澳洲又是一篇关于亚裔教育观的文章

在澳大利亚小学教育




刚刚看到这个 共享

期望教育改变命运 华人移民逼子女苦读

http://1688.com.au/site1/news/au/2013/02/03/707753.shtml

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说的挺好,的确是事实

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中国人有科举传统,朝为田舍郎 暮登天子堂。在过去,读书科举是下层社会和上层社会的唯一桥梁。当这个桥梁不在时,人们的惯性思维会把这个传统继续一段时间。

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很真实。

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在缺乏身体条件、外貌、动手能力、想象力、艺术能力。。。所有能出彩的条件下,死读书貌似是某种人能过上相对体面生活的唯一渠道了。

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回帖也很真实!

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回贴里一般分几类:

1 承认事实 对我家孩子就这样
2 读书好的都是书呆子以后没出息
3 读精英不是为了将来有大出息
4 我家孩子就从不补习
5我家孩子就不会补习,现在几个月大
6 笑而不语

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D妈妈真是善于总结啊!

回帖里有人说,学好了,才有可能上好数学老师的班,否则,就只能忍受一年完全听不懂的老师教课。

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补习班到底什么内容,是补习老师讲解难题 还是就是坐下来做卷子?

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走自己的路, 让他们去说去吧


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前几天在Coles买菜时,顺带买了本Naplan Year 3的写作练习,想看看女儿水平到底如何,当然结果是令人抓狂的。所以今天跟老师谈,结果老师好像觉得我做了什么坏事似的,哎呀哎呀,不要这样逼孩子。晕!就做个练习好像我虐待儿童似的,更别说什么补习班了。不过我们乡下地方想补也没地补。

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问题在于不少华人家长万般皆下品,惟有读书高,很少给孩子机会去发展其他方面的能力

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我们很多人移民过来,是看重澳洲教育的轻松氛围,可是真轻松了,却抱怨学校不教东西,老师多差多差,孩子的天资荒废的不行了,

于是到处补习。。。。
于是你补我也补。。。。
于是竞争越来越大。。。
于是澳洲的学习气氛终于向国内靠拢了。。。。
于是我们下一代,移民回中国算了

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博士山15年涨了6倍?

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另外一个极端是课外活动课无数

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大部分华人父母都是读书出来的,再看看自己身边的朋友也是差不多,所以也只知道这一条路。

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我还有一个感觉,就是我们华人其实是比较功利的,体现在教育上就是,无论孩子们学什么,都一定要学到顶级里面,否则就是浪费时间和金钱。

比如说,也有很多家长让孩子学琴棋书画什么的,但都是朝着很专业的方向去学,各种补习各种考级各种严格要求,把本来应该很轻松快乐的事弄得那么痛苦。要知道,让孩子的小嫩肩膀去承担职业重担,还是有点太早啊。

当然,这只是我的片面感觉,纯属胡说哈。

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呵呵,这个我认为就是现在华人数学牛蛙多的原因之一(虽然是表象上的“多”),我认为,华人父母对数学这个科目的“过度热心”的确害了很多人。

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还是要理解我们做父母的第一代移民,我相信到我们下一代会好很多,眼界和格局都会有进步的,绝对比我们更能和澳洲社会融合在一起。

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朱版,请教一下,你是怎么把内容粘贴过来的?我这好像不能粘贴呀

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Ctrl-C
Ctrl-V

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我笑而不语

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真有把孩子的音乐练成专业水平了, 当孩子决定把音乐当职业,家长又来反对了

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高, 只是空气太差, 望洋兴叹..

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然而,很多私校已经开始意识到,上过辅导班的学生或许并非他们想要的学生,缺少全面而探索的思维。比如Sydney Grammar School就强烈反对在参加该校的奖学金资格考试前参加辅导班。

成功了。呵呵。其实最后这句话才是我担忧的:什么样的思维是全面探索。一直搞不懂

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嗯,我也希望我儿子能够更好地融入这个社会

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这是原文,很长,内容比中文翻译的要多一些

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ ... rgcjx-1226566868295

It's just a swot hop to the top
by: Alice Pung
From: The Australian
February 02, 2013 12:00AM

TINA Huang, 15, is what the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development classifies as a gifted child. The Year 9 student is undertaking the Select Entry Accelerated Learning program at Box Hill High School.
Running in 36 government schools across the state, the SEAL program was designed to stem the flow of talented students from public to private education by creating an environment that would challenge and stimulate bright children. Students begin Year 8 work in Year 7, and can complete their secondary education in five years instead of six. Or they can choose to undertake a more comprehensive Victorian Certificate of Education that takes three years instead of two.

Tina's parents were granted permanent Australian residency after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. With a university degree apiece, the Huangs wanted to give their future children, Tina and her younger sister, a better life in Australia.

They bought a small takeaway business at Elwood, about 8km south of Melbourne's CBD. London plane trees dapple the enormous Edwardian and Queen Anne-style houses with shade and lend the neighbourhood an ambience of class and continuity, but for a concrete block of rental flats. "That's where we used to live," Tina says, pointing to a balcony jutting from the building.

The beach is a few minutes' walk, but Tina never went there much. She just wasn't interested - it was not that kind of childhood. Every weekend, her parents would drive to the Asian stores in Springvale, in Melbourne's southeast, 35 minutes away, to buy cheap groceries. When her mum and dad were not working, they were usually sleeping, because their shop was open until late.

Tina would clean or watch over her little sister or practise maths. Her parents drilled into her that maths was the most important subject. Maths made sense, particularly in their shop. When Tina was asked at school to write about her weekend, her parents wondered what on earth the school was teaching her, not fathoming that in the surrounding brick houses, children's lives ruled entire Saturdays and Sundays.

"When I was about five," she tells me, "family friends came over, and their daughter had got into the Mac.Robertson Girls' High School. From then on, that was what my parents kind of expected of me too." Tina's mum and dad understood it to be a good school because it required students to pass an entrance examination; only the smartest students were sifted through. Also, it was a government school, which meant education was essentially free.

Tina's extracurricular activities promptly became curricular. She had always been a bright child, but her parents believed she could be further ahead. Soon she was spending most of her free hours in after-school tutoring, including on weekends and in school holidays. At this early age, none of it was her choice, and the extra work set her apart from her schoolmates. It also instilled in her the idea that time had to be "used constructively".

At 10, Tina was enrolled at a popular coaching college, one with more than 40 branches across Australia. Every Thursday after school, she would take a three-hour scholarship-preparation class. "I sat in a classroom and did a maths and an English test, followed by two writing pieces," Tina explains. "For an extra $25 you could also do an abstract reasoning test. They run the tests through a machine and, tah-dah!, you have your results and self-worth all summed up in a pretty blue graph."

There are now hundreds of such colleges across Australia, dedicated to drilling students in the skills needed to win scholarships to private schools, to get into selective state schools such as Mac.Robertson or North Sydney Boys High or to gain admission to state schools' SEAL programs.

These coaching colleges do not require any form of certification from state Education Departments and are free to set their own curriculums. The more successful companies, such as James An College, have many satellite offices in suburbs with a high concentration of Asian parents. Courses are often booked out months ahead.

I went to an information night held by one such college. I was advised the company did not teach "generalised maths and English skills", but focused on "techniques for taking scholarship or selective entry-school examinations". The session took place on a Sunday evening in the small hall of a leafy primary school. There were five Chinese and Indian families. With the exception of a boy and girl in Year 8, the children were in years 3 to 5. Three Caucasians who attended came without children.

The woman who gave the presentation (and ran the company) had the demeanour of an old-fashioned schoolmistress. She urged parents to find schools that filtered the brightest students from the rest. She singled out a small Catholic school in Melbourne's outer-eastern suburbs, which one of the Indian children, a shy girl, was attending in the hope of winning a Year 9 scholarship to a private school. "Half the numbers in this school," the presenter said, not hiding her sarcasm, "are studying vocational education subjects: fascinating subjects like horse studies." One of the mothers laughed loudly.

She mentioned how some schools wanted "well-rounded" students who were engaged with their communities, and advised parents that they could get around this by finding a topical issue in their local paper and getting their child to write a letter to the council opposing the cutting down of a tree or the installation of new poker machines. The letter could then be included in the student's portfolio, should they get an interview with a school.

She told us there was "no need to lock little Johnny up in a room all afternoon, forcing him to read about the war in Sudan", because scholarship tests did not cover foreign affairs or ethical issues. She knew the details of each company that administered tests for the different schools, the contents of past tests, and exactly how many students had sat for each one.

Near the end of the session, the presenter put up slides with sample multiple-choice questions from previous exams for us to answer. Finally, the presenter reminded parents that before a student embarked on this month-long program of practice tests, her company offered a 3 1/2-hour pre-practice test - at a cost of $150 - to judge whether the child should even bother.

"The scholarship classes I took were soul-crushing," says Tina. "A coaching college! Dude, there are five-year-olds walking around that place. What are you possibly coaching them?"

Still, Tina muses: "I am yet to meet an Asian child who doesn't do some form of consistent tutoring."



AFTER years of preparation, Tina sat the various entrance examinations for selective state high schools, private schools offering scholarships, and schools offering accelerated education programs. She was eight, nine, 10, then 11. Each year rolled by in vain. The entrance exams usually took place on a Saturday morning or afternoon, and the women and men in the community - the small-business vendors and managers and migrants with dormant university degrees, as well as the factory workers and at-home sewing-machine operators with their Year 4 educations - sent their sons and daughters along to these exams.

Raised in a culture that since AD605 has employed a merit-based civil-service examination system to reward academic excellence with tangible, life-changing consequences, many Chinese-Australian parents understand education as a way to shift class. With insufficient time, energy or resources to change their own circumstances, first-generation migrant parents generally encourage their children to work within the system. This has led to the almost exclusive emphasis on examination results, and often leaves the entire burden on the small shoulders of the students themselves. At the age of 14, instead of visiting friends or holding slumber parties, Tina spent a few weeks sitting in scholarship coaching classes after school, to "test them out" for her younger sister, who was in Year 5. "I didn't want her to go through the same awful experience I did," she explains. "I didn't get into Mac.Rob. I didn't get into a private school through a scholarship. None of them."

Instead, Tina made it into the SEAL program at Box Hill High. She has joined the debating team, become class captain and even taken a creative-writing class. Her teacher, Imogen Melgaard, tells me, "Tina's intellect is frightening sometimes, because it is so easy to forget that she is only a kid. At times I have to stop myself from speaking to her like she's an adult and my equal."

Each SEAL school is responsible for determining its selection criteria, which means students are not siphoned off by a single test. The inclusion of interviews and Year 6 reports means that the SEAL program takes a broader approach to determining which students to admit. Their personalities and characters matter. Melgaard notes that SEAL students feel a level of acceptance that might be absent if they had remained in ordinary classes: "They would be the one or two kids who would stand out and be picked on. But, here, they have their Doctor Who club and their chess club, and they bring textbooks to school camps. There is a strong culture of pride in doing well."

Half of Melgaard's SEAL class is Asian. She remarks that "it is fascinating how much Asian pride these kids have. They will joke to me about the 'Asian Five' subjects that students study for VCE" - two maths, physics, chemistry and English - "and also about the 'Asian fail', which is an A minus."

Box Hill High used to be a working-class boys' college. But its SEAL program has done more than just revitalise the school; it has helped change the demographics of a suburb. In 1996, the median house price in Box Hill was $150,000. Yet, as more and more parents moved to be within the school zone, property prices soared. In 2001, the median house price was $280,000. Ten years later it was $960,000.

The largest group of overseas-born residents in Box Hill is from mainland China, and the new migrants have added an air of cosmopolitan sophistication. Restaurants nowopen later at night and the eating strip near Whitehorse Road teems with families and fast patter. For new arrivals seeking manual or market work, this is where you can make connections and find out where to send your kids to school. Lined woollen blazers, alumni networks and new swimming pools don't mean much to people who might have been in this country for only a handful of years, but they're quick to switch to a system that boasts the greatest number of graduates to top universities, or the highest Australian Tertiary Admissions Rankings.



TINA and I are walking down her favourite running track. "I hate running," she tells me, "but it makes me feel good afterwards." We are in her new suburb. Her parents moved to Balwyn, east of the CBD, so that her sister would be within the catchment zone of Balwyn High School, which also has a SEAL program and whose students regularly top the state's Year 12 results. The family relocated their Elwood business to Canterbury, closer to where they now live. Meanwhile, Tina continues to commute to Box Hill.

I ask her what she is most afraid of. "Failure," she answers instantly.

But when was the last time you failed? "Does burning toast in the morning count?"

Then she says, "I think the fear comes from not being able to come back from being stuck in a horrible place."

On the day of Tina's Year 12 biology exam, she is hyperventilating and breathing into a paper bag. (At the end of Year 8, 25 of the 75 SEAL students at Tina's school are selected to study a VCE science subject. "So I'm, like, the accelerated of the accelerated," she tells me.) Confessing that she gets sick after every exam, to the point where she has to take antibiotics, Tina tells me that this one is particularly nerve-racking because the marks count towards her ATAR.

To prepare, Tina has completed 50 practice biology exams - 150 hours' worth. She sourced the practice exams from teachers, tutors and friends, and bought more online. Over the six months I spend getting to know her, Tina's self-esteem seems precariously balanced between soaring confidence and debilitating anxiety.

Even private schools are beginning to acknowledge a coached student may not necessarily have the type of rounded, inquisitive mind that they are after. Sydney Grammar School, for instance, strongly discourages academic coaching as preparation for its scholarship exam.

If the purpose behind education for the gifted is to ensure that the brightest students are sufficiently challenged, this idea of extra, relentless tutoring cranks the dial all the way back around to the beginning, where naturally curious intellects are no longer being challenged in the ways that matter, and students' skills are limited to test-taking and thinking within the rules.

My last meeting with Tina takes place inside a McDonald's in Balwyn. She tells me about her sister. Tina's careful scoping exercise for a suitable coaching college eventually yielded the one that hosted the information session I attended. "It cost $2000 for a month, and she cried every week of that month," Tina confesses. "But it worked."

So much so that Tina's sister didn't end up going to Balwyn High, the school that was the reason for their parents' relocation. She won a scholarship to Camberwell Girls Grammar School, which has annual fees of about $20,000.

"She did better than me," says Tina with a half-laugh, half-sigh. Then she is pensive. "I've never really met any Asian parents who believe the whole 'not everything that counts can be counted' thing," she says. "But I have that phrase plastered next to the 'How to Succeed in Year 12 Biology' sheets on my wall. It keeps me sane."

This is an edited extract of an article in The Monthly, out now.



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私校由社会某些阶层掌控,如果出现削弱他们控制能力的情况,那么私校必定要改变游戏规则。
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