Different Classroom Cultures between Chinese and American schools

Growing and used to studying in their own countries’ culture, a majority of students studying abroad have found one of the influences that make the greatest difference in their new life lying in the culture shock, especially in the first year abroad. Thus, it is a common thing that these students are hard to adapt themselves into a foreign school at the beginning. In my research upon the different education cultures between Chinese and American schools, I have found one difference of great significance between Chinese and American education cultures. Chinese educators attach more importance to the education of what-to-learn while American educators stress more on the education of how-to-learn. Consequently, in order to achieve the goal of studying abroad, Chinese students studying in America have to embrace and fit the new classroom culture as soon as possible.

Zhang Caixia (2012) described the differences between Chinese students and American students like this: “They make the children recite a lot, which makes the children think in fixed thinking forms: they always think A is A, and cannot be B. American children can think about things in many different, even strange ways. American teachers aim to teach the students what they are interested in and do not limit the Children’s imagination and thinking in a fix circle. This is why the Chinese children are not so creative as American ones.”  Zhang means that Chinese students are less creative than their American peers and this phenomenon is caused by the different teaching ways of educators. However, deeper reasons can be found in the historical roots.

Gu Mingyuan (2006) analyzed the impact of traditional Chinese culture on Chinese education and tried to sort out the several characteristics in Chinese education caused by this kind of traditional culture. Gu suggested that self-discipline, self-nurturing, and other moral ideal pursuits were specially emphasized in the traditional moral education of China, which have been inherited and improved in today’s Chinese education. By taking the Analects of Confucius as example, Gu pointed out that China consider moral education as a priority in its education system. In other words, the first target of education was to “teach students how to conduct themselves and how to become people with lofty code of ethics”. Gu’s study reveals the fact that Chinese educators attaches great importance to moral education, which means conducting the students how to behave or what to learn. It means that Chinese education focus much on manners rather than the knowledge itself. It is notable that Chinese students are indeed conditioned to this kind of education because China has admired the traditional cultural values of obedience and respecting one’s superiors since the ancient times. To some extent, this is of great difference from American education.

Fang Guocai (2008) proposed the feature of American education that universities have the mission of two aspects, including education and academic research, or talent cultivating and knowledge contributing. The most important thing for universities is to construct subject and curriculum with its characteristics that pay more attention to the special advantage of the major at the basis of comprehensive and various subjects. It can be clearly seen that American education focus more on knowledge education and the choices made by the students themselves. The emphasis on academic research also helps the students to study and discover the world by themselves. Thus, American educators regard the ability of self-teaching or how to learn as the priority.

These authors have shown the classroom cultural differences between Chinese and American schools. However, they did not deeply analyze the influence resulting from the differences. Combining the studies of these authors, a new finding can be concluded as that Chinese educators attach more importance to the education of what-to-learn while American educators stress more on the education of how-to-learn. As regards Chinese education, on one hand, it may create many students of good virtues. For instance, these students could devote themselves into building up a more harmonious society, which has been well advocated by Chinese government. On the other hand, it may also hinder the improvement of education efficiency. By way of illustration, in class a student may put his respect for the teacher at the first place even though he does not agree with the teacher's idea. Consequently, Chinese students will be accustomed to being the ones of the kind already designed by their educators. In America, the students will not be pushed to learn by their educators for that highly popular individualism in this country encourages people to be themselves but not someone who behaves as others teach. America education teaches both the knowledge and the way to get knowledge while Chinese one teaches the knowledge only. In other words, compared to the behaving-teaching of Chinese education, American education stresses more on self-teaching.