Why the art examination has changed
Reporter investigates "chicken baby" art test phenomenon
Investigating motivation
In recent years, with economic and social development and quality education gaining popularity, more and more parents have enrolled their children in art interest training classes.
Especially in the context of the "double reduction" policy, the burden of students' homework and off-campus training has been further reduced, and there will be more time to cultivate hobbies and participate in art interest training.
Accompanied by them are a variety of grade examinations, some of which have even become shackles that restrict children's creativity and curiosity.
Earlier, at this year's "two sessions" across the country, more than 30 NPC deputies also collectively suggested: cancel the art examination for young people under the age of 12.
What are the problems in art examinations?
Why do many parents flock to it?
With these questions in mind, reporters from the Rule of Law Daily conducted a front-line investigation and interview.
□ Our reporter Zhao Li
□ Intern Yang Yinan
Recently, Ren Xue (pseudonym), a citizen of Beijing, is very anxious-she enrolled her daughter in elementary school for 3 interest classes, dance, painting, and piano. The annual tuition fee is about 15,000 yuan. She originally planned to aim for quality education. , Is not preparing for the grade examination; but after communicating with other parents, she found that everyone pays special attention to the grade examination, and thinks that "not taking the grade is nothing but learning."
How to do?
After thinking about it again and again, Ren Xue hired a one-on-one tutor to regularly go to the home to help her children in the art test, which was a lot of money.
"Originally just for cultivating hobbies, I didn't expect it to become a task again." She reluctantly said to the reporter of the "Rules of Law Daily".
There are many more parents like Ren Xue.
The reporter learned from a recent interview that many parents are eager to test grades. Coupled with the guidance and advocacy of some training institutions, the artistic grades gradually become more flavorful, and even show strong characteristics of test-oriented education, which makes people love and headache.
The test continues to heat up
Parents have a heavy burden
Data show that in recent years, the scale of my country's children's art training market has expanded year by year. In 2017, the national market size was about 67 billion yuan. By 2020, this number has almost doubled to 130 billion yuan.
The huge training market has also spawned a variety of art examinations, such as musical instruments, dances, recitations, allegro, and hosting.
From class to grade examination, parents took their children to "run and break their legs", which increased financial pressure and made the children complain.
The reporter entered into multiple parent groups and saw that many parents referred to quality education as "vegetarian" and subject education as "meat chicken."
Many parents ridicule, "Vegetarian chicken" is more time-consuming and costly than "meat chicken".
A parent said that her 14-year-old son has practiced saxophone and flute for four and a half years, and continued to test grades. This year, he sprinted to level 10 with a thick pile of certificates.
The money and energy invested for his son's grade test and performance are too much to calculate.
"This summer I let my children participate in ballet competitions and grade exams. I didn't feel much pressure at first, but after careful calculation, I invested more than 10,000 yuan in this item." said a first-grade parent in Xuhui District, Shanghai. .
So, why are parents still so keen to take exams?
Grace, a teacher from a training institution in Beijing who has been in business for 16 years, told reporters that in the early years, many parents asked their children to take the grade examination, mainly to give their children a bonus point when they entered school. Later, the social art examination and art competitions could not be ranked. Directly used as the basis for the assessment of artistic expertise, many parents also let their children continue to take the grade examination for the consideration of enriching their children's resumes.
The reporter learned during the interview that the reason why parents insist on grade examination is that some people use grade examination as a standard to test the effectiveness of their children’s learning arts. Some people hold the blind obedience mentality of "others test me and take the test", "something is better than nothing", and some others. People are helpless under the coercion of training institutions.
In the opinion of Liu Qiang, a citizen of Zhumadian, Henan, if you can take the exam, you must take the exam. Otherwise, why did you study so hard?
Liu Qiang has two children. His 7-year-old son has been studying drawing and hosting for one year; his daughter is 4 years old and has just started to learn dance.
"The relative's child has been studying art for some time, and has now passed the fourth grade. Looking at the certificates, it feels like there is no vain study."
The idea of "no grade examination is nothing but learning" represents the aspirations of many parents.
And Beijing Chaoyang citizen Teng Jie (pseudonym) is the kind of parent who "everyone takes the test, I also take the test."
Teng Jie’s daughter is 9 years old and has been participating in painting, dance, and sound training for a long time since she was 4 years old.
Because other parents around him are particularly keen on letting their children take the test, he chose to "follow."
Teng Jie did not consider too much whether it was necessary or the gold content of the certificate.
In fact, training institutions cannot shirk their responsibilities for the formation of grading fever.
Many parents described it like this: It was originally a training class for the purpose of cultivating hobbies, but after entering, it was like "getting on a thief boat." The examination, plus the cost of each examination is often within the acceptable range, so I also joined the examination team.
But in fact, the cost of taking exams again and again is not low, and it consumes a lot of energy from parents.
In Grace's view, the motivation of training institutions also comes from consideration of interests.
In addition to continuous training, the training organization that organizes the test can also get a certain commission when it promotes the test project.
Regarding the commission, some media described it in a report in March this year: The "cooperation agreement" of some grading agencies states that "examination service fee is divided into 6:4", "registration fee is divided into 5:5" and so on.
Gradually become test-oriented education
Against the laws of art
Teacher Gao was the vocal instructor of a famous children's choir in Beijing.
Not long ago, a pair of parents came with their children from other places, hoping that Teacher Gao could give some pointers to their children.
The child passed the ninth grade in the local violin exam.
Teacher Gao asked the child to play a piece of music on the spot, but found that none of the notes were accurate, which surprised him.
"There are problems with grade examinations in some places, and such grade examinations are meaningless." Teacher Gao told reporters.
According to reports, the "Social Art Level Test Management Measures" issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2019 clarifies that the art level of art learners will be evaluated and guided through examinations, with the purpose of popularizing art education and improving the quality of the people, and following the art The law of education, adhere to the principles of openness, justice, fairness and voluntary examination, and put social benefits in the first place.
Many industry insiders and parents said in an interview with reporters that they did not completely deny art examinations. Art examinations have social needs and have certain positive meanings. For example, music training and examinations promote the popularization of music education and also help teachers and parents. Grasp the development status of student literacy, improve teaching, and improve society's aesthetic and humanistic literacy as a whole.
However, some places overemphasize the progress of the grade examination, engage in the so-called "examination-oriented education" of "several level jumps", and "test grades for grade examination", one-sided pursuit of examination and speed, so that the artistic grade examination loses its original meaning.
Beijing citizen Zhao Pei told reporters that due to the epidemic, her daughter’s ethnic dance exams were all video exams. When the children took online lessons, they couldn’t remember the dance moves at all, so they mixed up with gourd paintings, and the children danced their parents’ videos and sent them to the teacher. The certificate is also down, "maybe you have the certificate after paying the 380 yuan registration fee."
Chen Xun, who lives in Jiuxianqiao Community, Chaoyang District, Beijing, feels the same way.
He told reporters that his child’s classmates took a music grade exam when they were 5 years old. They actually went to sing a song and got a certificate.
"So and so, how can it fully reflect the true music level of the students?"
In Grace's view, the craze for examinations violates the laws of art education and presents the characteristics of strong examination-oriented education.
Take the art exam as an example. “The topics of the art exam are fixed now. The students who applied for the exam have already understood the types of exams. Suppose a child wants to take the three-level sketching test. It may only be trained for sketching in the past half a year. The scope and types of learning have become narrow. This grade examination is more like a test-oriented education."
"Peanuts", a netizen in Yingkou, Liaoning, who has studied art for many years and participated in the art level examination, said: "Before the level examination, everyone knows what to test. When intensive training, the content taught by the training teacher is templated, in addition to improving test-taking skills. In addition, it is not helpful for the perception and shaping of artistic thinking, and it is easy to make students' thinking rigid."
Establish the right idea
Return to quality education
Where should the art examination go?
At this year’s “two sessions” across the country, Li Xincao, head of the China Symphony Orchestra, proposed “adjusting the music grading examination method or canceling the music grading examination system”.
He believes that utilitarian music education solely for the purpose of grade examination has violated the principles of scientific, systematic and gradual mastery of music learning, as well as the original intention of art education.
In the end, it will lead to children's extreme rejection of music and affect the aesthetics of life.
According to Yin Shaochun, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Capital Normal University, there are many unreasonable points in the grading standards for art examinations.
For example, "Children's Drawing Examination Syllabus (Trial)" has almost the same description of the 5th and 6th levels, except for the word "comparison": "Art is a subject that has a'slope' and is difficult to form a'gradient', unlike sports. It is easy to form a clear'gradient' in subjects such as, mathematics and so on. In the actual examination, I really don't know how the examiner judges the difference between'color coordination' and'color coordination'."
Many senior children's art experts believe that there is no simple standard answer for judging children's art works.
Qiao Xiaoguang, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said that according to the research on children’s cognition done by authoritative scholars, graffiti is one of the ways of children’s thinking and emotional growth. common sense.
Qian Xiaoming, an art critic and founding director of the Chinese Painting Society, also said: "Children's art examination puts academic technical indicators first. Compared with quality education, it is more like imitating academic education. Ignore the rigid skills of children's nature. Easy to judge, easy to cheat, and easy to obliterate children’s nature."
In Chen Xun's view, quality education such as art and sports is a subject that covers a wide range of subjects. Excessive pursuit of grade examinations is not conducive to the discovery of interest and the mastery of art. It is also a wrong learning method.
Any knowledge is getting harder and harder to learn. Maybe you just need to practice hard at the beginning, but the later learning is based on a solid foundation and good understanding.
Assault training is indeed more effective when passing low-level exams, but it is not conducive to laying a solid foundation. Instead, it causes children to not go far on the road of art.
“Grade examination is indeed a test of children’s academic performance, and can also play a role in comforting parents, but children’s choice to study art must be because of their love and passion at first. Letting children receive art training is also to improve their overall quality. Learning just for grade examination will inevitably consume children's enthusiasm, and it is also not conducive to children's learning of art." Grace hopes that parents will establish the correct concept of art training, stick to their original aspirations, and return to quality education.
Manga / Takaoka