Record: Junya Zhao and Mastura Badzis, “Parents’ Perspectives on Homeschooling in Chinese Mainland” in International Proceedings of Economics Development and Research 78 (2014): 17-21. [Article]
Summary: Junya Zhao and Mastura Badzis are from the Institute of Education, International Islamic University Malaysia. In this article they describe the results of interviews that they conducted with three homeschooling parents in China.
Zhao and Badzis start out with some interesting points about homeschooling in the Chinese context. First, they note that according to the Confucian educator Mencius (372-289 BCE), parents should let someone else teach their children because it can avoid tensions between parents and children in the teaching process. Second, homeschooling is rare in Mainland China because their schooling places such emphasis on socialization that homeschoolers are viewed with suspicion. In all, it’s estimated that only about 18,000 students across China are homeschooled.
One of the challenges for Chinese homeschoolers is that there are not any official organizations or support groups so far. There is also no legal acknowledgement. A final problem that they discuss is that according to the 21st Century Education Research Institute report (2013), 75.42% of Chinese homeschooling parents hold a bachelor degree, but not necessarily in education. Since there are few if any resources for homeschooling in the Chinese context, Zhao and Badzis question whether homeschooling parents without a background in education would be able to succeed without overwhelming themselves.
The study is based upon three, 30 minute interviews with Chinese parents who homeschool their children. The main respondent, who led them to the other two interviewees, is the founder and administrator of chinahomeschooling.com, one of the most important forums for Chinese homeschoolers. He is from Guangdong and started to homeschool his son three years ago. He referred the other two participants, from Guangzhou and Beijing respectively, who have been homeschooling their children for two years. All of the participants have at least a bachelor’s degree (not in education); two of them only have one child (because of the one-child policy), and all of their children are at the primary level.
The researchers asked about the parents’ primary and secondary reasons for homeschooling. The parents complained that China’s educational system is focused on exams rather than moral or spiritual development. The pressure to perform through constant homework and examinations is something that these parents want to protect their children from. Finally, 2 of the 3 parents are Christian, so they also chose to homeschool for religious reasons. This ratio is notable since the report by the 21st Century Education Research Institute in China (2013) found that only 5.59% of Chinese parents choose homeschooling for religious reasons.
When discussing their challenges and concerns about homeschooling, the two concerns that came up were socialization and support. Chinese children generally depend on school for socialization because of the One-Child-Policy that has caused most children to grow up without siblings. One parent voiced concerns that homeschooling could lead to the stereotype of the spoiled only child. Another concern that the parents expressed was a lack of support. They feel lonely in their lifestyle, and they question whether they are providing quality instruction (especially in subjects that they did not major in). They also mentioned that the lack of public awareness and understanding is something that makes homeschooling difficult for them.
In closing, Zhao and Badzis focus on the publicity issue and the lack of official acknowledgement. While the government’s continued involvement in education may make an official recognition of homeschooling appear unlikely, the authors are optimistic and say that China is a rapidly changing country that may officicially recognize homeschooling in the future.
Appraisal: This article looks at Chinese homeschooling from a broader perspective than the Buddhist one portrayed in Sheng (2014) and Guo-ping (2014). The authors here did a fine job of discussing their interviews, and the cultural information is interesting, but overall the article left me wanting more. First of all, they only interviewed the parents for 30 minutes over the phone. I was hopeful that the interviews might have been more in-depth or include observations since the sample size was so small. If the estimate of 18,000 homeschoolers in China is correct, three interviews of superficial quality are unacceptable for the kinds of analysis that the authors try to conduct with this data. The problem is heightened by the fact that two thirds of the participants are Christian as opposed to the 5.59% that the other study found. In fact, the main take away from this article is actually the citations that they use from the 21st Century Education Research Institute report (2013). This article is only available in Chinese, but it appears to contain some valuable quantitative information using a larger sample size.
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