Today, can we still believe that "knowledge changes destiny"?
Since 2013, Xie Ailei, a scholar of educational sociology and a professor at the School of Educational Sciences of South China Normal University, has conducted follow-up research on nearly 2,000 students in four elite universities in China, conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 students, and published "Being a Question Maker in a Small Town: The book "Origin, Mentality and Ivory Tower" objectively presents the physical and mental adaptation of rural and small-town students in elite universities, as well as their academic performance, social adaptation, and employment prospects.
In the author's opinion, "transforming oneself" is a grand and painful life project. The social mobility of young people in rural areas and small towns not only means the geometric movement of life coordinates, but also means the difficult adjustment of survival mentality. Integrating into a new cultural world is a "re-education of forgetting the past self."
Mengxin enters the new world of culture
Xie Ailei first met Wu Yue in the study room of a university in Shanghai.
"She was a little reserved and said that she was not good at talking. But as the conversation got better, she became very happy again and felt very proud that she could enter a first-class university in the country. I tentatively asked her if she would have some financial difficulties. Nervous,' she replied, 'No! ' Because in addition to the various scholarships and bursaries provided by the university, there is also other money. She was born in the western part of Guangdong Province, which has a strong sense of clan. When she was admitted to a prestigious school, her hometown gave her a lot of money. 10,000 yuan reward. This money allows her to go out and spend money without having to work.”
Like many studies of the same period, before starting the interview, Xie Ailei would assume that rural and small-town students like Wu Yue were economically disadvantaged. will face greater pressure. But after completing interviews with more than a hundred students with similar backgrounds, he discovered that their stories were different from what he expected. "For example, when talking to me, Wu Yue said that his main problem is not financial, but social."
The most recent conversation between them was after Wu Yue graduated. At that time, she had been working for a technology company in Shenzhen for more than a year. Later, she moved to another company because she didn't like the company's culture. This time, Wu Yue was more talkative, but still told Xie Ailei that he was "not good at socializing". He always had indescribable barriers when getting along with colleagues or at gatherings, and it was a bit difficult to integrate. He also asked him, "Do the subjects of the study all have this "
Wu Yue is one of the many young people from rural and small towns whom Xie Ailei met during his long follow-up research.
Since 2013, Xie Ailei has selected nearly 2,000 students to conduct follow-up research at four "double first-class" universities in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Nanjing. Nearly 28% of these students come from rural and small towns. They entered elite universities with excellent results, and most of them gradually adapted to university study and life, eventually finding a place in the city and achieving their own inspirational stories.
However, as Wu Yue’s story vaguely reveals, inspirational stories are not the full picture of these young people from rural and small towns growing up in elite universities. When they first enter college, most of them have difficulties in adapting due to their family background and deficiencies in social skills, and they also suffer varying degrees of emotional suffering.
They are not as often mentioned in many news reports - all the challenges they encounter are difficult economic conditions and uneven academic studies. Although there is often financial insecurity, most of them tend to have relatively stable financial resources. In addition, despite facing many academic and life challenges, these rural and small-town youths are still generally able to maintain academic standards comparable to those of urban students.
What often makes them feel a little overwhelmed is the "social adaptation" in college. During the several years of interviews with Xie Ailei, Zhou Shen repeatedly mentioned that his social skills were average, that he "could not work well with others" and that his circle of friends was "small" and that he felt that his college life was "incomplete."
Among the nearly 2,000 students surveyed, Zhou Shen is considered a typical case in the study.For these students from rural areas and small towns, the proportion of participating in various types of student organizations in their freshman year and the proportion of becoming student cadres in their sophomore year are significantly lower than those of urban students; in terms of participation in semi-official student organizations such as student unions, it is lower than that of urban students. students 14 percentile. All this means that the universities they and urban students experience may always be worlds in two senses.
Transforming oneself is a grand project
Cultural and social resources are important factors affecting personal social mobility, and they play an especially huge role when climbing the social ladder.
As Lauren A. Rivera points out in her book "Beginnings: Unequal Selection and the Self-Replication of Elites," which won the American Sociological Association's Max Weber Award, when screening candidates and making decisions about recruiting new employees At that time, top investment banks, management consulting firms, and law firms did not have high academic requirements. Their recruiters (the gatekeepers of the elite) place more emphasis on cultural symbols—diplomas from top schools, participation in elite extracurricular activities, and their own preferred interaction styles.
In China's elite universities, the main form of extracurricular activities is various student organizations and clubs. However, in Xie Ailei’s interviews, when students from rural areas and small towns talked about participating in semi-official student organizations such as student unions, youth league committees, or community federations, they often mentioned that they did not sign up easily because they felt “not competent.” related work”, or “not as confident as students in cities”.
"Transforming yourself" is obviously a more comprehensive and grand life project.
"In 2014, Wu Chao, who was studying at a prestigious school in Wuhan, told me in an interview that besides academic studies, leisure, entertainment, communication, and being generous and decent in urban scenes are all indispensable parts of this project. He My classmate Li Zhe also told me that the ritual that made her feel like she started to become a member of this strange world in the city was when she tried to go to the park, travel, and appreciate this new world, which was not the old world she once lived in. 'The norm.' According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, these rituals announce the entry into a new world in the cultural sense. "
The problem is that not everyone can be as smooth as Wu Chao and Li Zhe. integrate into the new environment. Because he didn’t know how to manage his extracurricular life in college, Li Yi, a student from a university in Shanghai, said in an interview that he often felt that his college life was lacking. “I had no choice but to settle down and be a top student!”
Lu Yao in " The story of struggle outlined in "Ordinary World" has fascinated people for generations. In the rare tide of social change and mobility that began in the late 1970s, the protagonist Sun Shaoping lived a poor material life, but he tried his best to draw spiritual nourishment. Today, the story of social mobility is a different story.
"Those who are in the process of social mobility and seek to leave their original social group may eventually find it difficult to embrace the old group and say goodbye to it. In order to resolve their inner conflicts, they have to deliberately psychologically distance themselves from the group. If elite groups keep their distance, the final result may be that they can neither embrace the past nor the present. "
" The social mobility experience of rural and small town youth tells us that we should re-examine the individual's social mobility experience - it. It also contains richer subjective non-economic emotional dimensions. Describing the story of social mobility only from the economic dimension may narrow the meaning of social mobility itself and only focus on rural and small-town youth who have become the proud students of elite universities. It is not enough to look at the geometric movement of life coordinates, but also to pay attention to their psychology and emotions in the journey of social mobility," said Xie Ailei.
Modern Express/Modern+ Reporter Chen Xi
(Photo provided by the publishing house)
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