A Comparison of Family Education Between China and America

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本科毕业论文A Comparison of Family Education

Between China and America

学院外国语学院

专业英语

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学号×××

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指导教师×××

成绩

二○一三年五月

Thesis: It is necessary to study the different notions and methods about family education of different counties for their unique features.

I. Two conceptions of family education

A. The concept of family education in China

B. The concept of family education in America

II. Two different kinds of ways of family education in children’s independence, interest, and creativity

A. The methods of Chinese family education

B. The methods of American family education

III. The different results of the two kinds of family education

A. The result of Chinese family education

B. The result of American family education

Ⅴ. The necessity of knowing the difference of family education in China and America and the warning we can take form it

The family education is related to a person’s life. Either China or Western countries, family education is always in the most fundamental position. Nowadays, social development needs high qualified talents and good family education is the key point to the high qualified talents. Increasing attention has been paid to family education by modern society, and it has become a hot spot of the society. Because of the different social systems, culture backgrounds, education aims and so on, family education for children is different in many aspects between China and America. Compared with American family education, Chinese family education still has a lot of problems. It is necessary to change traditional family ideas, and much can be learned from the ways of family education in the United States.

A Comparison of Family Education Between C hina and America

No matter which country you come from, what nationality you belong to, all think the family is a person’s first school, and the parent is the first teacher. Either China or Western countries, either the ancient times or the modern times, family education is always in the most fundamental position. A great man Deng Xiaoping said, “The basis of a country’s modernization lies in talents, the basis of talents lies in education, and the basis of education lies in families.” As a result, increasing attention has been paid to family education by modern society, and it has become a hot spot of the society. In view of the differences of family values, Chinese and American parents have great differences in their family education.

Mastering an amount of knowledge and skill has always been the primary purpose of family education in China. People define Chinese family education as “family-based”, and what parents instill to their children is how to study industriously to bring honor to the family. In China, young men are pushed to study hard to win fame for the family, and their parents would willingly work overtime for their children without complaint. They would like to satisfy for their children in any aspects. Chinese family education is characterized by an over-emphasis on children’s study and inequality between parents and children when making decisions (管晓静39).

Americans prefer an individual-based family educational purpose. American parents respect their children and advocate the idea of “self-selection, self-responsibility”. Parents respect the children’s wishes in setting the goals of family education (叶立群28). Parents’ aims are to train their children to have the ability of adapting to environmental variety and the ability of living independently. Based on this concept, most American parents emphasize more to train their children’s ability of independence once they are born. They generally believe that children’s growth must rely on their own experiences, because they think that children should form a self-supporting will and the capacity to live independently since their childhood. And the capacity comes from the training in the early age. The so-called training contains many aspects, such as work, temper will, patience, the spirit of hard work, etc. Besides, children can learn how to overcome difficulties, temper their willpower, develop their talents and skills, rich their knowledge, and form a habit of hard work and thrifty by working in hard conditions. It is just in the unconsciously process that children will obtain the

independent survivability and take the responsibilities for the society.

Because of a fundamental difference on family education concept, there are two completely different ways on cultivating their own children’s independence, interest, and creativity.

Compared with American parents, Chinese parents hold a very different attitude toward children’s independence. In China, most parents require their children to be obedient to them. On one hand, most of Chinese people hold the idea that there should always be a law in a certain community. That is the reason why almost every Chinese family has its law both as an illustration and an evidence of the education of children. The law might be either formally written down on papers or announced orally. The law will be used to give instructions to the children who have done something wrong. Apparently, this is very helpful for children, but in fact, it is unfavorable to cultivate children’s ability of independence. Because there are so many restricts in their lives that they have no chances to learn from the daily life. On the other hand, because of the influence of traditional culture, one should respect his parents absolutely in most cases. So, many parents do not concern their kids’ feeling, because they thi nk that what they do for their children is just their children’s needs. It is well known that in the later of last century, for the sake of sustainable and harmonious development, our country has carried out the one child policy as family planning, for thi s reason there’s an increasing number of families with one child, and Chinese children, since long ago, have been considered as the apple in their parents’ eyes. Based on the above reasons, parents tend to over-indulge their children in a surprising way that seems absurd to westerns. It is not surprising to see that Chinese parents always try to do almost everything for their children, such as helping them to wash, cook meals and bath, etc. In short, many Chinese parents, especially the parents with one child, arrange and decide everything for their children or even become the substitution of their children almost in all aspects of life. Therefore, the children have no chances to experience and contact with the society. The serious consequence is that many children cannot do these things what they should do in their age. For instance, the three-year-old children cannot wear by themselves, the six-year-old children cannot tie their own shoes.

In the city, the primary school students need their parents to accompany with them to go

to school and go home, and they let their parents take bags for them; many middle school students cannot wash their own clothes; the most serious thing is that many university students need their parents to accompany them to enroll at the first year. (朱永涛65)

In a word, many parents finish everything for their children. Besides, they protect their children excessively in social activities. Many parents fear that their children will face a lot of difficulties or become bad boys in t he society; they always reduce their children’s chances to contact with society or do not let them go to the outside alone. Once there is a dispute or an unpleasant thing happened between their children, they usually do not like to learn the truth but only accuse others. That makes the dispute into a serious conflict or a dispute among parents. These parents always are proud of what they did for their children, because they think that they have safeguarded the interests of their children. But, in fact, they do not realize that what they did for their kids have a negative effect on the children’s growth because these behaviors have deprived of their children’s right and opportunities to experience the life what they should learn in the early age. And they maybe have no chances to learn how to distinguish between right and wrong. At last, they are always laissez-faire to their children on economy. Many Chinese parents are obedient to their children’s any requirements on economy. Both rich families and poor families are likely to fulfill their children’s requirements without preconditions, because they hope their children have a superior sense when compared with others in material conditions (骆风124). They save money from each of expenditure or borrow from others to meet their kids’ demands. The serious result of these parents’ behaviors is that children can not understand the difficulties of life and do not know why they should save. The worst consequence is that many children do not like to do their own work, but ask others to do it for them by the means of giving others money. We can see this kind of phenomenon here and there in our daily life. This is the direct consequence of the laissez-faire on economy.

Most American parents think that the child is an independent individual since he is born, who has his own willing and characteristic. Neither the parents nor teachers have priorities to determine and restrict their children’s behaviors. In order to let the children recognize that they are the masters of themselves, American parents will give their children enough freedom and will not make decisions for them in most cases. American parents are willing to respect

and understand their children’s feelings, thus, they always think carefully about their words and choose the appropriate time to educate their children. The famous basketball star, Michael Jordan once said, “I admit that our children will inherit some good traditions, but I don’t think we should make rules to teach them what they can do, because I think even if they do, they will not be happy.” His words may represent the thoughts and attitude of most American people in family education. In order to cultivate the children’s ability to enjoy independent life, American parents take the measures as follows. Firstly, they try to give them enough opportunities and conditions which allow them to be fully trained in various settings since they were born. The common way the parents used is to let the children do some self-service work according to children’s abilit y in different ages, because this method will develop their children’s love of working and talents. For example,

There are three children, which are primary school students, in an American family. All of them have their own roles and abilities. The 12-year-old girl cooked all kinds of delicious snacks according to different formulas; the 10-year-old boy helped his father to mow, water flowers and clean court; the 8-year-old little girl can weave cup mat in various colors. (Frank 74)

This is the result of practices from their childhood. It is not an isolated phenomenon in America. This kind of examples, such as primary and middle school students doing part-time job, are too numerous to cite. The phenomenon of elder students working in society can be see n here and there, and they are supported by their parents. An American said: “Parents encourage their children to work and earn money in their free time. On the one hand, this will save some expenses, and more importantly, on the other hand, it will develo p children’s self-awareness at an early age.” (Locke 137) Children will understand the meaning of treasure and know that treasure can only be gained through working, and then, they will know why we should cultivate saving and other good habits. Secondly, American parents would like to see their children experience all kinds of difficulties rather than to live in an over-comfortable environment. They pay great attention to training their children’s mental ability so that the children can face all kinds of setbacks and can survive hard circumstances. So, we can see the following example, in a cold winter morning, the American children still get up to deliver newspapers while our children are still sleeping in the warm blanket. Many

Chinese parents probab ly think that it is unacceptable, or even think that is “cruel” to children. Thirdly, American parents have stringent requirements and regulations on children’s pocket money, although their economic conditions are better than the majority of Chinese families. The principle, how much money they should give their children as pocket money depends on children’s ages and actual demands and the income of the family. What American parents do is to cultivate children’s awareness of frugality. Moreover, they do not award their children by giving them pocket money, and they let their children understand that the purpose of study is to help them to become a valuable person in the future.

According to a survey, it is found that about 54 percent young students have no pocket money in America, and there are fewer chances to get money from their parents as their ages increase. It is also found that 68 percent American students earn pocket money through doing part-time job in their spare time. (Fauziah 49)

Rockefeller was one of the richest men in the United States and the first man earned one billion dollars in the world, but his children have little pocket money.

As for cultivating children’s creativity, there are also great differences between China and America.

Chinese parents are always just satisfied with their children to imitate others. They always hold a negative attitude on children’s exploration activities, and these activities are always stopped by their parents.

For example, the children who demolished an alarm clock in the United States families will not be blamed by their parents. Sometimes, they will work with their children to repair the clock when the children cannot do it. They will even encourage children to demolish the clock again and reinstall it. (黄个愈106)

But, if the same things happened in Chinese families there would nobody dare to tell their parents what they did even though they have installed it back. The children’s creativity is usually ruined by their parents’ strict supervision in the earl y age.

American parents encourage their children to innovate and surpass their predecessors in all fields. They think that children, like adults, have the independent ability of study, and they hold a tolerant attitude to their children’s creativity. They encourage children to explore and provide very different views on some problems and let children solve these problems through

their own efforts. Even if children cannot get a positive effect, the parents would not interfere their children’s work; instead, they would let their children to aware of the problems gradually in the process of developing and then correct their faults by themselves.

The attitude on children’s interest is also very different between American and Chinese.

In China, many parents nev er consider or respect their children’s interests. Because of historical and traditional reason, almost everyone thinks that scholars should be respected without any doubts and have high status in the society. So they pay great attention on their children’s studies because they believe that knowledge can change their fate. In fact, scholars are respected by people in most time. Hence, the parents hope that their children can obtain the same honor like the scholars in the future. Without thinking carefully and researching, we can conclude from practices in daily life that some Chinese parents, if not many, have been strangling their children’s interests in a way that is elusive to American. To be concrete, under the current Chinese family education, most children are arranged with assorted extracurricular classes where they are taught to learn playing piano, drawing, singing, etc., partly because parents wish their children to develop in all-round way and have a head-start in studies than other children. The fact, however, is that children may show the least interest in these classes that seem dull and boring in their minds. In this way, children are deprived of the freedom to dip into things what they are interested in and children are bereft of ebullience and creativity in studying. We also can find that Chinese parents do not care about children’s interests from a survey. According to the survey made by Women’s Federation of Tangshan Municipal, in Hebei province, we find that

About 10 percents parents absolutely agree that everything is not important if their children study well. And most parents agree this view thoroughly. There is only 27 percents of parents do not think so. As for the other opinions, that the children have a healthy body and a good spirit is more important than study well, only 5 percents of parents agree with it completely, but there are more than 32 percents of parents said they don’t agree with it completely. (黄个愈78)

All of these reflect that most Chinese parents more concern about chi ldren’s study than their interests. In other words, most Chinese parents do not care about their children’s interest.

But in the United States, children are encouraged and induced to developing their interest and do the things what they are interested in. American parents will not prevent their children from doing what they like to do, and they will not enforce their children to do what they do not like either. For instance, Jefferson, a fifteen-year-old child of a common family, likes to play basketball. His father said: “I wanted to make him become a lawyer, but he became interested in playing ball when he was young. We don't like him to give up his study, but after a long talk with him, I felt that he had his own idea of life, perhaps he should become in dependent, and so I gave up my mind.” (管晓静93) Maybe at the beginning the parents have requirements for their children, but at last their own choices are the most important in the United States.

Because the concepts and the methods of family education are different, the educational results show some obvious differences. The children and youth in the United States show the following characters when they are young.

Firstly, their ability of independence is very strong. They do not depend on their parents or families from 18 years old. They often do some part-time jobs to supply their consuming requirements. Even many students from rich families also do part-time jobs.

Secondly, they have the capability adapting to the market economy. The children in America begin to manage the finance when they are young, which let children deeply understand that it is not easy to earn money, and help them to form a good habit. For instance, There are two brothers (one is 12 years old, the other is 14 years old) in New York, who establish a company of washing cars independently under the affection of their parents.

They work very hard and ask for little payments. In order to reduce the cost and get more customers, they would rather walk to the stores where the price is lower to buy tools, wax scours and so on. (Locke 159)

Thirdly, they have the abilities adapting to social environments, because they have experienced the life through their own work. Many teenagers in America are not afraid of bitterness and have the perseverance of overcoming difficulties. They can face difficulties calmly and live harmoniously with people around them; they also have the confidence and courage of being independent as a member of the society. These qualities and skills form the foundation of their future development.

On the contrary, Chinese children show the following characters. Although their schoolwork is better than that of American students, they can not live independently for lack of independent consciousness. They strongly rely on other people and are passive in doing things. At the same time, they lack the abilities adapting to environment and face emergency. What’s worse, they only want oth ers to care about them, and lack of sympathy and the ability to help others. At home, they don’t want to care their parents; and in society, they lack social responsibilities. Supposing if a person only cares about himself, what responsibilities for the society can he take? It is not difficult for us to distinguish the two kinds of family education which one is better.

It is very obvious that the future of a nation depends on the quality of young people, which needs to improve family education because family education is the foundation of the whole school education and social education, and it can’t be substituted by other forms of education. According to our country’s special circumstances, the number of one-child family is becoming larger, so family education must be improved in the project of educational reform and development and family education must be combined with school education and social education. Therefore, it is necessary to change traditional family ideas.

First, parents should educate their children in social environment, in other words, they should not only teach their children the knowledge of survival, but also the responsibilities for the society.

Secondly, they must cultivate their children’s consciousness of independence, self-support, cooperation and the spirit of caring for others. And developing the qualities of person requires parents, especially the families with one child, to completely change the wrong ways which they used in the past. Therefore, much can be learned from the ways of family education in the United States.

Works Cited

Davis, Frank. Doing Cultural:Cross-Cultural Communication in Action.Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2001.

Fauziah, Noordin. Individualism-collectivism and job satisfaction between China and America. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004.

John, Locke.Of Civil Government Second Treatise. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 2009.

管晓静. 当今家庭教育存在的主要问题[J]. 山西高等学校社会科学学报, 2005(7).

黄个愈. 家庭教育在美国[M]. 越秀:广东出版社, 2009.

骆风. 21 世纪90 年代以来我国家庭教育研究进展述评[J]. 教育理论与实践, 2005(5). 叶立群. 家庭教育学[M]. 福州: 福建教育出版社, 1995.

朱永涛. 美国价值观?一个学者的探讨[M]. 北京: 外语教学与研究出版社, 2002.

摘要

家庭教育和人的生活息息相关，无论是中国还是西方国家，家庭教育都占有一定的地位。社会的发展需要高素质的人才，而良好的家庭教育是其敲门砖。所有的国家都越来越重视家庭教育，并且越来越吸引社会各界的眼球。因为社会体系，文化背景，教育目标等的差异，中美在教育孩子方面也各有千秋。虽然家庭教育吸引着社会的眼球，中国的家庭教育仍然有着很多问题。所以，通过对比中美两国家庭教育的不同，指出两国不同之处以及原因，中国才能取其精华，去其糟粕，避免在之后教育中犯同样的错误。