thank you to all my colleagues in course 6110

Dear all, thank you very much for your kind and professional performance in this course. I have learned a lot from you through the discussions and accompanies with you. Wish you all the best.

quotes of children

1957年11月17日,毛泽东在莫斯科会见我国留学生和实习生时的谈话中说:“世界是你们的,也是我们的,但是归根结底是你们的。你们青年人朝气蓬勃,正在兴旺时期,好像早晨八、九点钟的太阳。希望寄托在你们身上。”(The world is yours and also ours, but in the future is yours. You young people are dynamic and thriving, like the sun at 8:00 o'clock. Wish is on you.)

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”
― Margaret Mead

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray  

what should be assessed for a well-being child?

For many years in China, the entrance examinations to middle school, to senior high schools or to colleges are denounced by the public. The standard exams focus on test the memories, understandings of what the students learn for the past few years, and the entrance examinations will decide in what kind of schools the children will go to, or can partially say the entrance examinations decide the children’s fate, especially the exams to college. The schools will be graded based on the entrance examination ratios, the teachers will be ranked according to the ratios as well, and the families of the children will be happier or lose face depending on the entrance examination results of their children. And for the children, they have to spend a lot of time be trained how to give right answers of the tests a lot, and have very limited time to play or to develop other skills or interest like music, social, or arts. The teachers and their parents will decide how they spend their daily life.

Recently, the situation becomes a little bit better, since the generation who were born in 1980s becoming the parents now. The people who were born in 1980s were the first generation after the single child policy, since they took a lot of pressure from the school and parents in examination, they normally hope their children to have a happier life. But still, the whole situation for children is still dull.

Gardner (Berger, 2014) talked about 9 kinds of mutual intelligences of human beings which include linguistic, logical mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and existential. For the children in school years, in what ways they are assessed and considered normal development are very important to help the children become aware of their own abilities, skills and help them to develop self-concept. But in schools, the assessment mainly are for the cognitive parts.

Since children develop socialphysical, socialcognitive, and socialpsychological together to become a well-being person, I think it is important to assess the whole three areas. A genius maybe feels lonely because they cannot get along well with others, an athlete maybe is not good at academic learning. The aim of assessment is to help the children develop in balance or to focus on their advantages better. And another important role of assessment is to have the children form accurate self-assessment in their life. They know well who they are, what are their advantages and disadvantages, they are self confident and live a happy life.

Reference:

Berger, 2014, The Developing Person Through Childhood