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Lazy or Crazy?
2
July 8, 2010
Ten years ago when a storm of criticism showered China over its test-oriented educational system, I thought the loud advocacy for “quality education” in protest would at least give the next generation of students in China a chance for more relaxation and fun.
I could not have been more wrong.
I just returned from China a couple of weeks ago. While there, I visited an old friend and her fourth-grade daughter, and the little girl kept mentioning that she needed to finish her homework. While we grownups discussed the possibility for another get-together in a few years, she immediately complained: “Too bad! There is no way for me to make it since I’ll have a lot more homework when I go to middle school.” She is far from the only kid who worries about homework there. My college friend’s third-grade boy was writing his eight-page homework during dinner.
Back here in the US, my second-grade daughter usually spends half an hour working on her homework each evening. When I asked her teacher what we should do to make up for the school work she would miss while we were away for a month, her teacher simply said: “Keep reading.”
I cannot help asking- are kids here lazy or are kids in China crazy?
There was an article in The Economist magazine last year (June 13-19th) called “The Underworked American” in which the author referred to the underworked American children, who attend fewer days of school and do less homework than kids in Europe and East Asia. The worry was that “laziness” would lead to poor educational performance, and eventually job losses and America’s dismal economic future.
In China, the only children (due to the One Child policy) face particularly great expectations from their parents. It’s hectic. Many children not only go to weekend schools but also have many extracurricular lessons. My sister’s six-year old daughter is learning both piano and ballet. “Everybody is doing this,” my sister said, “and if you don’t spend as much time, money and energy on your only child as other families, you fear she will lag behind in future’s fierce competition.”
Before a college friend reunion, when one told me she’s afraid to offend her second-grader’s teacher to ask for one day’s leave, I couldn’t help but joke - “Is your son at school or in prison?!” She finally gathered her courage and freed him for one day.
Crazy or lazy, I am simply amazed when we say the world is flat and we are living in a global village, children can have such different growth experiences.
July 9th, 2010
Very interesting post Yun and I agree with the Economist to a point. I suspect that part of the problem is also a disparity in expectation across schools and families. There is considerable evidence that children in affluent families are as heavily scheduled as Chinese children. The activities may often be different, certainly there is more emphasis on sports here. But affluent families also enroll their kids in dance, music, or other art related activities, and frequently, high school age children are under pressure to participate in service projects, both locally and increasingly abroad.
Families without the same kind of resources are frequently stuck with what the school can provide, supplemented by whatever the parks department, boys clubs, or other organizations can provide at low or no cost. And very few American families invest this extra time on study or tutoring academic subjects like math, science, or history.
What's unknown and interesting is whether all the extra time spent doing heavily academic stuff would be any more valuable than the time affluent parents invest in music lessons, sports camps, or service learning expeditions to developing countries. One could make an argument that at least some of these activities are better preparation for adult life and economic success.
The tragedy may be that all families don't get these same opportunities for their children and that we invest nothing as a society to make sure all children have opportunities to grow outside of school as well as inside it.
July 12th, 2010
When I taught ESL in Chinatown in New York City, I taught at an 'after-school' school which ran from 3-7 and was exclusively Chinese American. Students would come to after-school school and study speaking/reading/writing in English, writing in Chinese, and math.
I had mixed feelings about it--on the one hand, it kept the kids off the streets and safe; on the other hand, what about play? What about the chance to be unstructured, to draw outside the lines and stare at catepillars?
I don't want to make any facile cultural comparisons...but it did strike me that I would have been a very different person had I gone to school quite literally 12 hours a day for elementary and middle school. I would remember different things about childhood--perhaps not better or worse, but different.