All responsible governments, the world over, strive to deliver a better life to their coming generations, than was achievable for their earlier generations. In doing so, a key factor is always education. Authorities in the Chinese mainland deserve great credit for some recent far-sighted new guidelines, aimed at providing a better life to its school-aged children. These measures are very welcome, although some might claim that they are also somewhat overdue.
As the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion residents, the Chinese mainland has more than 200 million children, and more children in schools than the entire populations of most other countries. These innovative and important measures can be seen as guiding a better way forward – a progression which could with advantage be emulated in many other places, including Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.
Let’s start with the home environment. The long-standing one child policy, just recently relaxed, has meant that most children in the Chinese mainland grow up in one-child families, with no siblings to play with or interact so as to better develop their inter-social skills. So this re-thinking on this one-child policy is welcome, for a number of reasons.
Having permission to have a family of up to three children is one thing; but this will only happen if young couples have the financial strength, or support, to do that. Wider forms of encouragement, such as the provision of starter homes for newlyweds, and the granting of longer periods of paid maternity and paternity leave, would make the possibility of having larger families more attractive to newlyweds.
As the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion residents, the Chinese mainland has more than 200 million children, and more children in schools than the entire populations of most other countries
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Next we turn to what is done to those millions of children of the mainland, in the name of education. It is a common thing, and not only found in the Chinese mainland, that immediately after a long day at school, children are frog-marched off to after-school private tutorial classes, reinforcing (or, often, re-teaching) subjects that they have already labored through all day at school.
At just the moment, when at the end of the day they exit the school gates, they should be set free to visit the park or to play with their friends, instead that are dragooned in to sitting through several hours more of academic study. ‘’All work, and no play, makes Jack a dull boy;’’ so runs the old saying. By obliging children to spend almost every waking hour in study robs them of that carefree childhood that they all desire-and deserve, and which lightens the soul.
The schools are also to blame here, by their setting of onerous daily homework tasks, which the children have to find time for by squeezing it in between their tutorial classes and bedtime. Whatever is meant to be imparted to their charges by school teachers, should be encompassed within the long school day, and not beyond it. Compulsory homework should be abolished – the government thereby taking another step towards returning their childhood to them.
With the best will in the world, surely enough is enough? Any important learning points not covered in the school curricula during their daytime classes can be left aside, as the essentials will surely be covered during the normal school day, rather than being matter needing to be re-covered during after-school tutorial classes or as homework exercises. For these reasons, the government is wise to ban all tutorial courses in existing school topics. Better, in my opinion, to ban such colleges altogether!
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Next we turn to just what too many youngsters like to do, in those rare moments of free time that come their way. Sad to say, many of them are besotted by video games. Several parents tell me that their children often play such games well into the night, thereby depriving themselves of sleep, with negative consequences on their attention-span and energy-levels for the next day at school. The government now rightly seeks to restrict playing such games to a maximum of just a few hours a week. Laudable though this move is, enforcing it will not be easy: the parents will need to be pro-active and firm in upholding it.
Another bugbear is the common practice, now found globally, of indulgent parents providing an i-Phone and internet access, even to very young children of primary school age. We all know that once so empowered, a child can all-too-readily be led astray, can gain access to visual material very unsuitable for a child’s eyes, or can even be abused in different ways by their peers or by older people, via social media and unrestricted internet access.
The best way to protect your children from the horrors of the dark side of the internet is for parental control on their children’s access to be complete: by the child looking at a device held and controlled by a parent. So, perhaps it should be prohibited to give their own internet access to all children below a certain age – such as 8, or 10?
Limiting their time online, should also free up more ‘’down time’’ for the children to enjoy by participating in more healthy child-like activities. For example, if a child joins a school or home-area football or basketball or swimming team, as well as the exercise being good for him or her, the necessary team-work, friendly co-operation and team spirit all contribute to his development as a person.
All-in-all, we of the older generations have unfortunately clearly pushed the current younger generations in to experiencing too much study and not enough play. These innovative Chinese governmental revised approaches represent many important and worthwhile steps in the right direction. It may be hoped that, following on from these promising starter measures, more will yet be done to return their missing childhood to the school children in China, and beyond, today.
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In all of this, schools and parents elsewhere could greatly benefit today’s school populations by introducing similar innovative measures too.
The writer has for decades been involved in the field of education in many parts of Asia, including the Chinese mainland, Macao, Tibet and Hong Kong.