This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
(Image from the web)
At school, every now and then a very naughty brat turns up. When you meet the parents, you find that basically the parents are just like the child; if the child was raised by the grandparents, the grandparents are often just like that too. At such times one often thinks of a phrase: never taught and transformed by the sages. This is a family that has never been taught and transformed by the sages. And the reverse holds as well.
One weekend I went to a friend’s home for dinner. My friend and his wife were busy in the kitchen, and I sat on the sofa watching TV.
My friend’s six-year-old daughter ran over and asked me: “Uncle, would you like an ice pop?”
I said: “No thanks, Uncle won’t have one.”
The girl said: “I want an ice pop, but I can’t eat a whole one. Could you help me eat a piece of it?”
I said: “All right.”
So she ran to the fridge, took out the ice pop, opened it, twisted off a piece and handed it to me. But I didn’t catch it, and it fell on the floor.
The girl immediately picked it up, handed me the clean piece in her hand, rinsed the piece that had fallen on the floor under the tap for herself, and then ate it with relish! When she had finished the ice pop, the girl went to the study to read storybooks, instead of fighting with me over the TV. What a well-brought-up child!
During the meal I asked my friend: “Your daughter is so sensible — you must have put a lot of effort into raising her?”
My friend said: “Raising her? We didn’t make any deliberate effort; we just let nature take its course.”
At first I didn’t believe it; later I believed it completely.
My friend is a cultured, refined man who loves reading, and there are books everywhere in the house. In the dining room, bedroom, study, toilet and balcony, books on history, philosophy, social sciences and psychology can be seen everywhere.
His wife is a university teacher, cheerful and quick to laugh, and an excellent cook; she prefers books on emotions and the arts.
Their family rarely watches TV: at weekends their daughter is allowed an hour of cartoons, or the TV is put on for guests when they have visitors. After dinner they go out for a half-hour walk, and when they come home they gather together to read.
The night is soft, the lamplight warm and lovely, and each swims in his or her own world of the humanities. When the girl doesn’t understand a passage she asks the grown-ups, and they put down their books and explain patiently with a smile; the family of three lives in happy harmony.
Born into such a rich cultural atmosphere, it is only natural that the girl loves reading — as natural as eating, breathing and sleeping.
They take their daughter’s wishes very seriously, without any perfunctoriness; she can decide most ordinary matters herself. And my friend and his wife are both very gentle and cultivated people who act with courtesy and restraint and consider others’ feelings, teaching by word and example — of course there’s no need for deliberate effort!
Recently, while working on junior secondary school admissions, I came into contact with some homeroom teachers. They said that a student had once committed suicide by jumping from a building at school.
Because that student liked to fidget in class, the teacher criticized her a little, and so the girl jumped to her death. Before jumping she said: “Goodbye, teacher.”
She waved, turned and jumped, too fast for anyone to stop her! On looking into the cause, it turned out that at home the girl’s father often drank and was violent, and her mother often had affairs, threatened suicide by hanging and made scenes about divorce; the girl often had nothing to eat and would run to her grandmother’s house to get a meal.
So the girl had a strong aversion to living. The teacher’s criticism was only the trigger; the girl had already been thinking of taking her own life.
Today teachers simply don’t want to deal with naughty brats. There was once a brat who liked to bully classmates, play pranks and make a loud noise in class. The teacher matched wits with him, and when there was really nothing else to be done, moved his seat to a corner where he would not disturb the other students.
The next day the brat’s mother came to the school and made a big scene, saying the school was discriminating against her child and that she would take it to the education bureau and expose it in the media. Today’s parents of naughty brats are yesterday’s naughty brats grown up; the bad conduct of naughty brats is all learned from their parents!!!
Today many parents, having failed to educate their own children well, pin their hopes on the teachers, but the teachers too are powerless to turn things around. A child is a miniature of a family; a problem student certainly comes from a family of origin full of problems.
Companionship and participation do not mean standing beside your child playing on your phone while the child does homework alone; not playing mahjong while the child reads alone in the study; not binge-watching soap operas while the child plays with building blocks alone.
True education is learning together and progressing together; it is one tree shaking another tree, one cloud pushing another cloud, one soul awakening another soul.
If you want your child to become “the kind of child everyone else wishes they had”, first become “the kind of parent everyone else wishes they had” yourself, all right?
