Excessive attention will increase the burden of learning
[Experts on the road]
Why is there a "chicken baby" phenomenon, and is the accompanying education anxiety normal and clear? Let's look at what educational scholars and sociologists say.
Xue Haiping, Professor, School of Education, Capital Normal University
The phenomenon of "chicken baby" is not only found in China, but also common in East Asian societies such as Japan and South Korea.
This group of parents has certain economic conditions, generally has a higher level of education, and has higher educational expectations for their children, and they still have a certain amount of time to often participate in their children's educational activities.
This phenomenon occurs in all classes, and more in the middle class.
I think there are several reasons.
The first is that Confucian culture has always paid more attention to education, so it hopes to achieve class consolidation or class mobility through reading.
The other is related to the characteristics of the education system.
The gross enrollment rate of higher education in my country has exceeded 50%, entering the stage of popularization.
In this case, for many people, the purpose of obtaining higher education is to go to a good university, a high-level university.
Therefore, competition is still fierce.
From the perspective of basic education, we have been working hard for many years to achieve a better balance and greater fairness.
Enrolling nearby and preventing school choice are to ensure fairness to the greatest extent possible on the basis of promoting the balanced development of educational resources.
This leads to anxiety among the middle class.
On the one hand, the opportunities for middle-class children to obtain high-quality basic education resources are becoming increasingly uncertain.
On the other hand, good universities are limited after all, and the confidence of gaining future competitive advantages through university is not very great.
At the same time, families with average conditions are also anxious.
The basic education stage implements a burden reduction policy, but the quality of schools still exists objectively.
The differences in the intensity and quality of children's participation in tutoring outside school may cause the differences in academic performance to be continuously enlarged.
Many families have a relatively single standard for the development of their children, which is to see whether the children can go to a good school.
Parents’ educational anxiety also reflects their increasing participation in children’s learning activities.
Excessive attention or the wrong way of attention will have many negative effects: for example, the child’s subjective learning burden is very heavy, offsetting the effect of the burden reduction policy, causing excessive education competition, leading to waste of resources and excessive family burdens.
(Reporter Yang Sa interviewed and compiled)