I am having one of those surreal moments wondering how exactly I got here. It’s late Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in a classroom that is not air- conditioned, full of 2nd graders on a sweltering, Texas autumn afternoon. The kids are yelling and jumping from desktop to desktop while their parents are sitting at the back of the class reading their newspaper or gossiping, desperately trying to ignore their children. I notice one exception, my child, the only one sitting up straight, striking her best -I am in school and I need to take this seriously pose. Her brow furrows in absorption and her dimples that usually dominate her face have now disappeared into a cloud of concentration. As I watch her, I realize she is paying attention. Her little hands are furiously scribbling her lesson notes because she wants to be here, the other children are here because they have been forced by their parents.
About six months earlier my eight years old came to me and asked if she could learn Mandarin Chinese. Since we live in South Texas, I figured this was a long-shot but to my astonishment found a school nearby. The parents, who started the school, emigrated from Taiwan where they write using the intricate traditional script that Mao in mainland China simplified to facilitate literacy.
So, a few months later, here we are in Chinese school learning to write the incredibly complex Mandarin traditional script and speak the four-toned language. I notice every once in a while a parent will unfold themselves from a cramped miniature desk, come over and knock an errant child on their head with a rolled-up newspaper. All the while, admonishing them for being such wicked offspring who will never get anywhere in life nor amount to anything. Ah, the joys of culture shock.
The children’s performance was echoed in their parent’s words. They were poor students never turning in homework, rarely paying attention. They spoke the language and saw no benefit in learning how to craft complex characters. The parents finally gave up any illusion of control retreating to the cafeteria to drink tea, visit and read their newspapers in peace. Now, classroom behavior went from bad to worse, I saw pencils launched as arrows, bloody gashes, punches, fights, shenanigans and general mayhem. Not exactly a conducive learning environment. In the cafeteria, during our short class break, teachers admonished students in front of their parents, under the watchful eye and tsking of other parents, surreptitiously grateful this time it was not their progeny in trouble. All this thumping with rolled newspapers reminded me of training a new puppy and I secretly cheered for the parents.
Back in class, after the break, the children had tasted a bit of freedom and whined piteously to go home. They complained the work was too difficult and their parent’s low expectations reinforced their poor self-concept. The children self-handicapped their scholastic performance by always coming up with excuses as to why they couldn’t participate or why they didn’t have their homework completed. Initially, I had no sympathy for them, as my child went to a private school where she worked on homework every night, weekends and even in the summer. Her only free time to complete her Chinese was in the car on the way to and from school. Then I recalled she wanted to be here, the others did not. Instead, I attributed her attitude to her belief that if she worked hard enough she could learn the language. There was no tangible reward for her to be in class she was there merely for the intrinsic factor of loving what she was learning. The other children were there for the extrinsic factor of candy, as during break time I witnessed parents doling out sweet tidbits as a reward to get the kids to go to back to class.
While learning about the theory of planned behavior, which is the concept that links belief with action, my mind immediately reeled back to that first year of Chinese school. The theory of planned behavior is when people have time to think about how they are going to behave and examine their intention (Schneider, Gruman & Coutts, 2012). Their intent is determined by three factors: their attitudes, subjective norms and their perception of how much control over the situation they have. My daughter’s attitude toward learning was informed by her love of language which directly influenced her academic performance. She was also strongly influenced by subjective norms, which is her belief about what the people she cares for will think about what she is doing. She knew school is serious in our family culture and she discerned we would be pleased she was reaching out to learn an unusual language. She also comes from a creative and slightly unconventional home, so she recognized learning Mandarin, while everyone else is learning French and Spanish, would elicit approval from her family and friends. She also believed she could learn Chinese effortlessly so she perceived she had some control over the situation. Okay, it didn’t always turn out to be so easy, but she thought it would be initially. Her belief in perceived control stemmed from the fact that she had experienced academic success at school and was confident in her abilities (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2013).
Over the subsequent ten years, I learned the children in Chinese school were not “bad kids” at all. They were just culturally in a very different place. When they were 2nd graders, their academic standing was not yet significant as their parents considered them not “cooked” yet as real people. These sage parents understood that making young children sit in a class for hours is not natural. The Eastern-style is more holistic in understanding of a young child’s capabilities, where the Western- style is centered on individualistic self-discipline. The Asian culture has the intuitiveness to know what young children are and are not capable of achieving. These children changed as they approached adolescence while concurrently there was a shift in the parental attitudes. Now that they were older and could sit easily for hours to learn, they were told how essential scholastic achievement was and why it was imperative to succeed. Their outlooks improved and they became model children and exemplary students. During adolescence, they exhibited behavioral control, as they felt they would be able to achieve success in the class. I attributed this shift in performance to their maturity and a modification of the subjective norms of their parent’s expectations.
My child went to Chinese school every Sunday for the next ten years, and the crazy, wild children she began school with flourished into impressive young adults fully prepared for college. It was fascinating to observe a microcosm of a collectivist culture in the midst of one that is individualistic. Both have their good and not so good moments, but in the end everyone was pleased with the journey.
Resources:
Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. (2013). Social psychology (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Schneider, F., Gruman, J., & Coutts, L. (2012). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: