Education is not only a science but an art. During the children's entire education, school education is in a dominant position but family education plays a key role. Children's growth needs education, help, and guide from parents. With the development of Chinese society and economy, the importance of family education of children grows more and more significant. But because of cultural traditions, lifestyle, social customs, ideas and sense of heritage, family education in China is still a weak part. The traditional concept of family education is being challenged. And many parents lack understanding of physiological and psychological development of the children during their growth, and lack proper education and effective methods to face the different stages of children's development. Consequently, parents tend to miss crucial educational opportunities. With different history, culture and social economic conditions between China and America, the formations of family education are producing a huge impact. American high level of culture and education also determines the United States the world leader in science and technology. The US has not only advanced school education but advanced family education, and their advanced educational concepts and teaching approaches are in line so that we can learn from American family education in a lot of places.Through questionnaire investigation and contrastive analysis, this thesis studies the differences between Chinese and American family educational approaches by three main aspects of intellectual education, moral and physical education, and life education. Firstly, this thesis discusses the reasons on the historical and cultural backgrounds and social conditions. Then this thesis describes the specific performance including the different status and contents, the comparison of parenting methods. In the end, this thesis has a brief summary of advantages and disadvantages of Chinese and American family educational approaches. This thesis tries to briefly describes and compares the intellectual education, moral and physical education and life education. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is in order to improve the quality of our family education. By studying the differences of family educational style between China and America, we do not mean to belittle our Chinese family education but is a kind of reflection. Absorbing American family education's advantages and removing the disadvantages of our family education style as well as keep our Chinese traditional merits of family education could make a benign circulation of healthy personnel training in our country. Thus, we could gain a competitive advantage in the future competition and gradually adapt to the world trend of the future.
A Discussion of and Suggestions to the Problems in Chinese Family Education —Based on the Observations of American Family Education
