中式教育是否缺乏「批判性思维」？ 第1页

最近在quora上看到了一篇来华留学生的回答，其中关于教育的讨论的部分非常有深度，非常适合回答本问题：

I like China a lot, however, I would absolutely not consider settling in China on a permanent basis for the following reasons, all of which are actually quite tightly related:

总的来说，我非常喜欢中国，但是，我绝对不会考虑在中国永久定居，原因如下，所有这些之间紧密相关:

1- The education system.

If I stayed here and had kids, I would not want to subject them to the Chinese education system. While I find it amazing and quite charming that Chinese people can recite so many classical poems from memory, the emphasis on memorisation of huge chunks of texts is enormously time consuming and unnecessary. I have seen the pressure that the Chinese kids are put under, and it is really nothing to do with the population being too big as most seem to believe, (China has a relatively low unemployment rate, so I don’t see how this is pressure is a result of competition which does not exist outside of China) but due to the nature of the examination system itself. I would not want my kids to have their youth wasted on pointless rote memorisation.

1 -教育系统。

如果我留在这里有了孩子，我不想让他们接受中国的教育体系。虽然我觉得中国人民能够背诵如此多的经典诗歌非常令人惊叹和迷人，但强调背诵大量的文本耗费了大量和不必要浪费的时间。我看到中国孩子们承受的压力,但这与大众以为的人口原因没有关系，而是在于考试制度本身。中国的失业率相对较低,所以我看不出这压力是人多竞争的结果，而且这种类型的竞争国外也是没有的。我不想让我的孩子把他们的青春浪费在无谓的死记硬背上。

And besides that, I do not want my kids to be brainwashed or to have the development of their critical faculties hindered by Chinese education. For example, we had a class at my university called 现代中国专题。

除此之外，我不希望我的孩子被洗脑，也不想让他们批判能力的发展受到中国教育的阻碍。例如,在我的大学有一课称为“现代中国专题”。

Some of it was truly ridiculous, e.g.,

有些真的是可笑，比如：

Q:“mao对中国最大的贡献是什么？“ （What was Mao Zedong’s greatest contribution towards China?）

A: 他解决了中国挨打的问题。 （he solved the “China being beaten” problem）

Q: deng对中国最大的贡献是什么？（What was Deng Xiaoping’s greatest contribution towards China?）

A: 他解决了中国挨饿的问题。 （he solved the “China being hungry” problem）

The problem with this isn’t that these viewpoints are “wrong” as such, but that these are actually very broad questions with a lot of subjectivity, and to have a simple answer which is right or wrong is just ludicrous. Another response on this thread pointed out the tendency to some Chinese to speak with authority on things they clearly don’t understand, (e.g. what a “typical American” looks like, Westerners do not value peace, Westerners are individualistic and Chinese are collectivist, the West is capitalist and China is socialist) ultimately stems from this style of education of memorising cherry picked “facts,” which are often opinions, not facts. This is not simply an issue of them teaching different facts to western schools, but of questioning these “facts” not being permitted. In history class in the West, you can challenge the teacher and you are rewarded for reading more widely than the set textbook. As an undergraduate I had a rebellious streak that manifested in a fascination with revolution, so some of my undergraduate essays on Chinese essay even took a fairly pro-Mao perspective and these got good grades because the arguments were backed up with evidence. However, taking a stance so against the mainstream viewpoint in Chinese school just would not be tolerated in the same way.

题目的问题并不在于这些观点是“错误的”，而是这些实际上是非常宽泛的问题，有很多主观性，因此简单的对或错的答案就很可笑了。这种思路另一个表现就是中国人倾向于用居高凌下的方式讨论他们并不真正懂的东西,(如“典型的美国人”是什么样子的,西方人不珍惜和平,西方人是个人主义和中国集体主义,西方是资本主义,中国是社会主义)最终这种依靠记忆的教育阻碍了真知的获取，常常获得的是观点而不是事实真相。（这句话是重点！）

这问题不仅仅是他们跟西方学校教学方法不同，而在于这些“事实”的不容质疑。在西方的历史课上，你可以挑战老师，你会因为知识面比课本更广而得到奖励。（没来中国前）读本科的时候，我有一种叛逆的倾向，表现出了对革命的迷恋，所以我的一些本科中文论文中甚至采用了非常亲毛的观点，这些文章取得了好成绩，因为这些论点得到了证据的支持。然而，在中国学校采取这样的违背主流观点的立场是不可能被容忍的。

Likewise, I don’t get the insistence that China needs to have an authoritarian government because it is too big and has too many people so is difficult to manage, while at the same time insisting it must be united to be strong and nothing is more evil than separatism. These two viewpoints are self-contradictory

同样地，中国需要一个威权政府的原因是它太大，有太多的人，所以很难管理，同时又坚持要团结起来才能强大，没有什么比分裂主义更邪恶的了。这种说法很难说服我，因为这两种观点是自相矛盾的，（因为可以推出一个如下结论）：

- if a small nation can more easily have better, more humane governance, then doesn’t it follow that China would be a better place as several small nations?

如果一个小国能够更容易地拥有更好的、更人性化的治理，那么中国作为几个小国的地位是否会更好呢？

(NB I don’t necessarily agree with this, but the prevalence of logical absurdities that go unchallenged is a symptom of the style of education - the idea that China’s political system is the way it is as a response to China’s large population, rather than being based on the Leninist model as a (failed) way to build a worker’s state is simply false, historically and factually. While you could make the case that this hasn’t been reformed because of the large population, this isn’t the point that is generally being made. And before anyone comes in with a “well but…” here, my point is not whether the arguments are right or wrong, but that they are repeated unquestioningly and are not open to debate.)

(附注：我不一定同意这一观点,但因为逻辑荒谬的盛行导致不可置疑成为教育体系的特征。那种认为中国的政治系统形成是基于中国人口国情而不是列宁式工人阶级国家的观点是错的。虽然你可以证明这是由于人口众多而并没有进行改革，但这并不是普遍的观点。在任何人进入反思之前，我的观点并不是争论是正确的还是错误的，而是他们被毫无疑问地重复着，并且不愿意辩论。)

虽然这位留学生仍旧停留在现象批判层面，没有进一步探讨（原因他原文也说了，作为一个留学生他没有资源也没条件。）。但结合他的某些看法，我可以说自己的想法。

一般认为批判性思维代表了对权威的蔑视以及一种否定的态度，但事实上批判性思维本身的目的在于知识的获取而非抗拒。

老师说是，学生说不是，这种简单的模式不等于批判性思维。

也就是说在学习中批判性思维与被动接受的方式都是在于知识的获取，只是渠道不同。批判性思维不等于反对立场，而是本质上通过某种反复推敲的方式模拟知识被探求出来的过程。

上面的模式在批判性思维下应当是：

老师说是，然后解释为什么，学生根据为什么推出不是的可能性并给予额外的佐证，最终获取一个更大范围内的多角度“事实”而不是某种情境下的“观点”。

但这种方式的困境在于，其所耗费的时间与成本要远大于灌输式教育。

中国这么多老师，没人希望自己教出来的学生是呆呆的木头。在一些中外教育交流中，面对一些开放式问题，中国学生所表现的想象力也不输给西方教育下的同龄人甚至因为知识的全面性而占有优势。

但是教育资源的缺乏，包括师资、时间，以及考核机制所带来的不平等，更重要的是处于赶超期的中国社会对于大规模标准化人才的急切需求使得批判式思维的启发式教育在教学中自然而然被搁置一旁。

这种境况不是一两次教改或者对教师、学生一点敦促就能改变的，归根到底是一个历史进程的问题。