Sino-British Basic Education ContrastClass: 11103 Number: 201100592 Name: Justin Abstract:After the appearance of culture, an important public service came into being, that is education. However, different countries have different forms of educations. According to the internet, it is found that there are many differences between the baisc education system in China’s and Britain’s basic education system.Britain’s basic education attaches much importance to the development of students’interests, personality, practical abilities and creativity. It combines theory with reality to createa comfortable and joyful learning enviroment for British students so thattheir comprehensive abilities can be improved. But China’s basic education stress that students should have a good knowledge of theoretic knowledge. Also, Chinese students bear much more pressure from basic education than British students. Ignoring the importance of practical abilities and interests cultivation, teachers assess students on the basis of exam grades, which makes them study negatively. This article aims to contrast Sino-British basic education in different periods.Key Words: cultivation; interests; practical abilities1.Preschool Education<1> Structure and Scale(reference 1)China’s preschool education institutions are mainly nursery, kindergarten and preschool. Nurseries recruiting children under the age of3 mainly provide convenience and guardianship for them; kindergartens, recruiting children aged 3-6, are the basic step of the school education system; preschools recruit those children aged 6-7 who are preparing for going to elementary schools.However, Britain’s preschool education institutions are mainly nursery school, nursery class, playgroup and day-care center. Nursery schools are independent institutions of early childhood education which recruit children aged 2-5; nursery classes recruiting children aged 3-5 are attached to the elementary school. The main purpose of nursery schools and nursery classes is to provide children with healthcare and education. Playgroups, recruiting children aged 2-5, let them get all-round cultivation with games; day-care center is divided in two categories: day nursery and boarding nursery. They recruit children aged 2-5, mainly giving priority to their healthcare and education.With respect to the number, there is a trend that the number of the China’s kindergartens, especially the children in the nursery schools is declining year by year. Even so, the number is still much larger than in other countries. Some classes in the kindergarten have up to 40 children. The class-divided form is mainly according to children’s age.The number of Britain’s preschool education institutions is generally small. They are able to strictly control the certain proportion of the class size and the number of people. Their class-divided form is on the basis ofeither the number of children(when the number of children is large) or chidren’s age(when the number of children is small).<2>Course content(reference 3)The course content of Chinese preschool education has a great change since the “Kindergarten Education Guidelines” carried out on July 2,2001, which points out that the education content must be comprehensive and illuminative, and can be divided for five important parts: health, language, society, art. Chinese kindergarten basically executes whole-day care while British kindergarten executes hal-day care. And British children education content can be divided into areas such as communication, language and literacy, mathematics development, personality, social and emotional development, creative development and physical development.<3>Charge standard(reference2)The Chinese preschool’s charge standard usually is based on the preschool students’age. Different age classes have different charge standard. The prescchools must refund the meal fee and establishment fee to parents whose child is absent. And some school also provides holiday service.The British preschool’s charge standard is based on the full month-expense on the first day of each month. If children are absent, the cost is not refunded.<4> CharacteristicsThe Chinese preschool education pays more attention to letting children to learn more skills, such as reading, writing and speaking. To adapt the modern education trend, Chinese pre-school has a great change to improve the teaching quality by equipping the classroom with computers, employing foreign teachers to improve children’s English level and pay more attention to cultivating children’s abilities. For the purpose of assuring the teaching quality and the teachers responsibility, many education administrative departments require that kindergarten teachers must have college or above degree and must own the children teaching certification.But because of excessively considering students security, there are few kindergartens letting children go outside to attend more activities. And to satisfy parents’need, there is more time for children studying than playing. The strict environment usually limits children to broaden their horizon and form their personality.The British preschool education pays more attention to develop child’s abilities. In the aspect of content, British educators focus on cultivating children’s abilities, emphasize letting children permaturely learn literacy and writing skills, request children to read a series of preschool familiar words and sentences and make them master the skill of using pen to write something. One target of British preschool education is to cultivate children’s character and ability, so nearly all of the education contents andchildren’s activities are closely linked.2.Elementary Education and Secondary Education(ref4/5)<1> Personality CultivationUnlike in China, the scale of elementary schools in Britain is not large and each class has average 20-30 children, which helps teachers pay attention to the development of every student so that it can provide favorable condition for children’s individual orientation. While in China, due to the large number of students in the class, school authorities put more emphasis on the issue of security and behavior regulation.<2> Discipline ManagementAll maintained schools in England are required to follow the National Curriculum, which is made up of twelve subjects. The core subjects—English, Mathmatics and Science—are compulsory for all students aged 5 to 16(/wiki/Education_in_England#cite_note-teache rnet-18), which contributes to permeating one another and developing students’creative thoughts. However, China’s schools adopt different couse plans. And, they stress systematicness and logicality of courses, which leads students to master knowledge deeply and profoundly, but lack comprehensiveness. Now, China’s schools are carrying out comprehensive practical activities for students. Once the quality can be guaranteed, we are able to make a great progress.<3>Teaching ContentBritain’s elementary schools can revise their teaching content under the national curriculum standard. The teaching contents are not many and difficult, which leaves much time that teachers can employ to guide students to read extensively, to introduce the society in class, for example, students and teachers often are seen to appear in the museum. Compared with those in Britain, China’s education curriculums are much more difficult and have complex contents and in the mean time, teachers ask students to systematically master all kinds of knowledge and give frequent examinations to students, which leads students to be emotionless about school. Speaking from this aspect, China’s education authority should take immediate and effective measures to solve the problem.<4> Interests CultivationBritain’s elementary schools don’t care about how much knowledge students have learnt, but lay stress on the cultivation of interests and practical abilities, provide all kinds of conditions as much as possible to let students imagine, explore and try, and constantly lead them to bravely demonstrate themselves. In this way, it can contribute to develop students’ creativity and abilities to think independently and deal with the problems. However, for chinese students, the social environment full of competition and elimination is more likely to meet the realistic demandsof each family, which asks Chinese educators to pay more attention to the cultivation of skills of examination, what to test and what to teach. All students study for one thing, good grades. So, China’s education authority should strictly carry out the quality education rather do superficial work.<5> Teacher-student RelationshipThe bond, and communication, formed between a teacher and student is very important. In Britain, they become friends of a kind and this friendship, and guidance continues long into adulthood. As western teachers we constantly move around the classroom and try, every lesson, to talk to each individual student. Teachers also make direct eye contact with students because in the western culture you are not a good person unless you look a person directly in the eye when speaking to them. Students are encouraged to get up and walk over to me when they have a question or need help.British teachers often have a kind heart, are very patient with a strong generosity, endurance and strength. Furthermore, in class room the student is the most important person not the teacher. Teachers are there to help advice and encourage students on their journey to adulthood. They do not believe in shouting at a student if they get an answer wrong, it is not a terrible crime because next time, or the time after that, or the time after that they will get it right if you encourage and guide them along.They firmly believe in the west that you, as a teacher set students on the path for success. If you shout at a student enough they will lose heart and never get it right. Surely a teacher encourages, helps and inspires students to do better not only for themselves but for their parents and in China We all need to ask ourselves how many good students have been lost to us, and our countries, because of bad teaching both here and in the west.<6> Practical AbilitiesIn Britain’s middle school class, teachers often speak less about teaching contents. On the contrary, students can get more chances to learn knowledge on their own. While in China, teachers are responsible for the whole class. All students should do is remember everthing that may be tested in the exam. Especially for physical, chemical or biological experiments, teachers always engage in theory teaching. For example, Chinese teachers will tell you the names of each step of it if you are conducting a experiment, but for British teachers, they will tell you how to do that. From this aspect, Britain’s students do much better than Chinese students and the teachers put much more emphasis on the their students’ development of practical skills and experiment abilities.<7> Interests and SpecialtiesWhen it comes to the student’s hobbies or specialties, Britain’s students are very keen on this topic. Families are good at discoverying and are willing to cultivate their children’s interests and specialties. But in China,things are different. In most case, If students’ interests can’t satisfy their parents, they will be nipped in the bud. Of course, every Chinese student has a common specialty: studying. But, that is only related to the exams and once the exams are over, studying has nothing to do with students. Although, many Chinese schools are aware of characteristic construction of schools, some of their measures are just meaningless ornaments. If they have nothing to do with exams, families and schools will not care about these so-called measures as much as they can. In a word, all things are used to serve the examinations.<8> Class AtmosphereIn Britain’s class, students can call the teacher’s name and sit however they want; teachers often encourage students to challenge themselves; school is also one of their favorite places to stay. But in China, the whole classroom is very silent and students sit formally. And, holiday becomes one of the most enjoyable things for Chinese students. Speaking of this aspect, students and teachers should respect each other and meantime, more importantly, the relationship between teachers and students should be a sort of friendship.<9> Reputation NotionLooking around in Britain’s classroom, we can see there are no league tables or honor rolls but all kinds of students’works. Students also are very much satisfied with their work although they seem not to be verytidy. While in China’s classrooms, as is known to everyone, honor polls and score statistics are everywhere. Good grades means good students.How about those who haven’t got high scores? Whether one student is good or not cannot be judged only by grades. So, something in Chinese educators’ notion should be changed.3.ConclusionBritain’s basic education aims to help students develop personal abilities as much as possible. Its essence encourages students not to follow authority blindly, but to learn how to reflect on questions independently, how to develop creative thoughts and how to cultivate teamspirit. Also, Britain’s basic education stresses on combining the theory with practice so that students can derive happiness and experience from that, which leads to an improvement of comprehensive abilities.But in China, teachers put more emphasis on the cultivation of theoretical knowledge and ignore the significance of the practical abilities so that students are good at nothing but exams. What’s more, China’s basic education is generally difficult and profound, and mainly demand students follow what they have learnt in the textbooks, which to some extent reduces their learning interests and restrains the develoment of students’ creative thoughts.So, Britain’s educational theory indeed provides much good information for the reform of China’s basic education and curriculums. Itbroadens our minds, and also is a requirement to enhance practical independence. Of course, whether the reform can be successful or not relies on the efforts of our students, teachers, families and society. References1.Mother s’ Representations of the Role of Parents and Preschools inPromoting Children’s Development Early Childhood Research&Practice Petrie, Jessica Taisey; Holloway, Susan D2.Tax Free Childcare Regulations, UK government HMRC3.What kids really learn in preschool Parenting v.13 no.8A(Fall1999)p. 74-74./wiki/Education_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China#Primary_schools5./wiki/Education_in_England。
