The Chinese community in Singapore can be divided into two clusters that is, the Chinese migrants from China that still regarded China, as their “home” as well as the Straits Chinese who mostly did not consider themselves as citizens of China rather, they were British citizens that considered Singapore their home. Straits Chinese or the Queen’s Chinese was not bothered about the politics in China and were mostly educated in English schools. This paper will therefore discuss the challenges in education faced by the Chinese community, more specifically the China-born Chinese migrants, in postwar Singapore.
During the period of colonial rule, the Chinese community received the least amount of support from the colonial government from an education perspective. Teachers and students alike were subjected to biased treatments for example, Chinese school teachers received a lower remuneration as compared to English school teachers and Chinese middle school graduates also found themselves with the predicament of no employment opportunities. This is consistent with the newspaper article titled, Education in Chinese that says, “Yearly, there are thousands of Chinese schools passing out from vernacular schools who are left jobless and ramble up and down the streets of the Federation because they have no bilingual qualifications.” The Chinese community had to finance their own schools as well as the employment of teachers from China.3 Predictably, the teachings in Chinese schools here, correspondingly modeled that as in China: with textbooks being imported from there.3 Students were taught “compilations that were vehicles of Confucianism” and materials that reiterated lessons of filial piety and loyalty towards one’s land.3 Chinese schools in...
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...n system came at the expense of the language and identity of the Chinese community. Furthermore, the Chinese community was at a rather disadvantage with them facing the predicament of no employment opportunities, no avenue for furthering their studies between 1952 – 1956, unequal treatment as well as a lack of financial resources. However, the colonial government cannot be blamed entirely for the challenges faced by the Chinese community as the uniformity in the education system was targeted at shaping a common identity for the people. Furthermore, it was not indisposed to helping the Chinese community but rather could not allow them the upper hand in the education system. In 1959, education remained fragmented along languages; it is therefore not difficult to imagine why such systems of education using foreign teachers and text could not lead to a unified citizenry.
Prior to immigrating to America, Nicole attended a public school in China where all of her teachers were Chinese natives. At Nicole’s school in China, however, English is a required course of study taught mostly by emphasizing English vocabulary, completing short one-page writing assignments, and practicing spelling. Learning English pronunciations and engaging in realistic English conversation wasn’t the goal for educators in China. The goal in China was to prepare students to pass their post-high school exam, which was their ticket into attending a university. The exam is highly demanding for Chinese students because it requires knowledge of English reading, comprehension, spelling and writing. For Nicole, the most stressful part of this exam was that students taking it
(TS) In the article “Zhan Haite and the Case for Change” by Katherine Majewski, Zhan Haite had to work through many hard times. (C) However, one day Zhan was told she could not go to the school she wanted to do to the system of education. (E) Even though this was her only option, she decided she should be able to go to any school she wanted to. She tried so hard. She even got newspapers interested in her story. She did not give up even though people called her names like,”Locust or a pest and implying that she was greedy for seeking the right to continue schooling in Shanghai ” (Majewski 1). Zhans family was also punished because they wanted better schooling for their daughter. One day their
Similarly, Wong also grew up in America with a traditional Chinese mother. In contrast, Wong’s upbringing involves her mother forcing her into attending two different schools. After her American school day, Wong continues on with Chinese school to learn both cultures. Her mother felt it was her duty to “[. . .] learn the language of [her] heritage” (Wong 144). This puts a burden on Wong as she starts to despise the Chinese culture.
While modern Chinese immigrants come to the United States seeking jobs as did their predecessors, new motivations have drawn families to the country. In the mid-1800s large numbers of Chinese people began to arrive in America. These immigrants were driven from their homeland by the opium wars, British colonization, peasant rebellion, floods, and ...
China would like to think of themselves as living in a microcosm. Foreigners are almost inferiors to China because each culture is so different that any influence foreigners would encourage to Chinese men would only be observed rather than accepted. Persistent Westerners hardly made any influence on China. Two different views upon Western impact on China were compared between J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism and Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocaust. Hobson’s coverage on China was a perspective written a century earlier than Davis’s coverage. The comparison of China on different timelines can explain the progress China has made, although between the two coverages, China was still adamant in preserving their culture and traditions.
The Chinese immigrant experience has traveled through times of hardships, under the English man. They have struggled to keep themselves alive through racism, work, and acceptance. Although many have come to Canada for their lives’ and their children’s to be successful, and safe. It could not be just given until adversity gave them the life they hoped to one day life for. In the starting time of 1858, the Chinese community had started coming to different parts of Canada considering the push and pull factors that had led them here. Because of the lack of workers in the British Columbia region, the Chinese were able to receive jobs in gold mining. Most Chinese were told to build roads, clear areas, and construct highways, but were paid little because of racism. The Chinese today are considered one of the most successful races in Canada because of the push and pull factors that they had come across, the racism that declined them and the community of the Chinese at the present time.
Through the characters and their experiences in The King of Children, Ah Cheng shows the effects that the Cultural Revolution had on education and how that affected the people’s search for personal meaning in education. The Cultural Revolution and Down to the Countryside’s elimination of all practical and economic incentives for receiving an education caused characters to find moral and ethical incentives for education, such as to protect others and to be able to communicate effectively.
Yeh, Wen-Hsin. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Print
Millions of immigrants over the previous centuries have shaped the United States of America into what it is today. America is known as a “melting pot”, a multicultural country that welcomes and is home to an array of every ethnic and cultural background imaginable. We are a place of opportunity, offering homes and jobs and new economic gains to anyone who should want it. However, America was not always such a “come one, come all” kind of country. The large numbers of immigrants that came during the nineteenth century angered many of the American natives and lead to them to blame the lack of jobs and low wages on the immigrants, especially the Asian communities. This resentment lead to the discrimination and legal exclusion of immigrants, with the first and most important law passed being the Chinese Exclusion Act. However, the discrimination the Chinese immigrants so harshly received was not rightly justified or deserved. With all of their contributions and accomplishments in opening up the West, they were not so much harming our country but rather helping it.
After the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1840s during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese people continued to travel across the Pacific, escaping poor conditions in China with hopes and ambitions for a better life in America. Many more Chinese immigrants began arriving into the 1860s on the Pacific coast for work in other areas such as the railroad industry. The immigrants noticed an increasing demand for their labor because of their readiness to work for low wages. Many of those who arrived did not plan to stay long, and therefore there was no push for their naturalization. The immigrants left a country with thousands of years of a “decaying feudal system,” corruption, a growing population, and the downfall of the Qing dynasty. By 1894, over one million Chinese lived and worked abroad with about 90,000 of those Chinese people in America. Originally, the United States had significant plans for Chinese immigration to California. These plans would better its trade relationship with Asia and further develop the still new land of the Pacific coast. The demand for jobs increased as a result. The Chinese Opium Wars with Britain, the Red Turban Rebellion, and a harsh economy all served as motivation to exit China and find a new life in Gam Saan, the Gold Mountain. For many immigrants, the Gam Saan led to possibilities of employment, higher pay, larger houses, stable food, fine clothing, and no war. These hopeful immigrants first arrived voluntarily and as free laborers.
Chinese children entered school at age six and stayed for six years. They would study the Chinese language, math and other basic subjects. After going to an elementary school children would enter a middle school. The subjects the Chinese taught were particularly important for the advancement of the country. During the Ming dynasty Chinese novels became very popular. There were many poems and collections of short stories. The Ming also established free schools for the public hoping to expand education in china.
The very first important development for a successful country is to have a respectable education system for those who need it from the first day they are born into the world. We have to instill what we want in our people to reflect how we want our to development to appear. In china their school system has more of a strict structure for example, at Harbin Number One High School; students begin school at 7:00 a.m., and remain until 8:20 p.m. The seniors, preparing for their final examinations, stay later, even until 10:00 at night.(Rybak) In a Chinese school the day are much longer than an American school day. This means that Chinese student spend a lot more time in school which bring us to conclusion that Chinese are more advantaged then the American student in long run. This prepares them for college or even the young adult can be bio-lingual. Most American student usually attends school for seven hours each weekday and may forget what they have learned because it in instilled into the young adults’ heads like the Chinese do with their students.
Tan,J. (1997). Education and colonial transition in Singapore and Hong Kong: comparisons and contrasts. Comparative Education, 33 (2), 302-312.
In recent years, Hong Kong education system has undergone a great change. In the past, students studied five-year junior secondary education, two-year senior secondary education and three-year tertiary education. Since school year 2009/10, secondary and tertiary education composed of three-year junior secondary education, three-year senior education and four-year tertiary education (3-3-4 Scheme). Apart from the academic structure of education system, new compulsory subjects like Liberal Studies was also introduced to facilitate independent thinking of students. The examples given above showed that the HKSAR government is working hard to change the education system from similar to the British system, to similar to the Chinese system. Given that Hong Kong’s education system changes from time to time, how will the sociologists see from these changes? The following essay is going to discuss the education system of Hong Kong based on the following three sociological perspective: the structural-functional approach, the social-conflict approach and the symbolic-interaction approach.
Hong Kong is one of the most powerful international financial and cultural centres in the world. Due to its great cultural diversity, Hong Kong is considered to be the place “where east meets west”. Between 1841 and 1997 The Great Britain had control over the region. In present, it is officially referred as special administrative region (SAR) of People’s Republic of China. History of Hong Kong indicates that this place had the English as a medium of instruction until 1997, however, afterwards, Hong Kong people started to teach in mother tongue, Cantonese. This report is going to outline the usage and importance of mother tongue at all schools while giving some disadvantages that may occur.