Haruki Murakami: School education should not stifle children's imagination

Haruki Murakami, a well-known Japanese writer, said that when he was in high school, he loved reading original English novels. Although it did not help him much in his English test scores at the time, the extensive reading broadened his horizons and laid the foundation for his status as a global best-selling writer today.

Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer who is known as one of the most popular novelists in the world today, first published his autobiographical essay "As a Professional Novelist" to reveal to readers how he accidentally entered the writing life 37 years ago, and how he worked hard like an ascetic monk every day. In addition to describing the appearance of the literary world and the creative process of novelists, he also specially wrote an article to sort out his thoughts on school education. Surprisingly, the crux of the problem that made Haruki Murakami, a high school student, unable to agree with school education 50 years ago is still a problem to be solved in the education field today.

Unsystematic, mechanically memorized specialized knowledge will naturally disappear over time and be sucked into a dark place like a knowledge cemetery. Because most of such things do not have the necessity to remain in memory forever.

In Haruki Murakami's eyes, truly important knowledge should be timeless, but this kind of knowledge is not effective immediately and often takes a long time to play its true value. He gave an apt example in his book, just like using a large teapot to boil water, it takes a long time, but once it boils, the water is not easy to cool down. However, in an education system that emphasizes efficiency, knowledge that cannot be immediately reflected in test scores is often ignored.

Haruki Murakami, a writer and translator of English novels, had average English grades in high school, but out of his interest and curiosity in original novels, he often went to the second-hand book stalls near his home to pick out second-hand original novels sold by local foreigners, and read the original mystery novels and science fiction novels with gorgeous covers one by one. However, his English grades did not improve at all.

Haruki Murakami pondered the reason and found that the purpose of high school English class was not to cultivate practical English skills in daily life, but to focus on how to get high scores in the university entrance examination. Reading original books and talking to foreigners in English were just trivial matters in the eyes of teachers. Whether you can memorize more difficult words and memorize the grammar of the assumed past perfect tense were the important tasks of English class. Therefore, Haruki Murakami found that among the students with better English grades in the class, no one had the ability to read an original novel from beginning to end.

Haruki Murakami is not interested in the teaching methods that use specific numbers such as scores and rankings to judge students' quality and emphasize mechanical memorization. "But because I have some good friends in class and a few pretty cute girls, I still go to school every day.

For him, there are so many books in the world that are more exciting and profound than textbooks. When reading, the content of the book seems to grow into his own flesh and blood. He mentioned in the book that extensive reading allowed him to experience all kinds of emotions in the book in person and see all kinds of incredible scenery in his youth, giving him a complex perspective and a more three-dimensional world in his eyes. Reading is like a large school customized by him, where there are no troublesome rules, judgments kidnapped by numbers, no fierce ranking competition, and of course no bullying.

As a young boy, Haruki Murakami found his own world in reading. As for students who cannot adapt to the school environment, have no interest in studying, and are overwhelmed by institutional pressure, Murakami also believes that everyone needs such a customized recovery space, which is a temporary refuge. They can also find what suits them here and develop their possibilities at their own pace, so as to overcome the institutional walls caused by environmental pressure.

The school education that Murakami expects is not to let children have rich imagination, but not to stifle the imagination of children with imagination. When each child's different personality has a place to stay, schools and society will be more fulfilling and free.