Family education recently became a buzzword in China as a number of anecdotes of stressed Chinese parents dealing with their children’s homework went viral on the country’s social media.
(File photo: VCG)
A mother was said to have been hospitalized for acute cerebral infarction after watching her child do homework, and an elementary school student knelt down to her mother, begging the latter to set her free from the stressful homework.
Such news revealed the problems of education in China. The healthy development of children calls for strong support from family, but the capabilities of Chinese parents in this regard are far from enough to meet the requirements of modern education.
A survey by the women’s federation of eastern China’s Jiangsu province and related departments shows that nearly half of the parents were clueless when it came to the ways of education, and about 80 percent of those surveyed said they were in urgent need of family education services due of the lack of knowledge and experience.
Many education issues surface because parents don’t know what education is. One of the major reasons for this is the absence of one parent in family education.
For instance, most of those who always complain about the fatigue of educating children are mothers, which shows that the role of fathers in education is always transferred to mothers, so that the children lack companionship. It not only leads to an incomplete family environment, but also further intensifies conflicts.
In addition, it’s easy for some parents to panic regarding the education of their children. They often compare their children to others, signing them to various training courses while neglecting their involvement. However, frequent extracurricular courses would only cause children to lose interest, passion and motivation for studying.
To resolve such issue, it calls for not only the improvement of the parents, but also efforts of the government and society in enhancing family education mechanisms and services. For instance, Jiangsu has released a draft policy that states governments above county level should provide a special fund for family education, and the province has also incorporated family education in rural and urban public service systems.
