Language Structure and Motivation of Lifelong Learning
I am forty six, as a wife, mother of 3 children, full time worker and persuading my master degree. I don't think this is anything special in the States. Most of my American friends and relatives said, "Wow! That's tough but you can do it. Good for you!!" The reactions from my Chinese friends (from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Canada) are quite different.
Most of them were surprised and didn't say a word. Some of them couldn't hold it any more and said: "Don't you think you are too old to go back to school? How about your kids? You are doing find. Why give yourself trouble?"
I can say among all the places I used to live. People in American has the best attitude of Lifelong Learning. Wait, I forgot youngsters live here are American too. This is my revised statement - Among all the places I used to live, mature American has the best attitude of Lifelong Learning and the best skill of critical thinking.
I grow up in Taiwan and lived in Hong Kong for 2 years, China 2 years, Canada 6 years. My wonderful big-nose husband could spend hours to share all the fun things he did when he was a child and all I can share with my childhood experience is one word, study.
Chinese has to memorize 3,000 to 5,000 characters in order to read. Our language is not a spelling system. We have to spend a lot of time to memorize characters by timeless writing so even the brain can't remember the picture of certain words, by writing on the paper, the words will come out naturally. Oh, take a look at my website welcome page where you can see my Chinese name. After looking at my Chinese name, I hope you will have sympathy to Chinese students now.
The most important 21st century skills is Critical Thinking which was not something Chinese encouraged. Critical thinking took too much time while we tryed our best to memorize the whole text books in order to pass the national exam for colleges. It also challenged authorities which could cause a lot of trouble. Our student years were too stressful, no wonder when we were out from schools, most of Chinese didn't want to learn. It called back too much painful memory.
I found Taiwan goverment set the Lifelong learning as a law on May 31, 2002（http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/終身學習法）. One report mentioned:
A national white paper was published in 1998 with 14 action plans to be the blueprints for developing lifelong learning....this has paved a way towards establishing a learning society. The Lifelong Learning Law took effect on 26 June 2004 and has laid a foundation for improving lifelong learning. ..It is essential for academics and practitioners in Taiwan to search for more critical and influential arguments to pursue policy-makers to develop lifelong learning. Enhancing the interactive relationship between lifelong learning and social changes would be the key to achieve that. (Wang, C. 2008)
It's quite interesting that lifelong learning has to set as a law in order to push citizens to learn.
Reference:
Preece, J. (2006, May). Beyond the learning society: the learning world?. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(3), 307-320. Retrieved September 15, 2009, doi:10.1080/02601370600697227
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