The family education differences between China and American
Name: Wangchao Student ID: S08060
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Sekou Conde
Economic Department Minzu University of China
2008-2009 Academic Year
Abstract: The family education is one of the important parts of education. It takes great effect both on personal growth and the development of entire society. Influenced by all kinds of society factors such as politics, economy, culture etc, family education of different countries presents different characters. This paper wants to carry out a comparative study about family education between China and American in family education process and result, and then introduces some reasons of the differences. Chinese family education and American family education have respective characters, advantages and disadvantages. On the basic of the analysis, this paper tries to give some reasonable advises in hope of that Chinese family education will be more rational.
Key words: family education； style of family education；
Values of family education
Introduction:
Family education is a vital constituent part of education. No matter for the individuals’ development or for the whole society’s, it plays an irreplaceable role. Furthermore, family education is the primary stage of the child’s education and it is the bedrock of the kindergarten education as well as the vital supplement of school education. So the family education is far-reaching for children’s development. Because of the influence of many factors such as history backgrounds, economic patterns and culture traditions, etc, the family education of different countries presents different characters. Taking Chinese and American as example, there are many differences of the family education in education purpose, process and result. Each kind of the education has their advantages and disadvantages. But compared with the development countries like American, there are still some flaws in Chinese family education. In consideration of this situation, I made such a comparative study into the family education differences between Chinese and American including the reasons, process and results of the differences. On the basic of that, I give some advises in hope of this will be helpful to Chinese family education.
1. The significance of family education
Family education is the primary stage of the child’s education. Since being gestated in mother’s womb, child begins to be affected by the family members and family atmosphere. So the children’s education is advanced to the period of pregnancy, it is so-called antenatal training. [1] Living in the same family, parents’ each action has the civilizing influence on the children. Family education plays an important part in the children’s development. Different family education method will result in different result. If the children are well-family educated，it is much easier for them to receive the school education. Conversely, if the children are poor-family educated, they will have difficulties in school education. If the school education is so called to emphasize the learning of knowledge, family education attaches more importance to exerting a subtle influence on the sociality, health personality and rich emotions．Lu Xun stressed the family education and society development. Noticing the poor family education in the old China, he said emotionally, “The poor children are wandering about in the street, while the rich children are roaming at home. When they grow up, they idle about in the society.” ,[2] the condition of children determines the future of society.
2. The differences between Chinese and American family education
Education is the constituent element of culture and is effected and restricted by the culture. “While influenced by the culture, education is the vital means of inheriting, developing and creating culture.”，expressed by Yang Baozhong, the author of the book, the family education in the perspective of education.[3] As the core of culture, cultural values effect the family education deeply. The particular cultural values reflect on the ideas and methods of family education. The fundamental reason of different family education is the difference of cultural values [4]. Because of the different culture, Comparative educator M．E．Sadler indicated the significance of culture research to the comparative pedagogy for the first time in his famous speech “How Far Can We Learn Anything of Practical Value from the Study of Foreign System of education?”[5]
2.1 The comparison of family education process
From the present conditions of different family education, as an important factor of educational system, although family education has not systematized, it has its own education aim, content and method as school education.
2.1.1 Different aims of family education
Different aims of education result in different processes. Therefore，it is the core of family education and the basic reason of the differences of two countries’ family education. The subject of American family education is raising the children into a social man who has the capacity of conforming to the series surroundings and independence. [6] So the parents of American don’t pay more attention to the study of the children, they emphasize the independent of the kids. Because of this, the parents always let the children do lots of housework even they all still little. But this is advantageous to the children’s development, they can be trained to be more independent in thought and action. By contract, Chinese parents are always keen for their children to be learned person, or person with great power and wealth. [7] They want to be admired of their kids. Guided by this object, the parents of China do everything for the children, wash clothes, cook, teach the kids to do homework and so on. The kids in china needn’t do anything in their childhood time. All they should do is studying, because they have the obligation to be excellent student and person with great future.
2.1.2 Different content of family education
Because of the different objects of family education, the content of education is surely different. American family education is rich in content that attaches importance to the children’s harmony development of physical power, cognition, sociality, language and emotion, which is called competence-oriented education. On enhancing physical power, the parents emphasize the outdoor activities; on the cognition development, they train the children’s senses, widen their sights and inspire their study interest. [8] Chinese family education gives greater emphasis to ensure that the children could develop in an all-round way, morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically. On physically, the parents ensure the nutrition of the children need daily, protect them from being hurt and take every precaution to the diseases; on intellectually, they teach the children knowledge and skills, such as buying all kinds of books for the children and teaching them reading, writing and calculating; on aesthetically, the increasing numbers of parents realize the importance of the special skills which could help the children enter better schools. [9] Therefore, besides the compulsory education, the children are occupied by all sorts of interest classes such as painting, dancing, piano etc, which is so eager for quick success that children’s real interests are ignored on one hand, and they have much more burden under the waste of time and money. Some of the practical skills like living skill, vocational skill and creative ability are ignored in the Chinese family while they are paid much attention in the American society. There is a social survey on the creative ability of Chinese teenagers, as the table1 indicated. From this table, the conclusion can be reached that the aware of cultivating the creative ability ought to be enhanced in Chinese family education．
Table 1
Question
When the children are taking apart the mew clocks, what do the parents do?
Answer
Reprimand or warn
Put it on one side
Others
Ratio
40%
58%
2%
Source: Yang heng,《China and the United States in family education and cross-cultural research》2007
2.1.3 Different methods of family education
Family education method is the specific measure of education content, which is determined closely by the traditions, customs and historical background and is restricted by the education object. In China, the most common method of education is teaching. Children have to try their best to learn things which was told to be mastered. By contrast, the west children often learn things that they’re interested in and no one will force them what they must to learn. In addition, the morality is the most important thing in China, so the children should obey many rules and try to be a good kid. In west, the family education plays a role of stimulating the children’s curiosity and imagination of the nature. Parents of China believe that independent consciousness is advantageous for their kids only when the kids are old enough to tell right from wrong, while western parents incline to foster kids’ consciousness of independence while they’re very young. In China, the parents always ignore the thinking of their children. Sometimes, kids are force [...]
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