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最新讲座的海报、录像和PPT |
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Some Eccentric Thoughts of an Equally Eccentric 15-Year-Old A.B.C. Girl Joy Yang (中文名杨旨优) Introduction: Recently, my mother made the fatal mistake of asking me to read the article, “Chinese Schools in America are Distancing Children from Their Culture–What Can Parents Do? A Perspective From a Grown A.B.C. (American Born Chinese) Kid” in the evening. What started out as a simple assignment to read roughly 4,600 words and explain my thoughts to my teacher quickly spiraled into me keeping my mother up past midnight and me keeping myself up for at least another hour because I needed to organize my thoughts into a coherent paragraph. Since you’re reading this, you have a pretty good idea that I’ve given up on that approach and instead am choosing to write my own essay explaining my thoughts. As atrocious and muddled as it may end up to be, at least it’ll help me get some sleep. Overall, I don’t disagree with Ms. Xu’s article. How can I, or any of us for the matter, really disagree with the whole passage? In fact, some may call me a hypocrite if I choose to take a stand against it. From my perspective at least, my mother has already done what the article recommends parents do to interest their kids in Chinese language and culture. She lets my brother and I pursue our own interests as long as it's legal and won’t get the two of us sent to the hospital. Whenever I make a mistake when talking to her in Chinese, even if it's one that I’ve made 10 times already in the past month, she gently corrects me, and when I (somehow) manage to correctly use a difficult word or idiom in my conversations with her, my mother’s quick to give me validation. I’m so comfortable speaking Chinese around her that as I read the English version of the article, I tried to translate it into Chinese for her. And guess what? I don’t hate my Chinese identity, language, or culture. However, if I had so many thoughts that I became an insomniac for a few nights, you probably know that I’ve felt some dissonance. It’s not that I have an antithesis but more like the fact that I want to explore certain points mentioned by Ms. Xu a bit deeper. Because to me, everything the article discussed was only the tip of the iceberg; things that everyone probably already knew deep in their hearts and just needed some validation. That’s by no means an insult to the article, as it’s wonderful that this crucial topic is finally addressed by someone. But since everyone seems to agree with it wholeheartedly this quickly, have we truly learned anything new? Or have we only found supporting evidence for a belief we always vaguely had? This essay detailing my experiences and thoughts will focus on points that I feel were and are easily glossed over and introduce a new perspective (my perspective) to consider. Specifically, I will discuss stereotypes and identity, western education vs. Chinese education, and the danger of extremities, and I will end with a conclusion I reached after pondering the aforementioned points. A little warning before we begin though: this is a long essay. Even longer than the one Ms. Xu wrote. And since I recommend you read the entire article, check to see if you have a cup of coffee (or something to keep you energized) before you proceed to the point of no return. Part 1: Stereotypes and Identity If I’m being honest, I’m probably not the best person to be talking about this. I’ve never quite experienced what Ms. Xu described in her article. I’ve never really felt ashamed of being Chinese or felt afraid of bringing Chinese food to school (in fact, all my classmates love it when I bring in Chinese food). Nor have I felt split between a “Chinese world” and a “regular world.” And maybe I do feel that I’m “Chinese enough” because I can at least speak Chinese and understand it pretty easily. I even eat Chinese food every day and have grandparents that only live a half an hour away. Or maybe it’s because I don’t let stereotypes faze me. After all, stereotypes are everywhere. Even in the article, I found one where the author makes the assumption that girls would be interested in romance novels while boys would be interested in adventure ones. Well, I happen to be a girl who loves adventure novels (and sci-fi, another book commonly attributed to boys). Additionally, I absolutely hate romance books and any mention of romance in books. If you ask my mom, she’ll tell you about all the times where I’ve come wailing to her about how an amazing book that was on its way to becoming one of my favorites before it was ruined by the romance between two characters. I can literally write an essay twice as long as this one as to explain why romance in literature is something that should definitely be handled with way more care and skepticism than it currently is. Did I express negative feelings towards the stereotype? YES, and that’s okay. It’s normal to feel a varying degree of unhappiness when someone assumes something about you because of certain parts of your identity. However, I think I’ve realized pretty early on that doubting yourself and having an existential crisis over every single stereotype you encounter in life doesn’t add up. It’s not your problem. It’s the person who made that assumption’s problem. So why put the blame on yourself? Furthermore, as unfortunate as it is, our brains are wired to categorize others. It’s a mechanism that helps our brain evaluate situations quickly and prevent our brains from exploding from the excessive amount of information we’re exposed to. Because of this, stereotypes are bound to show up at some point. But while we can’t always stop assumptions from being made about us, we can do something about how we react and how we are affected by them. There’s no right way to respond; everyone has to find the method that fits them best and helps them feel most secure about their identity. But even though there’s no right way to act, I believe there are wrong ways to. Physical harm, verbal abuse, or vengeance as responses are clearly incorrect. As justified as your point may be, you’re not helping your case through violence. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” But from my mind, I think two other rules should be added onto the previous list of three. 1) Don’t let the stereotype make you hate parts of your identity. 2) Save your words. #1 is pretty self-explanatory. It’s something we all know deep down. But I included it on my personal list instead of the general one given how it seems many children struggle with it, which I honestly find kind of strange. Like I’ve stated above, it’s not your problem. It’s the assumer’s. You are you. And no one can change that. I think the problem might be that too many people think of identity as individual puzzle pieces. Even at school, whenever we talk about identity, we’re asked to list things that make up someone’s identity. And as long as the list is, it’s not enough and never will be. Because even if we list every single thing, the list doesn’t quantify how much these aspects impact us. The list makes it seem like every part has an equal impact, which might be why some kids feel that they’re not Chinese enough. I’m not sure. After all, I’ve never felt this way. But I do know why I feel the way I do. I see identity as a completed puzzle. Each puzzle piece, no matter what it looks like or how big it is, is placed together to create this final image of you. From this bird-eye perspective it’s much easier (for me) to see how everything comes together to form one identity rather than worrying about how individual puzzle pieces operate. Moreover, the only “real requirement” for being Chinese is having Chinese ancestors, and guess what? You don’t even have to do anything to have that DNA sequence be yours. Chinese culture is so diverse and so different even amongst “real” Chinese people. So who's to say that your Chinese experiences don’t make up your Chinese identity? Can’t speak Chinese that fluently? Have to go to Chinese school? Well, maybe that’s what it’s like to be Chinese for Person A. Loves listening to Chinese music but can’t understand the lyrics? That’s the Chinese identity of Person B. Identity is a fluid concept, so I don’t understand why some children let themselves become boxed into oversimplified labels. Now let’s discuss rule #2 of my list: save your words. Sometimes, it’s not worth getting yourself all riled up about every slight; you’ll have to pick your battles. In 7th grade, I had a classmate that was oddly stubborn about holding onto her belief that Chinese people ate dogs and that all dogs in China were in danger. I explained to her how that was not the case, but she just rolled their eyes and launched into a counterargument. From her eye roll and tone, I had a pretty good idea that she wasn't about to change her mind and was ready to launch into a nuclear argument with me, so I just said “suit yourself” and went back to what I was doing. For most people, what I just did will either be categorized as cowardly or apathetic. Cowardly because I “obviously” felt hurt and am “totally” just hiding the fact that I was too scared to do anything. Apathetic because in the miniscule chance that I actually didn’t feel insulted or frightened, I should’ve continued advocating for Chinese people. I can see the logic of that thought process. After all, based on literature and pop culture, it’s quite clear that our society scorns cowardice and apathy/being a bystander while aggrandizing courage and justice. However, I think we should consider the big picture too. Because I’m an indecisive person, I sometimes like to weigh the risks of a course of action versus its reward to better help me come up with a course of action. In this case, the risk far outweighs the reward. First, if I win the argument, all I get is a grudging apology from one classmate and for only one person to stop stereotyping. And that’s if I succeed; there’s a high chance they won’t listen. That’s not much for rewards. On the other hand, there are plenty of risks. The argument might get heated and who knows whether or not one of us will leave with a bloody nose; I make a lifelong enemy; and in the possibility that my emotions get the better of me and I start screaming my head off, I absolutely ruin my reputation for being the sensible, kind, and understanding classmate (my classmates’ word choice, not mine). The last one is what I especially want to focus on. Reputation takes time to build, and blowing it for one argument isn’t worth it. On the other hand, if I maintain my reputation and composure, I’m the bigger person in this scenario. People see that person being unreasonably mean to someone they consider friendly, there’s a greater chance they’ll side with me on this one. Not only that, a good reputation can grant you a bigger audience than one angry classmate. I took this stereotype fight to the big leagues (aka a school assembly). My middle school has an annual assembly known as the Words Matter Talent Show where students get to perform songs, dances, or spoken-word poetry that confront injustices and celebrate our identities. Not going to lie, but no one gets really excited about it and people only like it because we get to miss class. But I went on the stage anyway and gave a spoken-word poem about the negative Chinese stereotypes I’ve met. Everyone was quite surprised that I was onstage since I was always viewed as the person that got along with everyone due to my kindness (again, their words not mine), but that only made everyone listen closer and actually digest what I was saying instead of getting beauty sleep. Reputation matters. And with reputation and a chance to perform, I’ve communicated the issue of Chinese stereotypes to not just one classmate but a whole school. Save your words for when it matters. Pick your fights. If you fight every stereotype you meet you’re going to tire yourself out before the real action occurs. In a way, it’s like refusing to eat a cookie every day so when you do eat a cookie, you feel so much more rewarded instead of tired of eating the same cookies for an entire year. Maybe that was terrible and inaccurate. Maybe that wasn’t. But it’s my perspective and perhaps it offers some insight into the less common views held by outlier children like myself. To summarize, stereotypes shouldn’t trip someone up to the point they doubt themselves. After all, letting that happen is letting the assumer win. But standing up every time is harmful to your wellbeing too since you're exposing yourself to numerous hurtful words and stereotypes with little benefit. Instead, try to win over society as a whole instead of getting caught up with one individual’s refusal to change. With that out of the way, let’s jump into my personal favorite section of this essay: western education VS Chinese education Part 2: Western Education VS Chinese Education Even though the phrases “western education” and “Chinese education” were only explicitly stated a few times, the belief that A.B.C. children don’t like Chinese because it’s taught in a way that’s not interactive and fun (the Chinese education method) is such a logical conclusion for one to arrive at after reading the article. However, this is an overly-simplified view of education. If things were really that easy, I would’ve been able to get more sleep since I wouldn’t have read that article at all. In fact, the article wouldn’t even exist since education would’ve been perfected ages ago. Additionally, my school would not have students who hate school and have F’s on their report cards if western education was so powerful. The truth is that there is no perfect education system, and while western education may be the lesser of the evils, it is not infallible. This isn’t to say that we should ignore teaching methods completely, but that we need to recognize the flaws of western education in order to improve it and better understand it. To start off, here are what I think most Chinese adults seem to think whenever they hear western education and Chinese education. They associate games, fun, projects, interactivity, and leniency with western education. They associate strictness, beatings, boredom, memorization, and challenge with Chinese education. And because of these associations, they're unable to comprehend why their child is still struggling and hating school even though everything is already perfect and sugar coated for their needs. But what seems “better” to parents is actually “normal” to kids. A person born into a rich family doesn’t think that they’re rich. They know consciously that they have a greater wealth than others but they don’t really comprehend the scale of their riches. For them, having money to spend and being surrounded by luxurious comforts is normal and will thus still find things to be upset about. However, from the eyes of the middle class or lower class, they view the upper class as perfect. They can’t understand why the bourgeoisie would still feel unhappy. Besides apologizing for stereotyping the rich and the poor, I would like parents to wrap their minds around the fact that the world is dynamic and what we consider easy and hard has shifted throughout history. Before, many people might be able to trek for hours to school through snow but now with the invention of the automobile, I doubt humans will regain that ability anytime soon. And while this may sound like I’m an ungrateful 9th grader that has no awareness of how lucky I am, I’ll admit that I’ll take western education with all its flaws listed below over Chinese education. But it’s crucial for parents to realize that unconsciously equating western education with success and happy kids is incorrect and will only worsen parent-child relationships. My friends love their parents, but they dislike telling their parents problems at school because they know their parents are going to guilt-trip and scold them for complaining by comparing western and Chinese education, and the relationship has only fractured rather than healed as we enter high school. Parents, you don’t know what western education truly is like just like your child doesn’t truly know what Chinese education is like. So you don’t have the right to blame your child if they can’t thrive in western education schools and tell them that they shouldn’t complain because it’s so much easier than Chinese education. Furthermore, even if you are a parent who has experienced both western and Chinese education, it’s easier to get used to being rich when you were once poor than vice versa. It’s easier for you to see the advantages since you came from a harsher education system, but for your child who has only known western education? Not so much. In addition, western education does have certain challenges that Chinese education doesn’t. For instance, in Chinese education, the Nationwide Unified Examination for Admission to General Universities and Colleges (高考) is the main factor for landing in a prestigious university, while western education needs students to maintain consistent success. Grades, extracurricular activities, leadership, volunteer hours, teacher recommendations, class difficulty, and numerous other aspects are factored in for college admissions since western education has a more holistic approach. Western education students need to be masters of all trades, and there’s a reason why the saying is jack of all trades and master of none; it’s extremely difficult to become the master of so many different things. Hence, both have their pros and cons, but you have to admit that western education is not easy either. Furthermore, I think parents need to know that kids don’t view western education as fun. In fact, I doubt that any kids (at least those old enough to have homework and hard classwork) view education/school as fun. Maybe necessary, maybe okay, maybe neutral, but not fun. However, I do believe that some kids view learning as fun. It looks like I have contradictory statements but education is different from learning. Education/school is a combination of learning, teaching, and many other outside factors (such as classmates, environment, safety, and lunch). All of these can have an impact on whether or not a child enjoys going to school. For instance, I mainly dislike school because some of my classmates make it impossible to be productive. Once some of my classmates nearly poisoned the whole class by spraying solvent oil into the air while the teacher’s back was turned and somehow escaped punishment. With classmates like that, I’m not just dealing with learning; I’m dealing with distractions, headaches, screams, and destruction as I work and try to learn. It’s no wonder why my irritation about going to school mostly faded after I finished that class. My other friends dislike school because they say that their teachers are terrible. Contrary to what most parents may think, they don’t always like their teachers if the teacher is nice. If the teacher fails to teach the class well, my friends complain incessantly about them. But what really gets them hating school is the teacher that is strict AND bad at teaching. Two of my friends are currently facing this issue with a math teacher. According to them, the teacher is searching up answers to the math problems on Google and has often made simple mistakes when solving problems. Additionally, the teacher rages whenever students fail to answer his questions (because the students don’t understand how to solve the problem) and threatens to just straight up stop the lesson if they don’t start participating, forcing a student (who somehow managed to become his favorite student) to beg him to forgive the class and continue the lesson. Honestly, hearing what they’re going through, it’s no surprise that kids won’t and don’t like education/school. And this should also be able to offer insight into some of the flaws of western education that would have to be faced one day. But while we’re on the topic of teachers, let's explore further. What is the best teacher? From the above paragraph it’s easy to see that a teacher who teaches well and has a friendly personality would be the winner. However, that’s a bit obvious, so I’m here to offer an example of a teacher who was strict but my, and many others’, favorite teacher. The teacher was my elementary school Enrichment Seminar teacher (aka gifted education teacher). He was an odd teacher–strict mixed with bits of sarcasm and dark humor. And he scared everyone, even those not in Seminar, so badly that those of us in the gifted program were wondering why we were chosen to be his prey and envying those who didn’t have to face him everyday. Some students in his class straight up hated him; one girl said she put him on her enemy list. His teaching style also frightened us. He’d give us math problems that people normally would solve with algebra (which we didn’t even know existed), gave us picture books with no words to interpret and explain our thoughts on it, would pounce on anyone who broke his rules (no shrugging as an answer, no guessing and checking for math, show your math for problems, look beyond the obvious answers, double check your work and read the question carefully, etc.), pushed us past our comfort zones, broke our pencils, and threatened us to not annoy him before his 3rd cup of coffee unless we wanted a bad time. But the odd thing was that by the time we all reached 5th grade, we stopped being afraid and started loving him and his teaching style. We looked forward to his class everyday and since it was the last one of the day, we often hung around instead of returning to our regular class. To this day, I still can’t pinpoint what suddenly happened to all of us that changed our minds. Maybe it was because his lessons (many of them life tips and lessons) suddenly made sense. Maybe we finally saw the humor in his dark humor instead of the dark. Maybe we realized that it is only by his teaching style that we would’ve listened. So who’s to say that only nice teachers who teach well can be good teachers? In fact, I’ll say he has had a greater positive impact on me than any of my teachers that would be considered “nice”. I have a theory as to why I think he had a greater significance in my life, but it’s more relevant in Part 3 than here, so keep this in mind. The main thing right now is to decide how a teacher can be the best teacher for students. Currently, it seems that teachers that teach well are the most successful. But that’s obvious and like what my favorite teacher said, we should look beyond the obvious. What counts as teaching well? Games? Projects? Group work? Occasional breaktime? Interactivity? All and none. Different things work for different kids. Some of my classmates detest projects since those tend to be more artistic and time-consuming. Some classmates hate group work, and I don’t just mean group work where the teacher decides your group. One classmate doesn’t like group work because her teacher lets the class pick their own group. This results in her friends wanting to be in a group and her accepting even though she knows this means she won’t be able to focus on the assignment. Kids are different. Each has their own best ways of learning. In addition, the ways that engage students the most are not necessarily the best ones for helping them learn. One great example are games. Games are probably the one method I’ve seen to be most engaging to my classmates. Everyone loves it since even if you can’t win, it’s better than doing classwork. Blooket and Gimkit (games where you have a question and four answers but you answer at your own pace to gain points for some other game-like activity) have dominated my classes while Kahoot (more quiz-like and anxiety-inducing) in an attempt to make learning more fun. However, I think we barely learn anything through them. Games power short-term memory. The fact that Blooket and Gimkit will repeat questions after the player runs through all of them only makes this worse, as players will memorize just the ones they need to quickly speed through the questions and focus on the actual game aspect of the platforms. I’ve played Blooket once in Spanish class, and I can tell you that after playing it I’ve learned only 8 words out of the 58 we were supposed to learn, and 6 of them were ones I already knew. What matters is long-term memory. But long-term memory takes a bit more brain power. The second time we played Blooket with the same set of words, I found a method that exercised my long-term memory and though it took more time and effort, I could identify their English meaning, spell them, and put the accents in the correct place by the end of the game. Later assignments further proved that I had indeed memorized all the words and that they were in my long-term memory. I’m sure you want to know what that method is, but I think it’s more important that everyone finds their own ways. After all, what works for me might not work for other kids, and the last thing I want is to be accused of being a liar. The only reason I included this was to elucidate that games are not the perfect solution everyone seems to think they are. So to summarize my perspectives, parents need to understand that there’s no perfect education system and acknowledge the flaws in order to connect more with their children. This irritating false belief that western education is perfect and easier than Chinese education is like telling a janitor that their job is easier than a scientist’s just because all they do is mop while the scientist has to do complicated labs. Both are so different that you can’t accurately compare them, though I will say that I think that western education, while perhaps not much better at getting kids to learn, is better in the long-term at maintaining a kid’s love for learning than Chinese education is. For teachers, I want to say that there are so many ways that might be wildly successful with one group but not with another. Additionally, there are some factors in education that you all can’t account for. My language arts teacher once told my science teacher that there’s only so much they could do, and that whether or not the student studies and accepts the opportunities offered to them depends on themselves, their parents, and society. A teacher can only go so far. So for the teachers reading this, I just wanted to let you know that as long as you don’t act similarly to my friends’ math teacher I mentioned above and don’t physically or verbally abuse your students, you’re doing fantastic and should feel more confident in your abilities. And here’s another thought: don’t be so desperate for a class’s approval either. I can say that at least 60% of my classmates would be fine if you taught barely anything. Many of their favorite teachers are their favorite because they have little assignments for students and students get to spend 90% of class playing Cool Math Games (which ironically has nothing to do with math). So don’t pressure yourselves too much. Now that western education vs. Chinese education is wrapped up, we’re more than half way through the essay. (Hang in there!) Part 3: Extremities (pushing too much and not pushing enough) From the article, I think the idea of not pushing kids too hard is conveyed quite clearly. And I agree (somewhat). Pushing too hard can lead to deterioration in mental health, as there’s more stress to perform well and will also make kids despise what they’re being forced to do more. Additionally, pushing kids too far might also result in tears or a fight, so the fact that parents might want to take it down a notch makes sense logically. But while I agree with the fact that pushing kids too hard and having impossibly high expectations for children is incorrect, neither is not pushing them at all. The article’s idea of letting kids learn Chinese culture through their individual interests is a brilliant suggestion, but I want to remind parents that this isn’t as simple as it seems. Parents can’t just plop a bunch of Chinese movies onto their kid; they have to take an active approach too. If kids just passively watch movies or read or whatever, they might be a bit less hostile to Chinese culture, but most likely they’re just going to accept that portion of Chinese culture and ignore the rest. Essentially what I’m trying to say is that the average child is not motivated enough to expand beyond their comfort zones and challenge themselves just because they sort of liked something. If it’s not fun, chances are they’re not taking that risk. Having fun and having positive associations with Chinese culture is of course a good thing, but it only can go so far without more fuel put in. It’s like how in preschool and kindergarten all the learning was done in a game-like fashion. By having games, kids would develop more positive associations with school and will also learn the basics in a fun process that they enjoy. However, as they get older, the games get cut back while lessons, homework, and projects take over. This is because making everything a game is unproductive by this point where more complex skills need to be developed. It’s the same for Chinese; a child can be introduced to Chinese culture and language through means it views as fun and interesting, but parents will have to add on actual lessons eventually if the child is to actually learn something. How parents implement the actual learning though varies. Be it Chinese schools (not all of them teach in the Chinese education style. I mean, at least the ones I went to never seem to. In fact, they seem to be more “western” than western education), private tutors, or Chinese classes at American schools. What’s worse than not pushing your child after getting them slightly interested in Chinese culture? Not pushing them when they weren’t interested in Chinese to begin with. In the article’s introduction, I was able to read plenty of comments from parents with Chinese children. And those comments were things straight from a horror movie. Here are the three that nearly gave me a heart attack when I read them: 1. “I’m a Chinese Mom, my kids 5 and 7, I have no intention to force them to learn my first language, they can learn when themselves want to” 2. “LOL, I’ve been telling my wife this because she makes our kid go to Chinese school.” 3. “Total waste of time. The moment my daughter said no to Chinese school, I totally agreed with her and took her out.” For me, that was absolutely horrifying. Parents should obviously listen to their children, but children are children after all. We don’t know everything. Sometimes we can’t see that far. So on the occasions where we fail to understand the importance of learning a certain skill, parents have to give us a push. These comments scare me because these parents don’t even seem to be trying to convince their kids that Chinese is a useful skill! #2 really peeves me. “LOL”?! This is not a laughing matter. This is your child’s future. Like what Ms. Xu said in the article, your child will one day understand the importance of learning and appreciating Chinese culture and language. And they’ll blame you for not pushing them to learn Chinese (or for not pushing them when they were about to quit Chinese). I’m sure some people are wondering what a 15 year old would know about this and if I really should be the one saying this, but I’ve read enough books to know this is the case. Moreover, when I visited my 8th grade Language Arts teacher (who came from a Spanish family) and told her how I was doing well with all three of my languages, she expressed regret that her parents never made her learn Spanish. So what are parents ever to do? You can’t push children too hard yet you can’t not push them either. Well, this quandary would be up to every family to solve it themselves. Parents need to better understand their kids and learn how far is too far. A word of caution though: your kid not wanting to do something and getting upset does not equate to them reaching their breaking point. I remember when I was in elementary school when my mom was pushing me to participate in a speech and debate summer camp hosted by our district’s high school speech and debate team. I cried my eyes out and refused to go (I don’t even know why anymore). However, my mom stayed patient and explained to me why this would be a great opportunity. In the end, we managed to strike a deal that I will go to the camp this summer and if I don’t like it, she won’t ask me to go back next year. My mom knows that I’ll break if she starts yelling at me, insulting me, refusing to tell me the logic of her actions beyond the “I’m the parent explanation”, or not offering me a way out of what I saw as a horrendous way to spend my August. Thus, armed with that knowledge, she successfully got me into the camp, and I ended up loving it. Now, I’m a member of the high school speech and debate team, and I can’t imagine a life without Saturdays of getting carsick on my way to speech and debate competitions. I’ve made plenty of new friends and am even more comfortable than before at public speaking, and all of this I can thank my mom for. Additionally, making kids uncomfortable also doesn’t mean pushing children too far. Referencing back to my favorite teacher, he identified all our comfort zones and then proceeded to shove us out of it. People grow by challenges, and making life a crystal staircase won’t help children grow since real life is a splintery staircase covered with tacks and torn up boards as Langston Hughes put it. My favorite teacher’s methods of challenging us to think outside the box and to not be afraid of failure actually worked (at least for me), and it definitely has helped me countless times on life’s staircase. Challenge is not always a negative. Don’t be afraid to throw them at your kids. So the main point is balance; the thing that everyone wishes to know but sadly cannot obtain an answer for. Even gymnasts, the people who seem to be best at maintaining balance, are actually constantly off-balance in order to do their tricks. I suppose parents can try to interact with their children more and understand them better to gain the ability to both challenge and encourage at the same time. But who knows? Life’s mysteries are what makes life so frustrating and rewarding. Conclusion & Final Thoughts: Congratulations and thank you for surviving till here! Or perhaps I should wait to congratulate you till I actually finish this section since it is still a decently long read. Anyway, this essay has addressed my views on stereotypes and identity, western education vs. Chinese education, and extremities. I’m sure I’ve repeated myself enough, so I won’t be going over what I talked about in those sections (read them again if you need to), but will instead move on to a conclusion I have drawn from all these analyses: It mainly depends on the child’s mindset. Mindset: defined (by the Oxford Dictionary) as an attitude one holds. The “right” mindset would prevent a child from falling prey to stereotypes, would help students love school and learning, and will allow children to understand the importance of some opportunities without adults needing to force it down their throats. However, what even is the right mindset? How to achieve it? If we’re able to solve these questions, life would be so much easier. I personally think that a mindset that perhaps will best meet the three points I mentioned above would be a mindset that has high awareness. This mindset would understand that stereotypes shouldn’t hold any power over them, understand the importance of education and possibly grow to like it under certain conditions, and will also understand why their parents want them to pursue certain opportunities such as learning Chinese. The high awareness just helps the child see the bigger picture and not be stuck on one particularly rough step on the staircase. But how to achieve that kind of mentality? I have no idea. I’m a 9th grader, not a psychologist or education expert. This is probably the Holy Grail of education; to help a child achieve the best possible mindset for learning and thriving in life. However, we need to also keep in mind that education is not just made up of teachers. It’s created by a child’s environment, parents, and so many tiny factors. We shouldn’t leave the burden for only the teachers. Moreover, the child also has to be able to absorb the lessons they are taught and repel those that will negatively impact them . So from my child's perspective, the person who can truly take charge of a child’s destiny is the child themself (so maybe children should stop making so many excuses all the time). But parents and teachers still have a major role. They are the ones pointing out opportunities and teaching these lessons. They open a child’s eyes to all the great possibilities. Like the Chinese proverb goes, “Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself (师傅领进门，修行在个人).” Thank you very much for reading this essay. Even if you disagree with me, I hope I have at least made you think twice and deeper about these topics. And feel free to contact me with any thoughts you have–even if it is different from mine. One of my favorite things is to discuss an intriguing topic with someone and learn about their individual perspectives and why they have those views, so please don’t hesitate to speak your mind! Again, thanks for reading! © 2012-2023 by Yuming Si. All Rights Reserved. Contact: info@holisticedu.us |