Rhymes of History｜The Myth of Hengshui Middle School Collapses, Revealing a Simple Truth

I just saw that Hengshui Middle School was trending on the hot search. The reason is that the number of students from Hengshui Middle School admitted to Tsinghua and Peking University has dropped significantly.

Hengshui Middle School used to be where parents would spend a lot of money to send their children. They felt that as long as they entered Hengshui Middle School, at least a 211 university was highly likely, and they could even aim for Tsinghua University and Peking University.

And the management of Hengshui Middle School is also notoriously strict.

It adopts a very high-pressure, highly institutionalized management model that emphasizes efficiency and results.

Students get up at 5:30 in the morning every day, do morning exercises and morning reading, and it continues until the evening. Every minute is strictly controlled.

Students’ behavior is almost “quantified management”: grades, discipline, hygiene, and conduct are all scored.

Every behavior of the students is monitored. They are even not allowed to look at their watches, daydream, cross their legs, or wipe their glasses.

Hengshui Middle School also emphasizes collectivism, with synchronized running exercises and military-style management, which erodes students’ individuality and trains them into test-taking machines.

This will have a great impact on the students’ spirit and psychology. Spending the entire adolescence like this is just for the college entrance examination. Is it really worth it?

In the past, when this question was raised, many people thought that as long as the college entrance examination went well, everything was worth it.

After all, the enrollment rate of Hengshui Middle School is there, and there are also many students admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University. They can even account for 80% of the number of students admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University in Hebei.

In an environment oriented towards enrollment rates, the Hengshui model has been replicated across the country. Replicating it in other places also seems to have achieved success. If the enrollment rate goes up, it means success.

We Sichuan people like to send our children to Mianyang.

The industrialization of education has made so many schools make a lot of money.

However, in recent years, the number of students from Hengshui Middle School admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University has plummeted, from a peak of 275 to 45 this year, while Hebei as a whole admitted a total of 281 students this year.

What is the reason?

Has the teaching quality of Hengshui Middle School declined? No.

It’s mainly because they are not allowed to recruit students from outside the area.

The overall number of admissions is also roughly the same, it’s just distributed to other places in Hebei.

This reveals a simple truth: people can only be selected, not cultivated.

For schools, selection is more important than effort.

The college entrance examination is used to select people. Hengshui Middle School chose the smartest brains in the province in advance. They can achieve results without too much effort.

In the past, Hengshui Middle School, through the method of picking the best, recruited the smartest children from the province and even the whole country to Hengshui Middle School.

Gold will shine wherever it is. With these good seedlings, it is easy to get into Tsinghua University and Peking University.

Getting into Tsinghua University and Peking University, and then continuing the positive feedback, makes Hengshui Middle School more famous, and can attract more top students.

But now that they are not allowed to recruit students from outside the area, these good seedlings are scattered in various places, and they can grow in the same way.

Moreover, Tsinghua University and Peking University have so many places every year. Whether they are concentrated together or not, there are still so many people.

So, the high-intensity studying like Hengshui Middle School is meaningless.

Not allowing the recruitment of students from outside the area, using the Hengshui model, and vigorously cultivating mediocre local children, the effect will not be obvious. No matter how hard you try, you can’t create miracles.

The college entrance examination was originally used to select talents, and the Hengshui model just advanced the screening function of the college entrance examination.

Although they are not allowed to recruit students from outside the area, some parents can’t see the cause and effect, and they have to buy houses specifically to study at Hengshui Middle School, and there is a long-tail effect, so Hengshui Middle School can still have 45 students admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University.

It’s just that looking at this trend, it’s getting worse year by year.

But this is also good. After more than 20 years of experimental class experiments, it was found that this kind of intense studying is meaningless, and it is better to let the students live a more relaxed life.

I was in a township middle school in junior high school. At the end of the second year of junior high school, the middle schools in the city came to the townships to pick the best, and the top few in our class were picked away.

Because my grades in junior high school were poor, I continued to study in the town, watching others being admitted to key high schools in advance, and I was so envious.

There was no way. My grades were not good, and I only went to a slightly worse high school in the city.

But later, I found that those classmates who went to key high schools, their grades in high school became worse and worse, and their college entrance examination results were not as good as mine.

Because I found that in a group of people with poor grades, as long as I worked a little harder, I could stand out, and I became more and more motivated to study.

And those classmates who went to key high schools, they said: no matter how hard they try in a school with so many masters, they are at the bottom, and they are less and less interested in studying.

So I have always felt that the model of picking the best like Hengshui Middle School is not good.

You think it’s the strength of the school, but it’s actually a survivor bias.

Now that they are not allowed to recruit students from outside the area, breaking the privileges of Hengshui Middle School and allowing education to return to its original state is a good thing for students from outside the area, at least they don’t have to suffer there for a few years.

What do you think about this matter? Welcome to leave a message to discuss.

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