Akron, Ohio, USA (Akron, Ohio), is the hometown of NBA star LeBron James .
This is an ordinary American town located in the Rust Belt. When James recalls his hometown, he always mentions ubiquitous guns, drugs and violence. Very few people like him escape with his sports talent, and most children can only receive bad public education in the slums. Therefore, Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single black mother living here, decided to take risks for her two daughters.
In August 2006, when Bora applied for a school for her daughter, she registered her address in the middle-class community where her child’s grandfather lived, so her daughter was able to enter a prestigious local school dominated by white people. Since most school funds are provided by the community tax, "education immigration" is strictly guarded against. The school hired a private detective to take pictures of her picking up her daughter from a slum, and Bora's lies were finally exposed.
Residents around the school were angry and accused Bora of being a thief. In January 2011, the school indicted Bora on the grounds of educational theft, who was sentenced to felony crimes and was asked to pay the school's $30,500 tuition fee. The
Bora incident caused an uproar across the United States, and the social discussion on educational equity suddenly became popular. Under pressure from public opinion, Bora was released after nine days of imprisonment. But her father was still charged with forging records, the house was taken into custody, and eventually died of illness in a prison hospital. Bora, whose family was destroyed, was both sad and angry: Why can't his children go to a better school like the middle-class whites?
Some parents are facing the same problem in China across the ocean.
On August 16, 2018, an iron gate quietly appeared on the campus of Suzhou Qinxi Primary School, a century-old famous school. Half a month later, as primary school started, the iron gate was given a new name - the isolation gate. The 800 primary school students who will borrow the site at Qinxi Primary School are originally students of Lixin Primary School next door. Because the school building was vacated, Qinxi Primary School became their temporary residence. On both ends of the isolation door of
are 400 local students. Most of their parents have spent a high price to buy school district houses, so they naturally oppose "learning freely"; on the other hand, there are 800 children of migrant workers, and most of their parents are ordinary workers. The purpose of the school building the iron gate was originally to ensure the independence of the two schools, but the word "isolation" stirred up the sensitive nerves of public opinion and immediately became the target of criticism.
Discussion on isolation doors, some people believe that the educational resources that parents buy at high prices have been occupied; some people emphasize that isolation doors are discriminatory and insulting educational equity. Behind the uproar in public opinion is the complex interests entanglement, and nothing has changed after the popularity faded.
01. Tear: The hereditary of educational resources
In 1992, two educators, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, reached a consensus on a conclusion: in the United States, no one really cares about the children at the bottom.
They signed up for the two-year Teaching for America program. After a formal interview, they were admitted to two public primary schools in Houston, mainly African and Mexican students. Prior to this, Levine and Fenberg, who were born in a wealthy middle-class family, had just graduated from Ivy League University and knew nothing about the public education at the bottom.
greets them with an American education that is completely different from the upper class. Teachers can leave the classroom at will for up to 15 minutes for a private phone call. Schools can also directly disqualify students from taking the exam in order to complete the "exam pass rate for students of each race" assigned by the Education Bureau (later after Levin refused to do so, he was fired by the school for "disobeying the school regulations").
When Fenberg sent his students to junior high schools in the ordinary community with good grades a year later, the students gave him a more desperate reality. They called Fenberg and told Fenberg that some female classmates had started dating, some male classmates were beaten in the school cafeteria, and some were out of school at all. Before hanging up the phone, they said, “Mr. Fenberg, these teachers are not like you."
The junior high school teachers are indeed different. While looking at Levin and Fenberg who came to the school to understand the students' situation with a strange expression, they responded perfunctorily, "They learned well." At this moment, Levin and Fen truly realized that all their efforts to students are like sand castles that have been troubled on the beach. If you are not careful, small waves or ignorant tourists can easily destroy the sand castles.
What they have experienced is just the tip of the iceberg of the lower-level education in the United States. Among the 100 public schools, only one can be called a "star school". More than 40% of students cannot graduate are called "dropout factories", while in nearly 30,000 public high schools in the United States, "dropout factories" exceed 2,000; the reading level of 9-grade high school students in this kind of school is only equivalent to grades 1-3 of prestigious schools.
Backward and scattered schools, perfunctory teachers, and ignorant students, together form the increasingly desperate reality of the lower-level public education in the United States.
school district system is the cornerstone of basic education in the United States, and 85% of students are studying in public schools in the school district. In addition to a small amount of federal subsidies, the funds for public education are mainly provided by state government appropriations and property taxes for community residents. Rich state governments will also provide additional fees for school districts, such as California , which stipulates that 40% of the income of local lottery is included in school district education funds.
The school district system for enrolling nearby has made great contributions to the popularization of basic education in the United States, but as the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, most private schools and good public schools are clustered in rich areas. educational resources are becoming increasingly hereditary, and the background of parents largely determines the development of future generations. The more diversified selection mechanisms of American high schools and universities have also consolidated the fortress of educational stratification.
Two years of teaching experience allowed Levin and Finberg to fully see the desperate situation of lower-level education in the United States. The teaching model of "teaching for the United States" is more like a group of young people who are not in the world to visit here. After they have accumulated enough beautiful experiences in their resumes, they patted their butts and left. It is conceivable that when these promising young people complete the two-year teaching plan and leave, those students will fall into the quagmire again.
Levin and Finberg decided to set up their own business and personally founded a school that can change the fate of poor students. They gave the school a fairly secular name: KIPP (Knowledge) Is Power Program).
is not taken from the classic quote by the philosopher Bacon, but from a song created by a black female teacher. The melody of the ballad is simple and has clear meaning: "You have to read, baby, read. The more you read, the more you know. Because knowledge is power, power is money, I want it." This song will also become a brainwashing song for KIPP in the future, and almost every student will know how to sing it.
Two young American guys challenged the windmills of education like Don Quixote. What is the current situation of education in China across the ocean?
02. Hands-to-hand: Make-up lessons, super schools, and the hope of the whole family
The representative areas of the three major provinces and cities support the whole picture of China's education - Huangzhuang, Hengshui, Hebei, and Maotanchang, Anhui. Compared with the complex and diversified selection mechanism of American education, the achievement theory of Chinese education has better channels for improvement and strong universality. In the face of scores, without any grades, the status of parents will not become the decisive factor in determining the development of the next generation. simply put: In China, it is difficult to pass on educational resources across generations.
The competitive advantages of college entrance examinations in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have always been envied by the people of the whole country. The advantages of gathering places for high-education populations, distribution places for high-quality teachers, and core areas for education and research have created a high admission rate for the Beijing-Shanghai college entrance examinations.But taking Shanghai as an example, many people do not know that the elimination rate of Shanghai's high school entrance examination is as high as 50%. That is to say, before 40,000 to 50,000 people in Shanghai took the college entrance examination, 40,000 to 50,000 were eliminated.
The fierce battle between Beijing and Shanghai education has always been before the college entrance examination. As the famous joke describes: "What level does a 4-year-old child have to have English vocabulary of around 1,500? It is definitely enough in the United States, and it is definitely not enough in Haidian ."
If the elite education in Beijing and Shanghai is still far from most Chinese people, then super schools represented by Hengshui Middle School are not unfamiliar to most Chinese families. Through the advantages of picking the top students and a high-pressure learning environment, Hengshui Middle School has built the most perfect examination-oriented education machine, and the results of hundreds of Tsinghua and Peking University students in the college entrance examination every year are at the pinnacle.
In the past twenty years, this super middle school that has rapidly risen through the acquiescence of local governments has become the biggest winner in Chinese education. Siphon's high-quality students and the high tuition fees have made super schools an accelerator for the intra-study of the college entrance examination. On the one hand, Hengshui suppressed , Hebei , and on the other hand, it was advancing towards other provinces with its teeth and claws. Super schools are increasingly becoming a roaring money-making machine under the college entrance examination system.
does not have the resources of Beijing mothers, nor does it have the qualification to register for Hengzhong. Maotanchang Middle School, known as the "Asian College Entrance Examination Factory", has become a shelter for poor families in China. For Cheng Xiaodong, the head teacher of Maotanchang's 2014 senior high school re-study class, his goal is to get more than 50 repeaters in the class to get into college as much as possible. For He Fei, a repeater, this is her last chance to change her destiny. During the time of being a class teacher in Yi Fei, Cheng Xiaodong set a small goal: to persuade her to rent a house outside the school. He Fei's grades were poor, and Cheng Xiaodong attributed this to the noisy accommodation environment of the school. If you want to significantly improve your score, day study is a good choice. He Fei's family was in a difficult situation. He failed the college entrance examination and then went to Maotan Factory to seize the opportunity to repeat the school and get into a relatively good university, bringing hope to the whole family.
Cheng Xiaodong proposed to He Fei and He’s father who came from another place to raise rent: he could subsidize several thousand yuan and also hold donations in the class. He's father smiled with a restrained smile, hunched his back and lowered his folded hands on his legs, and sat uneasily beside the person who seemed to control his daughter's future. Cheng Xiaodong finally said: "Save your girl, that is, you save your entire family."
Indeed, although they come from different countries, in the eyes of Levin, Fenberg and Cheng Xiaodong, education is the last straw that changes their life destiny of the lower classes. Whether they can catch it depends on themselves.
03. Self-rescue: Passionate slogans and strict education
For the majority of Chinese candidates who failed the college entrance examination, choosing to repeat the exam is equivalent to choosing a path of self-salvation.
In Maotanchang Middle School, the main way to save yourself is to regard the teacher's words as a golden rule. For example, the day study advice provided by Cheng Xiaodong was efficiently implemented by He Fei's family, and the effect was immediately effective: in the routine monthly exam, He Fei's scores improved significantly. Cheng Nanyan said to He's father excitedly that there is no problem in getting into the second school. Before He's father left this time, he did not forget to instruct "You just need to be responsible for cooking and washing clothes, and I will take care of the rest." The mothers of Maotanchang Middle School are surrounded by mountains, and there is only one export, and the town environment is in the small town with no trace of entertainment facilities. Here, learning is the purpose of living.
The ubiquitous slogan is the spiritual baptism given to students by the school. "Fight like a mad dog", "Blood and tears without regret", "There is a way out, no retreat, leaving a way out is a dead end", "I want to go to college"... These slogans are one of the symbols of Mao, and have become one of the main materials for educational experts to criticize. Although experts don’t care, the eye-catching and exaggerated slogans reflect the hope of tens of thousands of ordinary students in life.
In order to be able to get into college, the time is strictly stipulated: morning self-study at 6:30, class starts at 8:05, and get out of class ends at 12:00. After lunch in 10 minutes, class starts at 2 o'clock, get out of class ends at 5:10, evening self-study at 5:50, and ends at 10:50.After the school turned off the lights at 12 o'clock, people living on campus turned on flashlights in their beds, and those who were daydreaming took the lights until one or two o'clock in the morning. The teacher's authority, exaggerated slogans and harsh courses are gathered into the unique labels of Maotan Factory.
This set of tags is not only suitable for the KIPP opened by Levin and Finberg, but is building itself into the "American version of Maotanchang Middle School".
Two young teachers successfully recruited 49 fifth-grade students in the Houston area, basically from low-income and immigrant ethnic families. Levin and Fenberg's next small goal is to send them to Magnet School. Magnet school is equivalent to a key middle school in the city or district. It is far superior to ordinary middle schools in terms of equipment, faculty and student quality. It is a standard middle school.
Levin and Finberg completely abandoned the original set of free-range education, and replaced it with 360-degree brainwashing teaching, which is similar to Maotanchang. First of all, students must be familiar with the school motto - study hard and be a good person (WORK HARD. BE NICE.). The second step is to sign a letter of commitment, in triplicate. Teachers, parents and students all need to sign to ensure that they keep their promises:
Teachers must always reach 10 minutes earlier than students, so that students and parents can always contact them. Parents must check their homework every night and read with their children. Students must arrive at school before 7:25 in the morning and leave at 5 o'clock every day. They will receive tutoring on Saturdays and summer vacations. They should raise their hands when asking questions in class, sit upright when listening to lectures, dress neatly, follow the teacher at all times, and complete homework on time.
Finally, the KIPP schools were also hung with red banners—the words "Climb the peak of university" and "No shortcuts for success" are everywhere. With 9 and a half hours of classroom time a day, complete exam-oriented education, and overloaded homework, KIPP's teaching journey began in this way that violates the "American spirit of human nature". Here, students not only receive education, but also receive brainwashing of values.
KIPP classroom full of slogans
Therefore, all behaviors that may affect the goal of "going to college" will be punished. Students who do not do homework or violate discipline will be arranged by the teacher to be "corporal punishment" behind the classroom. The whole class will regard them as transparent people, not talk to them, and not eat with them. Teachers are their only person to speak, and once they speak, they must first ensure that they will not delay their studies anymore. This is even more abnormal than the Maotan Factory.
So soon, KIPP's shocking teaching method began to incite the American public opinion community. A reporter from the Houston Post reported a scene: On the cold winter night, a 12-year-old boy called Levine on a public phone to ask for his homework. He had to hold his homework book high in order to see the words clearly through the street lights. After the media reports, the United States knew for the first time that there was such a school in its country.
Use strict learning systems to help students at the bottom to save themselves, which is the same choice between Maotanchang Middle School and KIPP. Can social public opinion accept this almost cruel way of education?
04. Controversy: A sweatshop that is inhumane?
In 2000, GAP founders Doris and Don Fisher decided to inject capital into KIPP. The injection of new funds and the transformation of management models have ushered in development opportunities and entered a historical period of rapid development. In 2010, KIPP also received a prize of up to $50 million from the Federal Department of Education's "Investing in Innovation".
As of now, KIPP has 242 schools in 20 regions across the United States, helping more than 11,000 students get admitted to college. The proportion of people who finally complete four years of courses and get a degree certificate is 38%. This proportion does not seem high at first glance, but the graduation rate of all college students born in low-income families in the country is only 9%. To change the perspective, poor people who go to KIPP will have a four-fold chance of successfully graduating from college in the future.
Parents of students holding the KIPP sign
However, the rise of KIPP has not changed the reality that American education is becoming increasingly stratified. Including KIPP, the graduation rate of all college students nationwide is only 31%, of which 82% are from high-income families.In other words, in the United States, people who can have bachelor's degree or above are basically children of powerful people, and less than 10% of the children of the lower class can get a bachelor's degree.
The imbalance in public education has always been a difficult problem that previous American presidents have worked hard to overcome. There is far away from Bush's "Don't Let a Child Left Behind" and recently, there is Obama's "Every Child Success". However, the presidents' emphasis on public education has not hindered them from sending their descendants to top-level and authoritative private schools in the United States. In the past 100 years, only one president has done something different.
No president is willing to send his children to public schools except him. Former US President Obama once bluntly stated in an interview that the reason why he sent his two daughters to private schools in Washington with a tuition fee of up to $40,000 a year is that he is not at ease with the quality of teaching in public schools in the Washington area. In that school, former President Clinton's daughter, Nixon's daughter, and Vice President Albert Gore's son were all alumni.
KIPP stabs the education layering like a sharp sword, and is accompanied by social public opinion like Mount Tai. The act of encouraging students to call officials is considered to manipulate children, high saturation of classroom time and homework is considered to exploit children, and stressing that obedience to teachers is considered to be a violation of human rights. These voices have become more and more serious in Maotanchang Middle School in China. The students in
are much more crazy than KIPP. Some students were taken to the hospital due to excessive pressure, and were taken to the hospital; some students were crying loudly while carrying books and carrying them, and they couldn't stop persuading them; some students were so angry that they grabbed their hair and pinched their thighs to the point of being black. More students were in the school infirmary, holding books while injecting fluids.
Despite this, the gate of Maotan Factory was still broken. Because for them, there is no other optimal choice in life. The undergraduate rate of Maotanchang Middle School is above 90% and the first-tier rate of more than 50% are their way out. The college entrance examination is their last shortcut. However, there are endless comments from outside about Maotanchang, among which the most popular calls are "destroying human nature", "distorting education", "stifling creativity" and "suppressing personality".
This reminds people of a story: full-load buses came, and the passengers who had been waiting for a long time rushed to the front, shouting, "Master, wait, there are still people who haven't gotten on!" Once they squeezed in, they would urge the driver to say, "Close the door and drive quickly, there are no seats, don't let people behind you get on. "
05. Ending: Educational equity and top-level design
In March this year, the largest university admissions fraud case in history was exposed in the United States, with a bribe of up to $25 million. The parents involved were either rich or noble, and there were many Hollywood big-name movie stars and CEOs of Wall Street star companies.
bribed the invigilator, forged his sports career and even lied about his racial identity. The various fraudulent methods sent these rich children to famous Ivy League schools such as Stanford and Yale . A survey report released by Harvard later added fuel to the fire: among the 2021 freshmen, 29.3% of students have at least one parent who was a Harvard student, while 46% of freshmen's families have an annual income of more than $500,000.
The hereditary side of the United States' top educational resources is fully revealed. The educational resources of top-level prestigious schools have been quantified by interest groups into clearly marked commodities. If parents themselves are elites who graduated from Ivy League schools, they can also blatantly donate directly to the school.
Dora Seigel, who studies American education, wrote in his June 2018 blog, "How helpful is sponsorship to apply for admission? 》, the mechanism of this donation is introduced in detail.Stanford admissions staff will receive a planned list from the school every year and then actively contact these wealthy people, with a donation threshold of up to $500,000. This means that even if ordinary people are willing to spend money, they cannot find a way. Donations like
are enough to allow a student with a SAT score of around 1,200 to enter Stanford, and the admission score is usually close to 1,550 points (out of 1,600). Zhao Yusi, the daughter of the chairman of Stepan Pharmaceutical, who attracted attention from the Chinese Internet in this case, had an ACT score of 33 points (equivalent to SAT 1,500 points), but she spent more than 6.5 million US dollars to join Stanford and was cheated by the agency.
The imbalance in basic education is getting worse and worse, higher education is monopolized by the rich, and KIPP has become the last torch of American educational equity.
In China across the ocean, the top-level design ensures the sustainability of educational equity to a certain extent. On July 8 this year, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Deepening Education Reform and Comprehensively Improving the Quality of Compulsory Education." The finishing touch is Article 17, commonly known as "Citizens' Recruitment". The core connotation is to prohibit private schools from screening and selecting students, and students can randomly allocate to enter nearby schools.
By picking the top students, the industrialization of education in building a group-based prestigious school has increasingly threatened social educational equity. The school district housing speculation, which emerged with the concept of famous schools and vegetable schools, has torn apart social consensus with the huge gap between the rich and the poor. 's balanced resource matching for basic education is the core idea of this education reform. At a time when educational anxiety affects fertility rates, these measures are undoubtedly of far-reaching significance.
Bai Yansong once said that there is a type of school, such as Maotanchang Middle School, where I can't do anything ridiculous. Because those who can worship the willow trees outside the courtyard wall as sacred trees are not wealthy parents.
In the documentary "Days and Nights at Maotanchang Middle School", there is a scene worth talking about: a group of Maotanchang students who went to college returned to the school they had struggled and hated in the past. They booked a private room in the best hotel in the town and held a belated thank-you banquet , and Cheng Xiaodong was invited to the table.
At the dinner table, students made jokes about teachers, who had been followed by teachers, and which teacher had strong personal characteristics. Their faces had long lost the bad luck when they were resuming their studies at Maotanchang. It was obvious that the hardships they had suffered had been completely filled with their university life. If they were still in the quagmire of hell last year, now they are all happy and have fulfilled their merits.
is not only Maotanchang Middle School, but also Haidian Huangzhuang, Shunyi Mom, and Hengshui parents. They are all inevitable products under the Chinese education branch, and their essence lies in the intergenerational inability to pass on Chinese education. In the face of the college entrance examination, every generation must be reshuffled. Scores are the only weight in the hands of most people, and it is also the greatest opportunity for the vast number of students in China to overcome the various inequality in their origins through education.
After all, our nation has the belief that education has changed its destiny for thousands of years. The hope of "being a farmer in the morning and ascending to the emperor's hall in the evening" is the source of vitality for the entire society. This country's efforts to fight education stratification should never end.
(Source: Boss Fan Tong Dai WeChat official account)
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