英国社会与文化

Comparison Between British Education And Chinese Education

Britain has a long tradition of education with hundreds of history. It is quite perfect and complex, and it has a great deal of flexibility. This kind of education system is considered one of the best in the world. Many other countries model their schools after British schools, and with good reason. More than 99% percent of all British citizens know how to read and write. All British public schools follow England’s National Curriculum set by the government’s Department of Education and Science. Every student studies English, science, mathematics, computer science, history, geography, art, music, physical education, and a foreign language.

We should know that there are some similarities in the education of Britain and China. The similarities include the below factors: Both in China and Britain, school education includes primary education, secondary education and higher education. Furthermore, both in China and Britain, school education emphasize teachers’ professional development and continuing education in teachers’ training. They attach importance to the professionalism of teachers, focus on training their own quality.

Meanwhile, with the development of China and globalization, the education system in China is becoming more and more diversified and liberal. However, in general, it is still bound to past form, the exam-oriented education. A vast of Chinese student cannot study by themselves in a suitable way, even do not know the meaning of learning. Therefor, increasingly number of common people and

experts begin to compare Chinese education system with British education system.

Britain has more compulsory years of education than China: 11years in Britain and 9 years in China, while the higher education has less years, British education spend only three years in university and one year to get a master degree. And term arrangements are also different. There are two semesters in China and Britain has three terms. The distribution system of teachers between China and Britain is also quite different.

In Chinese classrooms, all the desks are facing the podium. The teacher speaks in the above, and the following students can only be under the requirements to interact with the teacher, such as handing to answer questions. Apparently, Chinese teachers take the typical instillation approach. But this is quite different in the UK. The teacher group the class according to the level of the students and often teach them in the form of groups. In class, teacher and students sit around a big table. Teachers are not always the protagonists, they will stay out of a lot of time for students to discuss and absorb. We can see that British teaching method is more instructive. From the of view efficiency, Chinese teaching method can teach students a lot of knowledge in a short period of time. In terms of the amount of knowledge, we definitely have an advantage over the UK. But British teaching advantage is that depending on this heuristic discussion, this will not only enable students to acquire knowledge, but also enable them to exercise critical thinking and self-learning ability. As the age grows, Chinese students may be better than British students in the mastery of the basics, but British students’ self-learning

ability and thinking ability will be stronger. What’s more, in my opinion, compared with emphasizing group discussion and cooperation of British education, lacking this kind of important aspect in Chinese education, Chinese students are more likely to absence spirit of cooperation.

British schools are very concerned about the psychological of students, this aspect penetrates into the entire education. To some extent, however, British attention seems to be a bit too far. Some British media criticism over-protection of students' psychological will let the students unable to bear the cruel society out of the campus. In majority of situation, Chinese schools think that students’ achievement is more important than students’ psychological. Therefore, Chinese students either have strong enough mental, or the serious psychological problem suppressed for a long time has not been alleviated. Such students into the community, regardless of their own or the community is a great potential risk. To sum up, schools and teachers from China and Britain,even all over the world, are supposed to care about students' psychological in a appropriate way.

China attaches importance to the knowledge-education, but Britain attaches importance to the capacity-education. With the deep influence of Confucius's idea, China focuses on the importance of knowledge education. Teachers teach students whatever textbooks have, and the examination can not break away from textbooks. Even when children go home after school, parents still ask them to take out their textbooks and let them consolidate the content they have learned in the class, then familiar with the new content; they can not get rid of the fixed framework of knowledge-education model. But the British teachers focus on

capacity-education, they stress that the students can familiar with the things and phenomena what they want to know about, then under teachers’ instruction and guidance, they can find the right answers and discover new knowledge. British teachers pay more attention to train the children’ sense of independence, and let them to take the initiative.

British people generally believe that, spoiling the child is the greatest obstacle to the formation of an independent character. To make children can adapt to the needs of the community, to live and work independently in the future, schools and parents must develop children’ ability to live independently when they were young. Besides, they should learn to respect others and self-restraint, and how to be accountable for their actions. British moral education does not require children to memorize ethics mechanically, but let children understand the ethics from the depths of the soul and daily life. One of the most important thing is that children are educated to learn taking care of themselves, but at the same time not interfering with other people.

Because of different history, culture and economic strength, China and Britain have different education ways. We can not say critically that which is better: Chinese education or British education? Perhaps Chinese education is not as targeted enough as British in some aspects, but Chinese education is still very worthy in other aspects of our trust. In the face of British education, what we should do is to take the essence and discard the dross, pay more attention to the combination of theory and practice, and create the suitable methods for our education system.