Tag: education

Shaming

Shaming

For the week, I would like to talk about shaming.

Shaming happens everywhere. Shaming is when you make a person feel ashamed, humiliated, or inadequate. It is terrible, but in China (or perhaps in all of Asia), they take it to another level.

What do I mean? Well, in school, students are ranked according to their grades. The teacher will actually read out each person’s name and their “rank” to the whole class. For example, #36 (name of the child).

If you are one of the top students, you will be praised. However, if you are one of the poorer students, your classmates will look down on you and may possibly make fun or avoid you (in case you make them stupid).

It’s messed up.

I still remember how one of my classmates had forgotten his agenda in Grade 1. The teacher punished him by making him stand outside the classroom for an hour.

Basically, the “shame” is supposed to make the child never forget his agenda again.

In my opinion, it does work. However, instead of fostering love and kindness, the child is taught to resent and hate.

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Why I hate the Education System

Education

This picture basically sums up why I hate our education system. However, compared to many Asian countries, Canada is already quite lax and accommodating to their students. In my opinion, though, it is not enough.

At the end of the day, there is still a curriculum we have to follow. Kids are still forced to learn certain subjects/things whether they like it or not.

In my opinion, school is important to a certain degree -learning how to read and write, basic mathematics, working together in groups, and so on. HOWEVER, I feel like the majority of the things we learn in school are irrelevant and useless to our lives once we get into the “real world”.

In addition, just because a child does poorly in school, it doesn’t mean he/she is stupid. Perhaps, he/she simply doesn’t care? The topic doesn’t interest him or her? It’s boring?

Or what if the child is just more hands on? Perhaps he/she may not be able to write down clear instructions on how to build a table, but can actually build one? What is more important?

I feel like those who are good in school = they are able to comprehend and retain a lot of information.

It is important to be able to comprehend and retain information, but that’s just one aspect of life. I hate how most people and companies mainly judge you by the papers you have.

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How most Asian parents think

A plus

Instead of blogging about motivational things this week, I want to share something that I find quite interesting and true for most traditional Asian families.

Note: This post is based on my experiences, as well as many others. It is not to say all Asian parents are like this.

Punishment
Asian parents believe it is totally acceptable to beat their children. They believe that punishment will deter an undesirable behaviour from happening again. Perhaps the child will be too afraid to get hit, so he/she will be too frightened to misbehave.

Once, my friends and I were randomly discussing over getting beaten as a child, and we went through a circle telling each other what we were hit with. Surprisingly, all of our parents used different things! The list consisted of: hand, a stick, a feather duster, a broom, newspaper, a ruler, a coat hanger, a rope, a hockey stick, and even a baseball bat. When we heard “baseball bat”, all of us were slightly amused and surprised at the same time. We all went, “Woaahhhh.” After all, baseball bats are so heavy/hard! That’s brutal!! But we had a great laugh. We all turned out fine, I think.

The Western society might find this shocking and unacceptable, but it is very common if you grew up with traditional Asian parents.

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