What are the children playing abroad after class
The first new semester after the implementation of the Ministry of Education's "Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Students' Homework and Extra-School Training in Compulsory Education" ("Double Reduction") policy has just kicked off. Educational authorities in all regions are urging the fall semester of primary and secondary schools to be comprehensive. Implement the "double reduction" policy.
Under the background that the whole society highly recognizes the "double reduction" policy, "Diorama" has launched a series of pages from last week. Parents from all over the world are invited to focus on schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and custody services in foreign primary and secondary schools in three phases. I wrote articles on hot topics that received the most attention, introducing the active exploration of various countries on the road of "burden reduction" in education, in order to broaden their horizons, expand their horizons, and inspire ideas.
This is the second in the series.
Switzerland
Extracurricular activities are just for children to play dumb
◎Jia Shufen
The Swiss have a "obsession" for outdoor activities. As long as the weather is good, the children will be "distributed" by their parents to play outside.
Before the fall, Switzerland ushered in the last few days of summer.
The quiet village where I live has three lively times a day, all of which coincide with the school time.
Everyone was in a hurry at school in the morning and school lunch break at noon, and the whole village would become lively until the time between school and dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon.
The children play outside, moms and dads take their children to the supermarket to buy goods, parents with small children socialize with other parents in the village’s sandpits and children’s amusement facilities, and the children read in the village’s library, surf the Internet, or in the playground Participate in various ball sports training, and there are also children on the way to class with musical instruments on their backs.
The elderly in the nursing home also come out to drink coffee, take a walk, or sit by the playground and watch the children play.
The community atmosphere is warm and comfortable.
In Switzerland, children are basically relaxed and free time after school. Many children do not participate in regular organized extracurricular activities or courses, but just make appointments with friends to play together-this play is real play.
The Swiss have a "obsession" for outdoor activities. As long as the weather is good, the children will be "distributed" by their parents to play outside, whether it is swimming in the river, digging sand and climbing trees, jumping on the court, riding bicycles and skateboarding. It will be all right.
When outside, children naturally focus on physical exercises.
As long as the child loses his temper and is in a bad mood, the first reaction of Swiss parents is often "there are not enough outdoor activities today."
In addition to aimless play, the most popular extracurricular activity for sports-loving Swiss people is training in sports clubs.
The Swiss believe that sports are the best way to train iron will and competitiveness. Basically, the sports courses that children participate in are more economical.
Many of the teachers and coaches instructing training are voluntary sports enthusiasts, and many clubs also have financial subsidies. The city of Bern also provides citizens with dozens of free sports courses in different projects.
If children join the club, they only need to pay the annual fee, and they can take one class per week or train multiple times.
But generally speaking, even if there are training opportunities every day, children will not go every day, because ordinary children value play more importantly, and only particularly gifted children will often train or participate in professional competitions.
In addition to sports, music is another popular option for extracurricular learning.
Basically every administrative region in Switzerland has its counterpart local public music schools. These music schools are subsidized by local education units. The tuition is relatively low (3 to 50% off for private courses), and the tuition fees for children from low-income families can be more favorable.
If you are a low-income family with many children, learning musical instruments is basically free.
Generally, these music schools provide one-to-one or two-to-three student courses on musical instruments. The teaching location is in the village or school, and the children do not have to travel long distances to class.
If the village music school cannot provide a certain musical instrument course, and the child needs to study across the administrative area, a certificate letter from the local music school is required, but the child can get a tuition discount for studying across the administrative area.
Swiss children do not have to take examinations to learn musical instruments, and they mainly cultivate sentiment.
The teacher's prescribed practice time is 5 to 15 minutes a day, and the annual public performances are also very casual. They are dressed in usual clothes and the performances are not complicated.
There are relatively fewer options for visual arts courses than sports and music. They are generally family activity days in museums and art galleries, or youth courses in art schools.
The prices of courses offered by these public institutions are relatively low, but they may require children to travel far away to attend classes.
A quarter of all marriages in Switzerland are transnational marriages. In addition, some residents are immigrants, and many children have foreign parents. Therefore, native language classes are also extracurricular courses provided by the cantons to provide subsidies to children. Children are encouraged to be in addition to school. In addition to the German and French courses provided, learn the parent’s mother tongue, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
These native language learning scores will be registered in the school transcript and used as a reference indicator of students' learning ability when entering a higher school.
Among all the extracurricular learning courses, the most expensive ones are dance and body classes. Learning dance, especially ballet, requires a lot of time and money.
There are mainly girls in ballet schools, but the proportion of completely Swiss children is very small, mainly from Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and Jewish, which are relatively "hard-working" families.
In Switzerland, extracurricular activities are generally just for children to play stupidly. Learning sports, music, and art is neither training ability or talent, nor the purpose of class jump, mainly for fun and social interaction.
However, there are a few exceptions. Relatively speaking, the parents of ballet children are the most tired, devoted, and expectant "tiger mother" ethnic group in Switzerland.
Canada
32% of families borrow money to pay for extracurricular activities
◎Fang Ye
There are many types of talent interest classes in Canada, including cooking, first aid, sewing, garden planting, sweater knitting, and many other life skills. Children have ample opportunities to discover their interests and talents.
Canada's educational philosophy is all-round development, and extracurricular activities are regarded as an important part of children's growth.
Many education experts point out that hobbies outside of the classroom can not only cultivate children's curiosity about the world, stimulate innovation, but also exercise social skills, enhance social identity and happiness, and are beneficial to children's physical and mental health.
Regardless of whether public schools or private schools, they basically go to school at 8:30 or 9 in the morning and end at around 3 in the afternoon.
Because the burden of homework is not heavy, children spend a lot of their time in extracurricular activities.
Subject tuition is only popular among Asians. Talent is the mainstream of extracurricular activities, and the most popular one is sports. Almost everyone in Canada can swim, skate, and ski.
There are many types of talent interest classes in Canada, and the classification is meticulous. It not only covers the fields of music, sports, and beauty, but also includes cooking, first aid, sewing, garden planting, sweater knitting and many other life skills classes. Children have ample opportunities to discover Interests and talents.
It can be said that as long as you can think of hobbies, you can find them here.
A fashion design school in Toronto has extracurricular interest classes for children, where you can learn the design and production of clothing, bags, and home fabrics.
My daughter used to study for a year when she was in the sixth grade. She could make a lot of clothes and bags on her own. After that, she opened a small online shop to sell her own products.
Talent learning requires talent and interest, especially for younger children. The discovery of interest and talent requires a process of adaptation and selection. Therefore, interest classes at the elementary level in Canada focus on fun, mainly for children Have fun and avoid making talent learning a painful burden for children, so that children can find the direction they like.
After entering the middle school, the children will choose what they are good at and interested in, enter the club for professional training, and often participate in competitions, hobbies are no longer just for fun.
The cost of extracurricular activities is high, especially the higher the level of study, the more professional it is, and the cost is getting higher and higher, which is not a small burden for ordinary Canadian families.
Take Canada’s most popular ice hockey as an example. The annual training fee, club’s annual fee, all kinds of expensive equipment, and competition costs will be tens of thousands of Canadian dollars, which is not affordable for ordinary people.
The Canadian government attaches great importance to extracurricular activities. In order to reflect the fairness of educational opportunities, the government not only allocates funds to open interest classes, but also provides subsidies for low-income families.
The “Toronto Interests” funded by the City of Toronto not only have a complete range, but also have a low price. For low-income families, there are subsidies ranging from several hundred Canadian dollars a year.
However, the government’s interest classes cannot be compared with the interest classes or clubs opened by private institutions in terms of teachers, venue conditions, or class time. Their function is to provide universal education for talents. If they want to study in depth, families have to bear considerable burdens. cost.
According to a survey conducted by Ipsos in 2018, 55% of Canadian families feel exhausted due to extracurricular activities, and 32% of families even borrow money to cover the cost of extracurricular activities.
Although extracurricular interest classes put pressure on family spending, Canadian parents still spare no effort to cultivate their children's talents.
According to the latest parent survey, 45% of families let their children participate in one type of extracurricular activity, 25% of families let their children participate in two types of extracurricular activities, and 30% of families let their children participate in at least three extracurricular interest classes.
new Zealand
Parents are the organizers of extracurricular sports clubs
◎Yuan Wei
There are dozens of various groups in each school, such as music groups. A school may have more than 10 bands, ranging from large orchestras to small rock bands.
New Zealand primary and secondary schools will end school at 3 in the afternoon, and a longer after-school time provides space for extracurricular training.
First of all, the school will provide a wealth of free time learning courses.
Subject learning is mainly concentrated in various languages. Currently, most of the learning in Maori, Chinese, French, and Spanish is being carried out.
The learning method is lively, mostly through games, music, and drama performances to inspire students' interest in and use of different languages.
Teaching generally uses school classrooms. Students can go directly to the fixed classroom to study after school. Each course provides one hour of learning time 1-2 times a week.
The school’s non-disciplinary extracurricular learning courses are rich and varied, mainly including courses that children like, such as Lego, art, drama performance, chess, baking, etc. There are also many sports courses to choose from, such as basketball, football, tennis, etc. Generally depends on the hardware facilities owned by each school.
Teachers for non-disciplinary training are generally deployed by off-campus training institutions. The school only provides venues, usually once a week, with a duration of 1-1.5 hours.
Cultivating and developing students’ interests and specialties in junior and senior high schools has become the main task of the school. Many small groups take advantage of the time between noon and after school in the afternoon, or require students to go to school in the morning for training and learning.
There are dozens of various groups in each school, such as music groups. A school may have more than 10 bands, ranging from large orchestras to small rock bands.
The school provides more learning and performance opportunities for students who are interested in music through the full-time music teachers on campus and teachers from outside training institutions hired to teach.
Various learning courses on campus need to pay a certain fee, and openly book and pay online, the cost is much lower than the price of off-campus training institutions.
In addition to participating in various courses offered by schools and social training institutions, New Zealand’s primary and secondary school students’ spare time is another major choice for participating in clubs. In particular, sports-related clubs are an important way for primary and secondary school students to develop sports. Club organization and coaching work are both To be borne by the parents of the students.
Take the rugby club that my 6-year-old son just joined. There are quotas for club members of every age group. We waited a long time to join this club.
The club trains for one hour every Wednesday afternoon and one hour of actual competition on Saturday morning at 9 o'clock in the morning.
I remember that when we arrived at the competition on the first day, the enthusiastic parents and children surrounded us and welcomed the new members, like a big family.
The club coaches and organizers are the parents of these children. There are a lot of fruits during the intermission. Every week, a family takes turns to bring some food to share with everyone.
My son is in the 6-7 year old group, regardless of gender, New Zealand girls never show weakness.
My eldest son who has gone to high school has joined the school’s tennis club. The club is mainly responsible for arranging matches within the school and between different schools. Regardless of the football skills, it can arrange opponents of comparable strength and advocate learning from each other in actual combat.
The venue of the game is not fixed. I remember that last season, I had to go to the stadium half an hour away by car at 8 o'clock in the morning every Saturday. It takes enthusiasm to be able to persist.
The coaches and organizers are still the parents of the students, and I really admire their persistence.
In addition, the New Zealand government provides students with a wealth of free online learning resources. From elementary school to high school, there are supporting learning software at all stages, especially reading resources. There are not only a large number of audio books, but also corresponding interactive exercises.
I really like a website where real people read books. In a comfortable environment, movie stars are invited to read books for children, which truly reflects the social value of stars.
Schools usually use these software on reading, mathematics, language, etc. to assign homework, especially in the days when the city is closed under the new crown epidemic environment, which highlights the importance of online learning.
Netherlands
After school sports have been with the children to grow up
◎Li Tingting
Every community has an organization called Logopedie (speech therapy), which specializes in guiding and correcting children's language expression
The Dutch are not too keen on after-school tutoring in subjects. They believe that learning should be a natural process, and the progress of learning should be in line with human brain development and learning ability.
If the child's learning is fully in line with his intellectual level, there is no need to make up lessons.
The school has corresponding assistance measures for students who are slow in learning progress, poor in learning ability, and underachievement due to special reasons; at the same time, there will be special countermeasures for students with strong learning ability.
The government will allocate additional funds to each school every year to help solve the differentiated needs of different students. For example, some students’ learning progress is slower than their classmates, and the school will provide them with one-to-one after-school tutoring; for students with high IQ, the school will Will hire experienced teachers to give him lessons, and these tuitions from the school are all free.
Excluding the school's after-school tutoring, each community has an organization called Logopedie (language therapy), which specializes in guiding and correcting children's language expression, including the improvement of reading comprehension, the pronunciation when speaking, and the posture when talking with others. And expressions and so on.
Many children in the Netherlands have experienced Logopedie training in different aspects during their childhood. Children whose mother tongue is not Dutch are the focus of their training and attention.
The cost of this training is fully covered by medical insurance.
In the Netherlands cram school is not popular, but it still exists.
Dutch education attaches great importance to teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, so tuition companies and teachers prefer one-on-one tuition. In their opinion, one-to-one tuition is not an effective way to help students.
Once the tuition starts, the tuition teacher will get in touch with the teacher of the student at the school and communicate with each other from time to time, so that both parties can help the student achieve the tuition goal.
Speaking of after-school interest classes, there are various extracurricular interest classes in art, music, science, etc. sponsored by government-sponsored youth activity organizations in every city in the Netherlands. Because they are government semi-public welfare projects, the fees are also relatively cheap.
It is worth mentioning that sports is a very important life event for every Dutch person, so students' exercise time after class will account for a very large proportion.
As the most basic survival skill, swimming is a sport that must be learned, so there are few people who can't swim in the Netherlands.
The Dutch usually learn to swim from the age of four or five, and are divided into three levels: A, B, and C according to the national swimming level assessment standards.
In addition to swimming, every Dutchman will choose to learn a sport from the age of four or five and participate in the corresponding club. Hockey, tennis, football, bicycle riding, boating, paddling, and equestrianism are all very popular among Dutch students. Ask a student, there must be a sports club training or competition after class, this kind of after-school sports has been with them to grow up.
And every type of sport has its own club in every city and country. Regardless of the size of the club, there will be business sponsorship, formal training and weekend club competitions.
Among many sports, team sports are the most important, such as hockey or football. The Dutch believe that this is the best way to develop children's social skills, so when choosing sports, you must have a team. Sports.
Japan
Participating in two or three extracurricular interest classes at the same time is very common
◎Huang Wenwei
Japanese parents also hope that their children will become a dragon. They hope that their children will be admitted to prestigious middle schools and universities, so they need to go to private schools to charge.
It is common for Japanese elementary and middle school students to go to private schools in their spare time.
According to data released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 37.8% of students in public schools and 69.1% of students in private schools have gone to private schools. Private schools have two forms of collective class and individual class instruction.
According to statistics, more than 90% of students from prestigious universities such as the University of Tokyo, Keio University, Hitotsubashi University have attended private schools in middle school.
Some private schools completely use one-to-one tutoring, and the cost is relatively high.
Japanese parents also hope that their children will become a dragon. They hope that their children will be admitted to prestigious middle schools and universities. Public primary and secondary schools have relatively easy work. Even if their children go to public schools in elementary and junior high schools, most parents hope that their children can go to a high school that is conducive to admission to a good university. Therefore, you need to go to a private school to charge.
Japanese children also participate in various extracurricular interest studies, such as swimming, English conversation, ballet, piano, painting, calligraphy, music, gymnastics, football, baseball, abacus, IT computer technology, etc., and participate in two or three extracurricular interest classes at the same time Learning is very common.
Study once a week, and the monthly cost is 5,000 to 8,000 yen.
However, extracurricular interest learning also has elements that bother parents.
For example, children are only interested for a while, and after a while the heat fades, they don't want to learn.
For example, when learning ballet and swimming, some children feel that they are always making no progress and are inferior to others, so they want to give up.
Some children can’t get along with the teacher who teaches them and feel that the teacher is too harsh.
Some children can't get along with people around them, because competition can easily cause disputes.
Interest classes are different from schools. Teachers basically do not coordinate the disagreements between children. Therefore, the interpersonal relationship is not good and it is easy to burden the children and even cause physical and mental harm.
Some parents do everything possible to increase their children's hobbies, but children, especially elementary school students, just want to go out and play more, and they will inevitably resist their parents' requests.
Japanese schools also generally have extracurricular interest group activities. Japanese is called "beauty", which includes various group activities such as sports, literature, and literature.
In this regard, the school does not charge any fees, and only the family needs to pay for the purchase of sports outfits and accommodation for foreign competitions.
Football and other sports teams, as well as orchestras practice more frequently. Morning exercises are usually carried out from 7 to 8 in the morning, and two or three hours of practice are carried out after class.
On the other hand, cultural interest groups do not have much practice, and very few morning exercises.
Since last year, due to the epidemic, extracurricular activities have also been affected to a certain extent. When the lectures are switched online, the extracurricular activities will naturally not be carried out.
Photo courtesy of this edition/Li Tingting and Yuan Wei