runs with a gas tank weighing 70 or 80 kilograms. He moves upstairs and downstairs, and only earns 2 yuan per bottle. So before junior high school, money had a special place in my heart."
Some poor children wrote in their autobiography: "(After graduating from elementary school), my father called me to the front and said: Child, our family has no money. Are you going to the school in the mine? ? "After school, we buy 30 cents of mozzarella every day." "Yellow cover, 5 yuan, a very thick set of test papers... In 6 years, this seems to be the best quality test paper we have ever used."
In the interview, poor families also often mentioned money: "Every year from September, it is the time when I worry the most. If I want to pay the tuition, I must pay my brother and my brother first... Even if all the rice is sold, it is not enough... Dad drinks a little wine but doesn't smoke, and he quits smoking for me. At that time, the family had no money and was too poor to smoke."
The poor children's memory of money is accurate and their attitude towards money is cautious. Money is always scarce and precious to poor children. Every penny they spent before they were financially independent directly implicated the little sweat shed by their parents on the dark land, in the hot construction sites, and in the shouts on the road.
Beijing News: In addition to economic pressure, what does rural origin mean to these poor children who have achieved high academic achievements?
Cheng Meng: At different stages, poor children will have different feelings.
There is an interviewee who is a doctoral student at a key university in Southern . She said from She never concealed her rural background, and she was "always very honest." In her daily communication, she would naturally tell her friends that she "was doing farm work" and "he was very strong". But she also felt inferior and did not dare to eat in the cafeteria, and felt the gap in financial ability with her classmates from shopping and making friends. But now she no longer feels inferior because of her rural background, but instead has insight into the pride she has related to rural life. She has the habit of rural life, regular life, thrift, and is proud of it.
also had interviewees who said that she had "a little inferiority in her personality", but she also had the pride of being born in rural areas, because "geting from the rural area shows that I have reached the same level as others with worse educational resources. "The interviewees also think that the rural life experience will make her "become more hard-working", "focus on feelings", and "be more humble."
Beijing News: Have you experienced this stage yourself?
Cheng Meng: For me, the process of switching from a rural junior high school to a key urban high school is the most difficult. I also wrote in my autobiography: "As young, I feel that the children in the city always wear so suitable for the people and things around me, and I don't match it. It does not have a canteen, dormitory, playground, or even a willow tree on the side of the road. My words and deeds always lack a leisurely and contentment, and I am prone to being cramped, nervous, and at a loss. "
Although the teachers and classmates are very nice to me, I still feel that this is not my school and I shouldn't be there.
was actually very confused at that time, and didn't know how to resist these shocks, but it was just uncomfortable. Of course, we also have many friends from towns and counties who come from similar families and often play together. All you can do is do every day well, do the classes you should teach every day, and do the homework you should do. Some things that can be digested, and what cannot be digested are suspended there. Now, it seems that it has passed day by day, and some troubles are slowly released.
After experiencing painful adaptation in the first year of high school and failure in academic studies, I turned to liberal arts in the second year of high school, and my grades finally improved. In the end, I ushered in a turning point in my fate through the college entrance examination in this place that "should not appear".
Cheng Meng in elementary school. Picture provided by the interviewee
"Education has different meanings for different people"
Beijing News: Your research has also caused some controversy?
Cheng Meng: After a speech video was posted to the Internet, some people felt that they were seen, comforted and healed, and some people would question "Is it meaningful to tell these? "Some people think that "will touch the problem." I am not misunderstood because of some doubts or criticisms, because different people have very different understandings of how to tell the stories of these poor children.
Although when the story is told, chosen, and stereotyped, the complex life experience becomes a specific reality, I still hope to present a richer look as much as possible.
I think telling is meaningful, which is helping us understand ourselves and the society we live in. It can even be said that the story of "reading materials" is about each of us.
Some listeners and I said that this research can "promote the cognition of people in different situations." I think this is what I hope to see more.
Based on the autobiography of poor children, Cheng Meng completed his doctoral thesis and improved it into a monograph "The Materials of Reading" and its Cultural Production - Research on the Growth of Contemporary Farmers' Children". Video screenshot
Beijing News: Is there a clear difference between "reading materials" and "small town test maker" and "985 waste" that are often mentioned now?
Cheng Meng: At present, discussions about "small town test maker" and "985 waste" are one after another, but there are definitely differences. For example, "small town testers", first of all, everyone has different understandings about what a "small town" is. I heard from an undergraduate student that his classmate was born in the suburbs of Beijing and he also felt that he was a small town test worker. The discussion of "small town questioners" seems to focus more on doing questions, focusing on a one-sided development centered on practicing questions and grades. Many people say that they are small town testers, which refers to an educational model that can cultivate test workers. In the concept of "small town questioners", the focus is on "doing questions".
What I know about "985 waste" refers to students who go to "985" universities, but they feel that they are wasteful and are in a state of frustration, even out of school or unemployed. "985 Waste" is discouraged, or sometimes self-deprecating, pointing to a life path in which even achieves high academic achievements, he still does not change his destiny through education.
If college students with family backgrounds in ordinary urban areas have a sense of deception and powerlessness, then this is even more true for poor children with poor families with difficult financial conditions.
Beijing News: Do you think education can change your destiny?
Cheng Meng: Education has different meanings of existence for different people, and it carries the purpose of social diversity.
Before, many people criticized the education model of Maotanchang Middle School, but I think the criticism of Maotanchang is a bit preconceived, and does not take into account the lives of these relatively ordinary or even poor students. Rural students’ efforts to change their destiny are often closely related to the educational model they live in. The parents of these children are also highly dependent on schools and teachers to help their children change their destiny.
For me, education must have changed my destiny, otherwise I would not have been able to sit here today.
Like any social group, poor children rely highly on a sound public support system. In this sense, their social mobility across urban and rural borders is more of a social achievement than a personal achievement.
Beijing News reporter Li Gui Editor Chen Xiaoshu Proofreading Wei Zhuo
Source: Beijing News
