2010-03-26

The Banking approach to child education

Tell me, where in the globe besides this city-state:
  1. More and more local parents talk to their babies not in mother tongue but only in a foreign language (even though the parents themselves don't master it well, and the grandparents can't participate in their conversation), with a view to make their kids more "competitive" when later going to the school admission interview?
  2. The so-called "early childhood education" means that, the toddlers as young as 3 (95% of 3~6 go to kindergartens in Hong Kong) have to learn "two languages three dialects" and "information technology", and to receive formal "writing skill training" (drilling)?
In this world's most capitalist city, arguably school (and increasingly even preschool) is the antithesis to education. It is a place where self-directed learning is discouraged and even punished, and it is also the place where children learn that learning is not fun, or that learning is not for the sake of learning per se.

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