Western school vs. Chinese school
I'm tired of a dishonest society made of people who say what others want to hear. There is a difference between honest criticism and attacking. The truth isn't always nice, but it is, after all, the truth. We should try to be tactful, but never pretend that shit isn't shit and bullshit another into believing lies just to make them feel good. It always comes back. Tactful beats dishonesty any day.
*opens can of worns and cuts finger during opening, grouch*
Much about the Chinese (or general East Asian? I don't know...) way of rising children is quite cringe-worthy and what I would call cultic, referring to the astonishing degree of pressure (and subsequent love-bombing) they apply, but "Western" culture certainly can and should learn from them. Why? The generation that has behaved the
most lenient and uncaring when bringing up their children, and that would be the hippies, has, more than any generation before them, produced a generation of ill-bred, lazy, chaotic, confused brats without manners. Either they teach the necessary manners to themselves in their twenties, or they stay that way - especially people who are anyways nearly retarded regarding their emotional intelligence, and/or are lacking abilities to read other's emotions, and/or who are otherwise mentally troubled. As studies have shown, to a large degree these problems aren't even genetic but are
caused by wrong upbringing and especially a lack of early support and stimulation. It could be said there are three possible outcomes from bad upbringing: 1) A nonetheless balanced, cherful person with a good amount of self control who will find it no big task to educate themselves about what they still need to know about manners and patience. 2) Someone troubled who wouldn't have become troubled at all with another sort of upbringing and better early support. 3) A pathologic personality who would experience a quite over-average amount of difficulties anyways, but who could also have benefited significantly from the right kind of upbringing, by having inserted balancing factors into their picture of themselves and others, and into their perception of what is "normality" (hint: "proletarian swamp = normality" - bad idea), and being teached how to make the best use of the limited emotional intelligence they have.
In any case, a better, more considerate upbringing could have saved many troubled people from becoming a chronical burden for society, being at risk to join criminal gangs (where possible), tending to get into all sorts of difficulties and essentially lacking ambition.
Parents should be able to tell their children the following three things, when appropriate; possibly with adapted wording. I took these, although possibly not as exact quotes, from an article about a Chinese mother I've read a while ago.
Child gets fat:
Wrong reaction: "Never mind, you're a beautiful butterfly!"
Right reaction: "You should lose a few kilos, fatty!"
Child is naughty:
Wrong reaction: "Er,... please,... could you... er... stop it? Please..." (<-- fucking hippies!)
Right reaction (as I said, possibly with different wording): "You're garbage!"
Child fails:
Wrong reaction: "Never mind, you're doing fine!"
Right reaction: "You can do that! Exercise more, lazy ass!"
As I said, I don't agree to the maxim that children should have no childhood and child-like occupations at all, which is very much the case for children brought up the Chinese way, but I also see a catastrophe in the making when children basically are allowed to do what they want the
whole day, in other words, to watch garbage on TV,
and to behave like they wish,
and basically to fail in school.
This being said, the curriculum
and teaching methods, as they are, are truly cringe-worthy, so if we should conclude that European and American children should be encouraged and urged to be more attentive and diligent in school, I'd also wish for them to have some more interesting, not that unworldly and nonsensical contents to learn (history lessons based on kings and their exact period of rule, cringe, anyone?), and better ways to do it.
I'm not referring to going all "Waldorf", not at all. For example, I just hope someone has, or will, find a real alternative to that routine of "let's quickly scribble it all down with your own hand in ink on paper what he/she said". It's essentially
idiotic. There
are already books and scripts. It is a fucking waste of time (and paper). To me, that system of scribbling, scribbling, and scribbling is so 19-century-ish, even when it is considered (truthfully, certainly) a good method to memorize stuff. Personally I hate the scribbling-down-routine. There is no reason to go on with it after primary school. I just wish everybody could have good scripts/textbooks/presentations with the
complete lection (which is consistent which what will be asked in the test) and be allowed (which isn't before college) to
type down additional notes. The lectures, insofar as they are lectures and not interactive exercises, don't even have to be live - nor do they require physical presence. That is equally true for everything from primary school to college. Take the best teacher, the best professor, and record their lectures, point, and nobody has to waste hours per day in the bus anymore, only for the things that require physical presence or teamwork. What I desire are electronic presentations that can be stopped for questions or set for repetition, 3D-animations (not only snapshots of such) of geometry lections (and molecules... cringe!), mathematical formulas that change and change back, moving timelines and family trees with clickable contents, and whatever else technology can (already!) provide. Instead, in school, it's scribbling, scratching down notes, highlighting texts in overly extensive books that unfortunately have little to do with the lections given or with the contents of the test to come. And if you've not been there, then you can go hunting for good scripts, instead of just downloading the official thing - because there
is no official thing. Children need to be around other children to socialize, sure - but they don't need others for a history lection or maths exercise, isn't it? During such things they're just at risk to disturb and distract each other - and yes, each has their own speed. These tasks, socializing and learning, can and should be separated, and if some children become bullies and harassers, or are retarded, they at last won't ruin or impede the learning experience for others.
In seconds I was screaming.....
