Parental Expectations and Bilingual Education

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In some regions of Asia, there are two phenomena that are brought about by folk beliefs. One is that the age of formal English education has been lowered from the higher grade to the earlier grade in elementary education. The second is the rapid appearance of bilingual kindergarten schools like mushrooms sprouting after the rain.

Is offering English education to children at an early age a positive impact or a negative impact on the development of children?

One education policy about language learning merely concerns the age issue; the haste of the reform seems to show a lack of consideration of the influence of foreign language learning on the cognitive development and cultural identity of children.

So what other aspects should the implementation of the language education policy consider?

In a democratic country, education refers to the welfare of all citizens. The education policy will be influenced by public opinion and awareness. Aside from the influence of the experts’ perspectives and guidance from the education theory, the foreign education policy is also strongly influenced by the thinking pattern of the parents.

The impact of parent’s concepts of childhood education on child development has always been a very important issue in academic education research.

In general, the education offered to children is based on the parent’s perception and expectation. Many cross-cultural research studies have showed that Asian parents consider providing their children with a great education as a very important responsibility (Dandy & Nettelbeck, 2002; Peterson, Steinmetz, & Wilson, 2003).

Even today, some Asian parents continue to believe that providing children with proper education is an important duty of being a good parent; what’s more, they are willing to sacrifice their own privilege and do their best to help their children get a great education (Peng, 1993).

It is worth noting, however, that while the majority of parents view childhood education as very important, along with the changing times, some Asian parent’s opinion about the content of education differs from the traditional point of view.

Under the trend of internationalization and globalization, some Asian parents are aware of the importance of learning an international language. So they have chosen bilingual pre-school institutions for their kids. Their expectation about childhood learning from the proficiency in mother tongue literacy has shifted to an acquisition of international language (Chang, 2005).

References

Dandy, J., & Nettelbeck, T. (2002). A cross-cultural study of parents’ academic standards and educational aspirations for their children. Educational Psychology, 22, 621–628.

Peterson, G.W., Steinmetz, S.K., & Wilson, S.M. (2003). Introduction: parenting styles in diverse perspectives. Marriage & Family Review, 35, 1–4.

Peng, S.S. (1993). Fostering student discipline and effort: Approaches used in Chinese schools. Paper prepared for a presentation in the AERA annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED363562).

Chang, C.Y. (2005). A cross-cultural perspective on children’s bilingual education: Taking cultural values as examples. Unpublished master dissertation, National Chengchi University.

Pallier, C., Dehaene, S., Poline, J.B., LeBihan, D., Argentini, A.M., Dupoux, E., et al. (2003). Brain imaging of language plasticity in adopted adults: can a second language replace the first? Cerebral Cortex, 13, 155–161.

Originally published at http://poeticmindfulness.wordpress.com on August 12, 2020.