I came to teacher in China in the fall of 2010. As a teacher in an international school I had a mix of many children from throughout the world. That is the nature of international schools. There was a mix of ethnic groups quite different from most US classrooms at least where I had done my initial training.
As is true of all teaching, discovering who the students are and how they behave and interact is a deciding factor in approaches or tactics to dealing with students. Getting to know your pupil is the key to discipline and how to dispense knowledge. What is their prior knowledge? From that point learning occurs.
Ethnicity was one factor. But, what I hadn't thought about, was the family makeup.
The group of people, which has the most profound affect upon any person's life, is the family unit. Whether you might be speaking of children playing together, learning in school, funding for college, or whatever steps in life a person might take, the number of siblings, including their order, affects how they act and react to life's circumstances.
Where am I going with this? China's "One Child Policy"! China's One Child Policy/ Invisible Children
In 1978 and continuing to present day the Chinese government started a course of population restriction for an understandable reason; over-population. China currently has a population of 1.3 billion people. China's Population counter
What significance does this have? The vast majority of children in China are only children. This has a profound affect upon all aspects of their lives. Of course, this also has a profound affect upon social life in Chinese life and schools. The result is a classroom full of only children.
If you have ever thought about an only child the first thing which comes to mind is that all the family's resources are focused on one person. One person! The older generation, which had many siblings prior to the policy, are all devoting their love, affection, and resources into the future of that one individual.
What affect might that have? The word "spoiled" comes to mind first and foremost, spoiled in many ways. It's an upside-down pyramid of flow into one individual. Father, mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents all watching the every move of this "one child".
Back to the classroom. The student enters the class as any child might but with one major difference; where there might have been a helicopter mom or dad before this, there is a whole squadron of helicopter relatives who are hovering over this child's development.
Let's get away from this for a moment and talk about learning within a family, prior to the classroom. I believe that the first learning that any person gets is within the family unit itself. There are lessons to be learned through the interplay of parents to children and children to children. These sorts of "real life experiences" and interplay are the child's first exposures to the world. Loving, caring, arguments, good and bad, are all a part of a person's growth and how they might deal with issues beyond the borders of the family. Without this early learning in the home, the classroom becomes the real starting point for many of these behaviors to develop. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/200907/the-adolescent-only-child
So, when I came across my first full classroom of one child students, which was during this year, I saw students with curious personality traits. Although I am generalizing here for sake of illustration, this is what I saw: students who were mature in many ways beyond their years due to their being around adults for most of the time and cultured due to their parents' input. These were also students who, socially, were very child-like, or late bloomers.
Other ramifications of the One Child System will be discussed in future blogs as this one quirky edict has made its mark in many, many parts of Chinese society.
As is true of all teaching, discovering who the students are and how they behave and interact is a deciding factor in approaches or tactics to dealing with students. Getting to know your pupil is the key to discipline and how to dispense knowledge. What is their prior knowledge? From that point learning occurs.
Ethnicity was one factor. But, what I hadn't thought about, was the family makeup.
The group of people, which has the most profound affect upon any person's life, is the family unit. Whether you might be speaking of children playing together, learning in school, funding for college, or whatever steps in life a person might take, the number of siblings, including their order, affects how they act and react to life's circumstances.
Where am I going with this? China's "One Child Policy"! China's One Child Policy/ Invisible Children
In 1978 and continuing to present day the Chinese government started a course of population restriction for an understandable reason; over-population. China currently has a population of 1.3 billion people. China's Population counter
What significance does this have? The vast majority of children in China are only children. This has a profound affect upon all aspects of their lives. Of course, this also has a profound affect upon social life in Chinese life and schools. The result is a classroom full of only children.
If you have ever thought about an only child the first thing which comes to mind is that all the family's resources are focused on one person. One person! The older generation, which had many siblings prior to the policy, are all devoting their love, affection, and resources into the future of that one individual.
What affect might that have? The word "spoiled" comes to mind first and foremost, spoiled in many ways. It's an upside-down pyramid of flow into one individual. Father, mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents all watching the every move of this "one child".
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| Grandfather and grandmother caring for their grandchild |
Back to the classroom. The student enters the class as any child might but with one major difference; where there might have been a helicopter mom or dad before this, there is a whole squadron of helicopter relatives who are hovering over this child's development.
Let's get away from this for a moment and talk about learning within a family, prior to the classroom. I believe that the first learning that any person gets is within the family unit itself. There are lessons to be learned through the interplay of parents to children and children to children. These sorts of "real life experiences" and interplay are the child's first exposures to the world. Loving, caring, arguments, good and bad, are all a part of a person's growth and how they might deal with issues beyond the borders of the family. Without this early learning in the home, the classroom becomes the real starting point for many of these behaviors to develop. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/200907/the-adolescent-only-child
So, when I came across my first full classroom of one child students, which was during this year, I saw students with curious personality traits. Although I am generalizing here for sake of illustration, this is what I saw: students who were mature in many ways beyond their years due to their being around adults for most of the time and cultured due to their parents' input. These were also students who, socially, were very child-like, or late bloomers.
Other ramifications of the One Child System will be discussed in future blogs as this one quirky edict has made its mark in many, many parts of Chinese society.
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