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But given that roughly 60% of Chinese families in major cities now spend one-third of their income on children's education, parents are expecting results, not just luxurious surroundings. Li Hongbin's 5-year-old daughter, Xu Yunqiao, attends a private nursery school in Beijing, where she studies from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., five days a week. It isn't enough. Concerned that their children weren't being prepared for the admissions tests at the city's better elementary schools, Li and other parents recently campaigned for play times to be trimmed to make way for more study—and got their wish. Li also started sending her daughter to after-school and weekend classes in reading, math and music. A generation ago, few Chinese 6-year-olds knew how to read or do basic arithmetic. Today, top primary schools expect matriculating students to know at least 1,000 characters and their multiplication tables. Her daughter "has 100 math problems to do a week," marvels Li. "She can do rapid calculations in her head." But she worries that these skills may come at an emotional cost. "It's really terrifying," Li says, of Yunqiao's packed schedule. "We don't know if this makes sense, but we have no choice."
Monday, Mar. 20, 2006
Asia's Overscheduled Kids Forget about playtime. Children today are caught up in an endless race of extra tuition sessions, tennis classes, piano lessons, late-night homework and much, much more. Are we preparing them for success or overloading them with stress? BY LIAM FITZPATRICK
In China, the fact that most parents have only one child helps to explain the extraordinarily acute pressure they feel to produce a superkid—and the resulting proliferation of books with titles like Prodigy Babies and 60 Ways to Ensure Success for Your Gifted Child. But parents across Asia are wrestling with the same conundrum. They're desperate for their children to do well in life and know that relentlessly hard work and a top-notch education can raise the odds of success. Yet many of them also quietly fear the impact of the ferocious pressure imposed on their children in service of these aspirations—how could they not, when tales of emotionally broken prepubescents and student suicides are a media cliché? But however ambivalent they may feel, most parents conclude that the goals are worth the risks. Indeed, the sight of a child being driven to study harder—by a frowning teacher, bullying father or beseeching mother—is a tableau as archetypal to the region as planting rice. Parenting techniques that prioritize the nurturing of a child's self-esteem are not widely espoused. There are no Oprahs or Dr. Phils to genially wag a finger at the dads who don't hug their kids or the mothers who berate them for bringing home anything less than straight A's. Instead, many Asian parents have been free to neuroticize their offspring in ways that would make an entire faculty of child psychologists blanch. Why has this state of affairs persisted?
The "E.M.B.A." program that kicks off on a Sunday morning in the heart of Shanghai's financial district is much like any other curriculum designed to train the future business leaders of China. "We give students the tools they need to build up their confidence," says Vivian Liu, general manager of the popular two-year-old program, which has seen 1,500 participants pass through its doors. But the difference between Liu's course and others is this: when the demands of subjects like economics or communications get too taxing, her students might just respond by having a good cry and asking for their mommies. How so? They're children. The e in this E.M.B.A. program stands not for executive but early, and the oldest student in the class is age 6. Civil servant He Jiachen sends his 3-year-old, He Xingzhen, to the E.M.B.A. course while he and his wife pursue their own adult M.B.A.s. "My son is developing well," he says. "In class, he isn't afraid of giving speeches, and he likes to be a team leader in group activities." High expectations for children are nothing new in China, where the need to master the thousands of characters necessary for basic literacy—coupled with the educational legacy of Confucius—has turned many an inquisitive, bright-eyed student into a sullen rote learner. But the pressure on even the youngest children is intensifying as their parents embrace the notion that education is a primary driver of the kind of upward mobility that was previously unthinkable in China. Eager to provide their kids with a head start, Chinese parents are signing them up for everything from weekend prep courses for under-sixes to boarding schools for toddlers. And we mean toddlers: for $700 a month parents can send children as young as 3 years old to the Hualan International Village Kindergarten in the port city of Tianjin, where they live full-time in landscaped villas outfitted with 42inch plasma TVs and pianos. http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/asia/magazine/printout/0,13675,501060327-1174763,00.html
TIME Asia Print Page: Asia's Overscheduled Kids -- March 27, 2006 Vol. 167, No. 12
One answer is the region's historical instability. The Asian drive for advancement has always been sharpened by traumatic and seemingly haphazard events. There's a revolution, flood, famine, dictatorship, evacuation, massacre or coup within the memory of almost every Asian. Even if an entire country cleans the mud of the collective farm from between its toes and marches towards a glittering future of service-sector jobs and flat-screen TVs in every home, it only takes a currency crisis or a strange pox like SARS to shake collective confidence to the core. And when the world is looked at this way, the notion of a child's school years Page 1 of 8
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strictly regimented day that begins at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. On the weekend he studies classical Chinese literature, crams chemistry for an inter-school competition and practices English. He has virtually no leisure time, though he doesn't seem to mind because of his own ambition to succeed. "When I was a student," his father reflects, "I went to school for only half a day. And in the afternoon, I could play with my pals as much as we wanted."
when the world is looked at this way, the notion of a child's school years as a halcyon time of finger painting and end-of-term musicals can seem nothing short of scandalous. Such attitudes towards children are reinforced by Asia's perennial concerns over familial honor and personal face. "Many parents want to show off their children," says Dr. Aruna Broota, a clinical psychologist at the University of Delhi who studies the effects of academic pressure on local kids. "They want to say, 'My son is the best performer in his class' or 'he will go to Harvard.' The child understands that what's important is not his education but that he is a status symbol for his parents."
By contrast, if today's parents do not fill their children's every waking hour with study, or at least organized activity, they risk social disapproval. In Hong Kong, 10-year-old Cheng Hoi-ming has 34 hours in school each week, as well as at least eight hours of tennis lessons and nearly three hours of extra tutorials in science and math. Her 13-year-old sister, Hoiying, was participating in 10 extracurricular activities each week by the time she reached second grade (a schedule that has been eased only slightly now that she has entered middle school). Even so, "I was regarded as an irresponsible parent, because they were not doing enough," says their mother, social worker Alice Chang. Parents who withdraw their children from the fray altogether face even greater opprobrium. John Au, a graphic designer, says his relatives were aghast at his decision to remove his son Justin from Wah Yan, one of Hong Kong's most prestigious schools. "A lot of people regard getting into Wah Yan as like winning the lottery, but my son was working until 11 p.m. every night at 7 years of age," says Au. "He got tired and I got tired." Justin now attends an international school and, according to his father, "seems much happier."
But even if there were no socio-cultural reasons for the emphasis placed on material advancement, merely observing the action of an entire continent on the rise would be enough to make a child-nagging brute out of almost anyone. Whole villages and towns are making the transition from poverty to wealth in less than a generation—not just in China, but in India, Thailand, Vietnam and elsewhere. The neighbors who used to rear chickens and grow vegetables are now working in call centers or queuing at the local bank for the latest IPO. In these epoch-shifting times of fantastical wealth, the thinking goes, only a fool gets left behind—and only the most insouciant parent neglects to send the kids to cram school. "Professionals want their children to follow in their footsteps and become doctors and engineers," says Esther Tan, an adjunct associate professor in the psychology department of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "Those who are less educated want their children to do better and have better lives."
There are many Asian parents who, like Au, have become disillusioned with conventional education systems. But not all of them have his confidence when it comes to knowing what to do next. Instead, they are more likely to experience the confusion felt by Chikako Kobayashi, a mother of two grade-schoolers in the Tokyo commuter suburb of Hachioji. She sums up the feelings of many when she admits, "I don't really know what is best for my kids."
Chew Peck Khoon, a 48-year-old Singaporean IT worker, is typical in her conviction that success at school is a key stepping stone: "I want my children to do well and get a good education that will bring them a better future." And, of course, she's anxious for her children not to fall behind her friends' and relatives' kids. "We always compare," she says. In a citystate that streams children as young as 9 (an age when the top 1% enter the so-called Gifted Programme), cramming is viewed as essential if kids are to have any chance of keeping up with their peers: an estimated 90% of Singaporean families arrange extra tuition for their children. In Chew's case, the extra lessons helped to win the admission of her daughter Ying Ting to Nanyang Girls' High School—one of Singapore's finest. The 14year-old now begins her day with a 6 a.m. wake-up call and finishes it at 10 p.m. or later, after several hours of homework and extracurricular activities. What most adults would regard as a long daily slog is entirely unexceptional for Singaporean youth. "I've seen people studying till 1 a.m.," Ying Ting shrugs.
Many Japanese educators have likewise started to question their own assumptions. Chastened by incidences of teen suicide and school-related stress (and mindful of the need to create a more adaptable workforce at a time of economic restructuring), the Japanese Ministry of Education has, in recent years, implemented measures in public schools to take emphasis away from rote learning. In a country once notorious for the burdens placed on its young, schools are now required to adhere to a policy of yutori kyoiku (relaxed education). This involves a broadening of the curriculum to include more general-studies components, but a reduction in the overall amount of course material and school hours—a measure colloquially known as "the 30% decrease." The practice of half-day schooling on Saturdays has also been scrapped. "The ministry re-evaluates its policies every 10 years or so, and the most recent changes stressed the need to give children the ability to learn independently, rather than just stuffing them with information," says spokesperson Shunichi Taniai. "The
Many parents cannot believe the timetables with which their children must cope. "It's very cruel for today's kids," says Shanghai parent Yang Langtao. But Yang's son, 15-year-old Bohong, nonetheless works a strictly regimented day that begins at 6.15 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. On the http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/asia/magazine/printout/0,13675,501060327-1174763,00.html
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children. Children give up very easily these days."
stuffing them with information," says spokesperson Shunichi Taniai. "The emphasis is on creating a well-rounded individual with a healthy mind and body."
An unintended result of the new policy has been an exodus from state schools to private schools. The number of first-graders entering public schools declined by a total of 3% over the past four years, while the number of children enrolled in private schools rose by 10%. The surge in demand for private education has been a boon for swanky establishments like Satoe Gakuen in Saitama prefecture outside Tokyo, where an annual tuition fee of $12,000 buys an extraordinary range of facilities. Never mind science labs, the school has its own planetarium as well as science teachers qualified to doctorate level—and all this is for an elementary school. "Parents are spending more on their children and there's a move to private education at a younger age," says vice principal Michio Kaneko. If parents can't afford private schools, they can at least dispatch their kids to after-school classes. "Most of the parents who send kids here are dissatisfied with the standards of [public] education," says Sachiko Kishi, a Kumon teacher in Tokyo. So despite the best efforts of the government to reduce study loads, many parents are working their kids harder than ever.
In South Korea, too, there are signs that even the most traditional institutions are beginning to question their old ways. Take the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy. To almost every parent, it is the shining apex, the Mount Olympus, of the country's schooling. A three-hour drive east of Seoul, Minjok is a private school that derives its eminence from results. "Most students go on to Yonsei University, Seoul National University, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology or Pohang Institute of Technology," says headmaster and former Minister of Education Lee Don Hee, reciting the names of some of the country's most desirable tertiary-education establishments. "If not these schools, then they go to medical school." And if they want to study abroad? "They matriculate to Ivy League schools or their equivalents." Results like this come through the disciplined implementation of classical methods. These require students, inter alia, to speak only English from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., practice either Taekwondo or archery, and learn traditional musical instruments. The children bow silently in the presence of visitors and wear old-fashioned hanbok garments. Academic disappointment is hardly contemplated. "No student has ever failed to proceed to the next grade," says Lee. "We select students who have the potential to become leaders in many areas of society, and we train them."
If Asian education is to be reformed, then, the battles must be fought in homes and hearts. The children of Seoul's Haja Center are familiar with this already: many of them had to fight their parents merely to be allowed on the premises. Take a quick walk around this experimental high school and it's easy enough to see why. Run by Yonsei University and the Seoul Alternative Learning Community Network, the Haja Center (the word haja translates as "Let's do it!") charges $40 to $150 a month for the kind of courses—filmmaking, fine art, web design, music recording—that would darken the countenance of many a Korean mum or dad. Unlike the Minjok Leadership Academy, there are no students dressed in the garments of a previous century, speechlessly prostrating themselves before visitors. Instead, groups of denim-clad, iPod-toting youths come and go from a rowdy cafeteria and look you in the eye if they notice you at all. Teachers are not even called teachers but pandori, meaning "facilitator" or "venue operator." For children traumatized by the rigors of the conventional education system, this is a blissful refuge. "Three or four years ago, children would come to us clearly exhausted from fighting their parents," says Chung Yeon Soon, who until recently was the Network's deputy director before assuming a research position at Korea National Open University. "But these days, some parents seem more able to empathize with their kids. There are happy cases now, in which parents and children actually come to visit the center together."
Yet under Lee, even this seemingly immutable Confucian stronghold is changing: he has broadened the criteria for admission ("because I wanted to find talented youths, not geniuses who had been created by their parents"), instituted unsupervised exams and introduced a student council. Lee even utters the kind of liberal maxims that would have had a previous generation of headmasters squirming with unease. "The school tries its best to help students enjoy learning," he says, "and not to have them study under pressure." Such concessions to modernity are more likely to worry Asian parents, however, than reassure them. In Japan, the great majority of parents are deeply suspicious of yutori kyoiku and their concerns were exacerbated by the results from a student-assessment test carried out among OECD countries in 2003. In reading comprehension, Japanese 15-year-olds were given a lowly 14th place in the country rankings. Another report, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, stunned Japanese with the finding that their children lagged behind those in Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. "Many parents are worried that their kids will lose out if we get carried away with yutori kyoiku," says Akiko Nishimoto, a systems engineer and mother of two in the suburbs of Tokyo. Yutori is supposed to mean "relaxed," "but ironically it is creating a desperate, inarticulate anxiety among parents," she says. Adds Miyuki Igarashi, a 43year-old with a son in fourth grade: "Yutori kyoiku hinders ambition in children. Children give up very easily these days." http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/asia/magazine/printout/0,13675,501060327-1174763,00.html
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There is cautious optimism in other parts of Asia too. Vasavadatta Sarkar, a New Delhi schoolteacher, observes: "There's no question that children are under mounting pressure, but there's a new generation of parents who understand that there are new career options open to their children." Partha Iyengar, an analyst at the Indian offices of IT consultancy Gartner, agrees. "The present form of education has helped the Indian IT industry create a world-class resource pool that is easily trained in well-defined processes Page 5 of 8
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world-class resource pool that is easily trained in well-defined processes and disciplined enough to follow those processes to a T," he says. "But it is also very ill-equipped to nurture [independent thinking]. If there is a concerted effort to produce more creative students, we will be well placed. Otherwise, India runs the risk of fading back into oblivion."
TIME Asia Print Page: Asia's Overscheduled Kids -- March 27, 2006 Vol. 167, No. 12
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From TIME Asia Magazine, issue dated March 27, 2006 Vol. 167, No. 12
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Iyengar's emphasis on the need for marketable skills is axiomatic to every Asian parent. It may not be couched in the same economic jargon, but it's a favorite theme of mealtime homilies and bedtime lectures. The only problem is that many parents are approaching the topic from an outdated perspective. In the new economies, the real spoils will go to the creatives —the quick-witted entrepreneurs and innovators, not the compliant milksops with ambitions restricted to the traditional professions. Education reform will come about only when this is more widely recognized by parents across Asia. Hirohito Komiyama, author of several books on the Japanese education system, explains: "Students who undergo mindless cramming tend to have a low EQ [a measure of emotional intelligence], and those who don't learn to socialize or communicate with others cannot succeed in the current corporate world, which increasingly seeks wellrounded individuals." South Korean educator Chung adds: "Education used to be the only way a person could move up in society, and the parents of our children are of a generation that grew up in just such a culture. But they are trying to impart 20th century values to 21st century children." And if none of this resonates with parents, what about a straightforward appeal to human kindness and empathy? Says Esther Tan of Nanyang Technological University: "Although having children who do well will make them proud, most of the parents I encounter genuinely want the best for their children rather than [looking] to boost their own egos." Change will depend on the ability of parents to admit this more readily, to let go of their fixations with status and social superiority, and to recognize their children not as appendages but as individuals. Even in China, where the desire to equip children to compete is so allconsuming, there are those who realize that the pressure has gone too far, that there is a desperate need for everyone—parents and kids alike—to kick back and take a deep breath. Feng Shulan, principal of Yayuncun Number 2 Kindergarten in Beijing, says she has repeatedly resisted demands from parents to push her students harder than she believes is good for them. "Sometimes, we have to lecture the parents about what's appropriate for their kids," says Feng. "I tell parents it's also important for them to simply spend time with their kids. I tell them it's important for the kids to be happy." If we forget that, we've surely forgotten the most important lesson of all. With reporting by Aravind Adiga/New Delhi, Hannah Beech and Bu Hua/Shanghai, Susan Jakes and Nicole Qu/Beijing, Austin Ramzy/Hong Kong, Toko Sekiguchi and Yuki Oda/Tokyo and Jake Lloyd-Smith/Singapore http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/asia/magazine/printout/0,13675,501060327-1174763,00.html
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