Cold family out of noble son"
essentially a sad survivor bias
01
Elite family incubation elite
The results of the college entrance examination came out, the top students of the college entrance examination across the country surfaced one after another, however, the most brushed page is the top student of the arts Xiong Xuanang in Beijing this straight Boy said some words --
"Nowadays, the top students are those who are good and powerful at home."
A sentence of capitalized truth, instantly poking the hearts of countless people in the country!
What is more valuable is that this child makes people completely unable to produce jealousy, at the same time he is so good, can realize their own advantages at the same time, but also have sympathy for the bottom of the people.
It is certain that this child will be very good, I have always been against the rule of the elite, but this child shows the best of what a future elite looks like.
So just how great is Xiong Xuanang's family? Xiong Xuanang comes from a middle-class family, which is no longer comparable to a well-off or petty family.
What is middle class?
It's hard to define what a middle-class person earns in China, but in most people's agreed-upon standards, it's summarized as having a decent house, a car that can't be financed, and 1/3 of your monthly income that you can spend as you please.
According to Credit Suisse's International Middle Class Standard, a family must have a minimum of about 9 million dollars in reserves to ensure the quality of life for the whole family if they are to lead a decent middle-class life in places like Beijing and Shanghai.
This is the middle class, which is different from the well-off and petit bourgeoisie who are promoted from many ordinary families.
They are also able to watch movies on weekends, go shopping, enter fine restaurants, and more importantly, to have a walk and talk to feed pigeons on the streets of Paris, and to pay for their children's summer camps in the U.S. without blinking an eye.
In addition to having a strong and difficult to be destroyed family economic foundation, fixed assets, middle-class families also need to have both parents have a good educational background, have a high professional value or social status, the pursuit of a healthy quality of life, have good manners and other characteristics.
These characteristics distinguish the middle class from the "rich".
In China, the middle class tends to be top executives of publicly traded companies, important technological research engineers, highly professional people with cutting-edge skills, or people at the cutting edge of certain specific industries, such as Xiong Xuanang's parents, who are diplomats.
In fact, the middle class in any country, whether it is the United States or Germany, is a combination of knowledge-skilled elite families, representing the backbone of a country's development and stability.
And these families do, as Xiong Xuan'ang said, continue to incubate "scholars" and "elites". It can be said that children from middle-class, elite families are basically elites.
From this proposition, we can also draw a conclusion:
A family plays a decisive role in a person's success, and this is no longer the era of the "noble son from a humble family".
Saying this, many people may be a little heartbreaking, but from ancient times to the present day, the reason why the "noble son from a humble family" has been rumored is because of the essence of the noble, because it is really scarce and difficult, in essence, it is a kind of tragic survivor bias.
Why?
A collaboration between James Lee, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Liang Chen, an associate professor at the School of History at Nanjing University, and their team examined the proposition:
What families did China's 150-year-long elite actually come from?
In the end, they built a powerful database of elites and concluded that:
More than 70 percent of the educated elite from 1865-1905, before the Qing government abolished the imperial examinations, were the sons of officials and came from the "gentleman" class across the country;
1906-1905, before the Qing government abolished the imperial examinations, more than 70 percent of the educated elite were sons of officials and came from the "gentleman" class across the country;
1906-1952, more than 60% of the educational elite were the children of local professionals and businessmen, especially in the Jiangnan and Pearl River Delta regions;
1953-1993, about more than 40% of the educational elite were the children of proletarian workers from all over the country;
1994 -2014, more than 50 percent of the educational elite came from wealthy families in each region, with specific key high schools.
From these four time periods, there are three stages in which the elites were clearly from "proletarian" families, and some might point to the third of these as evidence to the contrary.
In fact, between 1953 and 1993, it was mainly the breakup of the monopoly on education for the children of the upper strata of class society, the spread of basic education, and the establishment of the unified college entrance examination system that made it possible for the large number of proletariat and workers' children, who were originally from scratch, to make up a large proportion of the elite.
When everything stabilized, the class of "assets" in education came to the fore again. High-end education, quality education resources are still in the hands of upper-middle class families, so these families are destined to incubate the elite.
02
Why the humble family can't produce the elite
Xiong Xuan'ang's words are interesting.
He said that he was located in Beijing in the first tier of the "big country" of educational resources, has a unique educational resources, has a lot of "shortcuts" to education, and these are not available to children in rural areas.
Please note that the word "shortcut", in other words, the same high school entrance examination threshold, in fact, there are still to this end of the learning "shortcut", rather than a dead-end textbooks, problem sea tactics.
It's no coincidence that Sun Jingyan, who was the top scholar in Beijing's literature in 2013, was disgusted by people asking her how many questions she had "done" in an interview, and took a language test that scored 148 points, nearly a perfect score, as a person who has come to the conclusion that:
Modern college entrance exams, especially in the language subject, are not the only way to get to the top of the examination. The sea of questions can be managed, more is the accumulation of the daily education received.
In the interview, Sun Jingyan also shared a lot of her parents on her reading education, in order to buy a lot of books, to bring her a good sense of language, and finally or that, her success is also "water to the drain".
In other words, these elite students receive comprehensive education from an early age, and have a master teacher who can teach them how to master similar topics by doing only "one question", which is a "shortcut".
They have a lot of reading to do, as their own literacy deposits, which some ordinary families or rural students can not do.
We once heard in educational circles that students from big cities who were also admitted to Peking University could speak eloquently about foreign writers and masterpieces, while students from small cities and rural areas could not answer half of the questions, except that they could recite the passages in the textbooks backwards and forwards.
When I was in high school, the school invited the top students from three cities to give lectures to the students, one from Hubei, one from Nanyang, Henan and one from Guangzhou.
Wearing a thick beer bottle, the top student from Henan read word for word from a script he had prepared about how he brushed up on his studies, stayed up all night studying, and lived up to his parents' expectations, and judging by his life at Peking University, he didn't have an easy time of it.
Guangzhou's top student is a beautiful girl, almost no preparation for the college entrance examination, but how "lucky" she was, unintentionally became the top student.
When it comes to the college entrance exams, her point of view is not to care too much about it and not to be too stressed out in general. She shares more about how she participated in internships in her high school and traveled to other places, and her college life is still very much in the limelight.
Girls like that were a total shock to us at the time!
When it came to the question period, the Henan schoolteacher was unanswered and everyone was asking the girl questions. I felt the class gap for the first time when I looked at the spectacled guy sitting there alone, even though I didn't know the concept of "small-county schoolmaster" at that time.
The difference between a child from an ordinary family and a child from a middle-class family is so great that even if they are also top students in the college entrance exams, one of them is mute, dull, and not good at expressing himself, while the other one can control the emotions of the audience so well, and win the favor of the crowd, and I left the venue when many people flocked to the girl to ask questions and get autographs.
And what is even sadder is that this Henan schoolboy is the last remaining light of the gaokao era.
In the later gaokao scholars, children from ordinary families will no longer be scholars, and won't even have a chance to sit on the stage and feel the malice of us ignorant teenagers.
This is the difference in education hatched between elite families and ordinary families.
If you think that's all there is to it, and you want to refute it by saying that "knowing how to read doesn't necessarily mean you'll be good at it" or that "Peking University students are selling pork", you'd be very wrong.
Because the elite families are destined to hatch the elite, while the children of the humble families often fail to hatch the noble sons.
A family's economic hard power, the parents' soft power laid a child's ability to learn, the high level of vision, execution, boldness and courage.
When I was in college, I noticed this phenomenon:
Students from poorer families only have part-time jobs in their eyes, and they can even give up their studies because of tutoring for up to 50 dollars an hour.
While children from well-off families can spend more than 300 dollars on a book imported from abroad and travel around the world, they can focus more on their studies.
Of course, education is a small vision, while entrepreneurship is a big one.
In an unofficial statistic, it was found that the sons and daughters of humble families are more willing to accept a stable job and live on a monthly salary after graduation, while those from elite families are more daring and even take out loans to start their own businesses.
These are all determined by the vision, boldness and vigor brought to them by their families of origin.
In addition to this, their strong families of origin will also bring these educated elites into their own powerful circle of relationships, providing them with all the favorable resources, which is again a world of difference from the children of the humble family.
Overall, the elite family incubator is not only a "top student", but also confident as Xiong Xuan Ang, the comprehensive quality and ability of the elite are high.
03
The soft power of the middle class family can not be ignored
So simply rich family can be cultivated excellent children?
Nor is it. Middle-class families have fixed and liquid assets, but also personal abilities and values, social status, educational qualities and their taste in life.
So, they incubate a comprehensive elite, which is determined by their personal soft power.
And that's why the boomers rarely raise good kids.
Money is certainly an important difference, but family soft power is the essential reason.
Some of the soft strengths that a chilly rising family needs to give their children can be achieved without money.
Such as reading books, go to the museum, from a young age so that the child can learn from the experience, to develop their soft power, so that in the future in the development of the time can have insight, have the ability to think independently.
And these are far more important than parents who only know how to earn money and can only provide material conditions for their children, because those material conditions are less soft power to do the skeleton, in the end it is likely to go to the other extreme.
My side has a monthly income of more than 20,000 couples, working in the bidding department, do the bidding project often have to work overtime until two or three o'clock at night. Their child is 6 years old, in kindergarten class, very good, every day after class will be very obedient to complete the tracing homework.
The only regret is that the child is picked up and dropped off by his 72-year-old grandfather.
The grandfather, because of his own health reasons, took the child after school in his second son's love store, by the child's "brother-in-law" to take care of. So, the "uneducated" child did his homework all day in the love store.
Then the child became a typical bad boy, in the school did not want to study, and mixed in the social youth, his parents are also a good middle class, but did not let the child from childhood in the quality of education in the attention of a number of, and then the good conditions can not achieve good results.
So even if the family is well off, it is important to cultivate the child's soft power.
Nowadays, few people in China talk about the family style, but in fact, in ancient times, the famous family as well as many aristocratic families in the West, are very concerned about the family style, and they educate every child from childhood to the family style, so the family business can survive.
On the other hand, the criticism of the domestic rich but not three generations, but also because a lot of rich families do not pay attention to the cultivation of the soft power of the family style, so even if the strong foundation, and ultimately collapsed.
04
Hard power can't keep up, relying on education is useless
The wealth classification of this society, the solidification of the class of educational resources is a fact. Those who are unwilling to recognize it are merely covering their ears.
Rejection, denial, and non-acceptance are not the same as non-existence. Recognizing the facts, on the contrary, is more meaningful and valuable to the survival and development of individuals and children.
Since the middle class incubates the elite, shouldn't we pursue the middle class path? How far is the path of the middle class? The answer is far.
Most of the middle class was brought up by the previous generation of middle class, and as long as there are no surprises, they will eventually bring up the next generation of middle class.
This is a family's hard power, educational qualities of the day-to-day precipitation and transmission from generation to generation.
We, as a class of people who have been "lifted out of poverty", "running for affluence" and "petty cash", do not need to blindly pursue the middle class. Because China every day, every year there are many families died in the pursuit of middle class road. When you can't get the hard power together, you have to know how to be soft.
There was once a family that I knew:
The couple's monthly income was around 15,000 yuan, and the family had a property that did not require a mortgage, which was not quite middle class, but belonged to a family that was still doing well.
Later, the couple because around the friends are sending their children to study abroad, feel face to face, a hot brain, also hard to take the house to the loan, for his son to apply for high-priced schools abroad.
The child returned home three years later, and the family is still left with more than half a million dollars in unpaid arrears. And interestingly, the couple's child didn't learn much overseas, failing hard work and being brushed off in three or two rounds of interviews at many well-known companies.
The couple complained that their children did not study well abroad, but the children complained that they were busy as dogs doing part-time jobs abroad every day, which is heartbreaking to think about. In the end, the three-person family spent a long time scrimping and saving to pay off their arrears, and delayed their son's marriage as a result.
Life is full of examples like this.
As a lower-middle-class person, it is more important to recognize reality than to compare ourselves, especially in the area of education.
It's nice to be able to do what it takes to take your kids abroad to see exhibitions, but if you can't, there's actually very little point in simply copying the lifestyles of the middle class, which are leaps and bounds ahead of their own abilities.
Lacking a foundation and accumulation, such leapfrogging attempts can hardly achieve the same results as the middle class.
Just like the same to go to a famous school, if the child itself is too lack of basic quality education, can not keep up with the pace of others is common, and even will only develop an inferiority complex.
This is why society in general has a poor view of Phoenix men and women, and the odds are that very few of them will be able to excel in the matter of class transition.
Of course you're going to beat me over the head with the fact that there are quite a few fine examples, I'll certainly concede that, but they're few and far between.
It's like a very popular post on Tianya, "I struggled for 18 years to sit down and have coffee with you". It's the truth about how much effort it takes for a humble child to get to where the middle class kids started.
Just saying that these families need to recognize reality. Being able to provide the best for your child under the given conditions is already the best a parent can give their child, and that's something that parents, and especially children, should recognize.
On the other hand, if parents are willing to give their lives, they should not have the mentality of trying to help their children grow.
Because the results you want can't be achieved simply by selling your house at once, there's no point in pressuring your child with the idea that you're bound to reap the rewards.
If you look at the historical data, the situation is even more saddening:
The proportion of the total population admitted to the Southern Song Dynasty was 0.000647%, in the Ming Dynasty the figure was, 0.000055%, and in the Qing Dynasty it was even lower, 0.000031, and with such a low proportion of admissions it was hard to find a ticket for many families.
But at the same time, those families of the imperial examinations are talented and happy, and how much influence the family has is self-evident.
Compared to the era of the imperial examinations, we are actually in an era where class is the easiest way to rise.
The solidification of class is one fact, the easiest way for class to rise is another, and that's why I call this era a great era.
It may be the last era where you can change your destiny by personal struggle.
So what's the best option?
Not to educate your children, but to educate yourself.
If you don't have the desire and sustained action to rise up the ranks yourself, how can you hope that one child will turn a grass chicken into a phoenix, and one generation will change your family's destiny?
Instead of hoping for a child to become a dragon, you should become a dragon yourself.
WeChat public number juanzi mother storytelling