CHILDHOOD IN CHINA

If our observations were at all representative, the outstanding feature of childhood in China, and that which raises the lower basic problem, is the high level of concentration, orderliness, and competence of the children. The docility did not seem to us to be the docility of surrender and apathy; the Chinese children we saw were emotionally expressive, socially gracious, and adept. . . . Over and over we asked ourselves how the very young Chinese child was brought competence, social grace, and restraint. Put in its most simplifying form, Chinese children behave the way they do because that is the way children behave! The contrast with common American practice can be easily made. An American teacher (or parent) considers how he or she will effect a change in a child, what should be done with the child to make a difference. This attitude, which runs across many different theories of education, sees teaching as instrumental, as a set of procedures for the purpose of changing behavior. If the instruments of education, whether they are problem setting, positive reinforcement, or modeling, are ineffective, then change is difficult or distorted. Such a consciously instrumental attitude seems far less prevalent in Chinese schools. Rather, we formed the impression that Chinese teachers have uniform expectations of what children at one or another age can do and that they behave with the virtually certain knowledge that the children would come to behave in the expected way—and, critically, it did not much matter whether the children got there early or late.