Education Chinese Style – Part 5

February 11, 2010

In America many children are bored with school and use excuses to not study or read. This has led to high drop-out rates.

Here are the most common complaints heard over the years:

“I don’t like to read.”
“Why do you give us so much home work?”
“This class is no fun.”
“The reason I don’t do the work is because this class is boring.”

An American High School

“You failed me.”
“You are boring.”

It was bad enough to hear this from students. The parents of many failing students I taught made the same accusations. Not once in thirty years did I hear one parent take the blame. It was always the teacher’s fault when their kid didn’t pass a class or improve their reading ability.

A lot of the blame for this attitude is because of the self-esteem movement that was based on flawed logic proven with research to be wrong. It seems, that once the Titanic was on course, there was no stopping the ship of education from hitting the iceberg.

See Part 1

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart.

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Education Chinese Style – Part 1/7

February 10, 2010

Words are cheap. Actions speak loud, and the Chinese are not smarter than everyone else is.  They just work harder and have different values than Americans. The best way to learn about another culture is by comparing and contrasting that culture with yours to see the similarities and differences.

With that in mind, let’s examine Christianity first. Emperor Constantine lived 280-337 AD. He ruled the Roman Empire and is responsible for Christianity eventually becoming the state religion a century later. From that time, Christianity, more than any other influence, set the tone for morality and ethics in the West.

One of my primary Biblical sources is a Concordance of the Holy Bible given to me by a student teacher in 1982. When I checked to see what that Concordance had to say about the importance of ‘education’, I found nothing in the index under that word. I then looked up the word ‘learning’ and discovered six passages. I also looked up ‘teacher’ and there were a few references but nothing significant. That hunt to discover the importance of learning to early Christians was a revelation.  Those passages from the Bible will be covered in Part 2.

Also recommended The Reasons Why China is Studying Singapore

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

5 Comments | American culture, Chinese Culture, education, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Power Corrupts

February 9, 2010

The sun never set on the British Empire until endless wars brought that empire to its knees. I’m sure that at one time, a British citizen could easily say with arrogance, “If Russia (or China, or Germany, or Italy, or France or Spain) doesn’t behave, we will spank them.” And Britain did spank these countries and others for centuries until the empire was bankrupt and burdened with debt—sound familiar?  

I read a piece in The Huffington Post recently and was reminded how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Then I remembered what an “old” friend said in an e-mail.  This friend is a conservative, born-again Christian. He claims to be guided by scripture. He believes that George W. Bush was the greatest if not one of the greatest American presidents. He also believes in nation building as GWB attempted in Iraq.

He makes part of his living as a handyman. He lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment and drives a very-used car that he keeps running by visiting junk yards for parts and doing the work himself. He also votes Republican and bashes evil liberals at every chance while listening to radio-talk shows like Dennis Prager and reading authors like Ann Coulter.

This friend wrote, “If China doesn’t behave, we will spank them.” He also wrote once that Communism was evil. My reply was that individuals like Mao or Stalin were corrupted by their power and did evil things, but not all communists were evil.

I always thought that ‘power corrupts’ only applied to people in powerful positions like corporate CEOs or elected officials.  I was wrong.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Why China is Studying Singapore – Part 2/3

February 6, 2010

Let’s look at Singapore—known as the Switzerland of Southeast Asia where a student might be caned for talking back to a teacher. For sure, he will be fined and caned for spitting gum on a sidewalk.  But not in America where we are free to do what we want even if that means defacing or stealing someone else’s property.

Singapore City View

I’ve heard and read more than once that Singapore was the economic model that China was watching closely—not America with its chaotic market system that expands and collapses like a popped balloon. 

This sounds like the China we often hear about in the Western media or out of the mouth of an American politician. “…is a socially engineered, nose-to-the-grindstone, workaholic rat race, where the self-perpetuating ruling party enforces draconian laws … squashes press freedom, and offers a debatable level of financial transparency—”

That description was not about China. It was for Singapore, a city-state that has a government-enforced savings plan and an average unemployment rate of about three percent.

Return to Part 1 of The Reasons Why China is Studying Singapore or go to Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The First of all Virtues – Part 1/9

January 30, 2010

I read ‘any damn fool can be a parent’, and it made me think that North America is not a comfortable place to be if you become a geezer. Geezer is the endearing term our teenage daughter used to call me.

When I was a kid, youngsters were to be seen and not heard. We treated our elders with respect. And I was born in America.

After the birth of Disneyland, fast food, MTV, the Internet and the iPod generation, something valuable caught a cancer that spread through too much of American culture. That something is killing off ‘respect’. In China it is called piety and piety is very much alive. In other Asian countries like South Korea, piety is just as strong. You can read more about this in Hello Korea.

Go to The First of All Virtues Part 2 or discover Deep Family Roots

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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21 Comments | American culture, Chinese Culture, Confucianism, cultural differences | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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