September 18, Kunming City, Yiliang County, Ugly Duckling Middle School's principal's office, vice principal Yang Liu ushered in a man about 50 years old, after a detailed consultation on school enrollment, the man nodded, "I'll let the child's mother come in to take a look at it too."
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed his wife in a cab outside the school gates, and he lowered his voice, "How about you come in and see the 'dosage'?"
"The amount of medicine" is his and his wife's code, in order not to arouse the suspicion of his son in the same car, they told his son that this time to Yunnan is to borrow his father's business trip to play, and let the mountains of the "old Chinese medicine" to see if there is any problem with the health of his son.
This is a capital city in the northwest of a civil servant family, the only son of the family anorexia at home, addicted to the game all day, the couple had to trick the child to go to school. After signing the contract, the couple quietly left, and the 12-year-old son was left in the school.
Ugly Duckling Middle School is a private middle school for children with problems such as Internet addiction, anorexia, suicidal tendencies, rebellion, etc. In 2011, Zhan Dainian, who has been a principal of a public school in Hunan for 14 years, jumped out of the system and came to Yunnan to start a school for students who do not fit into the traditional education system. Over the past decade, more than 2,000 "problem children" have graduated from Ugly Duckling.
Every year in mid- to late September, when the regular high school season is over, the Ugly Duckling High School sees its peak enrollment, with new students enrolling almost every day. Most of these children come from economically privileged urban middle-class families, and some have even been students in local key high schools, but for various reasons, "slipped in the traditional education system.
In principal Zhan Dainian's view, Ugly Duckling Middle School is not a medicine that can't instantly change a child, but rather a way to try to catch them and "return them to a normal state of life".
On September 18, a new student entered the school and, as is customary at the school, several older students were sent to receive her. The girl obediently took the hand of her new classmate. The new Beijing News reporter Li Zhao photo
"cheating" to the students
"Do not come to pick me up, I will die to you!" Two days before the Mid-Autumn Festival, 14-year-old boy Hao Wei hysterically cried towards his father on the other end of the phone. Several students flocked to him into the counseling room and began to persuade him.
Hao Wei comes from a key private middle school in Hunan province, and his parents are executives in foreign companies. Before coming to Ugly Duckling Middle School, he dropped out of school and stayed home addicted to games, and was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety. His father discussed with him that there was a school in Yunnan where the pressure of learning was not so great, so he could go and experience it, and then choose to come back if he still didn't like it for a month.
More than a month passed, his father did not come to pick him up, and Hao Wei realized that children sent to Ugly Duckling usually have to stay for a full semester.
In Ugly Duckling Middle School, most of the children were "tricked" by their parents into traveling, visiting relatives and other excuses. Yang Liu, vice principal of Ugly Duckling Middle School, remembers that a public security director had a child tied up with a rope and thrown in front of the school, and a mother who was a doctor fed the child a small amount of sleeping pills to bring him here.
When it comes to parents who can't handle it, the school sends teachers directly to the home to pick up. A school teacher in charge of logistics "Ma" to pick up students quite experienced, driving to the school, will pass a sign showing the name of the school, "Ma" will be thrown ahead of time to let the students bury their heads in the car to find, distracting their attention.
Ugly Duckling Middle School and Hao Wei original school life is very different. The previous routine every day more than six o'clock to get up, seven thirty on the first class, ten o'clock at night under the evening study, a week of vacation day. He describes himself as having a "dead fish face" as he writes papers from morning to night.
Hao Wei felt he didn't belong here. After calming his emotions, Hao Wei began to write to his father, hoping to send some teaching aids over, "only teaching aids around, will feel less anxious."
Yun Han, a Cantonese girl, does not understand Hao Wei's anxiety. This is her second visit to the Ugly Duckling, and she is often assigned to receive and comfort students who have been "tricked" into coming. She sat on the edge of the playground, squinting in the sun, the sky washed blue, a large white cloud floating low.
Before coming to Ugly Duckling Middle School, Yun Han hadn't been to school for more than a year, and she went to bars to drink when she felt down. Her parents divorced when Yun Han was three, and she lived with her grandparents. When she was 12, she went to the hospital alone and found out she was depressed. After leaving from Ugly Duckling last year, she went back to her school in Guangdong and disappeared into thin air for a few months, there were a lot of rumors about her among her classmates, Yun Han fought back very strongly, "During that time, I did several fights." She said in disbelief. And just like that, Yoon-han came back to Ugly Duckling Middle School.
This is the first private middle school in Yunnan Province for middle school "students who are not adapted to traditional education", by the Yiliang County Education Bureau in charge. The school enrolls students with various problems such as internet addiction, anorexia, suicide and self-harm tendency, early love, etc. It has three grades and about seventy students. From 2011 to now, the ugly duckling middle school a **** enrolled more than 2,000 "problem children", about two thirds of the students from other provinces outside Yunnan.
September 17, ugly duckling middle school students in military training. Xinjing Daily reporter Li Zhao photo
Every summer is the busiest time for Ugly Duckling Middle School, which organizes a month-long summer camp and short-term custodial training that is very popular with parents. The school in addition to children with serious mental illness, other "problem children" as a whole, "50 places will be snapped up as soon as they are released." Yang Liu told the Beijing News.
On campus, it's hard to associate these students with "problem kids", and if you ignore the occasional tattoo and hair coloring, they look no different than any other high school student.
With a tuition fee of nearly 30,000 yuan per semester, Zhan Dainian says most of the students at Ugly Duckling Middle School come from urban "three-high families" (high-education, high-income, high-status). Some of the children were once students at key local high schools, and it's not uncommon for them to have at least one talent. Some of them can arrange music, some piano grade 10, some paintings are great, and some can program ...... the afternoon of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the school gave two or three lessons to prepare time, they can also be decent to organize a Mid-Autumn Festival party.
On September 18, an English class at Ugly Duckling Middle School, where students form study companions in groups of three or four. By Li Zhao, New Beijing News
A Different Kind of School
Before founding Ugly Duckling Middle School, Zhan Dainian spent 14 years as a public school principal in Taogang County, Hunan Province.
At the age of 26, Zhan became the principal of Yanglin Middle School in Taojiang County, which has become a "famous school" in the area. Every school season, a variety of relatives and acquaintances will find to greet the relations of enrollment, Zhan Dainian hate to hide. When the school does not worry about the source of students, naturally, there is a "meritocracy" of choice.
Gradually, Zhan Dainian realized that this is not right, "How can education be eliminated? What is the right of other people's children to take to you to choose the best?" In 2000, Zhan Dainian resigned and left the public school. At that time, coincided with his brother to do business in Yunnan, invited him to Kunming together to run the school, Zhan Dainian did not think much about it agreed.
Around 2000, the peak of the wave of migrant workers into the city, the city's public school resources can not meet the demand for student enrollment, private schools in the city blossomed. Zhan Dainian recalled that in those days, it was very easy to apply for the qualification of private schools, and there were many "shack schools" in the center of Kunming City, a dark private room, a black clay board, a chalk, three children, a stool plus a junior high school diploma teacher, you can run a school.
In Kunming when the school, a student to Zhan Dainian left a deep impression. "A very smart kid with divorced parents, he kicked the student next to him out of class because he was going to sleep." Then the student disappeared from the classroom for two or three months and came back looking even more tired. Zhan Dainian learned that the boy had been sent to a school for "problem children" in Jiangxi province, where he was subject to corporal punishment and imprisonment.
Around 2009, Yang Yongxin "electric shock treatment of Internet addiction" was exposed, but also lifted the various types of Internet addiction treatment, corrective training "problem children" institutions of the tip of the iceberg. Zhan Dainian wanted to set up a different kind of school to accept poor students. However, in the first year, his concept of disagreement with the partners, the other insisted on not on the cultural courses, increase the intensity of military training, Zhan Dainian that this is a means to control the students through the consumption of physical strength, he chose to leave the self-employed.
In 2011, after the approval of the Yiliang County Education Bureau and other departments, the new school in Yiliang County, Gucheng Town, a vacant school building up. Wang Yeju, then vice chairman of the CPPCC in Kunming, named the school "Ugly Duckling", Zhan Dainian liked the name of this child, he said on many occasions, the ugly duckling is a variety of the white swan, "Ugly Duckling's children are going to fly to the blue sky miles."
At the beginning of the enrollment is very difficult, Yang Liu remembers, they went to the neighborhood elevator pasted flyers, in the local TV station ads, with little success. The first student only 8 people, including 6 are friends of the children, did not receive money, while the teacher recruited 14, and then all gone.
Meng Bin entered Ugly Duckling Middle School in 2013, when there were fewer than 30 students. He remembers the school building as a dilapidated rural bungalow, with a hard concrete playground, hard iron gates that were closed, and raised barbed wire that was dusty when the wind blew. In this environment, Zhan Dainian began to boldly carry out his ideal educational experiment.
In Ugly Duckling Middle School, there are only three teachers for each cultural class: an arts teacher, a science teacher, and an English teacher, and the arts teacher and the science teacher have to teach several classes. In the ugly duckling classroom, students sit together in groups of three or four to become "learning companions", designed by the teacher "learning card" open record of the learning process, encouraging students to explore on their own, learning achievement is no longer the evaluation criteria. The students' favorite class is the "interest class", which is the school's own courses, including guitar, archery, etc., and Zhan Dainian sometimes teaches the class himself. In addition, the school insisted that "every festival must pass", the activities of the display wall, posted a variety of water festival, outdoor barbecue left photos.
Zhan Dainian advocate loose "whole person education" concept, and emphasize the obedience of the military training seems to have a natural contradiction, but he still retained the "military training" course, he found that many students just came in the mental state is very depressed. He found that many of the students were depressed when they first came in, and he said, "Running drills will help them regain their normal physique and regular routine." It's just that the training is a little less intense than at other similar schools.
Zhan Dainian wanted to create a relaxed and egalitarian atmosphere, and he recruited teachers who "love to laugh and play". On campus, students call teachers by their first names or nicknames, and the principal's office is located at the entrance to the staircase, making it easy for every student to come to Zhan Dainian.
These are the first time I've ever seen a teacher in the world, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen one.
The ugly duckling middle school classroom wall, pasted with students' "heart".
"Relationships"
The reason why a "problem student" school is designed to be so "loose! "Zhan Dainian said that this is based on a basic conclusion he reached in this decade-spanning educational experiment: "problem children" are rooted in "relationship" problems, and "relationship" is formed in the environment, and the "relationship" is not a problem, but a problem. "is formed in the environment, a more relaxed environment to promote the improvement of the "relationship".
Before the epidemic, the school would invite parents to come to school every year to do parent-child training with their children. It was often a time when Willow captured some of the subtle moments of families.
At the event, Yang Liu used her cell phone to take photos and videos as some parents turned their backs, and others simply left the scene to go sit in their private cars. Yang Liu realized that for many families, it is ultimately considered dishonorable for their children to attend such a school. A student who has graduated a few years ago told the New Beijing News reporter that during his years at Ugly Duckling, his mother in Kunming has always claimed to the public that her child has gone to study abroad.
Li Guihong, the school's only psychology teacher, told the Beijing News reporter that the factors that produce "problem children" include family, school and society, but family factors are the most prominent.
The second return to Ugly Duckling Middle School was a choice made by Yun Han herself, who is one of the few students to have her school registration transferred, and who will stay in Yunnan to take the exams a year from now.
In the corridor of the school's book bar, Yun Han told the Beijing News about her past. Yun Han was born in a patriarchal family, her grandfather is a well-known domestic heritage of a folkloric skill, the combination of parents is not favored by the grandfather, Yun Han is not valued by the grandfather.
After her parents divorced, Yun Han's father hardly ever asked about her, and her mother, who had to work, sent her to her grandparents' home. The grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, drove the nanny away, and the burden of the family's household chores fell on Yun Han alone. The old man got up early, and every day at four or five o'clock, Yun Han had to get up to cook, and then she simply did not go to school.
The first time she was sent to Ugly Duckling, she met her "only good friend", a girl from Guangdong who had lived abroad since she was a child and was sent to Ugly Duckling because she couldn't adapt to the domestic education system after she returned to China. Yun Han's mother studied abroad as a teenager and often took Yun Han abroad, which gave the two girls a lot of **** the same language. The girl's parents also took good care of Yun Han, but after one semester, her best friend was picked up by her parents.
"I want to change my last name to her last name, Chen, so maybe we'll be a family, I really want us to be a family." Yun Han felt that was the first time she had experienced the warmth of a near-family relationship.
Yun Han talked about a boyfriend at school. Talking about her boyfriend, she pulled out a piece of letter paper that had not yet been delivered, with neat handwriting on it, which included the sentence "I hope you won't abandon me like my father abandoned my mother". "I cried when I wrote that." She put away the letter paper and said, "I want to grow up faster, far away from home, and never go back."
In 2014, Zhan Dainian randomly surveyed 100 "problem children," 74 of whom came from divorced families, remarried families, single-parent families, and left-behind families. Zhan Dainian explained that some families are not necessarily divorced parents, but the family atmosphere is a big problem, the father or mother of the family function is missing, "not understood" brought about by the miscommunication, but also often become a dead end of the parent-child relationship.
The day after Hao Wei made the "threatening" phone call, his parents drove over from Hunan and Guangdong respectively. The first time I saw my mother in the book bar, Hao Wei's face instantly sank, Hao Wei's father made a wink, let Hao Wei's mother temporarily avoided, mother and son have been more than a year without any contact.
Hao Wei fourth grade when his parents divorced, he was sentenced to his mother. He told the Beijing News reporter, he learned from a friend that his mother attributed the decline in his grades to play, so let his friends stop playing with him, so Hao Wei and his mother broke up and "black" mother.
In Hao Wei's account, he played ping-pong and was runner-up in the city tournament, and his science scores were very good, and he envisioned that he would be a computer science major at Fudan University in the future.
In the parents' version, however, it's a different story altogether. The mother of Hao Wei said that her son is not as good as he said, ping pong runner-up, full marks in science and so on are all fabricated, he has been immersed in his own imaginary world. From the fourth grade, Hao Wei's grades went downhill, and then addicted to the game, according to the current level, he is afraid that it is difficult to even get into the ordinary high school. She denied Hao Wei's claim that he had strayed from him and his friends, "His hatred for me may be a way for him to escape reality."
On September 19, Zhan Dainian recorded a short video answering parents' questions in the school's studio, which he hopes to use to spread his educational philosophy.
Dilemma
Li Guihong contacted ten years of "problem children", there is a very personal feeling, that "the previous problem children are mostly behavioral deviation, now the problem children The problem children now have more mental illnesses. Even some of the best students of the famous schools, also because of mental illness was sent to the ugly duckling middle school.
In March of this year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology research team prepared the "China National Mental Health Development Report (2019 ~ 2020)" shows that in 2020, China's adolescents, the detection rate of depression is 24.6%, of which 17.2% of mild depression, 7.4% of severe depression, middle school stage of the detection rate of depression is about 30%, the detection rate of severe depression is 7.6% -8.6%. 8.6%.
In a sense, the definition of "problem child" seems to be broader. Regarding the definition of "problem child", Li Zhenxi, director of the New Education Research Institute and former principal of Chengdu Wuhou Experimental Middle School, once asked Zhan Dainian whether "problem child" itself means labeling.
"I've actually thought about this, but really haven't figured out how to avoid 'labeling'. I can't wait until a non-labeling program comes out to run a school, can I? Besides, 'problem kids' already exist, so how much difference does it make to have various statements and definitions?" In the school's official statement to the public, Zhan Dainian simply referred to this group collectively as "students who do not adapt to traditional education".
According to media reports, work-study education is considered the earliest initiative in China to educate, correct, and save "problem children," and the first work-study school was opened in 1955 in Haidian, Beijing.
However, work-study schools have always been controversial, and before the 1990s, most work-study schools enrolled students who had committed minor offenses, and were not enough for reeducation-through-labor or sentencing. Although over the years, some work study schools actively transformed to recruit learning abnormal, psychological abnormal, moral behavior abnormal "problem children", but many parents still hold prejudice against work study schools, not willing to send their children.
According to the China Youth and Adolescent Research Center (CYARC), by the end of 2017, there were only 93 work-study schools in the country, compared with more than 200 schools in 1966. Zhou Long, principal of Chunlei School in Yueyang City, Hunan Province, wrote in his paper, "The pressure and risk of running a specialized school, the small support from all parties, the difficulty of improving the quality of education, and the long cycle of return on running a school have led to some specialized schools struggling to support the eventual difficulty in sustaining themselves and can only stop running schools."
But on the other side, a variety of correctional business organizations are emerging. Internet addiction is a "problem child" in the prominent problem, in 2014, the National Health Commission has made it clear that "China has not yet approved the medical institutions specializing in network addiction treatment", so most of the Internet addiction treatment institutions to As a result, most Internet addiction treatment institutions exist in the market under the names of "counseling centers" and "growth schools", and there is still a gap in the relevant laws or industry regulation. In the past decade, the media has exposed a large number of Internet addiction treatment centers where people are beaten, imprisoned, and abused.
Some students at Ugly Duckling Middle School have been to such institutions before. A boy from Kunming told the Beijing News reporter, he was previously in a training institution recruiting objects spanning from primary school students to adults, the oldest "student" in his 30s, was sent in by his parents and wife to quit Internet addiction. The school offers four courses in Chinese studies, law, musical instruments and calligraphy, with classes once a week on average, and the rest of the time arranged for intense physical military training. If you make a mistake, you will be locked up in a small black room, slap your mouth, use a high-pressure water gun to nourish water and run laps in the playground to dry the wet clothes on the body. Such institutions charge more than 8,000 yuan per month, 11 months for a period of one year, plus miscellaneous expenses close to 100,000 yuan.
Ugly Duckling Middle School faces the same skepticism. Many parents send their children, will be a little difficult to ask the question "hit the students?" Zhan Dainian replied, "My philosophy is never to hit a child, but it's really hard for me to make sure that it doesn't happen at all in the school."
At the beginning of the school, Zhan Dainian recruited several life teachers from the police academy, responsible for student training and life. The young people who had just graduated were only in their early twenties and had a lot of fire in them. A 90-year-old life teacher had punished students for smoking by whipping them with a belt. Many ugly duckling children claim that corporal punishment is now occasional but rare.
In a school like this, cultural teachers are the hardest to recruit and the hardest to keep, and Yang Liu has counted half a dozen teachers who resigned in the early years because they were angry and cried by students. At present, the school's most senior teacher in the school less than five years.
Teachers can also feel the anxiety of parents, some parents send their children to the child has been completely autistic and do not speak, parents just want to return to normal, when the situation improves, the parents' first reaction is still "learning".
In September of this year, one of Zhan Dainian's fans was inspired to apply for the job of ugly duckling, she is a graduate student from a major university in Jiangsu Province, specially quit her job to come to Kunming, only two weeks to do it, "can't stand it", resigned and left.
On the afternoon of September 21, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the ugly duckling middle school students in the evening Mid-Autumn Festival party rehearsal. Xinjing Daily reporter Li Zhao photo
Role
Ugly Duckling's graduates, Meng Bin is considered to be one of the well-developed. This year, he just graduated from a 211 university in Nanjing.
Meng Bin thinks it's hard to say what he's changed by the Ugly Duckling. In high school, he still smokes, fights, and has some bad habits, but his mood is generally much calmer. He recalled that when he first joined the Ugly Duckling, he was often "so angry that he wanted to kill someone" and "felt that he was not understood".
Once, Zhan Dainian ran into a red-faced Meng Bin on campus with his fists clenched, and the boy gritted his teeth, pointing at the director of moral education, and said, "I want to beat him to death." Zhan Dainian calmly asked him, "Then why don't you go beat him up?" Meng Bin said, "I can't beat him!" Zhan Dainian put his arm around Meng Bin's shoulders and sat down at the edge of the playground, "Then give up, after a while." Afterwards, Meng Bin calmed down and apologized to Zhan Dainian.
Zhan Dainian three WeChat account has tens of thousands of friends, replying to dozens of parent messages every day. Zhan Dainian said, many parents to consult the child to send, is looking for a "medicine", which makes him difficult. In his view, the ugly duckling middle school is not an instant remedy, can not be like a repair shop, "improve" a child.
Zhan Dainian feels that, more often than not, Ugly Duckling Middle School plays the role of protector and companion who embraces Meng Bin and sits down, and that fierce rebellion is like a cold in adolescence, which will be cured one day, and that if you can't do anything about it, "it's good just to protect the life."
Reconciliation is easier to achieve in a calm environment. Hao Wei's parents spent the Mid-Autumn Festival with their son at school. At the school's Mid-Autumn Festival party, Hao Wei was the host, and Hao Wei's father was at the side of the stage filming with his cell phone. After the party, Hao Wei took his first step out and awkwardly struck up a conversation with his mother.
"We were in order to wrestle a good life, now it seems just earn money, material changes, spiritual loss is too much." After discovering Hao Wei's psychological crisis, his father realized his own problems, and last year he quit his job in the hope of making some amends and changes.
But in reality, not all the "ugly duckling" can be successfully turned into a "white swan". Last year, a local student in Kunming was sent to the ugly duckling high school because of alcoholism, left the school in July for some reason, and went out half a year later, unfortunately died in an accident. A few years ago, a boy, divorced parents as a ball "kicked around", in the ugly duckling middle school during the school year, leave to go home and never came back, and later he was convicted of robbery, kidnapping, rape.
For more than 2,000 children from the Ugly Duckling, Zhan Dainian lacked an accurate and systematic tracking, he said bluntly that his limited energy, tend to use emotional standards, "If a child can correctly perceive their own face to face the life to measure the success rate, the success rate of the Ugly Duckling is 100%".
With the popularity of the Ugly Duckling Middle School, some controversial voices have emerged. A semester tuition of nearly 30,000 yuan, whether the more ordinary or poor families "problem children" blocked outside?
"In fact, I did not want to set up a school of general education.
For Zhan Dainian, the meaning of the existence of the ugly duckling middle school is a research base, the number of people to control the existing scale is more convenient to do research. He intends to make a curriculum platform to disseminate his educational philosophy in the form of video, "If you can not solve the fundamental problem, the country opened 100 ugly duckling will not help." Zhan Dainian said, "My purpose of running this school is to eliminate it."
On September 24, a 14-year-old boy showed a reporter a tattoo on his hand, saying, "I'm getting a smiley face on my hand to remind myself to be happy." The New Beijing News reporter Li Zhao photo
In July, the ugly duckling middle school moved from the ancient town to Ruixing village. Drive along a winding mountain road through farmland, fruit trees and clusters of exuberant trilliums before reaching the new campus on a hill.
The window sills of the school building were sealed up, replacing the cold barbed wire with eco-friendly logs. The school's fence was given to the students to graffiti freely, and the cafeteria was designed as a book bar where you can read anytime. Next, Zhan Dainian also plans to introduce a set of digital teaching equipment, "so that the walls of the classroom can be written and drawn, and you can network at any time to share educational resources and video meetings with parents." Recently, Zhan Dainian has also taken a fancy to the site outside the school, which is at an altitude of 1,950 meters, and he is excited to move the classroom outdoors, "to learn language, physics, chemistry and biology from a fruit tree."
"Get the kids a classroom in the sky - in the mountains, by the river, in the forest, in the wild cave ...... where the blue sky and colorful clouds fall." Zhan Dainian said.
(Yun Han, Hao Wei and Meng Bin are all pseudonyms)
Xinjing Daily reporter Li Zhao
Proofread by Wu Xingfa