Poetry lessons in the mountains: no utilitarianism, no expectations
Long Zhengfu takes a poetry lesson by the stream.
Long Zhengfu in poetry class.
Children play after the poetry lesson.
Child standing in front of framed poetry.
Children play after the poetry lesson.
Child standing in front of framed poetry.
For a group of children deep in the mountains of Guizhou, writing poetry is as daily as picking buds in the valley.
Poetry can be born at any moment. Once after school, they carefully bypassed crops and flue-cured tobacco seedlings and stepped on crunching pinecones and fir leaves. They laughed, blew dandelions into each other's faces, and hung prickly acacia leaves on each other.
It was late afternoon, with distant mountains and cooking smoke wafting into the clouds. Yuan Fangshun, an introverted and thin boy who was originally in the crowd, casually chanted the poem he had just composed: "Golden sunset / The sky has nowhere to hide / The eyebrows are shaped like a bow / Do (sit) peel the lotus canopy." He explained that "the clouds are the eyebrows of the sun."
A cockchafer climbed into his hand. He submissively let it climb up his arm, then tilted his arm slightly, leading it back to the leaves.
He was the most "prolific" "little poet" in his class, using 3 poetry books in 10 years. It has been two years since his mother and father divorced, and he does not want to talk about missing his mother again. But he still reads the poem he wrote:
"Before you were the brilliance of spring / But you left me / I put 'Mama missed you' on the willow / The flowing water flutters like your hair in the wind / The pebbles also have your smile."
His class, called "sixth grade," had 71 students filling the classroom. Three years ago, Chinese teacher Long Zhengfu started teaching poetry classes in his class. Since then, every day someone will quietly hand him new poems.
In terms of study alone, they are not excellent: in 4 classes in 35 townships, their grades are not satisfactory, and the average score in Chinese and mathematics fluctuates around 60 points. They always have dirt and "plateau red" on their faces, looking carefree - climbing into trees to pick up badminton rackets between classes, jumping leather bands and ropes on cracked playgrounds, and throwing basketballs in their hands into the grass as soon as the class bell rings. Some teachers described the lecture as "walking with a snail".
But they would write heavy poems about death, parting and longing. There are 39 students in the class who are unaccompanied by their parents, whose parents have divorced, died, or all went out to work.
Here, poetry may be born or die at any time: some children's poetry books are burned when grandpa lights a cigarette; Some children's books fell on the floor and forgot to pick them up, and were swept into the trash by other students. There was a storm that blew open old wooden doors and wet all the poems that were taped to the back wall of the library.
But they always say that "poetry is important," and even a girl who sits in the last row and often sleeps in class says she "knows poetry" and gives advice to others. "Those who write their true feelings, I think are good."
They say that poetry is light, a camera, a diary, a good friend.
"You can do nothing"
In Long Zhengfu's poetry class, he came up and said, "You can do a lot of things or you can do nothing." ”
The noise of 71 children easily overwhelmed his voice. The small hands under the desk hold flying chess pieces and playing cards, and from time to time mineral water bottles fly over the desk.
Even when writing poetry, children's mouths and hands do not stop. The poetry book was passed around in the dirty little hands. There are always people who pat the same table, or turn their heads and ask the back table, "How do you write this word?" As soon as someone finished writing, the classmates around him snatched the book to read, and waved "enthusiastically" at Long Zhengfu, asking him to "appreciate".
In class, Long Zhengfu always pressed his body very low, rarely output opinions, and just kept asking, "What do you see?" "Do you like his expression?" "So does it matter if others like it or not?"
After 40 minutes, the PPT is still stuck on the picture on the first page. Students kept standing up and sharing their observations. "You're so good that I don't think I dare to say more," he said, shaking his hands excitedly from the podium.
After class, the children chased him to read poems. Long Zhengfu sat next to a thick pile of books, gently read the sound, took pictures, and then carefully wrote the criticism. Even if some sentences are unremarkable, he draws wavy lines and dots an exclamation mark next to it. Most of the comments are not good or bad, but mostly some of his responses to the emotions in the poem.
One child wrote, "The sun shines through the window / Shines in the room / makes me show / teeth every day." He criticized, "The teacher is also happy." Some children wrote, "I walked down the road / and found / My shadow has been / quietly following me." He wrote, "When we stop and pay attention to our surroundings, we begin to pay attention to ourselves and to life." ”
Before starting his poetry class, Long Zhengfu had not read any poetry. He believes that good poetry is "patriotic", "strong" and "positive energy", "Don't talk about foreign (poets), even Beidao and Gu Cheng, I have never heard of it!" ”
Exposure to poetry lessons stemmed from chance. In 2019, the non-profit organization "Yesguang" cooperated with the Qianxi Municipal Education Bureau to provide poetry courses and training to local rural teachers. When the application form was sent, the teachers "didn't quite know what was going on." The principal was transferred to the director of education, and the director of education was transferred to Long Zhengfu. Long Zhengfu filled in while thinking, and did not finish filling it out until the evening.
Previously, teachers had to use rulers to keep the class quiet. Long Zhengfu has not used it. He asked the children to read Tagore, Gibran, Silverstein, Furukawa Shuntaro, and Mirei Kaneko, in the morning, between classes, or during lunch breaks. He did not ask to read together, but let them read it in all tongues, "everyone has their own taste."
The children in Long Zhengfu's class did not have a good Chinese foundation, were not proficient in pinyin, and the reading questions on the roll were empty, but this did not affect their creation. When encountering words that cannot be written, some children dictate and ask classmates to "ghostwrite", while others use mobile phones to convert text by voice and then copy them themselves.
"Poetry is like a fun game," one boy said. He was one of the naughtiest boys in his class, sometimes scoring just over 10. In the eyes of the head teacher, he did not have good grades, but he was very active when working, took the initiative to take a shovel to the toilet to take out the manure pit, and did not mind when the manure splashed on his body, "everyone is not perfect, nor is it useless."
The organization "is Light" regularly selects children's poems and awards prizes. Although this boy's poem did not win an award, one of his favorite poems was written after seeing a strange puppy being hit and killed. "When my puppy is in a car accident / I will use my hands / gently / hold it up / When I see its body / My teary eyes / Instantly fall on my heart."
"In poetry, I can express freely"
Longtang Primary School is located in the town of "one no factory and two no mines", where the land is broken, the wheat and corn harvests are not good, the main industry is flue-cured tobacco, and the annual income of 10 mu is less than 2,<> yuan.
Most young people choose to go out to work. The wall next to the national highway is painted with a slogan in white on a blue background, "Pay attention to migrant workers, and entrust the care of your children."
Mr. Long said he would have a hard time gaining the trust of his children without poetry. Many children will have sudden changes in their mood one day, such as suddenly not speaking or shedding tears in class. He asked the child why, and the child said nothing.
He started poetry classes three years ago, and he took his children to read and write poetry. At the end of the semester, the children wrote only "running accounts", but he patiently took pictures and wrote comments on each poem, and in the next two years he changed three mobile phones, each with thousands of poems.
Slowly, the children let their guard down. A child used to always sleep in class, cut his arm with a blade, and never spoke to Long Zhengfu. Late one night, he suddenly sent a message to Long Zhengfu, saying that he had locked the door and wanted to jump from the stairs.
Later, Long Zhengfu learned that he had been living with his grandparents, and his mother left home when he was less than a year old. My father was preparing to remarry, and the phone only told him to study hard. During that time, her mother wanted to see him, but she told someone to pretend not to know her when she met and to call her "aunt" because her new family did not know that she had children.
"I'm in my 30s, if I don't know how to solve this kind of thing, how can you let a child bear it?" Long Zhengfu said.
Most of the parents in the class have only elementary or junior high school education, and their expectations for their children are generally not high, and they have no concept of poetry. Lin Yi was the second in the class, but her father said: "I don't want her to be so good, I hope that the circle will be better in the future, and it will be easier to find a job." When they learned that their daughter had won an award for writing poetry, they treated it as "homework assigned by the teacher."
Ms. Lin's father built a house in a neighboring county, her mother worked a night shift in a textile factory in Fujian, and her family consisted only of grandparents and younger siblings. She was tall and thin, with few words, and two strands of broken hair hung quietly on her face. Every day when she came home, her grandparents had not yet returned from farm work, she skillfully boiled water, cooked rice, boiled water, and finished her homework.
When she was alone, she spent a lot of time in a daze. When the sun set on the tip of the mountain, she stood under the vines next to the pigsty and looked at the mountain until the shadow of the sun disappeared from the mountain. "I would think about the people on the other side of the mountain, see if the sun will be very close? Or is there a mountain in front of them, and the sun actually sets from that mountain? ”
The poem "Moon" was also written when she was alone. "Put my little coin under the paper / Take a flash with a flashlight / Don't tell anyone / I found a little moon on the paper."
Since she was 3 years old, she has been accustomed to seeing off her parents who go out to work. Now, her thoughts are deeply hidden. Her mother called her before going to work, she didn't know what to say, but she didn't want to hang up, and finally she could only ask without words, "Mom, you're going to work?" ”
"yes, it's dark on our side."
"But our side is still very bright!"
It's hard to understand her. She has two poetry books, one to write poems that record mood and one to read to her teacher. In the book that no one had read, she turned loneliness and sadness into raindrops on bamboo and dirt under her feet.
Even poems that seem happy have "secrets" behind unhappiness, she says, and "in poetry, I can express myself freely." She was satisfied that no one could read it, "I don't want them to know." ”
But there are always clues that can't be hidden. One girl said that she likes to use "it" instead of "he" and "she" in her poems to refer to friends and family around her, "because animals have no feelings, even if they are too deep, they will leave you one day." ”
Their poems contain complex and subtle emotions: for example, they write about disappointment at hand, "I'm about to pick up a star / But the stairs slipped / I fell to the ground." ”
Write mercy and redemption: "The setting sun sprinkles light / under the water / as if / wants to save the child who fell under the water before." ”
Write a cruel farewell: "The snowman / looked at the shadow of the quilt (back) that winter left / But winter did not stay / but / turned his head and smiled." ”
Zhu Guangqian once said that poetry is aesthetic education, "that is, learn how to liberate from the limitations of nature, turn slaves into gods, and fully feel the dignity of human beings." "Aesthetic education must start from a young age, the older you get, the more complicated your external affairs, the stronger the cage of habits, the sluggish your feelings, the more complex your psychology, and the weaker your appreciation of art."
"Human perception is powerful, and those poems we see, which are one billionth of perception, remain in words." "It's Light," said Kang Yu, the founder.
“是光”的课程覆盖了27个省份，康瑜发现，相比于山东孩子的平实、湖南孩子的热烈，贵州山里的孩子们的特点是“朦胧”。
“贵州的小朋友会写，一滴水掉在河里，画着鱼的轮廓。还有人写，想做自由的蜻蜓，为莲花做镜匣。你能够更加感觉到他们是稍微远离生活的。”
他们用树、风、天上的星星、地上的田野，包裹自己隐秘的现实生活。
“不功利，无预期”
接触诗歌课前，龙正富觉得自己“太麻木”。他2008年成为特岗教师，那时认为好老师就是“把成绩搞上去”。
那时农村小学没有“双减”的概念，学生成绩和老师绩效工资挂钩，“天天放学后留学生背、抄、读。”
很多教师教作文写作，就是让学生背模板，写景的背一篇，叙事的背一篇，衔接词是清一色的“一开始……然后……最后”。他在这种环境里陷入迷茫。
“学生也努力了，你也努力了，但学生好像会通过一些行为告诉你，他不太愿意这么做。” 龙正富回忆那时候整日都忙，忙着写教案，改本子，“很少关注学生本身”。
有次一位女生流鼻涕、说头疼，两天后就没有来上课。第三天他去家里探望，人已经在棺材里了。他只记女生是圆圆的脸，不长不短的头发，经常穿着红衣服。
他突然觉得茫然，“到现在我也不知道她得了什么病。她就这样突然消失了。我没走进过她的内心世界，她留给我的不多，我留给她的也不多。”
他想更了解学生，不想用成绩定义学生。但不看成绩，他又不知道怎么做。“有了成绩才好管(学生)，但(学生)可能就没有爱心了，该帮助的人不帮助，只想着保护自己。”
他渴望参加教研活动，但机会寥寥。他读苏霍姆林斯基的书，但总找不到实践的路径，直到遇到诗歌。
“是光”的教师培训课中有句话，“不功利，无预期。”“是光”创始人康瑜见过很多乡村老师，着急让孩子们写出诗，“(他们)还会有以往的课程惯性，就是课堂一定要出一个东西。”
他们还急迫地希望有一些“抓手”，比如有几个重点、课堂目标是什么，“他们发现自己好像没有传统课堂上的权威了。原来他们知道标准答案，但诗歌课没有标准答案。”
最初，龙正富“功利”的教学习惯还会冒出来。郭沫若的《白鹭》中有一句，“但是白鹭本身不就是一首很优美的歌吗？”他总联想到考点，“考试可能会要求把这个句子改成陈述句”。
但当他尝试让孩子们自由地读上两三遍，读到这句，他们会不自觉提高声音，“像呐喊，也像争论，是在表达对作者的理解，(他们)也认同，白鹭是一首优美的歌，很自然就理解了这个句子情感上的增强。”
龙正富的同事、五年级的数学老师代红艳上诗歌课的初衷，是提高班里的语文成绩。
他们班上有学生还不能熟练拼读声母韵母。作为班主任，她想借助诗歌提高学生们的学习兴趣。但她从没读过诗歌，自嘲“语文基础还不如学生”，诗歌课是她第一次上不给学生布置作业的课，“很迷茫，我也变成学生一样。”
有时学生的诗在“是光”平台上获奖，她又开心又懵，因为“没有读出什么特别的感觉”，“不是我教学生，好像学生教我。”
代红艳班上写诗的同学只有一两个，看到龙正富每天都能收到诗，她找龙正富“取经”。对方告诉她要耐心，“把主题告诉他们，然后就让他们去想吧。只要是他们想的，就是对的！”
原来她上课不爱笑，脾气大，吼人时声音能穿透操场。她总提醒自己上课要多微笑。“现在我每个星期还要发怒，但是发怒的程度好像有小一丁点进步”，她不好意思地说，“就当是牵着蜗牛散步”。
有次诗歌课的主题是“重塑”，一位同学写，要把某某老师粉碎。她没有生气，而是让那位同学放心，“我不会告诉这个老师的”。她还狡黠地问班里的同学，“有没有想把我粉碎的？”
她知道教这里的孩子，尤其需要耐心。龙正富班上有个男生叫李杰，胖乎乎、大嗓门，走路带风，“成绩超级无敌糟糕”，总是被指责欺负同学。
代红艳教过李杰，有次李杰塞给她两个橘子，其他孩子在旁边起哄，“老师，他是捡的！”但代红艳很开心，“就算是捡的，也不是坏的呀！就算是捡的，他也知道给老师呀！” 她说着说着，有些激动，“说真的，有的学生学习不好，没办法，但他不是一个十恶不赦的人。”
李杰会写的字不多，有天他口述了一首诗，叫《花》，同桌帮他记了下来——“花是香的/一生下来就是香的/就像人/一生下来就是勇敢的。”
“回到生活中”
距离毕业还有一个多月，龙正富把5月的这堂诗歌课主题定为“转角”。
PPT上放着尼采的诗，《我的幸福》，“自从厌倦了求索/我便学会了看见/自从一种风向和我对着干/我便乘着所有的风扬帆。”
龙正富有些动容，“这首诗送给你们，也送给我自己。这几年是你们陪伴了我，是你们的诗歌陪伴了我。”
他回想起课堂外，他曾带学生们去树林中漫步，或者去小溪边抓小鱼，鞋子甩在一旁。玩累了，坐在草地上写诗，孩子们用笔拨弄虫子，草含在嘴里，花瓣洒满本子。
很多诗都写于自然中。一位女生说，她坐在山顶，听到鸟在叫，猫在跑，自己的本子差点被风吹掉，“随手一写，哦嚯，就入选了。”
她写，“小鸟去捉风 不想让风走/可风太大了/风却把小鸟捉着了。”
“诗意是叙述文字之外的真相”，诗人朵渔是“是光”的课程顾问，也曾给乡村的老师和孩子们上过课。他发现孩子们很擅长捕捉诗意，虽然写出的文字并不完全是诗歌，但里面有诗最核心的东西。
“他们对这个世界的感受是初次的，他在感受和命名这个世界，这就是诗人干的事情。等他长大了，他的这个能力会消失。”朵渔说。
龙正富希望能通过阅读和郊游，唤醒孩子对生活的感知力，“回到生活中”。他发现很多孩子的生活是贫乏的，家长的情感缺位和对成绩的焦虑，让他们丢失了看见周围的能力。
他觉得小学阶段是孩子最依恋大人的时期，“如果这时候接触太多权威、固化的东西，就会失去个性，想象力被磨掉。”
渐渐地，孩子们的表达也发生了变化，“在慢慢接近他们所看到、真实的东西。”
There was a "problem" girl in the class, who always liked to stare viciously, quarrel with her mother, run away from home, and spend the night in the grass. But after she started writing poetry, she once went to plant buds with her mother and saw her busy hands, densely wrinkled, and her nails cut short. So she wrote, "I went to the cornfield with my mother / I saw nothing / only my mother's hands." ”
A girl wrote in her essay about the death of her grandfather and father. "One day, Grandpa said, 'Baby, Grandpa is going to pick stars for you, obediently, I will send it to your dreams.'" I know, grandpa is gone, it's a white lie.
At night, knock knock, someone is knocking on the window. I opened my eyes, ah, 'Grandpa is by the window', I quickly opened the window, Grandpa had the residue of stars in his hand. I wiped my tears and said, 'I don't mind.'"
I thought it was already sad. Until Dad was gone, the last thing he said to me was, 'Baby, Grandpa is so lonely, I'll go with him, don't cry, don't make trouble, wait quietly for me to come at night.' ’”
This is the first time she has written about her grandfather and father in her essay, "You can feel from her words that she is very sad, but this separation is presented naturally, her emotions are very restrained and powerful." The departure of her grandfather and father has always guarded her. Long Zhengfu said.
"Growing up is the process of giving up imagination", Duoyu read the children's poems, and found that they retained the courage that adults lost, "adults were smashed back by reality with a hammer and a hammer." But the kids didn't. For life and death, for the universe, we can't figure it out and don't want to, but the child will ask. ”
Long Zhengfu, influenced by children, also began to read and write poetry. In the past, he always felt that he was "too emotional" and "crying", and his eyes would always be red when he was excited. When he was in middle school, he read "Me and the Temple of Earth" and "Ordinary World", wanting to become a resolute person like Shi Tiesheng and Sun Shaoping, "but it has always been far away, and I don't know how to go."
"Poetry is an emotion recalled in serenity", from which he learned restraint and adjustment. He likes to read Wang Guozhen's poems, "His excited, surging emotions are pressed in the language of poetry." It is a force of restraint. ”
He asked his students to copy Wang Guozhen's "The Mountain is High and the Road is Away", "The cry is the silence of the explosion / Silence is the silent call / Whether agitated / or tranquil / I pray / As long as it is not dull / If the distance calls me / I will go to the distance / If the mountain calls me / I will go to the mountain / My feet are worn / Simply let the sunset smear the path / Hands scratch / Let thorns turn into cuckoos / There is no road longer than feet / There is no mountain higher than people." ”
Therefore, seeing that the students in the class have a fondness for the opposite sex, he does not accuse, "Sometimes he does not feel love, but lacks love, feels empty, wants to find sustenance, wants to find people who understand him." Adults have this urge, let alone children. He would tell poems about love, about Marx and his wife, and about true love being "like-minded."
"Flowing through the cracks in the stone"
Some people asked Duoyu, after learning to write poetry, even if the children stay in the mountains in the future and become farmers, will they also be happy farmers?
He laughed and shattered the illusion that "could be a miserable farmer." He will have higher demands for beauty, richer emotions, and may be more sensitive and fragile. You can escape into the poem, but it hurts more to hit reality. ”
But, he added, "Poetry is about finding joy in pain." The pain is deeper and the pleasure is greater. ”
"Writing poetry makes a person, even in a crowd, feel alone. It will make it easier to withdraw from reality and treat the world around them as an observable object. ”
This is the power unique to poetry. When Lin Yi saw the grapes falling on the ground in front of her house, she would think that it represented the weight that the vines could not bear. "But the vine didn't drop all the grapes, so I had a setback and I didn't want to drop it."
Only the poem "Flower" won the prize for Li Jie's poem, and after that he wrote 8 more poems, none of which won the award. He always thought of the way his classmates laughed at him. But he still had itchy hands, wanted to write, and read it to his grandfather after writing.
His parents divorced very early, and there was only a grandfather in the family. He plans to finish junior high school and go out to work, or go home to help his grandfather farm. He said that he wanted to be a "gentle uncle" in the future, and "you can't hit a child's face and buttocks, it will break the child's heart."
Another precocious girl, Gu Min, the class leader, is often called "plagiarized" by the boys in the class, but she has a pink hard-shell book full of poems, such as this "Letter to the World".
"Sister Xiaoshu wrote to the world / wrote / The river, the sea / also received / only left her bare self."
After her parents divorced, Gu Min has been living with her mother. The mother and stepfather had just divorced due to domestic violence. "He was wearing designer clothes that my mother gave him with drop of sweat, and on his feet he was wearing sneakers that my mother bought for him, and he kicked my mother hard one by one." Gu Min said expressionlessly.
Afraid that the police would be late, she called a neighbor and rushed to her mother while calling the police. "I was doing these things and I didn't shed a single tear."
The poems contain Gu Min's courage, and she will write that her ideal is to "become an economically independent person." She would also write about her determination to protect her mother, "Mom is like my sun and moon / Protect me day and night / Overturn my world."
She always thinks of her aunt, who went back to school after the divorce, learned the craft to earn money, and dressed herself beautifully. She decided not to marry prematurely, "living for herself is 100 times more wonderful than getting married." ”
"Poetry can help them build a value system. Some people may say, what is the use of writing poetry and not getting into a good school? But if the sense of accomplishment and joy he gets from writing poetry is great enough, he will not be hurt by the outside world. The poet Duoyu said.
"We teach children to write poetry to develop the mind, not to cultivate poets." Duo Yu recalled that in the eighties and nineties of the 20th century, writing poetry was a trend on campus, but among the students of the poetry club, he was the only one who still insisted on writing poetry.
"The probability of sticking with it is extremely low, and there is no need to stick to it. Poetry is an exploration of the boundaries of human existence. ”
Seven years ago, Kang Yu, the founder of Yes Light, taught at a rural primary school in Yunnan. In addition to writing poetry, she took the children to sing and dance, and after she left, only poetry remained, "even if there were no teachers, they still wrote poetry every day." ”
"Gently falling to the ground like a seed," Kang Yu describes the presence of poetry in test-taking education, "like a stream flowing through, not pushing away the stone, but flowing along the cracks in the stone." ”
Long Zhengfu has taken the sixth grade many times, but for the first time he seriously imagined their future after graduation, "What kind of people will they meet?" And how will you try to grow? He plans to make a book of poems from the children in his class and distribute them to everyone on the day of the graduation party.
There are always students who send folded stars, written notes, rubber apples. They asked Long Zhengfu, "If I write poems in the future, can I send them to you?" Long Zhengfu never worries whether the children will continue to write poetry.
Yuan Fangshun, the most "prolific" "little poet" in the class, said that after becoming a junior high school student, he did not want to write his previous poems, "to write happy poems". Even if he now has more than 10 points of English in his bag, even those rough mountain roads, he will still walk alone.
In the poem "I", he wrote: "I may be a little / fairy tale / eternal song here / eternal dream / all in my little / poem / I want to go through a bush / in it / meteors never shine / day never dims / puddles are always small periods / This fairy tale never grows big." ”
(Li Jie, Gu Min, and Lin Yi are pseudonyms in the text)
Photo by Jiao Jingxian, reporter of China Youth Daily Source: China Youth Daily