A Comparative Study Of Sino-american Family Education From The Perspective Of Cross Culture

Education, essentially, is a social activity which cultivates people, and also afundamental approach by which people inherit social culture and pass on productionand life experience. Family education refers to the educational processes parentsapply to the children’s development during the family interactive activities. Familyeducation plays a basic role in the whole education. The initial goal of familyeducation is to ensure children’s physical and psychological development before theyaccept collective educations (like kindergarten, school education, etc.), and lay a goodfoundation to their future lives. Furthermore, family education is to strengthen andenrich individual and family wellbeing. Family education is intended to prepareindividuals for their family roles rather than repairing family disfunction.Chapter one is a literature review concerning family education and cross culture.Chapter Two is a general introduction to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the BestSeller in2011in the field of family education, which was written by Amy Chua.Amy Chua, an American Chinese, is a professor at the Law School of Yale University.In this book, Amy Chua shares her parenting experience of remarkable merits whichshe describes as a traditional and strict “Chinese” upbringing in her American family.Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother initiated a hot issue over advantages anddisadvantages between Chinese and American family education.Chapter Three mainly presents the similarities in Sino-American familyeducation from two aspects—the essence and the content of family education. Theessence of life meaning and cultural implication are the common pursuits ofdifferent family education. Obviously, both Chinese and American parents educateand guide their children to be independent and to cherish their lives. Familyeducation is a way of achieving extension of human life. In terms of culturalimplication, family education aims at imparting intelligence to children to let themimprove themselves, fit into the society, and to be creative. Realizing the similarities is of great significance in the age of globalization. It is expected to promote thedevelopment of family education through the mutual communication and comparison.The family education of every nation has its own cultural mark. Chapter Fourfocuses on the differences of family education between China and America. Thesedifferences between the two types of family educations are mainly shown in twoaspects: the processes and the results. To be specific, the different processes includedifferent aims, different content and different methods of family education. Onlyafter we have fully understood the existing differences can we figure out the causesbehind them.In addition, as a cultural phenomenon, differences between family educationtypes reflect different social and cultural values. Last but not the least, Chapter Fivesummarizes four main causes of the differences from the cultural and cross-culturalperspectives. The Chinese and Americans have different values of success and valueof life, different ways of thinking and different parent-child relationship. Byanalyzing the cultural differences and cultural reasons, taking American familyeducation as a mirror, this study tries to provide people with some enlightenment andfeasible methods for future Chinese family education.