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International Education: Everyone has the impression that international education is a money-consuming process. Is it true that only by spending money can we get good international education? Where do parents spend all their money?

Zheng Jinlian:It is certain that you will spend money. Parents who choose international education have changed their tracks, and this track has higher requirements, so the cost will also be higher. First of all, the tuition is high. Secondly, in addition to tuition, there are many practical activities. Most families who choose the international education track still aim to attend prestigious international schools. These universities will value many practical activities and extracurricular activities, including international competitions. In order to participate in the relevant practical activities in the application, you must participate in these international activities, and these activities themselves cost money. If you want to cultivate your children to have outstanding abilities in certain aspects, you will need a lot of investment. For example, students at the Experimental School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University have a lot of international competitions and activities to participate in, which all require a lot of investment.

Chen Zhiwen:Some of our domestic international schools charge significantly higher fees than some foreign schools, including private schools. This is also a normal market behavior, not a forced sale, and parents can choose not to go. So going to an international school is a personal choice. Of course, if you have money, you can go there. There is nothing to say about it. But I would like to remind you that international education is a different track and a different growth path. There is no need to sell everything you have to send your children to an international school. I firmly oppose this practice.

In recent years, some parents have been very interesting. When their children cannot go to the UK or the US, they send them to international schools in countries such as Thailand and the Philippines because the cost is low. This is also a choice and consideration for different people. I have talked to some parents,They have a wrong perception that the final learning results of children depend on the school and the teacher. This is a serious mistake. An excellent child is first cultivated by the parents.The final result is graduation from a prestigious university. Why is the competition for students in Tsinghua University and Peking University so intense after the college entrance examination? Two years ago, Zhejiang University said during the college entrance examination that the top 100 students in Zhejiang Province who applied to Zhejiang University could receive a scholarship of 500,000 yuan. Later, it was criticized by the Ministry of Education and the application was withdrawn. Note, why do prestigious universities compete for students? Because the source of students is decisive, and it is more prominent in middle school. Therefore, one of the purposes of the reform of the middle school entrance examination is to try not to let good students gather in prestigious universities. The reason is also relatively simple, because once you enter a prestigious university, this middle school becomes a super middle school.I remember once at a meeting of famous high school principals, a super famous high school principal said something that made everyone uncomfortable: "We should not over-exaggerate our own value, especially the value of our principals." He said that everyone is desperately working on one thing, grabbing students, because everyone knows that the decisive factor is the students, not us. We just gave him a push in the end.

So what I want to remind you is that excellent students always have the right to choose, so they choose famous schools, and the final result is that famous schools seem to have produced a bunch of famous students. Who makes excellent students? First of all, parents. Although teachers and schools also have important value and contributions in the growth of children, especially teachers sometimes play a turning point in the development of children's lives, but in general, parents have a very large influence. Chinese education does not like to talk about heredity, but heredity does exist objectively. Of course, the more important influence of family education and family style on a person. If we only rely on heredity, the son of a dragon will dig holes, and the son of a phoenix will dig holes, then the world will not progress, and social classes will not flow. Parents' upbringing, family style and education of their children are decisive.

so,If you go into debt and sell everything you have just to get your children into so-called international schools, this is essentially a cognitive reversal. You think that if you send your children to a prestigious school with excellent educational resources, they will become outstanding. This is a fantasy. Learning depends on the child himself. It is not just his talent, but also his behavior, including so-called self-discipline and internal motivation. These factors together determine the final result.If you just send your child to a famous teacher and don't study hard, there will be no good results. If society is like this, it will become a world of the rich, who can choose the best schools and teachers. But even if you send your child to the best school in the world, if he doesn't work hard, there will be no significant change in the end. This is normal.

Zheng Jinlian:I would like to add that education is indeed very dependent on family support. Whether it is international education or domestic education, family investment is very important. International education is expensive, but domestic education, at the junior high school and elementary school stages, is also very expensive for families who want their children to excel. If you want the education process to be less stressful, domestic education may be a more appropriate choice because the domestic education system is more fair. In international education, the family's investment of resources determines how far the child can go.

Chen Zhiwen:Teacher Zheng made an important reminder that the cost of domestic education is not low for some families, including various tutoring classes and training courses. But it should be pointed out that these burdens are actually added by parents themselves. This extra burden comes from the anxiety of social competition. Sociologists once said that the current anxiety is actually the anxiety of the emerging middle class, who are worried about falling from the status of the middle class. Therefore, they compete desperately and also pass on this competitive pressure to the next generation.I would like to remind you that we should have a normal, correct and scientific expectation for our own and our children's learning and development. Frankly speaking, desperate competition alone cannot really solve the problem, especially for something you are not good at.

Chen Zhiwen: In order to reduce the burden, examinations at all levels are being reformed, such as replacing the junior high school entrance examination with the junior high school academic level examination. In places like Beijing, the full score has been raised from 600 to 670. According to data from 2022, in Haidian's 660-point exam, 70% of students scored above 600, and there were almost no people between zero and 400. On the surface, 660 points seems high, but in fact, there may be misleading behind such a high score. Many parents and children may therefore mistakenly believe that their children are very good and are only one step away from entering a famous middle school, and then work hard on the questions. This is where we need to change. Parents should not judge their children's excellence solely by grades, especially in the context of flattering exams, high scores can be misleading.

For example, in the past two years, there was a student named Tang Shangjun who took the college entrance examination 16 times. Everyone noticed that during his early tutoring, his grades gradually improved from junior college to undergraduate and then to first-class college, but later his grades hovered at a certain level. What does this show? Even though the difficulty of our exams remains stable, continuous practice of questions for many years will not significantly improve the level. Working hard does not necessarily improve grades. Therefore, we must have a clear understanding and positioning of ourselves and our children.