Learning is a process that deals with mental and physical ability. Every creations in this world spend most important part of their life to learn how to survive with the help of the nature, how to be faster, how to become more powerful, strong and perfect, how to lead. For animals the process is just to follow their parents or their animality. But for human learning is more than just to follow others. Because for human there is always a scope to add their creativity and thoughts with what they have learned. To realize the creativity and make better function of it their thoughts need to be organized. To dispose thoughts people need to be educated and here ability of copying plays the very first role of education. After that they learn to put their experience and creativity into their thoughts to create something outstanding. Without copying or recording it is not possible for anyone to learn and create anything in his life.
A Cheng is a revolutionary writer. He knows the value of being educated. In his story King Of The Children he creates a big black hole to the readers regarding his opinion. For literature it is very useful to keep good imaginations and knowledge of reality in parallel. Because a good literature cannot be created without being imaginative. And all the materials for the literature cannot be found from real life all the time. So literature has to be very close to the reality and very artful to catch and hold the readers. During the cultural revolution in China a lot of symbolic signs were being used to express the ideas of revolution. Such as huge characters expressed the rage inside of minds and color of the sun was red that was the symbol of inside courage and nobility. To realize these symbolic ideas people need to be very idealistic and also they have to have the feelings of these expressions. In other words they have to have good imagination power and very informative that is close to the reality. In the movie we see that the director picks out a lot of symbolic figures to make the feelings real. Such as the “I” is playing with a shirt’s sleeves, trying to move a useless machine with his skinny body, we can assume that he is doing heard work for nothing because he is so unable to make any changes. At the end we see a lot of wooded sculpture on the top of the mountain, that could be the symbol of upcoming revolutionary world. Laidi’s dirty provocative words such as she says:
Let me tell you: you can teach for a hundred years, I still know what you keep between your legs! Huh! Just a few days and he takes himself for a scholar.(P:182)
these are the examples of how the writer and the director put their imaginations and sense of reality together to create and redirect the article. It is not possible to absorb the hidden messages without thinking or being creative and imaginative. When a person learns to demonstrate his ideas all the copying and recording become only good sources of knowledge. Because creativity express what he has learned not from where he has learned.
In the story it is clear that the writer does not support the idea of copying. He says Suddenly I stopped in mid-stride, took the dictionary out of my bag, opened it and wrote carefully: “To Wang Fu, from Laidi.” I looked at it, then added my name next to hers. Where in the movie King Of The Children the director leaves the message for Wang Fu is Never copy, not even from dictionary. Even though they both has taken very strong stand against copying but there is still a slight silent gap between their thoughts. For the writer somewhere copying is not just some blindly followed things or rules. For human copying can be a way of learning if it becomes a function of brain. Because brain is the most powerful weapon for human, it crates the ability to think. With that power a person discovers his own creativity and learns how to connect his own thoughts, ideas and imaginations together. When copying interacts with these abilities then copying becomes just a stairs to enter into the world of creation, it becomes just a backup of his knowledge and a strength of his creativity.
In the story and the movie we see that the “I” is a positive source of spirit. He holds a very compassionate character and voice. He is very sweet and at the same time little helpless. He thinks to make a change but he knows the darkest part of the society is very strong to fight back. He said not to copy everything blindly, he wants his student to think and to be confident about themselves. But on the other hand he is the character who has to follow the rules of the society at the end. He mentions a cow story to his student. He says :
Cows have a craving for salty things and urine is salty, so they used to jostle each other to get my urine. Then they’d be very happy. Sometimes I even contained myself, saving my urine for the cows when we got up the mountain, that way not a drop was wasted. When you feed cattle with your own urine you’ll find they will always obey you loyally, they’ll treat you like a parent. (P:170-171)
by this comment we can clearly say that the teacher as in the “I” compares himself as the cattle and the government as the master of him. And all he is trying to say that even he knows the government treats him with the nastiest way but for him government is his parent. He has no power to fight them back but to obey. In other words we can say even he does not like the idea of copying and following but he reflects as a silent follower of the society and the government rules.
In both story and movie we see that the “I” encourages his students to record things instead of copying. He thinks recording will make them more confident about their knowledge and their ability of creativity. But recording is not any personal creation, it is an experience that a person gets from his everyday life. And if someone records things without using his thoughts, without learning from it, then what makes recording so distinct from copying? It won’t be any help to anyone. Without using creative thoughts it is just a repetitive formal written copy of real experience. The fundamental of learning is to recognize the ability to create something new and unique. It can be short, it can be funny but it has to be individual. He says:
I know he did not run, nor did he fly, and he didn’t get someone to carry him, but he walked. This way, he’ll gradually be able to write a bit more and be a bit clearer. It’s much better than copying. (P: 196)
here we can see that the student uses his thought of walking, but what if he wouldn’t mentioned the word? Would it be his own creation? It is much clear that without using the creativity everything become just a scanned copy. Recording also has the same value as copying if it doesn’t interact with thoughtful mind or creativity. And that is not the percept of learning. The only difference between recording and copying is, recording is a collection of real life experience. Without interfering of intellectuality they both become same unproductive elements of acquisition, and they both destroy the goal and the principles of learning.
In both story and movie Laidi is a symbol of life. She has a lot of life force and courage inside of her that is complete opposite of the teacher. Her physical attitudes and expressions are very embarrassing to others. She talks in a dirty way, she uses a lot of seductive words while she talks. She does not care what other people think or say about her expressions or about her attitudes. She just love to be the way she is. We can assume that she has moderate knowledge over words and education considering her speech. She loves to think herself as a very intelligent woman and she has the ability to teach in school even she is not so sure about being a teacher. In both we see she mentions that she writes songs. And she wants to be a singing teacher where the “I” teaches. She is the owner of the dictionary, but she never used her dictionary to find out appropriate words for her songs. So literally her songs belong in the land of recording. Even if her songs are the property of recoding but she might get her writing materials from the central radio. She says:
Let me tell you, Brownie, even though there’s a lot of interference on Central Radio, I still listen to it every day. If Cultural Radio gives you first sentence I can give you the second.(P:187)
for Laidi the radio could be the source of her knowledge, she uses radio to build up her creation. Once again we can say source could be anything but the creation needs to stay individual.
In both stories we see that Laidi owns the book but she does not have enough confident about her writing and she asks for help to the “I”. She wants him write the lyrics where she can compose the songs. Her songs is more likely an individual thought than communal or recording. She creates songs from her thoughts and her thoughts are unorganized and also inconsistent to understand. That is why she wanted to take help form the “I” to give her songs more power and strength. Her song becomes reality when the students sing it. She likes the idea of being teacher but she never judges herself carefully. She thinks she can teach because she has the ability to create melody. She might have the good imagination but imagination cannot always deal with reality to process or to develop thoughts. Imagination supplies ideas for creativity and to organized the ideas people need to be very passionate to their creation. In Laidi we do not see that passion to her creation. Instead of being passionate she is fascinating to her creativity. This is why her songs are not very persuasive.
At the end of the discussion we can say that learning without copying is not possible. A kid cannot learn to talk or walk without copying from others, a student cannot learn words without copying characters. When learning cannot be recalled then that learning becomes useless. The main intrinsic of learning is to recognize the ability of creativity. And to create something people need to organize their ideas, thoughts and imaginations. To get this organizing power people need to practice. And for practice there is nothing equivalent as literature. Because literature is the mixture of both imagination and reality. It creates chances to put reality and imagination power together to express the creativity exclusively. Copying and recording become blessing when they turn the power of creativity on.
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