Christmas WS's!
It’s been a while since Amy Chua ignited the ongoing discussion over parenting methods, in her book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” ? She certainly sparked a maelstrom of opinions from both sides of the fence – most of which seemed to come from the ‘let kids be kids’ side of the equation.
Opinions aside, I really like to read articles that show “proof in the pudding”. Parenting in the Digital Age did just that with a four-part series, comparing education in four countries: US, India, Japan and China. Peppered full of stats and research, this series of short articles really brings home the bigger picture of education and parenting, and its progress in each of the countries. It does not bode well for US students.
I was particularly fascinated by the comparisons between China and the US. That is certainly not taking anything away from Japan and India, which also hold their merits and you can read about those countries here and here.
Back to China. The article highlights three main areas where students excel in China and its in the attitudes of parents, teachers and their approach to work at school and homework. Yalda T Uhl, the author of this blog post did her homework (yes, pun intended) and she found some great research and stats to source to support these statements. Here are some of those summarized:
Focus at School and Homework
- In US classrooms 5th grade students spent 64.5% of their time on academics, while Chinese students spent 91.5% of their time on similar tasks. (Stevenson et al., 1986)
- In the US, children were found to spend 20% of their time at school outside of the classroom, while in China they were rarely observed in other non-mandatory tasks (Stevenson et al., 1986).
- On the weekends for example, Chinese children have eight times the amount of homework of American children. (Tobim et al., 2006)
Teachers
- In China, teachers learn a major subject that they will then teach in the classroom, such as Math or Science. The result is the teacher is usually both more prepared and interested in the coursework. (Tsui, 2005)
- 90% of US elementary school classrooms have one teacher who teaches all subjects. (Tsui, 2005)
Draw what conclusion you want from this, but the author (Tsui) concludes that many American teachers have a subpar understanding of subjects, such as Math, even though they are student’s primary source of knowledge for these subjects (Tsui, 2005).
Parents
- Only 42% of Chinese vs. 91% of US mothers thought the school their child attended was doing a good job teaching, while less than 6% were happy with the work their child was doing. In the US, 40% of mothers were happy with their child’s performance. (Stevenson et al., 1986)
- Chao (1996) found that American mothers de-emphasize academics and instead focus on building social emotional learning and self esteem, while Chinese mothers emphasize work load and the development of study skills.
Let me leave you with the Yalda T Uhl’s (author of Parenting in the Digital Age blog) opening quote – from the eminent Thomas Friedman:
We (Americans) are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to sub-prime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.” Thomas Friedman, 2010
