First, the differences in the purpose of family education.
1. The purpose of American family education is to cultivate children into "social people" who can adapt to various environments and live independently. This expectation is not high. "Social man" is not an ethereal ideal, but a plain, easy-to-operate and broad requirement.
Therefore, American parents can treat their children's education more easily, maximize the positive factors in their children's personality, and let their children realize their self-worth. Even if the goal is achieved, we will not pursue some utilitarian goals such as high education and good career. But in fact, such education has produced many "unintentional" effects, and genius is produced inadvertently.
In addition, under the guidance of this goal, it can really cultivate children's independent consciousness and ability to survive independently. Look at American children at all stages: they sleep independently from childhood, play by themselves when they can walk, and few parents hold them; If you are older, you will have your own space, and the children will be responsible for the decoration, layout and cleaning of the room; They have been doing paid services within their power since childhood, such as cleaning, babysitting, delivering newspapers and so on. In high school or university, they will work and study in exchange for living expenses.
2. The purpose of family education in China is to cultivate children into "talents", so that children can have a promising career and spend their lives in prosperity.
First of all, this expectation is very high and utilitarian, because "promising", "successful career" and "thriving" are not a general purpose and are difficult to achieve.
For this purpose, China's parents are particularly concerned about their children's academic performance. The only requirement for children is to sit quietly and concentrate on reading and studying art, but ignore their talents and limit their creativity. As a result, in order to cultivate so-called "talents", they stifled their talents and produced many "intentional flowering" effects. Moreover, because children's personality, social adaptability, civic awareness and other issues are rarely considered, even if their academic performance is good, they may not be able to stand on the society smoothly in the future, and sometimes they will completely live up to their parents' expectations.
Second, the difference of family education content.
1. American family education is rich in content and pays attention to the harmonious development of children's physical strength, cognition, language, sociality and emotion, which can be called "quality education".
In promoting physical strength, we should attach importance to children's outdoor activities and physical exercise, such as swinging in the courtyard and hiking in the wild; In the development of cognition, we should pay attention to training children's various senses, broadening their cultural aesthetic vision and their interest in learning. For example, parents like to take their children with them when they borrow books or study in the library, so that the children are influenced by the surrounding environment and have a desire to learn.
In the cultivation of sociality, educate children to serve themselves and do their own things, and ask them to learn to cooperate, share and help each other with their peers; In terms of emotional cultivation, we should guide children to appreciate the beauty of music, art, dance and literary works, such as taking children to art galleries and museums to watch various exhibits, encouraging children to participate in artistic creation activities, and letting children personally contact and experience the mysteries of nature, such as taking children to travel in forest parks, swimming in waves, rock climbing, etc.
2. Family education in China can be divided into four aspects: morality, intelligence, physique and aesthetics. However, it is often when children enter school age (some even before school age) that they begin to put intellectual education in an overwhelming position, which makes the educational content tend to be unbalanced.