论文总字数：36135字

摘 要

家庭教育相对于学校教育和社会教育是最根本的教育，对于个人的成长、家庭的和谐及整个社会的发展，都起着至关重要的作用。本文试图以《洋妞到我家》和《阳光小美女》为例来分析中美家庭教育方式的差异,主要分为专制教育和民主教育、智力教育和能力教育、温室教育和挫折教育三大方面。接着从历史背景、经济模式以及文化传统三个方面剖析其原因，进而提出适合我国儿童全面发展的建议。

关键词：家庭教育；教育方式；原因分析；电影

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Differences of Family Education Methods 3

3.1 Autocratic Education vs. Democratic Education 3

3.2 Intelligence Education vs. Ability Education 4

3.3 Hothouse Education vs. Frustration Education 6

4. The Reasons of Differences of Family Education Methods between China and America 8

4.1 Different Historical Backgrounds 8

4.2 Different Economic Patterns 9

4.3 Different Cultural Traditions 9

5. Suggestions 10

6. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Chinese Confucian School holds that family education is the basis of governing the country. John Locke, a famous British philosopher, regards family education as a starting point of one person’s education. As the primary site to conduct formative education, family plays a critical role in the cultivation of good habits and the development of intelligence for children. Family education, the earliest education of all, occupies the most important position for the reason that it shapes personal world outlook, philosophy and values(Frank, 1966:10). However, with the process of globalization, Chinese family education cannot satisfy the needs of the new era for a deficiency of theoretical guidance and practical experience. As is known to all, America is a nation with both strong economy and well-developed education which advocates quality-oriented education instead of exam-oriented education. Numerous differences exist in the objectives, content and methods of family education between China and America. This thesis carries out a comparative study of family education methods on the basis of When a Peking Family Meets Aupair and Little Miss Sunshine to draw lessons from the excellence in American education on account of China’s actual conditions, which helps the Chinese eliminate the long-standing mistaken concepts and exerts efforts to the advancement of Chinese family education. The introduction of the two films mentioned above is as follows.

When a Peking Family Meets Aupair tells a story of a typical Chinese household. In this movie, the mother employs aupair (Natalie) beyond economic capability to teach her daughter (PiPi) English in order to immigrate early to provide better environment and education for PiPi. A number of differences exist in culture customs and education methods between Chinese parents and Natalie. This movie shows the real living conditions of present Chinese family may face, such as children’s education, couple’s affection, Chinese outlook on life and values, having aesthetic taste and the meaning of cultural thinking and practical guidance.

Little Miss Sunshine tells a story of an American family who treks from Albuquerque to California to attend a beauty contest called “Little Miss Sunshine” to fulfill the deepest wish of their little daughter (Olive). Although family members go through a variety of frustration constantly, the whole family learns to encourage and support each other on the way to realize Olive’s dream. Many matters in this film have reflected the methods, features and values of American family education, having the meaning of reference and guidance.

1. Literature Review

The definition of family education is stated like this in Family Pedagogy: “Generally speaking, family education is the education activity which focuses on parent-child relationship and aims at cultivating people required by the society. It is the influence on individual exerted by family during the process of man’s socialization (Deng Zuojun, 1995:7)”. “Firstly, based on blood relationship, family education is an education of love and life which mainly depends on the unconscious influence of what one constantly sees and hears by taking unique advantage of family. Secondly, it is informal education. Although family education has certain purposes, it is not organized and planned education. Thirdly, family education is lifelong education (Zhao Zhongxin, 2001:5).”

However, to reflect all the meanings and essences of modern family education, we must consider the features of the times to grasp and understand family education from the dynamic point of view. Therefore, we think modern family education refers to the interactive education based on the two-way communication and mutual influence of family members with a link of blood relationship in real family life. Family education is directive or indirective: direct family education means to the interactive education and training conducted between parents and children according to certain social requirements in family life; indirect family education refers to the unconscious influence and edification produced by family environment, family atmosphere, parents’ words and deeds and children’s growth.

Family education method refers to the general name of activity mode of interaction between parents and children adopted by parents in order to promote the healthy development of children in the course of family education (Miu Jiandong, 2009:210). Family education method is both a significant component in the process of education and one of the basic elements of family education. It has direct relations with the formation of good character and development of positive emotion of children. Moreover, it affects the effect of family education and the direction of children’s growth.

Family education method is on the basis of the feature, purpose, and principle of family education. It is supposed to be chosen and used appropriately and creatively according to the atmosphere of family, the relationship of family members, the age and psychological characteristics. Mastering scientific family education method is conductive to better accomplish the aim and task of family education. The versatility of family education content and task decides the diversity of family education method. The mutual complementation and interaction of all methods is of great significance (Li Tianyan, 2007:141).

3. The Differences of Family Education Methods

3.1 Autocratic Education vs. Democratic Education

3.1.1 Autocratic education in When a Peking Family Meets Aupair

Autocratic education is the education based on parents’ intentions, which strongly emphasizes the authoritative position of parents in the family. Children must obey absolutely without the freedom of self-thinking (Li Tianyan, 2007:58). In this movie, PiPi’s mother is so mighty that she usually gives orders to her daughter and always makes rules and plans for PiPi compulsively. PiPi’ mother regards immigration as her top priority with the purposes of getting better growth environment and high-quality education for her daughter. She insists that immigration is for kids. The essence of the problem is that they haven’t taken the inner thoughts of their children into consideration. Just like the excellent daughter of her friend finally says: “I have decided to move to a quiet town after graduation to live a simple life. I’ll teach kids to play the piano or how to read. I’m really tired. I don’t want to fight all my life like you.”

In general, Chinese parents are accustomed to playing the role of manager and leader in the process of educating children. The authority of parents is overemphasized and unconditional obedience of children is required. Parents can’t make friends with or learn from their children. They hardly try to understand and encourage children. In addition, they cannot make equal communication with each other. Not showing enough respect for children’s personality, Chinese parents usually infringe children’s right of privacy. For instance, schoolbags are searched; diaries are peeked at (Huang lei, 2008:235). The Chinese exercise strict control over their children’s behaviors and attitudes with the purpose of meeting a certain absolute standard. The subjectivity, uniqueness, creativity or personal willingness of children is scarcely allowed. Autocratic education is filled with restrictive words, such as no, cannot, not allow. As a result of such education, parents educate children subjectivity and neglect their own interests. Even worse, it restricts children’s physical and mental development seriously and stifles their creativity and unique personality, thus harmonious and democratic family atmosphere can hardly be created.

3.1.2 Democratic education in Little Miss Sunshine

The Americans stress democracy and equality and respect children’s personality and rights. American parents regard children as independent individuals and children have the right of being respected. No one have the privilege to control or restrict children’s behavior (Miu Jiandong, 2009:75).

In this film, although her mother was surprised that Olive ordered her favorite ice cream at breakfast, she said nothing. When her father thought ice cream would cause fat and opposed this, her grandpa and brother all supported Olive and her mother said to her kindly: “I just want you to understand you can be slim or you can be fat. Whatever you want, it’s OK.” We can see family members esteem self-selection and aspiration of Olive.

Due to mother’s objection to his entering Air Force Academy, Olive’s brother takes a vow of not speaking for 9 months. His Mother doesn’t criticize him or force him to change his action. His father also thinks that such persistence reflects his strong perseverance and determination to realize his purpose and dream.

Such education shows not only the concern with children but also the respect for children’s wishes and personality. They don’t use the privilege to decide, control and restrict children’s thoughts and behavior. Therefore, children consider themselves as the master who should be responsible for their choice and results. Generally speaking, the democracy of American family education reflects in the following aspects. First of all, Children have the right to speak, in another word, they can express their own opinions on family affairs. American parents always encourage their children to say whatever they want to say. Secondly, children have the right to choose on the basis of personal willingness, such as friends, interests, occupations and even marriage. Most of the time, what parents do is to guide children to make choices or giving encouragement to help them build self-confidence. Thirdly, the Americans can become friends with their children and make equal communication with each other. Finally, American parents show great respect for children’s right of privacy (Huang lei, 2008:235). John Amos Comenius, a famous educationist and practitioner, has clearly put forward the idea of respecting children in his work School of Infancy which is the first early family education work in the west. Disrespect may hurt children. Respect for life is the core of all education. By respecting, we can understand the huge potential and complex differences of life, thus promoting scientific education.

3.2 Intelligence Education vs. Ability Education

3.2.1 Intelligence education in When a Peking Family Meets Aupair

PiPi’s mother regards intelligence education as her primary task. Regardless of the financial burden, she employs aupair to improve PiPi’s English level. She stipulates the time when PiPi must practice the piano, do her homework, learn English and so on. Besides, she forbids PiPi from watching TV and going out for fun. During PiPi’s daily life, she always learns knowledge in a boring way without spare time for leisure and entertainment.

“Reading is superior to everything” and “A good scholar can become an official” are well-known sayings of Chinese ancient scholars. Influenced by traditional culture, Chinese families place emphasis on training their children to be talents with excellent grades, high degrees and well-paid jobs, which overlooks children’s cultivation of ideological morality and living habits and development of individual potential and survival skill (Huang Quanyu, 2010:15). Under the pressure of exam-oriented education, Chinese parents tend to assign extra homework, employ private teachers and send children to attend specialty classes or advanced classes to prevent them losing in the starting line (Zhang Liangcai, 2006:38). However, being a talent is unequal to leading development. All things of nature grow in accordance with certain law, including human (Yan Xulei amp; Yang Ping, 2012:156). Breaking the law may cause side effect.

In a word, Chinese families place emphasis on training their children to be talents with excellent grades, high degrees and well-paid jobs. Chinese parents show more concern about children’s academic achievement, which overlooks the happiness and freedom in growth stage. The Chinese attach importance of preaching, ignoring the importance of practical training and creativity. Children are exclusively required to be docile and study diligently. They live under the pressure of endless examinations and burdensome homework so that they have few opportunities to take part in various outdoor activities. Gradually, children lose creativity and imagination. Lack of extraordinary competence, they have difficulties in adjusting themselves to the surroundings and thus few of them can achieve success in the end.

3.2.2 Ability education in Little Miss Sunshine

Compared with intelligence education, American parents attach more importance to the development of children’s abilities. In this movie, Olive packed her bags and carried her luggage without others’ help. Facing lots of audience, She puts on a dynamic performance with great courage and confidence. She has shown good communication and coordination skills in daily life as well. We can see family education has made her develop good habit of independence and psychological quality.

Moreover, Olive’s parents don’t force her to do homework in free time, but encourage her to participate in various activities and competitions. American parents hold that playing is a strategy and method of study. In other words, playing itself is study. Playing makes children the subject of study, promoting learning efficiency; playing meets children’s need and interest and stimulate intrinsic motivation, making study easier; playing encourages children to make use of their knowledge and grasp unknown knowledge, boosting further development of them; playing can provide various learning experience. Above all, children can achieve happiness by knowing themselves and the personal inner strength ( Yan Xulei amp; Yang Ping, 2012:254).

In short, American family education places great emphasis on the children’s overall development of physical power, cognition, sociability, communication and emotion, which is called competence-oriented education (Li Ziyin, 2007:138). On enhancing the physical power, the Americans stress outdoor activities, such as playing in the yard and hiking in the field; on the development of cognition, American parents train children’s senses, wide their sights and stimulate their study interest, for instance, parents bring their children to the library for feeling the good academic atmosphere. On developing sociability, parents hope children to do their business with team-work spirit, make great communications with others and overcome various difficulties on their own; on edifying the emotions, parents guide their children to appreciate music, art and literature to cultivate their taste, such as taking them to all sorts of museums or exhibitions, encouraging them to attend creative activities and enjoy the nature. I think these are the reasons why they are active, outgoing, self-confident and courageous, can overcome difficulties persistently, meet challenges bravely and adapt the surroundings as soon as possible.

3.3 Hothouse Education vs. Frustration Education

3.3.1 Hothouse education in When a Peking Family Meets Aupair

PiPi’s mother treated her daughter as princess and thought girls should be eutrophic. She prepares special stuff and organic food for PiPi. She also asks Natalie to get all bones out of food, peel the fruit and filter the fish soup for PiPi, which results in PiPi’s being sent to hospital due to the bone wedged in her throat. Furthermore, she warns Natalie repeatedly not to take PiPi out and contact with the outside because there’re many strangers who may be wolves. These behaviors reflect the overprotection of parents, leading to the bad temper, impoliteness self-centeredness.

In the parenting pattern of fondness, children have gradually developed a mentality and behavior setting of being cared, praised and followed all around, which may result in both the loss of chances to evaluate their own objectively and the undesirable personality characteristics. Here follows several aspects: firstly, Chinese parents get used to offering superior material conditions and treating children as “princess” or “emperor”, leading to the arrogant and willful personality of children. Secondly, parents tend to obey and meet all the requirements of children instead of teaching them how to communicate with others, care about others or consider others’ feelings, resulting in children’s selfishness and self-centeredness. Thirdly, too much favour of parents causes children to be excessively dependent without their own judgment. Lack of opportunities to practice, children have poor problem-solving ability and psychological frustration tolerance capacity.

In short, Chinese parents regard kids as the apple of their eye. They are extremely worried about their children’s bearing hardships or being upset by some unkindness outside. Due to the fondness, children are inclined to be fragile and have poor adaptability and strong sense of superiority. As a result, it’s quite hard for children to be mature mentally. Makarenko, a well-known educator, has once said: “It is the most terrible gift that parents give to their kids to offer anything or sacrifice everything, even their own happiness.” Actually, excessive concern deprives children of the opportunities to accumulate experience by experiencing failures and suffering from setbacks. In consequence, they are always self-centered and unaware of dedication. Essentially, such education hurts children and does harm to their physical and mental health and overall development.

3.3.2 Frustration education in Little Miss Sunshine

Frustration education means that educatee suffers from setbacks during the process of education to stimulate their potential, thus making them master more knowledge (Li Haizhou, 1995:2). Getting exercise is the core of frustration education. It is a vital component of fully implementing quality education and accelerating the perfect development of personality. Just as the saying goes: “A fall into the pit, a gain in your wit.”

Although Olive fails in the end and even is banned from participating in any beauty contest, all the family members are satisfied and glad because what they really care about is the process of realizing dream instead of the result. Besides, Olive’s mother tells her that commit suicide is the reason of Frank’s wound directly to let her face up to social reality and understand this matter by her own values. What impresses me most is the words Olive’s uncle has said :“ You know Marcel Proust? French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he"s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he gets down to the end of his life...and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered-those were the best years of his life, cause they made him who he was.” We can see frustration is the wealth of life. Only by accumulating experience from failures can we achieve great success.

No one ever succeed without failure, which is the value and meaning of failure. Just as the saying goes: “Failure is the mother of success.” If success can build children’s self-confidence, failure can enhance children’s bearing capacity and improve self- reflection ability. American parents firmly believe that suffering can exercise children’s willpower to avoid giving up easily when faced with frustration and make tremendous efforts to realize personal goals and dreams.

In the course of individual growth, setbacks are unavoidable. It is essential to be confronted with proper setbacks during one’s growth process. Growing in favourable circumstances is likely to make people frail and vulnerable (Liao Xiaohua amp; Zhao Qiaohua, 2004:24). Frustration education is a required course with strong practice. Appropriate experiences of failure are of great value for children to improve the ability of overcoming difficulties. Going through frustration strengthens the perseverance and will, thus providing mental strength and lessons for dealing with troubles next time.

4. The Reasons of Differences of Family Education Methods between China and America

4.1 Different Historical Backgrounds

Although China is a great country that has a long history of over five thousand years, Chinese traditional culture is established based on the agrarian economy under a comparatively closed geography condition. Human beings were satisfied with simply reproducing and didn’t have the ability of expanding social reproduce, which resulted in the slow development of society. People also had conservative and cautious value and were short of adventurous and creative spirits. In the family education, as the core in family, parents are the symbol of authority. They force their children into doing what they want their children to do by inducing and threatening parents’ opinions. Children should obey their parents all the time.

However, the U.S. is an immigrant country with a comparatively short history. And influenced by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, most Americans are creative and have advanced thoughts for they have strong characters and librated thoughts. They ubiquitously want changes (Huang Heqing, 2003:13). Therefore, in American family education, parents focus on the development of independence of their children. Parents in America foster their children to be independent, confident and fond of exploring in which way their children can adopt into the multicultural society with multiple values. Compared with Chinese, Americans are more adventurous and creative. Besides, Americans like letting children make decisions to deal with the problems by themselves they meet in life if they have the ability to solve those problems. In a word, parents in America try their best to respect and understand their children.

4.2 Different Economic Patterns

Due to the advanced productivity and booming commodity economy in the United States, there are lots of opportunities for American people to find a job and they have limited life stress. In addition, America is a society with numerous persons of extraordinary ability and perfect system where staff flow freely. The staff have many chances to change their jobs, which means that there are a lot of different jobs for Americans to choose. American parents feel satisfied if their children are able to base on the society regardless of the job status. Due to the constant changing of commodity economy and employment opportunities, American parents never think their children can live smoothly. The purpose of America family education is to cultivate children to be a well-rounded person.

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