美國的小學教育

mattsmum

"要是憑課堂上的學習成績拿獎學金，美國人常常不是中國人的對手，可是一到實踐領域，搞點研究性題目，中國學生往往沒有美國學生那麼機靈，那麼富有創造性。"

good comment, saw this article in another web site, worth re-thinking about the issue of primary education here.

thank you for posting it up here.

mattsmum

uncleedward 寫道:

Dear Song

Regarding your remark that “ I don't understand why the HK students are requested to 背 those not famous Chinese articles. 背唐詩 is FINE, but not those normal articles. What is the purpose???” I had the same question before. Then I put forward this question to a friend who is a senior executive at a well-known publisher producing such rubbish primary Chinese books.

The answer is simple. EMB has a prescribed list of standard Chinese characters a primary school student is supposed to learn. The publisher then has to hire a genius writer to write up articles to include these characters but at the same time to exclude those which EMB considers as out of syllabus.  That is why you never see articles by famous writers to be included in primary school Chinese books. That is why these text books are all so dry. I have yet to see a kid whose interest in Chinese is aroused by these text books. They are the perfect tools to keep students away from learning Chinese. The whole Chinese education has been buried by these text books.

very good observation,

not only that, they test your chinese standard by using just 26 or so articles.

they would ask you questions like" what is the main theme of xxx?". if you had never read this article, you will lose lots of marks.