这是一位国际学校资深外籍教师给顶思的来稿，分享了他眼中的中西教育教学的碰撞与比较。在西方教育的亲历者眼中，批判性思维、以学生为中心的真实课堂是怎样的情况？中国学生对于小组活动的顾虑，对于知识性内容的记忆能力如何？西方的个人主义、中国的孔儒思想，又对各自教育产生了怎样的深远影响？本期，我们一起来感受和思考。

* 最终文意请以英文原稿为主

The Author：Kyle Hargraves

Kyle Hargraves grew up in New Zealand but has spent most of his life in Australia. He has visited many countries and taught AP and A-Level physics, maths and economics along with some history and chemistry in China for a decade. The last job in Asia was teaching statistics at a university in Vietnam during the first year of Covid-19.

Kyle has a number of majors (BA & BSc) along with post graduate degrees in Business, IT and Education. He also has a master in International Relations and a second master in Applied Mathematics. He has had careers in business analysis, IT, aviation (Operations Manager and pilot) and teaching.

The principal motivation for writing articles, for which he as been engaged for some time, is to correct perceptions that the West has towards Asia and to provide some information for Asian audiences regarding Western living.

Introduction 导言

The intention of this short essay is to convey some contrasts between Asian students (particularly Chinese students) and students in the English-speaking world. Given a length of the order of eighteen hundred words, the essay does not intend to be exhaustive but does intend to offer some insights into cultural and educational practices.

这篇短文的目的是传达亚洲学生（尤其是中国学生）和英语母语国家学生之间的一些对比。鉴于这篇文章的长度约为1800字，作者并不打算详尽无遗，而是提供一些对文化和教育实践的见解。

Internet sites such as YouTube have rather crude or overgeneralised comparisons between western and Chinese cultural perspectives. The West, certainly since the end of World War II, has promoted individualism a the (so called) nuclear-family at the expense of extended family relations or indeed moral themes that can be observed in the Ancient Greek or Roman plays. To a large extent the conduct of the individual in Asia still has a bearing on the reputation of the family. To this end, largely, Asian children have an awareness to the extent that their behaviour affects them and their wider social interactions; particularly family interactions. The microcosm of this contrast is often witnessed in the classrooms of the respective regions; the West and Asia.

YouTube等互联网网站对西方和中国在文化视角上的比较相当粗略或笼统。自第二次世界大战结束以来，西方一直在促进个人主义，即（所谓的）核心家庭，而牺牲了在古希腊或罗马戏剧中可以看到的大家庭关系或观念道德。在很大程度上，亚洲人的个人行为仍然与家族的声誉有关。为此，在很大程度上，亚洲儿童意识到他们的行为会影响他们和他们更广泛的社会互动，尤其是家庭互动。这种对比的缩影经常在东西方各自地区的教室里看到。

For the English-speaking world The Elementary Education Act of 1870 and sometimes referred to as Forster's Act came into effect in England. The school boards, established by the Act eventually imposed prescribed "standards" that were to be attained from ages 7-8 to 12-13. There were six standards, numbered 1-6, and corresponded to a school year where standard 1 was directed to seven year old children. This method of education continued into the late 1970s for Australia and New Zealand. However, it was common for children in the British Empire (as it was then) to commence school at age five.

对于西方英语国家来说，1870年的《初等教育法案》，有时被称为《福斯特法案》在英国生效。根据该法案成立的学校董事会最终实施了针对7-8岁和12-13岁学生规定的“标准”。共有六个阶段的标准，编号为1-6，分别对应一个完整的学年，其中第一阶段针对7岁儿童。这种教育方法在澳大利亚和新西兰一直延续到20世纪70年代末。然而，在英国，孩子们五岁就开始上学是很常见的。