Our Kids Tough Enough?

[lindapalmara]

Rude, bone idle and cosseted by the State

I haven't actually seen this program get as I tend to watch all episodes together but I have seen the trailers and was horrified.

I spent 5 years in Hong Kong and had a job teaching English to young children. I was very impressed by the discipline shown by both parents and teachers. The children were polite, beautifully behaved, wanted to learn and did, quickly and with no disruption. The parents were all keen on giving their children a good education because their culture does not include hand outs and choices whether to work or claim from the state.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/08/03/uk-school-kids-rude-bone-idle-and-cosseted-by-welfare-state-say-chinese-teachers/

[ummmm]

But the OP suggests that our youngsters are not polite and well behaved. In my experience they are, well at least most of them.

Young...I don't know where you live but the shops I go in tend to be staffed by Brits.

[-Talbot-]

“In China we don’t need classroom management skills because everyone is disciplined by nature, by families, by society."


Yes and we don't half praise the discipline Chinese society dishes out here in the unruly UK.



ps.
A group of Chinese teachers has branded British kids ill disciplined and emotionally immature


I'm a builder and not a teacher...is the above grammatically correct?

[derekpara]

Talbot. Yes, it is. 'Group' is singular, hence 'has' rather than 'have,'

[youngmafbog]

I live in Bournemouth. In the part I live most are foreign (and I dont mean they have a coloured skin before the usual jump on my back)

You are clearly living in Utopia if you are not flooded with foreigners. We now have them put up in expensive hotels here - at tax payers expense of course.

[ummmm]

My neighbours are Polish and there's a black family that live down the road...

Oh...and the local shop is run by second generation Indians (who happen to employ lots of Brit youngsters)

There's also quite a lot of Irish and second generation Irish.

As for other foreigners I wouldn't know until I heard them speak, and I haven't.

It's a lovely area, close to schools, where I see on a daily basis how nice and polite our children can be.

[Ric.ror]

I saw something the other day where children in Japan (I think) are made to clean the classrooms
Might be worth a thought

[-Talbot-]

It doesn't sound right to me and I will be sticking with 'have'

There is a massive increase in foreigners here too...not met any impolite ones yet, adult or child. (I'm assuming the two burka clad women who ignored me were British) I think some adults are petrified of kids and this leads to them forming a wrong opinion of them.

[Kromovaracun]

So, I have taught English in China (in Anhui, not near any of the major cities) and in my experience the Chinese education system is really nothing to write home about. Sure, students are really obedient. Sure, they do all their homework. But that's because the whole system is based around obsessing over test scores, which are often fudged by the examiners anyway. I was often called in to schools to assess their English, only to have school examiners sit next to me and actually edit the scores I was giving students.

Also, as I taught on a weekend school, many of my students were docile because they were simply exhausted. Students get hours and hours and hours of homework dumped upon them get know absolutely *nothing* outside of the curriculum, because they have time for nothing else. I was advised by the director of my school to allow students to sleep in class if it came to it (which they sometimes did) because he knew full well how many of them were seriously sleep-deprived and were just in class because their parents were forcing them.

Also, when you praise the fact that "their culture does not offer hand outs", what you mean is that the prospect of falling into serious poverty when you (eventually) retire in China is very, very real because the state offers precious little support - the plight of the elderly in China is a thousand times worse than it is here, unless your children can afford to support you (which in Hong Kong they probably can, unlike many cities). This was the main reason, incidentally, why so many schools kept fudging my exam results - because they knew if it was below a certain number, it basically be dooming a kid to being unemployable in a society where being an unemployed child basically means begging, prostitution or being a pawn of one of the various gangs.

So, yes. Forgive me if I do not give much of a fig what a handful of Chinese teachers have to say about our education system. And forgive if I am not terribly sympathetic to this stupid, ignorant and thinly veiled attack on the welfare state which Breitbard is offering.

[Kromovaracun]

(please excuse the various typos. Was writing on my phone, which is a pain on AB).

[jourdain2]

I think the Chinese do go OTT - but to balance this I have had pupils complain 'Why do I have to do English? I can talk it can't I.' There are good, industrious pupils, but there are a heck of a lot who regard school as an unnecessary imposition (usually backed up by parents) and they make it so difficult for the others. Nothing wrong with old-fashioned methods, they work as long as they are tempered with sensitivity to individual needs and abilities.

[Kromovaracun]

Well, sure but I think my objection to this article is more the idea that the welfare state ruins education rather than the idea that there is less discipline in schools. In China, the biggest reason that is not so serious problem is that in most of the country kids are threatened with third world levels of poverty if they are not successful. This is not a model we should be aspiring to.

[Booldawg]

lol, this is filmed in Bohunt School in Liphook where I was educated!