Winter vacation is coming next week, yet Shen Yiqian is upset. For her, the month-long winter break means more study, no fun. Her mother has already set up a demanding schedule: English, piano and painting lessons.
Chinese kids are sorely tested. All this extra schooling aims at making the seven-year-old more competitive in a demanding, fast-paced society.
For her winter-break studies Shen will be rewarded with a Japanese cartoon TV drama on DVD and a short trip to scenic Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
“I have no choice,” says her mother Wu Lihua, an accountant. “People around me have all made detailed and early plans for their children. I just can’t let my daughter lose at the starting line.”
It’s fair enough to want to give your child an edge. Children of today like Shen won’t confront basic living problems in their future. But their parents can pay scant attention to their psychological needs for rest, fun and a largely worry-free childhood.
Parents are pushing their children too hard to excel academically at very early ages, says Professor Yang Xiong, director of the Institute of Youth and Juveniles with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
“Parents, many of whom are white-collar workers with good educational backgrounds, place excessive expectations on their children,” he says.
“Some kids are even deprived of a happy childhood since they are trained and supposed to be ‘geniuses.’ Yet a wise approach is to let children be children.”
He warns that though kids today, overwhelmingly in one-child families, are smarter or more knowledgeable than those in the past, they are also facing new problems such as lack of sleep and free time, anxiety over performance and pleasing their parents and even retrogression in their daily-life abilities and skills.
“It’s sad that some primary-school students still don’t know how to tie their shoes or take a bath on their own,” says Yang. Because of all the attention focused on them, he says, “they are also likely to become selfish and self-centered.”
Education these days is overwhelmingly exam-oriented. “Teaching for examination and learning for examination” has been the motto for years, and it’s difficult to change the mindset. The system is much criticized for turning out good test-takers but relatively few well-rounded students who are curious, inquiring and who take the initiative. Passive, not active learners.
The concept of “quality-oriented education” or quality education has been around since the 1980s and Chinese educators have tried to gradually put it into practice since the 1990s, encouraging students to think for themselves and be creative.
Turning out well-rounded, physically and emotionally healthy people is a slow process. Parents push their children to score high, and teachers still focus on the tests.
‘Quality education’
The exam score based on academics is still the only standard method to select students for college admission. Though a university degree no longer guarantees a good job and high salary, it can help, and parents still want to send their children to prestigious colleges for a bright future.
To fully embrace “quality education” in a rat-race era, however, means a new mindset and probably lower test scores.
In principle, quality education covers five aspects: academics, arts and music, moral and value education, physical education and physical labor. The physical labor part is dropped nowadays, and academics is emphasized.
Until that changes, extreme pressure, stress, distress and duress are a matter of course.
Quality education remains a goal, and children’s television can help achieve it through learning and entertainment. It can also promote healthy intellectual, emotional and physical growth.
Children’s TV in China dates back to the late 1950s. But teaching based on quality education will be incorporated into the 2008 programming by Haha TV, the dedicated children’s channel in Shanghai.
Haha TV, formerly a series of TV programs, became a separate channel as of this month. It targets children and teens 14 years old and younger.
Cong Haiying, an official from Shanghai Education Commission, says this is the first time some condensed content and requirements of quality education have been televised in a systematic and easy-to-understand way.
Yang Wenyan, channel director and veteran TV producer, describes today’s children, mostly from single-child families, as curious, emotional and capricious. She also sees depression and dissatisfaction.
“The fact is that they are getting too much homework and are asked to compete at the very beginning,” she says. “They have little chance to interact with society or nature.”
It seems that parents have only one mantra for their children: You must win. That pushes Yang and her team to promote healthy, meaningful learning and child development. It can also help parents understand children’s brain development and cognitive growth, and why enormous work loads and demands can be counterproductive.
“The primitive form of children’s TV like singing and dancing shows will be replaced by a format with more scientific planning,” says Yang. Most programs are developed with experts and psychologists from the Shanghai Education Commission and East China Normal University. Scientific research on children’s physical, neurological and emotional development goes into the planning.
“Haha Games” offers funny physical games that take into account children’s physical shape and abilities. The program’s “happy sports” spirit conforms to local teaching guidelines for physical education.
Children’s TV
Parents too can learn from “Happy Scampering” about the cognitive growth and development of children through age seven. Specialists in preschool education are program advisers.
Programs will also encourage children to become readers and get interested in traditional Chinese festivals and customs.
“This is my favorite show,” says 12-year-old Chen Qinian of “Haha Games.” “My classmates and I seldom miss it. It has taught us how to play football and basketball. That is so cool.”
Program highlights include a children’s drama about campus life titled “Together We Bond” and a pantomime about building healthy parent-child relationships.
The four-month “Happy Art” teaching program by Norwegian cartoonist Oistein Kristiansen helps children from three to 12 years old express themselves and build constructive imagination through doodling, cartoon drawing, painting, paper craft and other expressions.
“We will apply bright and mild colors in the studio to help children’s eyesight,” says channel director Yang. “There will be no sharp edges of furniture on the sets and our camera gets down to the child’s height to make them comfortable.”
The channel will also sponsor a national doodling contest, a children’s charity dinner and summer camps for kids to get to know about nature and Chinese society and culture.