Children in the mountains

I once accompanied my friend Ying Tong, a very excellent parent-child education expert, to a mountain village school called Wanfu in Zhejiang Province many times to provide supportive educational resources to this mountain village school.

Recently, when I went to this mountain village school again, I brought a mythology class to the children. I opened the children's hearts by telling the dream of human collective consciousness - mythology. .

The children who were born and raised in the mountains also taught me a lesson.

When I ask this group of children who grew up deep in the mountains, who is willing to step out from the crowd, stand in the center of the crowd, and tell me, and also tell all the children, what is in your heart? What is the most memorable myth?

A little girl walked out of the group and said shyly but firmly:

The most unforgettable myth in my heart: Nuwa mending the sky

A long time ago, there were holes in the sky. Human beings lived a life of floods, tornadoes, and flying sand and rocks under the broken sky. Nuwa used colorful stones to plug the big hole in the sky. However, when all the colorful stones were used up, there was still the last small hole left in the sky, so Nuwa used her body to plug the last hole.

Children in the Mountains, using such a magnificent myth as its opening line, deeply shocked me.

I remember then asking the little girl: What part of you does this myth touch? What does it remind you of?

The little girl fell silent and looked at me speechlessly. The question was too deep for her.

So I asked another question: If this is your favorite myth, who would you most like to tell it to?

The little girl replied: I most want to tell this myth to my mother.

This is a mountain village school where 80% of the children are left behind. Most of the children live in the school for many years or live with their elderly grandparents.

This mountain village school has good hardware facilities and is not short of money, let alone material things. Most of the teachers are young people born in the 1990s, and they change almost every six months. I don’t know how often the school principals change, but I went there for two consecutive years and met the two principals.

That day, on the mountain road back to the city from Wanfu, there were colorful fallen flowers. I had a lot of reflections on the way. If we look at the mainstream school education and mainstream family education standards for children in these mountainous areas, they are full of loopholes and their competitiveness is extremely low.

However, facing the Nantian Mountains shrouded in clouds and mist all year round in Wanfu County, and facing the children in this mountain, I saw the resources they have from another level.

Through communication with Yingtong and the teachers, I learned that this is a school where there is no pressure to enter higher education, and the children have a lighter academic load. There are more than 30 students in the whole school in the kindergarten department, more than 50 in the primary school, and more than 50 in the junior high school. The total number of students in the school is more than 130.

No wonder these children are so interested in the tribal myths and stories.

Anthropological research points out that the first naturally formed group of human beings - the largest primitive tribe has about 150 people, and each small tribe is based on 50 people as a basic unit. In other words, as long as the number exceeds 150, most people will not be able to have a truly in-depth understanding and connection with other members in daily life situations.

This group of mountainous children has just the right group size, no more than 150 people. Most of them are residential students, which means that they have eaten together, slept together, lived together, and grown up together since they were young. And the children are all from the same village. Although many of the children's parents have gone out to work, these children from Chinese villages and villages have the same belonging to this land and water, both physically and psychologically. sense of identity and identity.

In other words, if the school group is run properly, this group of children can have a very deep understanding and support of each other.

Such a group of children will naturally be deeply attracted by the myths in the tribe, because the stories that happened in those tribes are no longer distant myths to them, but are their lives. Whether it occurs at the physical level or at the spiritual level, it can deeply resonate with them.

When I was telling the tribal story, a big boy moved towards the center of the group. He wanted to get closer and listen to the story more carefully.

When I finished telling this ancient tribal story, I asked the children if they had any thoughts.

The big boy stood up quickly and said sincerely, I want to hear more stories like this, about myths, about ancient tribes, about warriors and mothers in the tribe. The story...

What particularly impressed me about these children in the mountains was their connection with the land and the mountains and forests. There is a little girl who is a squad leader. She is strong and strong. When she stands up to speak, she inspires the whole audience. When she smiles, she shows very white teeth...

Behind them is the ancient pine forest. and the mist-shrouded Nantian Mountains. Looking at this group of children, a song "Children of the Earth" kept popping up in my mind. This song was written by Taiwanese aboriginal musician Hu Defu for the children of the Gaoshan ethnic group.

As for the group of children in front of them, this group of children grew up in the Wanfu Mountains, a small Tibet in Qingtian. The mountains on their backs are not poor, they are the granary of Qingtian. The grandparents of these children grew alpine vegetables and alpine sweet potatoes, and perhaps their yards were covered with alpine bayberries—a fruit that is famous at home and abroad. On the way to Wanfu School, I saw alpine rice along the way. What was even more amazing was that there were actually red fish swimming in the rice fields - Qingtian field fish, a model of coexistence of rice and fish farming.

The most precious resources for this group of children from the mountains are the land under their feet and the mountains behind them, rather than blindly identifying with the values ??of mainstream education and competing with children in the city for enrollment rates. Such competition It’s neither wise nor fair.

Because, by contacting and perceiving the facts of one's own life and the facts of the surrounding environment, a person has the opportunity to fully absorb his own resources and become a mature and powerful person, rather than comparing himself to others. , to imitate an advantageous standard and mainstream value that does not belong to one's own life.

Real education is to open up this group of original ecological children's sensitivity and creativity to the land under their feet, and to develop their love and respect for their homeland.

Really listen carefully and hear the song that is unique to you, the song that belongs to your own homeland.

I have experience living in Tibetan areas. Every prefecture and county in Tibetan areas has its own song. Countless Tibetan singers and troubadours are singing about that piece of grassland and that piece of land. People develop a deep sense of connection and belonging to their hometowns.

Sociologist Dr. Brene Brown has spent six years studying the personality characteristics of people with a high sense of self-worth, and has found without exception that such a group of people will not be defeated by any adversity, nor will they be defeated by any adversity. People who exist for any reason have a deep sense of belonging and can live wholeheartedly and intensely, because existence itself has value.