Finding the right school for your children is a difficult decision many parents face. Finding the right school in a foreign country – in which you may or may not speak the language – is a process that stresses out even the most resilient expat parents. Regardless of the school, comparisons between China’s education system versus your home country’s system eventually arise.
A Chinese mother now living in Japan recently posted her thoughts (and confusions) about the differences between Japanese and Chinese kindergartens. Check out her observations, as detailed on chinasmack.
She addresses the emphasis on individuality and independence in Japanese schools, versus community and dependency taught in Chinese school. In one example, she emphasizes the fact that Chinese parents tend to carry their children’s book bags, whereas Japanese children carry everything by themselves. Subsequently, she wonders, “Why? Is it because we Chinese love our children a little more?”
Maybe that’s not the quite the question to ask, but these observations raise interesting cultural differences between China and Japan.
