Experts caution parents as home schooling rises
Print Edition
WITH home schooling in vogue, especially in developed cities like Beijing and Shanghai, education experts want a legislation on the qualification of parents, quality of education and access to high school in the future.
A report found about 18,000 people, including children, parents, teachers and others relevant people, were involved in home schooling in China.
Guangdong, Zhejiang and Beijing had the largest number of children doing home schooling.
Shanghai was sixth with about 300 children, while Guangdong had the highest with 1,459 children. But experts have sounded a note of warning.
Yang Xiong from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences said school is not only a place to study but also a place to build peer culture. There is no such culture in home schooling.
“Parents can’t take the place of peers and home schooling is a risky education measure, which can be tried but not widely promoted. Most children are better off in schools,” he said.
“Whether home schooling can meet the standard of compulsory education remains in doubt,” said Xiong Binqi, vice president of 21st Century Education Research Institute.
“A legislation should stipulate what kind of education parents need, what curriculum the home school should have, and which organization should evaluate the quality. All these are necessary if more and more families decide on home schooling,” he said.
Dissatisfaction with teachers
The Oriental Morning Post said one of the reasons for the rise in home schooling was the dissatisfaction with teachers education philosophy, which focused too much on good behavior.
Zhang Qian, a Shanghai mother of a 11-year-old son, who started teaching her son at home about six months ago, said: “Teachers were always scolding him. He shocked us one day by saying he wanted to kill the teachers. I was afraid if my son stayed in school longer he would have mental problems.”
She said her son did well in the past six months by learning Chinese, maths and English in the morning every day and reading, painting and enjoying outdoor activity in the afternoon.
“I picked the teaching materials which were in line with his interest while also covering books from school syllabus,” Zhang said. “He has had a great improvement on his Chinese, especially classic Chinese works. He has finished maths like children of his age and did well in test papers I bought from the book store.”
Elsewhere, a group of five preschool children between the ages of 2 and 4 don’t go to kindergarten but meet at parks at least two to three times a week. “Children learn from nature and real life. It is much more important than pinyin and math,” said Xu Hong, one of the mothers in the group.
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