论文总字数：27513字

摘 要

本文试图对比分析中西方家庭教育的异同点。相似点主要体现为：重视家庭教育，父母角色，注重培养孩子的求知欲和阅读能力，同时都注重言传身教。 由于不同的家庭教育定义、不同的家庭教育目标、、不同的家庭教育内容、不同的家庭教育价值观，导致了不同的教育期望。本文旨在从对子结果中而找出中国家庭教育与美国家庭教育存在的问题与不足，吸收和借鉴两个国家家庭教育中的先进经验，转变两国国家庭教育观念，提高两国的家庭教育水平，为孩子的成长和未来人才的培养奠定基石。

关键词：家庭教育；差异；孩子；比较

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Similarities of Family Education between China and America 2

3.1 Importance of Family Education 2

3.2. Parents’ Role in Family Education 3

3.3 Cultivation of the Habit of Family Education 3

3.4 Parents’ Examples of Family Education 3

4. Differences of Family Education between America and China 4

4.1 Different Definitions of Family Education 4

4.2 Different Goals of Family Education 4

4.3 Different Contents of Family Education 5

4.5 Different Value of Family Education 8

4.6 Different Anticipation of Family Education 9

5. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

Entering 21st century, as one of the hottest spot, family education is becoming increasingly important in people’s life. Family, as the cell of society, is the first place where children receive and get in touch with the society. Education is a highly complicated process which is connected with families, schools and society throughout one’s whole life. In modern society, family education contents become various. It includes not only family life education, family relation education, family morality education, but also children education, parent’s education and so on. Chinese say that if you know the family, you do not need to know the individual. It is clear that family is important to every human being’s life. The family is among the oldest and most fundamental of all human institutions. We are born and mature in the families; then we form new families and leave them at our death. Family life is a universal human experience. It is also an experience that helps shape the manner of each individual in the world. (Peng Xiaoyan, 2012: 101)

A family education usually includes all kinds of aspects, such as a moral education and a financial education. But in each aspect, there are differences in different countries. Next, the author compares some detailed contents between Chinese and American family education. In this paper, the writer mainly discusses the education of the children.

2. Literature Review

China and America have many distinctions in their respective cultures. Among those distinctions, family education is the most obvious one. From the Different Family Education in China and America, we know that Chinese students have a well-established learning foundation and a good self-discipline since Chinese parents pay more attentions on kids’ intelligence quotient. However, Chinese family education also has short-comings. To start with, the spoiled raising method, which means parents always satisfy wishes of kids. In temporary society, “boomerang child”, “strawberry generation”, and “child slave” become high frequency words that used to describe Chinese parents. Besides, parents only emphasize on intelligence quotient and ignore the emotional quotient completely. Spending a lot of time on intelligence quotient and ignoring the emotion aspects, many children in China are delicate. And what’s more, parents usually tell their kids to follow disciplines and traditions. And to American method of family education, there are also many positive and negative aspects. American parents know the importance of emotional quotient, so they coordinate the emotional quotient with intelligence quotient. Thus, children can have a comprehensive development. So we often see that parents advise children to attend more sports activities, social works, or go to the church, from which children can perceive the spirit of competition, cooperation, and moral outlook. (Xue Yaxuan, 2008: 147) Moreover, from the The Cross-culture Research between China and America on Family Education, American parent prefer to cultivate the initiative, creation and leadership of their kids, rather than persuade them to follow traditions. (Wang Zihan, 2013: 230) Hence, in order to have a better systematic way to raise children, Chinese parents and American parents can draw lessons from each other. Of course, besides those merits of American family education, it has defects. On the one hand, parents give a lot of choices to children; which means children may have less self-discipline because he or she knows there always another way to help them to escape from a hard situation. On the other hand, to the contrary of Chinese students, American students’ learning foundation is not that firm. In modern society, with the help of lots of scholars, family education has already permeated into various aspects of human life.

Every day, parents have to confront it. And the differences between Chinese and American family education can call forth more and more people to concern how to improve family education. So in order to build a better family education method, as aforementioned, we should combine the two aspects to improve the family education.

3. Similarities of Family Education between China and America

3.1 Importance of Family Education

Regardless of the homeland and nationality, everyone admits the fact that family is a person’s first school, and parents are 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. As we know, if you have good family education, you will have a better basis. Moreover, family education is also a very important aspect. Family education can develop us a lot of good quality and can be a good foundation for the accepting education in the future. In a word, family education accounted for a very important position in the child’s life and is cannot be ignored.

3.2 Parents’ Roles in Family Education

Either in China or in the West mother is almost described in many cultures as the main fosterer, and then father plays only a part. The parents are the main undertaker who teaches the child to know the rationality education. Parents are responsible for child"s food and drink in daily life, the material guarantee, the emotional satisfaction and so on and they are also the main undertaker of child’s emotional cultivation. Its result is that the child holds his father in awe and veneration and causes the poor relation between child and father, and thus affects child’s perfect development. If the parents all can allot reasonable about the division of education, our children will develop in an almost perfect direction.

3.3 Cultivation of the Habit of Family Education

The Chinese parents of ancient time fully realized this truth; they guided the children in reading books. The western parents also focus on family reading. The children must listen to section of stories before sleeping, and this is a fine tradition of Western family education. China’s family education also uses this approach. They all think that the child should receive good culture. Because there is a good cultural atmosphere, children can healthy growth. So, at the usual time, we should be concerned about the cultivation of children’s habit to read. Let them have a good reading habit. As we know, the cultivation of good habits is beneficial for them.

3.4 Parents’ Examples of Family Education

Parents are child’s examples; usually a simple movement is more effective than the inculcation of ten thousand instructions. In the usual life, children like to imitate parents’ behavior. So parents should notice that they should have great influences on children. Parents should pass the active, healthy and positive things to the children. Children need to learn a lot of positive energy from their parents. Only in this way, in the future, can children maintain a positive attitude when encountering difficulties.

4. Differences of Family Education between America and China

4.1 Different Definitions of Family Education

Chinese culture has been defined as a collectivist culture. People attach more importance to their families than they do to themselves. Chinese children are brought up to seek fulfillment with others rather than individually.

Yet, in American family, individual freedom and equality rank at the most important place. Americans believe that they should control over their own destinies; and they are more likely to concern about their own freedom of activism than the opinions of the elder members of their families. Family members are regarded as friends and they treat each other equally in daily life.(Kang Yanli, 2010: 276)

4.2 Different Goals of Family Education

Family education purpose is to train children into what kind of person through family education. It is the core of family education. The difference between the family education purposes is “success”. It is the essential difference between Sino-US family education purposes. The purposes of Chinese family education focus on children’s good results: they can be admitted to good universities; they can have stable good jobs and successful futures. To get the goals, Chinese parents will meet the children all requirements. Almost, they don’t let the children do any housework or join in social practices. The only requirement for children is to study hard; and parents even take children to participate in all kinds of classes when they’re small. Therefore, parents often ignore the children’ intrinsic interests and hobbies. They kill their talent and creativity. At the same time, they also cause the children’s ability to social adaptation to shrink and can’t adapt to the competition of society. On the contrary, there are a lot of children to do something at home or go out at an early age in the US, such as doing cleaning, taking care of children and delivering papers; when they are in high school or college, they usually do part time jobs for living expenses and pay their own daily spending.

Chinese parents lay emphasis on social enlightenment, ignoring the growth of children. The Chinese parents take the social compatible enlightenment seriously, but often neglect the development of children’s characteristic; they often train the children under established forms, and lay down the broad road for their growth. The western parents provide the children an environment for growth resistant to them, and foster their tenacious individuality and the good conduct, and they choose their idea and way of cultivation according to the change of society and the characteristic of children physical and mental.

4.3 Different Contents of Family Education

China’s family education also follows the principles, such as: morality, intelligence, physique and all-round development talent. But with the growth of the children, especially after the entrance to primary schools, the intellectual education will rise to the first place. There will have a tendency of imbalance. This is mainly affected by the education status quo of our country. In order to achieve the former goals, parents urge their children to study, to check the homework, to buy all kinds of examination paper, to cope with the endless tests …. However, train the ability can only pass the test, which is not related to the actual ability too much. On the moral education, our country has attached great importance to the ideological and moral education of nationality since ancient time. In modern society, due to the deviation and part of the education center of gravity, although the moral education is still the focal point of family education, moral education is no longer listed in family education first place. In sports, physical activity time shrinks to less than an hour.

In the school, attending classes occupies almost all the time: doing practice to consolidate learning content during the day; family physical education can only provide children with growth needs of nutrition indeed. In addition, it can protect the personal safety, prevention and treatment of disease. In the aspect of aesthetic education, many parents ignore the children"s own interests. They are blind to cultivate “Artistic talent”, such as drawing, singing and dancing. Although the spend lots of the time and money, increase the burden of the children, it may not achieve the purpose of the aesthetic education. By contrast, American family education content is more rich and relaxed, reflecting “Quality education”. From early childhood, the children were busy with outdoor activities and physical exercise. Almost every family has a swing in the yard or rebounds. The children have rollerblading, the skateboard, and the bicycle and so on. They often take place the wild hiking, mountain climbing, the sea swimming with the family at the weekend. On the intellectual education, parents don’t let the children learn lots of rigid knowledge. They strive to cultivate their learning interest, arouse their learning desire, expand the culture field of vision; besides, parents and children can enjoy music in Aesthetic education. In addition, Parents encourage children to make more friends; they will learn and cooperate with each other.

As we know, Chinese traditional education emphasizes mechanical memorizing. That is to say, the children receive the knowledge without understanding. There is an ancient proverb. Education form of China is too rigid and constrains children’s imagination. Children do not doubt what parents say. They are always been protected by parents, so they are not be able to think too much. However, in the United States, the west emphasizes the child’s “power of understanding”. Many parents don’t control their children. Parents give children full freedom. They can do anything they want. They can enjoy every day happy and relaxed.

4.4 Different Ways of Family Education

Firstly, because China’s children are often the only child, many parents deal with all daily arrangements. This leads to children’s poor performance in independence. Children become weak in front of the troubles. When they lose others’ help, they will complain. Chinese parents, especially the only child, parents always worried about them. So they limit children to contact with the outside world and warn children not to talk with a stranger. American parents often give them opportunities to create self exercise and conditions. In addition to taking care of their children’s safety, they let the child choose things in life, such as personal hygiene, Clothes washing store. American let children contact and communication. Parents let children play as much as possible. They can contact with the surrounding environment, to explore the nature and the real world.

Secondly, Chinese parents are highly demanding for the children’s learning and higher grades. They think these can be the only way for children and the standard of success or not. In order to make the children study well, children will continue to do a lot of exercises after school every day. With the great pressure, children"s curiosity in erosion, confidence in the loss, creativity will not get trained. On the contrary, American parents mostly put less much pressure to children’s study. The focus of education lies in cultivating children to adapt various environment and they have independent ability to survive. (Tang Mei, 2007:50)

Thirdly, a blood relationship between fathers and sons or among brothers combines political domination between monarch and subject. The dual relationships bring the loyalty to monarchs and also keep the filial obedience to the parents. And as a foundation of the moral education, the loyalty and the filial obedience maintain unequal relation in feudal society. The loyalty to monarchs is the base of moral education in our ancient times. It also restricts other moral norms. Under the influences of regulations of feudal religion, traditionally moral education is different from other countries moral educations. However, America is a representative of capitalistic country. And people hold a view point of the moral education with equalities of a personality, a democracy, a freedom and a fraternity. So when you see an American father and his son paying each other to leave after a meal in a restaurant, you will not doubt why they do this. An individual is a core of the moral education in America.

Last, an ability of managing money matters is the basic quality that everyone must have. It has impact on a persons development and happiness in his whole life．Especially nowadays, an economic construction is a center of our social development. Our ability of managing money matters develop much more slowly than Americans’, because we have taken actions on an adult education of managing money matters, but we do nothing on children or teenagers. Chinese parents do their best to make money and create an excellent environment for their children so that their children grow up healthily and study hard. The parents hold that managing money matters is the parents’ duties, and children should not step into managing money matters early. Chinese parents usually provide children with money whenever they need without conditions. Even under the condition of bad economy, the parents still do they best to satisfy their children wishes. And it will lead to bad habits which the children spend extravagantly some young parents express their love to their children by providing pocket money and high toys. It makes children requests become more and more, higher and higher. Then the action of parents fosters children many bad habits which they are fond of enjoyments and gain things without work. And it also corrupts their souls. In a family with a bad economy，for the sake of being not looked down by other children, parents pinch and scrape to satisfy their children high expenditures. It will make children not show consideration for their parents at all. From above examples，we can learn that parents’values and consumptive values will affect children growth directly.

However, because of developed economy, traditionally commercial spirit and social identity of an independency, American children’s financial education starts earlier and accumulates a lot of precious experiences. American parents encourage children to take part in various economic activities，for example, children make money by themselves to provide their own tuitions. They also educate their children how to make money, expend money, deposit money, and borrow money and how to enjoy money with others.

4.5 Different Values of Family Education

Chinese culture has been defined as a collectivist culture. In traditional Chinese culture, people attach more important to their families than they do to themselves. Chinese children are brought up to seek fulfillment with others rather than individually. (Kang Yanli, 2010: 276) So we can see that family loyalty is an important value in Chinese culture. As to the relations within a family, the Chinese people emphasize the relation between parents and children, particularly emphasizing children’ love and respect for their parents. Chinese family life is, in reality, the life of filial piety. Individual freedom and equality in American family are ranked the most important place. So the family members are very much like friends. In contrast to Chinese culture, the primary responsibility of the American family member is not to advance the family as a group, either socially or economically. Neither is it to bring honor to the family name. In order to illustrate detail American family values, a case which is edited from my diary is offered below: June.23. 2006 Today, it is Sunday today, I was in charge of two American guests to visit Warriors Museum. They were father who was an around 60 years old retired engineer and son who was an around 35 successful lawyer. When we approached to the tickets window, I said, “Sir, we need to buy tickets first. 90 RMB. Who will buy the tickets?” After my words, I saw the father and the son taking out their wallets at the same time and went to the window to buy the tickets one after another. I was shocked and murmured: How come? This is ridiculous! How can a son only buy the ticket for himself? However, after the tour, they also tipped me respectively. (Kang Yanli, 2010: 276) From this case, we can see that the relationship among American family members is quite different from that of China. It seems that the filial piety has nothing to do with the behavior of the son. The father and son are just like the friends. Both of them are too individualistic to bear for Chinese people. The Chinese parents care about the reputation in educating the child, thinking educating the child to become a useful person is their achievement, but if not, the parents feel shameful. The education"s goal is for earning their living, for honor. The western family education is different from china in the educational goal. Education is not the preparation for earning their living, but for survival. “The learned education” they emphasize has the value of molding one’s mind, one kind of value which has nothing to do with the utility or the occupation consideration.

Besides, the Chinese parents care about the reputation in educating the child, thinking educating the child to become a useful person is their achievement, but if not, the parents feel shameful. The education"s goal is for earning their living, for honor. The western family education is different from china in the educational goal. Education is not the preparation for earning their living, but for survival. “The learned education” they emphasize has the value of molding one’s mind, one kind of value which has nothing to do with the utility or the occupation consideration.

4.6 Different Anticipation of Family Education

Chinese parents nurture their children to be talents. Their parents expect them to have good jobs and happiness lives in the future. So Chinese parents care for children’s achievements at school very much. But they ignore children’s interests, talents and creativities. American parents nurture their children to be independent persons who adapt to various environments. Different methods, contents and aims will lead to different results of an education. (Peng Xiaoyan, 2012:102) Through the comparison of the results of family education between China and America, we can find that each of them both has advantages and disadvantages about the family education. Chinese children usually are not good at communicating with others. They have poorly independent living abilities and they are short of the sense of standing on their own feet and abilities of adapting to the society. But they value emotions very much. And they have Chinese traditional virtues. Generally speaking, American children have strong abilities and they can adapt to the complex society quickly and smoothly. But just because of the education way of a free growth to children, it appears many social issues of children and teenagers. Another aspect, an excessive reason makes children lack a sense of responsibility supporting their parents.

5. Conclusion

Today, with the increasingly fierce international competition, the competition for this kind is the quality of people in the final analysis and is the competition of talent training. We know that the talent training is the first position of the family. Therefore, in a sense, talent competition is parents training skills competition, so all the countries notice the education projects of training new century talents. Besides, they attach great importance to family education in the world. For the similarities and differences of family education, we should adopt the right attitude.

All in all, there are many differences between China and America family education and each has its strong points and weak points. We should reject the dross and absorb the cream of them, advancing the family educational modernization instantaneously.

Works Cited

[1] Wang Jin, the Cross-culture Research between China and America on Family Education. International Cultural Exchange of Tong Ji University School, 2000.9

[2] XueYa xue, Different Family Education in China and America. Science and technology institute of mandarin of Hue Hong University, 2008. 6

[3] Kang Yan Li, The Study of China- US Cultures: Comparison of the Family Values between China and America. Xian International Foreign University, 2006.7

[4] Wang Zi Han, Cultural differences between China and America. International College, 2013.11

[5] Pen Xiao Yan, Comparison of Family Education between China and America. Economics and Finance University of Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, 2012.8

[8] 唐梅. 《不同文化传统下中美家庭教育中的评价比较》．教育研究期刊，2007.4

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