【正确答案】Kid's Lack of Science Cultivation Worries Everyone
Increasingly excessive emphasis on imparting knowledge to the neglect of fostering science sense has caused concerns and worries among science and engineering academicians in China.
Academician Liu Shenggang, former president of the Electronic Science University, related his granddaughter's experience and laments: "Gone is the childhood for kids in China!" One day, the scientist went shopping with her granddaughter and told her that she might buy whatever she wanted. The reply made him sad, "Grandpa and grandma, what I want now is nothing but sleep."
The granddaughter told her grandpa that some boarders read books in the restroom at night and some others read books hidden away in the quilts under the dim light provided by a flashlight.
Mr. Liu urged his son to complain to the school authorities and the reply made him even sadder. One teacher said, "If I gave her a childhood, that would mean it would deprive her of an adulthood—What will happen to her if she fails the college entrance examination?"
"A child deprived of childhood could develop poorly both physically and psychologically. Where could he find his source of innovation?" Liu concluded.
Academician Ge Mulin, a well-known physicist and professor of Nankai University, recalled that he had acquired his rudimental physics knowledge from a picture book introducing the great scientist Edison. And he, as a child, always played American football and went swimming together with his teachers and fellow students. He enjoyed these extracurricular activities so much that he always forgot to return home. "I believe," he said, "fostering a refined quality is nothing new in China. Quality education itself is a student's willing act. The key to its success is to play up to the kid's instinct."
However, schools now offer many for-profit courses for kids as part of after-class training. Parents on the other hand urge their kids to learn the piano, drawings, Peking Opera or classical Chinese after class.
Some of their contemporaries in the West, on the contrary, can already design a small model boat at the age of 3. An academician criticized, "They train talents by the batch under their educational system while our talents imbued with creativity are a few survivors of our educational system."
Academician Wei Yu suggested that the pressing task at present is to restore the science course to the first-year primary school students. It can at least guarantee that the students receive science education continuously between ages 5-12.
The science course for primary schools was formerly called common knowledge, and then changed to nature, both starting from the first year in primary school. When the course structure reform changed the name of the course into science, it was offered as late as the third year of primary school. Academicians call for reexamination of this reform.
Referring to the revising of the state standards for science education for primary schools now in process, Wei Yu admitted frankly that she was very serious about it. "It concerns the science cultivation of our hundreds of millions of kids. It's no joke."