Family Education Tends to Be More Mature and SensibleA new survey shows China's family education in big cities tends to be more mature and sensible and that parents have come to attach greater importance to the role of education for bringing up their children. But they still spend less time with their children.The survey has been carried out through random sampling among 4464 parents with their children at age 3-7 from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, centering on family education status, parents' education concept, parents' appraisal of children, parents' expectation, infant personality development and family education environment. The survey indicates that in contrast with things 10 years ago, parents' occupations have changed, a decreased number of people working as workers has been seen and there are also some increases in the number of other occupations. About 90 % of parents hope their children would have a college education and even hold academic degrees above college level. Parents hope children to have a master's degrees have increased by16.9 % from 4.5% 10 years ago. Skilled workers, engineers, college teachers, scientific research staff, doctors and nurses are parents' favorite choices for their children's future jobs, those who hope their children become managerial staffers in enterprises and work as cadres in government offices have increased from 3.5 % to17.5%. In spare time, more parents choose to relax and entertain themselves, less with their children; those like to play with children and telling them stories have shown a drop to 10% from 17.5 % compared with 10 years ago. However, nowadays parents invest more on children, they spend an average of 93 and 195.5 yuan on books and toys from 16.1 and 31 yuan every half a year 10 years ago, a 4.8 and 5.3 fold increase respectively. Spending time with children for taking walks and telling stories has been placed at 2.8 and 4 hours from 3.4 and 9.6 hours, and to parks and go to travel decrease to 6.5 times from 9.1 every half a year. Most parents pay great attention to children's health, not just their intellectual growth. About 46.5 % of parents cared much about their children's health ten years ago but against this there is now an increase to 69.7%. Those who hold dear to children's intellectual growth have dropped to 12.1% from 44.5%. In ways of recognition or making commendations of children, parents tend to give encouragement to their children, parents who encourage children by facial expression and vocal praises shown a 15% increase more over 10 years ago. Experts say that the above figures indicate that parents' education level has largely been raised, family education method tends to be more mature, but there is still much to be desired. |
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