Weekend sharing: What education did Yang Zhenning receive as a child?

Let's introduce Yang Zhenning's family first:

His father, Yang Wuzhi, graduated from Beiping Normal University when he was young, which was later Beijing Normal University. After graduation, he returned to Anhui to teach. 1922, when Yang Zhenning was only 10 months old, Yang Wuzhi was admitted to study in the United States at public expense in Anhui.

If you have heard of the origin of science in China, you should know that it was driven by the scholarship returned by boxer indemnity, and all provinces are also civilized, and every year some funds are allocated to send overseas students.

His father received a bachelor's degree from Stanford and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago. His main direction is number theory.

When his father returned to China, Yang Zhenning was 6 years old. When he first met his father, he was a stranger and everyone was a little scared.

If someone thinks that this family must be a senior intellectual, it is wrong, because Yang Zhenning's father, Yang Wuzhi, was like this, while Yang Zhenning's mother was married at that time, and she was a typical woman with little feet in old China. His mother's family is not rich either. Before she got married, she didn't know a word, not even a name.

Yang Wuzhi went to the United States when Yang Zhenning 10 was 0 months old, so in fact, Yang Zhenning was educated by that illiterate mother only before he was 6 years old.

How was it educated?

My mother has been studying reading with him since she was 4 years old. In more than a year, she learned about 3000 words.

Although his mother has a low education level, she is also forced by conditions. At that time, the money at home could only be used for the education of my brother. In fact, his mother is a forbearing and tenacious woman.

At that time, his uncle also hired a private school to teach several children at home to read, and the textbook used was called "Long Wen Whip Shadow". The function of this book is reading, that is, enlightening children.

However, most of the books used in traditional private schools are San Zi Jing, Hundred Family Names and Qian Zi Wen. At that time, the old gentleman used the dragon whip shadow. In fact, one advantage is that there are four words in the book, and every four words is a historical story. Therefore, if the old gentleman in a private school is careful, he will recognize when he speaks, reads and tells stories.

But the teacher who invited them didn't tell a story at all, just gave birth to his back, like "valuing Chinese filial piety and being loyal to Wu Mu".

So that at the age of 6, my father returned to China and asked Yang Zhenning, "Have you studied?"

Yang Zhenning replied, "Yes."

"What book did you study?"

"Long Wen whip shadow."

"Then can you recite a paragraph for me?"

So Yang Zhenning recited a long paragraph, and then his father continued to ask, "What does this book mean?"

Yang Zhenning was dumbfounded and could only answer that I don't know.

But then dad didn't blame him, but gave him a pen.

This is probably the education that this outstanding physicist received before he was 6 years old, which is not much different from ordinary people at that time.

A leisurely way of education

After that, my father taught at Xiamen University. Has Yang Zhenning's education level improved?

It would really be better.

But what my father told him is roughly how the sun, the earth and the moon interact. Chickens and rabbits are in the same cage. How do animals have several legs? How to analyze them? How to teach some English letters? More is to teach some Tang poems, representatives of historical dynasties, heavenly stems and earthly branches's order, gossip names in gossip, and sometimes go.

By the time Yang Zhenning was over 9 years old, in fact, his father had judged that the child had strong mathematical ability and was very talented in learning.

For example, the great mathematician who was a teaching assistant in Tsinghua at that time often visited the Yang family and once told his father that he was very talented.

Also, when Yang Wuzhi was on a business trip in Berlin, because he was homesick, he dug up the photo of his son and wrote at the back of the photo: "There seems to be something special about Zhenning. I want to use the word' Gu ο'.

What do you mean?

In other words, this child is really talented. I want to give him a word called Yang Boxuan.

But what did his father actually do?

It was in the first summer vacation of Yang Zhenning's freshman year that he invited a student from the history department of Tsinghua University to teach him to read Mencius. Moreover, he invited the student in the second summer vacation to continue telling him the second half of Mencius.

In middle school, Yang Zhenning often rummaged through his father's bookshelf. There are many math books in English and German on it. Sometimes Yang Zhenning can read books such as finite group theory, and he can also read them.

But at that time, his English was not good enough to understand the details, and he asked his father for advice many times. But Yang Wuzhi's answer every time is, "Take your time, don't worry." It is Yang Zhenning who is so persistent that his father will tell him one or two basic concepts.

But the general principle is: don't let him learn these maths.

Yang Zhenning's own memoirs also commented on this matter. He said, "In retrospect, if he had been willing to teach me analytic geometry and calculus in junior high school, I would have learned quickly and made him happy, but he didn't."

This practice is hard to imagine now. A mathematician fully realized his son's talent and didn't even arrange for him to study mathematics in depth, but let him study Mencius without hesitation and let him follow everyone in class.

This kind of education also benefited Yang Zhenning a lot. He didn't worry, attached importance to the education of humanities, and also gave him the opportunity to get all-round development in the future.

Yang Zhenning's Educational Suggestions

At the age of 68, Yang Zhenning wrote a letter to a Malaysian Chinese scholar. Before that, the scholar wrote that his son Luo was very clever and a young genius. /kloc-graduated from high school at the age of 0/2 and wanted to send him to the National University of Singapore immediately. He asked Yang Zhenning for advice.

Yang Zhenning's reply is like this, saying:

Zhang Xiong is young and has no reason to worry. Please read the autobiography of mathematician Bohnert Weiner, once a child prodigy. Even though he was a clever boy, his father kept putting pressure on him, so that at the age of 60, he became a famous mathematician with superhuman wisdom. His thoughts are still in an unstable state, and his autobiography profoundly shows his strong resentment towards his father.

Weiner also talked about several smart children of the same age at Harvard University in his autobiography. Almost everyone's life is unhappy, and some people even committed suicide.

So my advice to you is: Let Zhang Xiong grow up like a normal child, spend one or two hours a week under the guidance of university professors, and don't rush to put pressure on math and science.

He still has a long life journey to go, so it is particularly important to maintain a comprehensive and balanced development of psychology and learning.

I don't see the benefits of Zhang Xiong's eagerness to achieve success, but I can see that it is a serious danger to encourage others to do so.

On the other hand, if you are interested in the third grade exam, you can search for such topics as "adults can't handle the third grade interview questions" or "a group of adults are shivering after reading them" and "the mystery beats adults"

Xiaoshengchu's requirements include mastering the oral arithmetic of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with more than two digits, understanding the painters of the Renaissance and the styles of their works, as well as the requirements of many pieces of knowledge about Chinese studies that have changed their taste, and speaking a topic in English.

To really meet these requirements, I think if you are an adult, you can't achieve it without a few years of penance. Then it is unrealistic for a child of 1 1. But the actual exam is also like that, so no one will actually meet the requirements.

If you don't join them, the educational resources you can get will only be worse. No family can arrange a master's degree in history to tell a child of 1 1 about Mencius, as Yang Wuzhi did to Yang Zhenning.

Then I thought, the solution may lie in the parents themselves, and grasp the time before they enter puberty. Because children have great trust in their parents, they will certainly tend to imitate their parents' behavior in all aspects.

When parents are chasing all kinds of bubbles every day and are anxious about all kinds of unrealistic needs, children will also be in a roughly similar psychological state.

Of course, this is easier said than done. There will be various problems in actual operation, which need our joint exploration.