This article is from WeChat official account:Modern Middle Class (ID: modernstory)< span class="text-remarks">, author: Modern Middle Class, original title: “”Killing” the Chinese Prodigy”, title picture from: Visual China
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In the winter of 1977, a newspaper in New York received news that China was selecting children on a large scale for unknown reasons.
At that time, the mist was still covering the ocean. After various ridiculous speculations, the reporter interviewed the Chinese scientist Li Zhengdao, and the mystery was revealed.
Li Zhengdao said that when he visited China 3 years ago, he suggested to the senior management that he could follow the ballet training method and select a group of talented teenagers and send them directly to the university to create a “small but precise basic science job.” Team”.
Three years later, the wave of prodigies started, and the starting point of the wave was an unexpected letter.
In the autumn of 1977, Ni Lin, a teacher at Jiangxi Institute of Metallurgy, wrote a long letter to Vice Premier Fang Yi, recommending Jiangxi prodigy Ning Bo.
The letter stated that Ning Bo was able to recite a hundred poems at the age of two, beat an adult in Go at the age of five, and was familiar with the constellations at the age of eight. He was already familiar with medical books at the age of nine and could prescribe medical prescriptions.
Ni Lin suggested, “I have never seen such an incredible child. If you go to university to train specifically, you will definitely become a breakthrough.”
Fang Yi issued a letter, and the University of Science and Technology of China sent two mathematics teachers to Jiangxi to investigate. One of them was a master of Go.
In the classroom of Ganzhou No. 8 Middle School, Ning Bo answered two sets of math test papers. In the domestic test paper, seven questions are correct and five questions, and the American Olympiad test paper, six questions are correct one and a half.
The teacher of the University of Science and Technology of China immediately played against him. In three games, Ning Bo won two games. After that, Ning Bo had a good answer in oral examinations on literature, history, astronomy, geography, chemistry, and Chinese medicine.
Finally, the teacher proposed an impromptu poem. The 13-year-old Ning Bo wrote a seven-laws within 20 minutes. The beginning said: I am sighing melancholy and having nowhere to go, and I don’t want to hear it now.
Finally, the University of Science and Technology of China stated in a report: Ning Bo does have extraordinary understanding and memory, and his knowledge far exceeds that of children of the same age.There are prospects for training, so I am admitted.
After the Guangming Daily reported the incident, Ning Bo became the focus of the country, and letters from various places flew to the University of Science and Technology of China like snow flakes, recommending the prodigy.
Under the trend, the University of Science and Technology of China sent 12 professors to the whole country. Wherever you go, the whole city will welcome you, and the place will give birth to a child prodigy, which is regarded as a great honor.
Some leaders put down cruel words: We must have a child prodigy in this place!
However, the selection process for child prodigies is extremely rough. Because there is no uniform standard, the assessment is based on random questions from the professor and impressions of the scene. Some children were unsuccessful because they stammered nervously.
In Lujiang, Anhui, the interview question encountered by the young Qianzheng was: How many pieces of watermelon would a watermelon cut horizontally and vertically with a knife?
The number of knives continued to increase, and the politicians answered calmly, and the admissions professor surprised him as a genius.
The reason for signing up for political affairs was because I saw a manuscript called “The Story of a Child Prodigy”, which recorded Ning Bo’s deeds. Soon after, his story was also written and circulated throughout the country along with the manuscript.
The destiny of the child in the manuscript becomes dreamlike.
In March 1978, Ning Bo went to the University of Science and Technology of China to report that on the train, passengers poured into the carriages to watch. The conductor asked Ning Bo to chat, and finally upgraded his family to soft sleepers.
On March 8th that year, the opening ceremony of the University of Science and Technology of China was held. 21 teenagers wearing black tunic suits took a group photo.
14-year-old Ning Bo stood in the center. Not far away was the 12-year-old in politics. Xie Yanbo, the youngest in the class, was 11 years old.
Six months later, 67 students enrolled in the second term, and the first junior class with a total of 88 students officially arrived in Qi, Ningbo student number 001.
That fall, it was the 20th anniversary of the University of Science and Technology of China. Vice Premier Fang Yi came to inspect. The first item on the agenda was to visit the juvenile class.
Under the grapevine, he and Ning Bo played two games, losing both games. The deputy prime minister laughed and said that the future is terrifying.
The grape frame has since become a sacred place for parents everywhere to take pictures, and that sentence has also become a nightmare for a generation of teenagers: look at Ning Bo, then look at you.
On campus, the pressure faced by the first youth class is also huge.
The People’s Daily called them “the young commandos on the knowledge wasteland”, and the vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China said in an inscription, “Hope rests on you.”
The public is full of expectations for the teenagers: People hope to use the intellectual advantages of the prodigy to make up for those abandoned times.
The teenagers initially lived in a temporary dormitory with board houses. There were ten people in a room. There were parasol trees outside the window. The cicadas screamed at night and stirred the heat.
The TV station rushed to shoot a documentary for them. In the beginning of the film, Ning Bo led the teenagers and pointed the starry sky under the curtain of night.
Shortly afterwards, the youth class had a class song, in which the young people were singing Haiyan, haunting waves and hovering in the blue sky. And the end of the song keeps repeating: Hard work is in the youth.
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The first Chinese lesson of the youth class is about “Injury Zhong Yong”. The youth is amazing and brilliant, and it is inevitable that everyone will be surprised. Looking back after many years, it seems to be a sign.
The first test after enrollment, among the prodigy, the highest score in mathematics was 98 points, and the lowest score was only 10.
Previously, the University of Science and Technology of China had recruited child prodigies who were good at mental arithmetic and discovering stars with the naked eye, but dropped out because they couldn’t keep up with the course.
High hopes are placed on the first youth class. After enrollment, the school can easily select the best teachers to teach, and often arrange meetings with well-known scientists. However, they are only children with an average age of 14 years old.
The class teacher, Wang Huidi, prepares milk powder for them every morning, adds a physical education class in the afternoon, performs rounds at night, and turns off the lights for the teenagers.
After turning off the lights, teenagers often run under the street lights to read books, or go to the classroom all night. Under heavy pressure and excitement, the teenagers never chatted, half-jokingly saying, “Chatting is a waste of time, and writing biographies in the future is a dark history.”
Xie Yanbo’s iron ring was not used again, and was thrown in the corner of the bedroom. Only when interviewed was reluctantly taken out to perform.
One year after enrolling in school, Ning Bo approached the head teacher Wang Huidi and said that “the University of Science and Technology of China does not have a department I like”.
He most wanted to study astronomy before entering school, but was asked to study theoretical physics. After all, this is the major that can give birth to great scientists.
Wang Huidi filed a report and applied to transfer him to Nanjing University to study astronomy based on Ning Bo’s interests, but the University of Science and Technology of China replied “if you come, you will be safe”.
Years later, retired Wang Huidi said in an interview that “The University of Science and Technology is not willing to let this celebrity go.
Ning Bo, who was left behind, became silent, noThere are more and more passing subjects, but the praise from the outside world has not stopped.
He shaved his head and has a weird personality. He likes to stand in the corner when taking pictures. He told his classmates that those who ask him to play chess don’t care about his skills, only his reputation.
He wrote to Ni Lin, who recommended him back then, “Uncle Ni, I am a live fish, I was thrown to death and sold.”
Many years later, he told reporters that he was just a product that the times needed.
He played bridge for a period of time, and then turned to Go, saying that Go can be controlled by himself, but the bridge depends on luck.
He hates luck. After graduation, he took the postgraduate entrance examination three times, but he flinched and didn’t enter the examination room.
His external reason is that a child prodigy can succeed without the postgraduate entrance examination. Old classmates said that he was only extremely self-esteem and extremely low self-esteem, fearing failure.
After graduation, the classmates went abroad for postgraduate entrance examinations, the stars disappeared, and Ning Bo stayed in school. After a wave of media hype about the youngest university teacher, they gradually dispersed.
He lives in an old building next to the school. He is married and has children. There are only a few pieces of old furniture in his home. The only electrical appliances are a telephone and a wall-mounted water heater.
He became more and more silent, obsessed with qigong and vegetarianism, and the fiercest quarrel with his wife was about child education: never train children to become prodigies.
He tried several times to go to the sea, to work in companies and factories, but all failed.
In 1992, Ning Bo was invited to give lectures in Hainan, and after crossing the Qiongzhou Strait, he was intercepted at the border inspection passage in Haikou. In addition to his ID card, he has forgotten his work permit and invitation letter at home.
After explaining to no avail, he was thrown into a shelter and locked up with a homeless man. He was given two chances to let out the wind every day, and food was delivered from the doorway.
Finally, the asylum stated that it must either let the inviting unit send a telegram to explain, or go back the same way. He stubbornly chose the same way back.
The ship passed through Qiongzhou, and there was a turbulent turbid current under the ship, and he was a bubble without roots.
Not only him, Xie Yanbo, who rolled the hoop back then, followed Academician Zhou Guangzhao to study for a Ph.D. after graduating at the age of 15, but due to tensions with his mentor, he moved to the United States to study.
After arriving in the United States, he studied under the Nobel Prize in Physics. His tutor is known for his pride in the physics world. However, his tutor claimed that Xie Yanbo was more proud than him.
After the killing of a professor by a Chinese student, the University of Science and Technology of China was concerned and recalled Xie Yanbo to China.
He stayed at the University of Science and Technology of China to teach, but his colleagues said that he was living in his own world and “mentally had a problem.” In recent years, his subject is that the entire scientific system is fabricated by “fairies”, and he wants to find loopholes.
Another genius is in politics, who can count the watermelon knife skills, but not the world. After studying abroad, he also returned home because of the tense relationship with his mentor.
The University of Science and Technology of China asked him to go back to school to study Ph.D., but he refused. Later, he wanted to work at the University of Science and Technology of China, but was rejected because he was not a PhD.
He imprisoned himself and his mother in the old community in Hefei, ignoring the world, ignoring changes, and the media to and fro. He declined interviews, and only said:
“My life is like this every day, no work, very monotonous, and nothing to say.”
In 1998, when we talked about education, Ning Bo stood up and spoke in a corner of the audience, saying, “Educating children is not about doing business, so you can’t experiment with them”.
Few audiences at the scene know that he is Ning Bo, a child prodigy who once shined for a generation.
In 2003, Ning Bo became a monk. Since then, his whereabouts have been elusive.
On New Year’s Day in 2004, Ning Bo, who did not know where he was, created a classmate on the Internet, and he was the only person on it.
One year later, on July 24, the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China was established for 10,000 days. The first class of students reunited on campus. Ning Bo was not there. The protagonist of the classmates that day was Zhang Yaqin, the chief scientist of Microsoft Research Asia.
In the school history museum, the name of Zhang Yaqin is eye-catching at the bottom of the photo. Ning Bo, Qian Zheng, and Xie Yanbo have no names, and are only labeled as “Juvenile Classmates.”
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In 1999, during the two sessions, Cai Zixing, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, gave a report entitled “Abolition of Youth Classes Early”.
At this time, the wave of prodigy children disappeared, and the colleges that set up junior classes changed from 14 schools at the peak., Has dropped to 6 schools. Cai Zixing said that the road for the youth class is getting narrower and narrower, and he should consider where it will go.
In 2001, Shanghai Jiaotong University closed the juvenile class, and the school used the term “to give birth.” In 2004, Xi’an Jiaotong University reformed the juvenile class to recruit students from junior high school. After admission, teenagers must go to high school for a year to minimize psychological problems.
People calmly examine the results of the junior class. In the past 40 years, more than 60% of the graduates of the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China have studied abroad, and only 20% have been engaged in academic research.
In 1921, American psychologist Terman conducted an experiment. He passed an intelligence test and screened out 1,200 talented teenagers with IQs above 140.
After that, just like the HKUST Junior Class, the US government provides this group of children with the best quality education, hoping to give birth to the next Einstein or Newton.
However, when most children grow up, they work in common jobs such as seamen, archivists, and typists. The few who have achieved good results have a strong will.
Terman finally concluded: No matter how we look at it, we are still far from discovering the complete correlation between intelligence and achievement.
The experiment of genius comes to an end. Geniuses can grow naturally and cannot be made artificially. After the huge surge, the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China has declined media interviews for many years, and a full-time psychology teacher was added to the class. On the 35th anniversary of its founding, Chen Yang, the dean of the Junior Class College, said:
In the past, if a student told the teacher “I didn’t want to be a scientist”, the teacher would be very upset. But now some classmates say “want to get a job”, I will help him with ideas and let him do things according to his own interests.
Last year, 16-year-old Xian Qiqi was admitted to the juvenile class. The reason for applying for the exam was just “too lazy to read high school.” In March this year, Li Yunze, who was a junior in the juvenile class, chose to join the army because of his military complex.
The 25-year-old Cao Yuan is the most famous graduate of the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China in the past two years. He discovered the magic corner of graphene, and has published five papers in “Nature”, and was named the first of the top ten scientists of 2018 by “Nature”.
The teenager recalled that the most comfortable part of the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China was that he could stay in the laboratory all day.
He laughed and said: I’m not a genius, after all, it took me 4 years to finish college.
Everything is back to the beginning. In 2009, the former principal of the University of Science and Technology of China and educator Zhu Qingshi said: Treat education with less intervention and more awe. The purpose of education itself is to find the most suitable growth. When there are no more child prodigies, then every teenager is a child prodigy.
After staying away from the dust, Ning Bo’s figure was scattered and recorded in the old blog. Someone ran into him in a Buddhist temple in Jiangxi, surrounded by mountains on three sides, filled with clouds.
When Ning Bo lectured, the atmosphere suddenly became quiet and solemn. He never looked at his notes, and directly told the audience which page of the book he quoted. Outside the monastery, autumn has arrived, and large leaves are falling, in the most comfortable way.