Making_caring_common_project_study_finds_that_students_value_achievement. Photo by racorn/Shutterstock Richard Weissbourd and Stephanie Jones are two of my favorite people to talk with about children and teenagers. They teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and they want to shift the frame for kids’ moral development—away from thinking about themselves and toward caring about others. More on Slate Plus They are publishing a new report today that makes the challenge clear. Kids who gave caring low priority tended to score low on a scale for empathy and also were less likely to say they would volunteer in their free time or help tutor a friend.
Are kids reflecting their parents’ values when they choose success and achievement over caring? What’s to be done? Weissbourd and Jones make this good point: Children and youth need to learn to zoom in, listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, taking in the big picture and considering multiple perspectives. We parents need to help our kids zoom both ways. Have American Parents Got It All Backwards? | Christine Gross-Loh.
The eager new mom offering her insouciant toddler an array of carefully-arranged healthy snacks from an ice cube tray? The always-on-top-of-her-child’s-play parent intervening during play dates at the first sign of discord? We hold some basic truths as self-evident when it comes to good parenting. Our job is to keep our children safe, enable them to fulfill their potential and make sure they’re healthy and happy and thriving. The parent I used to be and the parent I am now both have the same goal: to raise self-reliant, self-assured, successful children. We need to let 3-year-olds climb trees and 5-year-olds use knives. Imagine my surprise when I came across a kindergartener in the German forest whittling away on a stick with a penknife. Similarly, Brittany, an American mom, was stunned when she moved her young family to Sweden and saw 3- and 4-year-olds with no adult supervision bicycling down the street, climbing the roofs of playhouses and scaling tall trees with no adult supervision.
Children in Japan. There are some values in Japanese society that play a large role in how children are raised. One such prominent value is that of group life. Japanese society is very group-oriented, and it is important to be able to interact as part of a group and to get along with others. This value is very apparent in child rearing in Japan. The whole purpose of the preschool experience, for example, is essentially for children to assimilate into group life.
Japanese children gather in a school gym. Image courtesy of John Donaldson's site with pictures of Japan. Another value that is gaining importance in Japanese society is that of raising an academically superior child. These two main values in Japanese society have become problematic in their contradiction to one another. Such a strong sense of group life creates the desire for Japanese children, especially teenagers, to move in and act as part of friendship groups. Children hanging out with their friends. Sources used for this page: High school in America: A complete disaster. Photo by Creatas/Getty Image Every once in a while, education policy squeezes its way onto President Obama’s public agenda, as it did in during last month’s State of the Union address. Lately, two issues have grabbed his (and just about everyone else’s) attention: early-childhood education and access to college.
But while these scholastic bookends are important, there is an awful lot of room for improvement between them. American high schools, in particular, are a disaster. In international assessments, our elementary school students generally score toward the top of the distribution, and our middle school students usually place somewhat above the average.
But our high school students score well below the international average, and they fare especially badly in math and science compared with our country’s chief economic rivals. What’s holding back our teenagers? In America, high school is for socializing. By contrast, high school students haven’t made any progress at all. Japanese students say American teens have more freedom : J Student Reporters. By Brian Shin, Chaparral High School, Grade 12 January 10, 2011___Students from Miyazaki, Japan were able to have a taste of something strikingly different from what they’re used too: American schooling. As a part of their visit to America in a foreign exchange program, the students of Miyazaki Minami High School visited Temecula, California – and during their stay, they visited Chaparral High School for two days.
Keita Hikigi, a Japanese student, describes his first impression of the States. “Everything is very big here! Everything! Cars, hamburgers from McDonald’s, mayonnaise jars, houses, and streets.” Even Chaparral High School was considered massive with a population of 2,800 students. “I like it very much though. Chieri Kai, when asked about her first impression of an American school described the appearance of the students. Yuki Kamikawaji, a male student, says he was impressed by the other male students. Yoshiro Tsuji agreed. Japanese Teens | teensaroundtheworld. Japan has always been known for its modern essence and advanced development. Its technology has spread through continents to bring us things such as anime, film, video games, robots, J-pop music, electronic music, Wii consoles and dance machines. Japan’s evolution has led to the rise of a new generation of teenagers that are different than ever before.
Many teenage interests are similar to interests of teens in America, but the cultural differences have also brought many distinctions. In this post I will discuss various aspects of Japanese teenagers lives, and how they compare to teenagers in our very own nation. Many consider Japanese teenagers to be more respectful than American teenagers. In Japan, when teenagers are scolded for by elderly people for doing something considered inappropriate, such as talking on a cell phone on a subway, the young people often obey immediately and offer a polite bow.
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