Homeschool’s NewDay inChina
By Rachel
Terry
Last summer our family stayed on a university campus in Xi’an, China, for three weeks. Every- where we went, people wanted
to touch our children’s blonde hair
and pinch their cheeks. When people
found out we homeschooled, their jaws
dropped, and we soon found ourselves
on a television talk show.
From our visit to a Montessori kindergarten on the campus of
Northwestern Polytechnic University, we understood that education is paramount in
Everyone we
spoke with about
education had one
name on their lips:
Zheng Yuanjie.
China. Very young children spend long
hours perfecting their handwriting, and
teachers and administrators are rightfully proud of the beautiful educational
environments present in their schools.
And yet, everyone we spoke with about
education had one name on their lips:
Zheng Yuanjie.
Well-known children’s author Zheng
Yuanjie homeschooled his now-grown
son, Zheng Qiya, and the son’s success
has validated the father’s e;orts. Parents
all over China look at Zheng Yaqi’s success—he’s opened bookstores, started
magazines, and set up photography
studios—and wonder if maybe homeschooling has contributed to his successful creative endeavors.
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Growing Interest in
Homeschooling
Zheng Qiya has succeeded in areas that
many Chinese students ;nd mystifying: the arts and entrepreneurship. Traditional Chinese education has been
based on rote memory and repetition,
and while this method has produced
many students who calculate and regurgitate facts at the speed of light,
some parents are beginning to question
its wisdom.
In 2005, China Daily published an
interview with a teacher at Guangzhou
Baiyun Institute who was teaching his
9-year-old daughter at home. ;e father,
Wei Yuan, said that he decided to home-
school because the school’s teaching
methods were “stultifying. Kids have to
do sums again and again and they are
not allowed to openly express them-
selves in compositions.”
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