Abstract:

It is often said that the traditional Asian educational style uses “rote learning”, forcing students to take in knowledge without understanding. Meanwhile, the Western educational style is considered to be less result-orientated, because parents do not generally see learning as the only way for students to succeed (Breitenstein, 2013). With international schools becoming increasingly popular worldwide, it is quite intriguing to investigate about the benefits and limitations of both educational systems and how students perceive them.

An online questionnaire was sent to a sample of students in Northeastern China via WeChat (a popular social media application) to make some inquiries on how students felt about the education they received at home and at school. The questionnaire had a maximum of 40 marks, as there were in total 8 questions. There were five choices under each question in the questionnaire. The first choice under each question meant 1 mark gained, the second 2 marks and the rest follow. A mark for each questionnaire was calculated after data collection. The lower the total mark, the stricter the students’ parents and/or teachers were and therefore the student experienced more stress. Among the 57 students who responded to the questionnaire, 25 of them studied at a traditional school and 32 an international school. The answers submitted by students from traditional schools and international schools were looked at separately to find some differences between the answers from the two groups. A brief review of other existing publications was also done to see whether the results were in accordance with each other.

Out of the 40 marks, the average score that measures average stress level of traditional school students is 25.5 while that of international students is 27.7. It can therefore be concluded that students attending an international school do enjoy slightly less pressure. While some social scientists think cultural barriers make combining the educational styles impossible, more advocate that there are certain benefits of doing so. A research also proves that the Chinese educational system produces students with higher academic achievements, but the exam stress caused by “Gaokao” (University Entrance Examinations) is indeed a problem (Xu Zhao, 2014). Guidance on how can the systems reform on the “middle road” is also provided in nowadays research, which is believed to be the suitable option (Jeynes, 2007).

Keywords:

Comparative education, student stress, Chinese education, international education, middle school, parents and teachers.