Who else in Jiangsu education circle doesn't know Mr. Zhou Defan?

On a larger scale, in the whole field of education, Mr. Zhou Defan is also well-known

More than twenty years ago, Zhou Defan, then deputy director of Jiangsu Education Commission, took the lead in advocating quality education in Jiangsu. As a result, the concept of quality education has become the will of the country and has been fully rolled out throughout the country. It can be said that Jiangsu's basic education can walk in the forefront of the country, condensing his wisdom and shining his thoughts. In particular, the work of promoting quality education has made Zhou Defan influential all over the country. Moreover, his influence still plays an important role until now.

Zhou Defan has many titles, such as former researcher of National Education Development Center, national inspector, former deputy director of Jiangsu Provincial Education Commission, former deputy director of Education, Culture and Health of Provincial Political Consultative Conference, and dean of Jiangsu Institute of Education. He is currently the president of Jiangsu Education Association and the president of Tao Xingzhi Research Association. Expert in early education of social service assistance system for scientific parenting, leader of the research group of "Scientific education-developing children's potential" of the tenth five-year plan project of the country.

But Zhou Defan's first identity is a teacher. Graduated from 1963, Physics Department of Jiangsu Education College. 1963- 1983 worked as a physics teacher, director of the guidance office and vice principal in Nanjing No.29 Middle School. Until I went to Nanjing Education Bureau as the deputy director, I was still standing on the podium teaching.

Now, after retiring from the leadership position, this senior who has been obsessed with the role of a teacher once again stood in front of various platforms, trying to tear open the corner of education and persistently shouted for Chinese teaching for more than ten years.

In 2000, when I was teaching in Zhangjiagang Senior High School, Mr. Zhou Defan gave lectures in this school. Therefore, for the first time, I was able to listen to the teacher's teachings. Since then, I have specially studied many articles of Mr. Zhou Defan and paid great attention to the theory of quality education advocated by him.

In 2008, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Zhou Defan, and I have had in-depth contact with Mr. Zhou since then.

From the first day we met, I called him Miss Zhou. It was also from that day on that I positioned myself as his student. I regard every contact with him as an opportunity for me to learn from him.

Our contact is profound, because almost every time, we spend time talking about education.

The meeting place is usually in a teahouse near Mr. Lu Zhou in Guangzhou. Every time, we will talk for two or three hours. Although it is tea, there are not many guests. So we can find a very secluded place in downtown Nanjing. The waiters and waitresses were silent when they came to give us tea and fruit. Once, while we were talking, it began to rain outside. Indoor, we can still hear the rain in Nanjing.

Every time, I bring a small computer. As soon as the chatterbox was opened, I immediately turned on the recording equipment in the computer and recorded every word of Teacher Zhou about education.

Who else can have such an opportunity to be kissed by educators? I think this is the great fortune of my educational career.

In this kind of contact, I think Mr. Zhou is first of all a serious and especially punctual person. Almost every time, he is the first to arrive, and then, quietly sitting on the sofa waiting for us. So, there will be another appointment later. Anyway, I must get there first.

Speaking of teacher Zhou's conscientious punctuality, it reminds me of an incident after the New Year's Day holiday in 2009. At the end of 2008, I was entrusted by the education department in my hometown of xinghua city to invite Mr. Zhou to give a lecture in our hometown on the afternoon of June 5438+1October 4, 2009. I tried to talk to Mr. Zhou about it. Unexpectedly, Mr. Zhou agreed to my request.

After New Year's Day, I called Miss Zhou on the evening of the 3rd and made an appointment to go to Xinghua early tomorrow morning.

At this time, my heart is very uneasy. Because Mr. Zhou is a busy man, there are many places where he is invited to give lectures and there are many things to visit and inspect. Plus, there were a lot of things at home at that time. I am very worried that he can't go to Xinghua the next day. If so, I really can't explain it to my elders in my hometown.

I called, but no one answered. I put the phone down and felt very uneasy. Fortunately, Mr. Zhou called back soon and said, Guangping, at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, we will set off at the gate of Nanjing Normal University. Rain or shine!

The stone in my heart fell to the ground

The next day, the first person to arrive at the gate of Nanjing Normal University was Teacher Zhou. Teacher Zhou is right. It rained that day. It was exactly seven o'clock when I arrived. Teacher Zhou called me and said he was waiting for me at the gate of Normal University. In the winter rain, I saw Miss Zhou standing outside the car, calling and looking for me everywhere. ...

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In that small teahouse, we talked about many topics, such as the new curriculum reform, whether to cancel the college entrance examination, the work regulations of primary and secondary school class teachers, and the professional ethics of primary and secondary school teachers. Most of them were close to the policies of the Ministry of Education and sensitive hot issues at that time.

These topics were particularly helpful to me at that time. Because I am the executive editor of an education weekly. Whenever the conversation ends, we will publish a special edition or topic. In this way, the media and readers will certainly benefit.

However, what we talk about most is actually Chinese teaching, which is a "scientific reading" topic about literacy and reading teaching.

When talking about Chinese, Mr. Zhou emphasized that he was just an "outsider". He viewed contemporary Chinese teaching from the perspective of "outsider" and made a value judgment on Chinese teaching.

He said that the reason why he emphasized being an "outsider" was to try to gain a kind of sobriety of "outsider".

Teacher Zhou is a physics teacher, but because of this, accuracy and logical rigor have formed his consistent thinking quality.

In fact, for Chinese teaching, Mr. Zhou is not only "watching" or "observing" as an "outsider", but more importantly, he has been doing it. For more than ten years, in his own words, he actually only did one thing, that is, a fund project of the Ministry of Education called "Scientific Reading".

Why do you do this topic? Teacher Zhou told me that 1997, US President Bill Clinton proposed to launch a "reading challenge movement", requiring American children to read independently before the end of the third grade of primary school. This made Mr. Zhou lost in thought. American children can read independently at the age of eight. Why can't our children in China achieve this goal?

Moreover, for so many years, why has our Chinese education been hovering at the low point of "less, slow, poor and expensive"?

How to make a real breakthrough in Chinese education?

To this end, Mr. Zhou projected his eyes to the period of the May 4th New Culture Movement. Looking back on the development of Chinese for a hundred years, Mr. Zhou's conclusion is shocking: First, for a hundred years, China people have shown emotional bias towards their mother tongue, thinking that Chinese characters are difficult to learn and recognize, and some even want to eliminate them; Secondly, people have some biased views on the understanding and teaching of Chinese characters. On the second point, Mr. Zhou said that Chinese characters are graphic characters, and children need graphic recognition ability to read Chinese characters, which began to form when they were 6 months old. Because according to the law of physiological development, generally speaking, children can make simple pronunciation around 1 year old. Normal children around 3 years old have been able to associate symbols with things and master and understand written symbols. It's just that writing lags far behind reading and listening. For example, children who often patronize or pass by McDonald's restaurants will generally recognize the word "McDonald's" written together very early, but they can't confirm the pronunciation of these three words in time and accurately. Teacher Zhou also found that from the perspective of Taizhou mahjong culture, a child can accurately recognize the words "East, South, West, North and Middle". So Mr. Zhou once put forward a point in a speech: "Small mahjong tiles contain big articles." Triggered a lot of people's * * *. However, Teacher Zhou pointed out that many people don't recognize this and ignore children's physical and mental development. In fact, they have all the conditions for Chinese character recognition. They all unilaterally emphasize that children can't enter the state of Chinese character recognition too early, and even explicitly stipulate that Chinese character recognition teaching is not allowed in kindergartens.

In other words, Mr. Zhou believes that to make a breakthrough in Chinese, one is to find a way from the language itself, and the other is to find a breakthrough path from the learners' learning situation.

Teacher Zhou concentrated on introducing three famous schools of literacy teaching in China, namely, Zhang Tianruo's centralized literacy teaching, his decentralized literacy teaching and the "memorizing literacy method" (that is, the teaching method of "reading first and then writing, using phonetic notation"). Then, he learned from many teachers and put forward the experimental method of scientific literacy.

Scientific reading experiment, in short, is to attach importance to the situational role of children's reading, and effectively promote children's scientific reading and memory through the situation, so as to effectively accumulate and realize the leap.

Now, after ten years of exploration, research and practice, Mr. Zhou told me that he can proudly say that our children in China can read independently at the age of eight.

Not only that, but he was also delighted to see that in the experimental school of scientific cognition, children realized independent reading at the age of eight, which triggered positive changes in subsequent Chinese teaching.

Such an educator who has been focusing on scientific reading experiments for ten years has cured his mother tongue with the sound of reading, but he often claims to be an "outsider" in China education.

Ten years of scientific reading experiments have basically confirmed the correctness of teacher Zhou Defan's original hypothesis: through three years of kindergarten counseling, most children have been able to read thousands of Chinese characters, and some children can read about 2,000. What is more gratifying is that these children are generally interested in reading. We are also glad to see that many children have the impulse to study and have formed a benign interaction between family and kindergarten. Not only that, scientific literacy also makes children's oral expression ability better than other children who have not been trained in experiments.

Then, Mr. Zhou believes that we should further improve the connection between kindergarten education and primary education, readjust the starting point of literacy teaching in the first grade of primary school, make a new and more scientific orientation for literacy teaching and reading teaching in the first and second grades of primary school, and continue to carry out literacy teaching in an orderly manner under the guidance of scientific literacy theory. Then by the end of the second grade of primary school, it is easy to eliminate reading obstacles and realize independent reading.

The most typical examples in this respect are the successful experiments of Wuxi Dangkou Kindergarten and Wuxi Dangkou Central Primary School. The results of the graduates of Class 4, Grade 2008 in Dangkou Primary School in Wuxi are: reading more than 3.5 million words, accumulating profound and rich languages, reciting a large number of classical poems, and reaching a level that children of the same age can't reach in oral expression and written expression. Children's Chinese literacy and Chinese skills are truly formed and successfully radiated to the study and creation of other disciplines.

When students enter the third grade or even higher grade with about 2500 literacy and scientific literacy formed in this process, it is bound to put forward new requirements for Chinese teaching. If eight-year-old children's independent reading is regarded as the first stage of Chinese teaching, then the reading teaching of middle and senior grades in primary schools will inevitably enter a new stage. Teacher Zhou called it the second stage. Chinese teaching must be reformed on this basis. From the third grade to the sixth grade, it will enter the stage of extensive reading, free reading, special reading and classic reading. This is also called "deep reading". If so, children will certainly form rich language accumulation and a higher level of scientific literacy when they graduate from primary school, thus laying a solid mother tongue foundation for junior high school Chinese learning and forming a new starting point for middle school scientific literacy and Chinese learning.

Of course, the following problem is that after scientific literacy is fully implemented in primary schools and achieved positive results, it puts forward a new problem for junior high school Chinese teaching, that is, the repositioning of junior high school Chinese teaching. Where is the real starting point of Chinese teaching in junior high school? Is it necessary to seek a new logical starting point for Chinese teaching in middle school? From the perspective of scientific reading theory and practice, it has become a problem that Chinese educators must think deeply about.

Teacher Zhou Defan also put forward his own idea: after entering junior high school, junior high school students' research reading can be realized completely, thus connecting with senior high school Chinese teaching perfectly. This is the third stage of Chinese teaching. In other words, junior high school Chinese teaching can be directly integrated with our current senior high school Chinese teaching, even surpassing senior high school Chinese teaching.

Of course, this will inevitably bring about thinking and requirements on the reform of curriculum system and modern academic system, and also put forward new requirements for Chinese teachers' literacy and entry conditions. How to deal with it seems to be a topic outside of scientific reading. However, since the problems have followed, we should probably reposition and think about the current Chinese teaching, modern curriculum system and basic education structure.

Therefore, the significance of scientific literacy is not only to let children know more Chinese characters, but the value of scientific literacy lies in that with the popularization and promotion of scientific literacy, it will inevitably bring positive changes to Chinese teaching. After this positive change, Chinese teaching is bound to have an unprecedented new pattern. This pattern will be a new situation full of cultural self-confidence and cultural pleasure. In this situation, people's understanding of Chinese and their feelings for their mother tongue will certainly take on a new look. In this case, the emotional mode and educational mode of mother tongue in the past will inevitably change fundamentally.

Scientific reading will correct people's China cultural complex from a cultural perspective and change people's bad mother tongue mentality. Therefore, under the new situation, scientific reading is bound to make us re-examine our own language and the frame of reference of our past judgment and cognition of Chinese. More optimistically, people will form a new value system in Chinese cognition, the beauty of Chinese will be more fully displayed to the world, and China culture will truly go to the world.

If the goal of scientific literacy experiment is truly realized and the three stages of scientific literacy are fully implemented in the field of basic education, it will bring more than just the revolution of Chinese character literacy itself. The scientific understanding of reading will tear a corner of China's education, and it will become a breakthrough of China's education reform, which will lead to the reform and innovation of China's teaching and even the whole school's curriculum system, teaching philosophy and educational behavior, modern academic system, basic education structure and other major aspects, and have a far-reaching impact on the improvement of our national quality and the inheritance of Chinese culture.

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This is an outsider's career in China.

What a fascinating career in China!

I am deeply immersed in the theme of scientific cognition. I have conducted dozens of interviews with two schools that Teacher Zhou often talks about-Dangkou Primary School and Gaogang Experimental Primary School in Wuxi, and accumulated a lot of information. Finally, as a result of this interview, I published two books: Opening a Corner of Education-The Mystery of 8-year-old Children Learning to Read and Listening to Their Mothers-The Path for Primary School Students to Go Deep Reading. These two books, both published by Nanjing University Press, give a panoramic description of a China topic in the form of reportage.

The reason why I wrote these two books is because I was moved by Mr. Zhou's spirit of running for education and impressed by Mr. Zhou's historical reflection on the century-old language.

It was only after writing these two books that I fully understood why I didn't work hard on classroom modeling in the experiment of scientific literacy: what scientific literacy requires is to form a completely open Chinese teaching pattern and take all the information and situations around us as our language environment. If such an open pattern is limited by a so-called "classroom model", it is completely contrary to the original intention of the scientific reading experiment.

What a wonderful career in China!

However, such a wonderful career in China was accomplished by an outsider and a physics teacher.

What is even more touching is that now, it is time for Mr. Zhou to support himself!

This reminds me of a common saying: When he was the deputy director of Jiangsu Education Commission, as a departmental official, Zhou Defan traveled all over 99 counties and districts in Jiangsu, and only checked more than 20,000 primary school students' composition books. This is a record that no one has broken so far.

The current situation is that from 2000 to now, Mr. Zhou has been running around villages and cities in Jiangsu for scientific identification since he retired from the leadership position of provincial offices. In kindergarten, he squatted down to talk to children; In elementary school, he bent down to talk to the children. For the Chinese teacher, he has heart-to-heart talk and face-to-face communication; He has high hopes for the school leaders. He has only one wish, that is, to use scientific research results to improve the language level of China in a larger scope and region, tear open a corner of education and realize a real leap in education.

This kind of unremitting efforts to realize one's own educational ideas and ideals, running between urban and rural areas, easily reminds people of a person-Mr. Tao Xingzhi.

"They are really alike." The reporter of Modern Express lamented.

In Nanjing, I am proud that I can participate in the work of Teacher Zhou, and I am proud that I can have such a teacher in my middle age. ...