Kaoru Tomiishi sobbed as the body of her six-year-old son Koki was lowered into a small plot near the family home in Fukuoka. She told mourners she wanted to find and kill the murderer.

Three days earlier, on September 18, the 35-year-old housewife from Japan’s southern island had led a frantic search for the boy after telling police he had wandered off in a local park. Searchers found his body stuffed into a small gap in the wall of the park toilet. He had been strangled, most likely with the strap of a mobile phone.

In a depressingly familiar turn of events, investigators announced soon after the funeral that Kaoru had confessed to the “impulse” killing.

“I felt there was no hope for the future,” said the mother of one, who had reportedly become overwhelmed by her parental responsibility. “I thought about killing my son and also myself.”

Experts say the case is emblematic of a broader crisis. Recent statistics record more than 100 cases of maternal filicide — mothers murdering their children — since the end of 2005, including six in September this year. Although the proportion of Japanese aged 14 and younger has been steadily shrinking in the past decade, the number of filicides has stayed roughly constant.

“Women have become responsible not only for the full-time parenting and care of their children, but also their educational performance. The pressure is immense,” Professor Ohinata says. “That’s why, in recent cases of filicide, women haven’t just been killing infants but also schoolchildren, including teenagers.”

In an interview by AERA magazine, one psychiatrist said the killings could represent a kind of transference, whereby women were assigning the suppressed fury they felt at their neglectful husbands to their innocent children.

Evidence of the growing burden on mothers, Ohinata says, can be measured in another shocking statistic: reports of child abuse have jumped from 1101 in 1990 to more than 40,000 last year.

Criminologists say the breakdown of traditional family living arrangements, in which three or four generations of one family would live together in large suburban or rural houses, has cut young mothers off from family advice and support. Instead they rely on magazines and online parenting guides, which entrench anxieties that their children may have intellectual or physical disabilities.

Megumi Iwase, 33, earlier this year used a towel to strangle her three-month-old son Shuji before drinking a bleaching substance and slashing her wrists in a failed suicide attempt. The first-time mother had already resolved that his “development was slower than other children his age”.

In a recent court appearance, her 39-year-old husband admitted he had abandoned all parental duties to his wife and suggested he deserved to be jailed in her place.

Source: The Age, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/5n2vhl

More than nine out of 10 private Korean kindergartens are disregarding the curriculum determined by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and are teaching English to their students.

Teaching English in kindergarten is illegal under the Early Childhood Education law.

In South Korea, the kindergarten curriculum is under the jurisdiction of the Education Ministry, but kindergarten is not compulsory at all and most kindergartens are run by private institutions. In addition, kindergartens are not part of elementary schools as they are in some Western countries.

According to figures released by the office of Democratic Party National Assembly member Choi Jae-sung, a study of 274 private kindergartens revealed that 262, or 95.6 percent, are teaching English.

Of those, 216, or 82.4 percent, began teaching English to their kindergartners in 2006 and 19 more began in 2008.

Some 173, or 66 percent, said they teach students English “because of parental demand.”

Another 13.4 percent responded that they teach English because they “don’t want to lose out in competition with other kindergartens,” while 10.3 percent said they are only teaching English “because of the government’s emphasis on strengthening English education.”

In addition, 43.9 percent, or 115 kindergartens, said they employ native English teachers.

Under law, kindergartens may only teach within the range of permitted curricula via ordinances set by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; currently, that does not include English.

“Given the emotional and mental development of children, at the kindergarten level they need an education method where they learn diverse areas in an integrated manner, and not concentrate on one subject,” said a ministry official. “According to the ministry, kindergartens should not teach English.”

“We have a situation in which ‘the law over there, while reality is over here’ with the continuing increase in kindergartens that teach English and private English academies that are sprouting up all over the place,” said Choi. (…)

Source: The Hankyoreh, South Korea
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/317869.html

To make up for a disappointing medal blank at the Athens Olympic Games four years ago, the US diving team is eyeing a comeback at the Beijing Olympics, with Chinese coach Chen Wenbo.

By doubling the training hours and adding a full-time training program, Chen has brought wholesale changes to the US diving team in the lead-up to the Beijing Games.

“We have worked very hard for the past three years. We got medals at the 2006 World Cup, 2007 World Cup and a medal this February at the Worlds. We believe we will break through this year,” said Chen, who joined the US diving team three-and-a-half years ago and is now the team’s assistant coach.

Unlike Chinese divers, who started diving at a young age, most of the American divers started their careers because of a personal interest. They lack basic skills training, which Chen considers a weak point.

Chen has turned part-time training into full-time training, doubling the hours from 20 to 40 a week.

“We were looking for some new ideas, and Mr Chen has certainly brought those,” said US diving coach John Wingfield. “He has taken us from a developmental level to the top level.”

The divers have accepted Chen’s training methods.

“He has a different style to some of the US coaches, but I think that’s only made Ariel (Rittenhouse) and I a stronger sychro team,” said Kelci Bryant, a US synchronized 3m-springboard diver. “I think my coach is a great coach. He helped me to achieve my dream of being in the 2008 Olympic Games.”

Born in Zhanjiang, a city in China’s southern Guangdong province, Chen was one of the best divers in the Chinese national team from 1973 to 1982, winning two national titles in 1977 and 1980.

He began his coaching career in the Chinese national diving team in 1983, until 1991. He left to coach in Canada in 1992 and moved to the US two years later.

Compared with the Chinese divers, who are more experienced and whose performances are stable, Chen said he believed the US team was physically stronger and under less pressure.

“My divers are open-minded and have little mental burden in competitions, which will help them create a miracle,” he said. “If they are well trained they will have a bright future.”

At the Beijing Games, the US diving team is led by veteran divers Laura Wilkinson, the 2000 Olympic gold medalist on the women’s 10m platform, and Troy Dumais, who is competing in his third Olympics and has three sixth-place finishes, and a fourth in two Olympics.

“The US team has a mix of veterans and young divers, the whole team is improving,” Chen said. “Wilkinson is still the best in the women’s platform. I hope those veterans will steady the team’s nerves and help it strive for a good result.”

Source: People’s Daily Online, China
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90779/94837/6466479.html

The secret to the academic success of many Asian students starts in the home, with a study of schoolchildren suggesting a regular homework routine carries benefits into the classroom.

The research examined the study habits of three groups of Year 3 students and found that Chinese children spent more time on their homework, completed more work and did it on a more regular basis than Anglo or Pacific Island students.

The study by University of Western Sydney researchers and the NSW Education Department challenges the myth that Chinese students perform better at school because of a cultural disposition to study.

“There has been inadequate attention given to the ways educational attainment is founded on embodied capacities, such as productive stillness and quiet, which are crucial to sustained attention and application in intellectual endeavour,” the report says.

Cathy Garde, a Year 3 teacher at Berala Public School in Sydney’s west, agreed that less attention was paid in recent years to the practicalities of learning, and training young bodies to sit still.

“I often have to start the year teaching the kids work habits, the capability to sit down and focus,” she said. “Some children struggle to control themselves. They don’t have any self-discipline. You get children who come into the classroom and start walking around the room in the middle of a task.”

The report, Cultural Practices and Learning, involved interviews with parents, teachers and 36 students in six Sydney schools, as well as classroom observation.

The study found that 56per cent of the Chinese students spent more than one hour a night on their homework, compared with 24per cent of Anglo children and 35per cent of Pacific Islander students.

But the study says the time spent on homework was not as important as the study routine.

A greater proportion of Chinese students, 40per cent, did homework in their bedroom or study at a desk compared with 13per cent of Anglo students and 25per cent of Islander children, who tended to do their homework sitting on their bed.

Source: The Australian, Australia
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24115399-2702,00.html

We must acquire a license to become a driver, a lawyer or a doctor, but should we pass certain exams to become parents? The result of a parents’ test conducted by a kindergarten in Zhejiang Province shows that the answer is ‘yes.’

“Parenting is probably the hardest job in the world. You never know which of your minor deeds will affect your children in their future lives,” Cheng Yanqing, head of the kindergarten, says.

In early June, parents of the kindergartners sat the parenting exam. Twenty percent failed the trial, according to the Zhejiang-based Qianjiang Evening News.

No one is born with the techniques to be a successful parent, so you have to learn, Cheng says. “This is the message we want to send to parents through the exam.”

The exam tests parents’ knowledge on raising and educating children. It includes questions like “How many hours of sleep do children need at different ages?” “Which foods contain nutrients that children need for their growth?” and “How does one deal with a child’s rebellious behavior?”

“The test rang the alarm for me, so I have to study more scientific ways of educating my child,” Zhu Songjun, the mother of a senior student in the kindergarten, says.

The kindergarten presented parents who passed the exam with a framed license, and plans to hold the exam regularly to refresh the parents’ skills.

Parenting licenses are nothing new in China, or even worldwide. Reports say that Austria is planning to give qualified couples government-issued parenting licenses. Licensed parents will enjoy preferential policies. For instance, the licensed parent can get custody of the child if the couple files for a divorce.

Many Chinese cities, such as Xiamen, Chengdu, and Nanning have also tried to give out certificates in recognition of successful parents.

Source: China Daily, China
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-06/23/content_6786851.htm

Education strategy may have global implications

A major transformation of higher education in China has the potential to impact the global economy and global education structure, according to recent findings from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

The authors point to recent statistics showing the number of undergraduate and graduate students in China has increased by about 30 per cent per year since 1999. Earlier studies estimate that by 2010 there will be substantially more PhD engineers and scientists in China than in the United States and within two years 90 per cent of all PhD physical scientists and engineers in the world will be Asians living in Asia, most of whom will be Chinese.

This outcome, the authors believe, is a result of a number of factors, including improved access to higher education for rural households, promotion of elite universities and consolidation of other universities to reduce their numbers. The focus of the policy is to elevate a small number of Chinese universities to world-class status. These institutions have been put under extraordinary pressure to upgrade their international rankings, measured by publications in international journals, citations and international cooperation.

“Potential implications for the global education system and global economy are major,” says CIGI Distinguished Fellow John Whalley. “If China succeeds by maintaining high growth or initiating new growth by using educational transformation, other countries may follow with higher educational competition between countries as a possible outcome.”

Chinese education transformation is a result of strategy driven by decisions made at the high policy levels in China and not by analysis of the demand side of labour markets. In China’s case, these latest efforts seem to be motivated by a desire to maintain high growth by using educational transformation as the primary mechanism for skill upgrading and raising total productivity. This unique development strategy started in the late 1990s and is still in its early stages. However, the authors suggest that Chinese education policy will form a central element in China’s integration into the international economy.

The policy brief was authored by Yao Li, PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Western Ontario; John Whalley, CIGI distinguished fellow and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; Shunming Zhang, professor of economics and finance at Xiamen University in China; and Xiliang Zhao, assistant professor in the Department of Economics as well as the Wang Yanan Institute for Economic Studies at Xiamen University in China.

Source: Market Wire, USA
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=864778

American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Our best thoughts come from others.”

The problem is, for different reasons many people derail learning by drawing their conclusions too soon, based on incomplete information. They inadvertently close themselves off from an array of enriching resources.

Last year, in the Washington Post’s “How to Keep America Competitive” (Feb. 25), Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, wrote, “Innovation is the source of U.S. economic leadership and the foundation for competitiveness in the global economy,” with its workforce as “the most important factor.”

He argued, “if we are to remain competitive, we need a workforce that consists of the world’s brightest minds.” There’s nothing to disagree with here.

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek affirmed, the U.S. system “is very good at developing the critical faculties of the mind,” and reminds us that foreign governments send observers to U.S. schools “to learn how to create a system that nurtures and rewards ingenuity, quick thinking, and problem-solving.”

Gates has called for “strong schools” for “young Americans (to) enter the workforce with the math, science and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the knowledge economy.” He laments, out of 29 industrialized nations surveyed, U.S. high school students ranked 24th on an international math test in 2003.

In 2007, he wrote about America’s “crisis point”: computer science employment is “growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually,” but there’s a “dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees.”

Yet, 25 years ago America’s National Commission on Excellence in Education reported in “A Nation At Risk” that “Our Nation is at risk … the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

“What was unimaginable a generation ago,” the April 1983 report says, “has begun to occur - others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.”

The report recommended, among other things, “far more homework”; the teaching of English, mathematics, science, social studies, computer science, each area with specific purposes; as well as the learning of a foreign language in elementary grades.

Falling behind

“Wake up. We are falling behind daily,” the April 30 USA Today’s Greg Toppo quoted Bob Compton of Harvard Business School, an entrepreneur, angel investor, and professional venture capitalist, who has been active in over 30 businesses.

Erik Hromadka’s “2 Million Minutes, How high school students in China, India and Indiana are spending their time,” in the February Indiana Business cover story, “Is Time Running Out?” is a must read.

In 2005, Compton traveled on business across India, to which a growing number of U.S. technology jobs are “being outsourced” — an “economic tectonic shift” taking place in the world. He said he found his “seminal moment” when he asked 5- and 6-year-old first graders in a Bangalore classroom what they want to be when they grow up. “Most of them said engineers or scientists,” compared to American children who “aspired to be rock stars and professional athletes .

The one word that was never mentioned (by American children) was ‘engineer’ and that just shook me to the core.”

Compton sees “strong math and science skills … will allow people in the 21st century to earn high wages,” and that “capital and opportunity are going to flow to where the brains are.”

Compton set out to spend 20 months to make the documentary film “Two Million Minutes” (www.2Mminutes.com) about how high school students in Bangalore, students in Shanghai, and at Indiana’s Carmel High School, among the top five percent of high schools in the U.S., compare and contrast; how they allocate their time in class and at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, goofing off, “affecting their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.”

As Toppo reported, the film “finds plenty (for Americans) to be worried about: not enough study or homework time, not enough parental pressure, not enough focus on math or engineering. American teens … are preoccupied with sports, after-school jobs and leisure.”

Americans need to be concerned about their ability to remain globally competitive.

Source: Pacific Daily News, GU
http://tinyurl.com/5rp2ys

Like many Chinese-Canadian parents, Henry Yu wanted his two children to have English-sounding names.

Although the University of B.C. history professor valued the cultural significance of the names associated with his traditional Chinese heritage, more than anything, he wanted his children to fit in.

He named his daughter, Chloe, and son, Mylo.

A look at baby-naming trends indicates Yu’s thinking isn’t unusual. Despite more than 400,000 ethnic Chinese in B.C., few Chinese names popped up in a 107-year survey of popular B.C. baby names, compiled in The Vancouver Sun’s new online baby-name database.

While 291 Ethans and 236 Avas topped the list in 2007, in that period, only nine baby girls were given the Chinese name Jia. Another Chinese name, Chun is listed, but hasn’t popped up since 1999, selected for five baby boys.

The Sun’s database uses figures drawn from data collected by B.C. Vital Statistics’ annual list of the most common names for newborns, as well as from data collected by researchers at Nanaimo’s Malaspina University-College in 2004. Vital Statistics only tracks names if they occur at least five times.

(Since the database launched last week, more than 23,800 users have logged on to www.vancouversun.com to track a name.)

Yu says he isn’t surprised by the data.

“English is dominant,” said Yu, listing off historic factors, like B.C.’s colonial past and the education system, which favours English-speakers. “I think many ethnic Chinese have adapted to a hierarchy of language.”

For starters, Chinese names can’t be accurately translated from their character format into the English alphabet, often blurring the meaning of a name. And English speakers struggle with some Chinese sounds, such as “ng.” Also, many Chinese parents want their children to be successful in English-speaking Canada, he said, adding this may come at the expense of their own language.

At the same time, English names are usually offset by Chinese middle names, he said. These names are often considered just as important by Chinese-speaking family members.

Four-year-old Chloe’s middle name is Phuong, meaning phoenix, and three-year-old Mylo’s middle name is Long, meaning dragon. Yu’s own middle name is Shuen Ngei, meaning “complete fortitude,” he said, adding this doesn’t translate well into English letters.

Linda Chiew, an early-childhood educator who lives in Burnaby, said she and her husband encouraged their own parents to help pick a good Chinese middle name for their new son.

In the end, the name Hoo-ngun was selected by intergenerational consensus, she said, adding the name sounded good in both Mandarin and Cantonese.

“It means ’source of blessing and richness,’” she said.

Chiew and her husband, Billy, selected a first and second name, Riley Josiah, to reflect the family’s Canadian ties, she said. “He’s Canadian too,” Chiew said.

Source: Vancouver Sun, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/6hqd4m

There’s no ignoring that China, with a population exceeding 1 billion people as well as burgeoning economic capabilities, is a force to be reckoned with. Throw in the fact their kids too often score better in math and science than students in the United States and what does not make sense about getting Minnesota and Chinese educators together?

Forty-nine principals from all over China made a cross-global trek to meet last week with Minnesota educators in the first-ever U.S.-China Principals’ Summit hosted by the University of Minnesota’s China Center and the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals, among others.

The four-day event, also sponsored by the Beijing-based China-American Education Foundation, was a conversation about the commonalities and differences in each nation’s system of schooling their children.

Education is “their number one priority and their number one fiscal commitment. They are intentionally focusing on becoming a world leader in first-rate education. We need to collaborate with China and we need to keep them a close educational partner,” explained Joann Knuth, executive director of the principals’ group.

There is also Chinese students’ widely recognized academic reputation, said Youngwei Zhang, director of the center. “They outscore their counterparts in many countries in math and science. These are things we need to know about so our students can do better,” he said.

For instance, MinnPost reported last December on recent Program for International Student Assessment, a.k.a. PISA, scores where students in Hong Kong and Singapore outperformed American high school students.

The forum benefits University officials as well, Zhang said, since the University has the largest population of students from China of any U.S. campus. Currently, about 2.5 percent of the University’s student body is international students, and the intent is to double that number. He estimates the U received about 800 student applications from China.

Though international differences in education approaches are difficult to swallow in one big gulp, I asked two educators, Knuth, and Chin Yi (Chin is his family name), to share their initial reactions to the summit.

Chin, who is director of international programs from the Middle School attached to Hunan Normal University, and spoke in English, had this to say.

He praised the American educational system’s “creativity.” “One of the first things that attract me is the creative spirits I found in the American high school teachers and students. We often found that American high school students are very creative, although the Chinese kids have a solid academic foundation, they lack the creative spirit,” he said.

The American system seems more open to new ideas and innovation, he said, with China having a “unified curriculum.”

In addition, China attaches great importance to academics, Chin said, claiming more than 95 percent of its students graduate from high school – much exceeding U.S. rates.

“Also, I like to point out China is attaching great significance to education by the parents. You say the involvement. In China there is no problem in parent’s involvement,” he said.

Knuth, who also represents Minnesota at the National Association of Secondary school Principals in Washington, D.C., shared these thoughts:

“I was very intrigued by China’s commitment to education. Education is their number one priority.” For instance, they talked about a 10- year education reform program where they expect to establish 110 key universities and how they are investing $2 billion in poly-technical colleges, what Americans call technical or vocational schools, she said.

“This is an extraordinary commitment. When you think about their population and the impact it will have on global education, it’s amazing.”

However, China recognizes the need to reform some cultural aspects of their kindergarten through 12th-grade system, she said. “Right now it’s very intense.” She talked to a Carleton College student from China at the conference who told her Chinese students regularly spend 10 to 12 hours a day in “intensive study.”

What the Chinese are looking to infuse into their education system from the American system is innovation. “[Chinese] students are very good at rote learning, but the idea is to learn concepts and then be able to think about, analyze and create new. That is not the cultural pattern in their schools,” Knuth said.

It was 1972 when Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic of China, thus opening the door to normal relations with the Communist nation. The U’s China Center has worked since 1979 to encourage understanding and cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese people and cultures.

Source: MinnPost.com, MN
http://tinyurl.com/4xte2v

For generations, scholars have debated whether language constrains the ways we think. Now, neuroscientists studying reading disorders have begun to wonder whether the actual character of the text itself may shape the brain.

Studies of schoolchildren who read in varying alphabets and characters suggest that those who are dyslexic in one language, say Chinese or English, may not be in another, such as Italian.

Among children raised to read and write Chinese, the demands of reading draw on parts of the brain untouched by the English alphabet, new neuroimaging studies reveal. It’s the same with dyslexia, psychologist Li Hai Tan at Hong Kong Research University and his colleagues reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The problems occur in areas not involved in reading other alphabets.

Using two brain-imaging techniques, they identified striking differences in neural anatomy and brain activity between children able to read and write Chinese easily and classmates struggling to keep pace. Both were at odds with patterns of brain activity among readers of the English alphabet.

Even when readers in both languages looked at the same written characters, the brain activity was different, other researchers found. Arabic numerals of standard arithmetic — used by readers of Chinese and English alike — activate different brain regions depending on which of the two languages people had first learned to read, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Dalian University of Technology reported in 2006.

“In this sense, we may regard dyslexia in Chinese and English as two different brain disorders,” Dr. Tan said, “because completely different brain regions are disrupted. It’s very likely that a person who is dyslexic in Chinese would not be dyslexic in English.”

By any measure, reading is a complex and peculiar task. At the speed of thought, readers of English turn letters they see into sounds, sounds into words, and words into meaning. Fluency is measured in milliseconds. Spelling variations are speed bumps in the brain.

Until recently, researchers who study reading abilities focused mostly on Western alphabets. English and 218 other languages, from Alsatian to Zulu, share variations of the same Latin character set. But that set is only one of 60 writing systems used among the world’s remaining 6,912 spoken languages. Even so, those studies convinced many scientists and educators that the brain’s response to the written word, regardless of the language, is universal.

The new research suggests they’re wrong. The schooling required to read English or Chinese may fine-tune neural circuits in distinctive ways.

“We have to recognize that the writing system in China is different, the demands on the brain are different and the characteristics of dyslexia are different,” said Georgetown University pediatric learning specialist Guinevere Eden, who is incoming president of the International Dyslexia Association.

To document the effects on brain development, Dr. Eden and her colleagues are launching a five-year study in Beijing and Washington to compare the neural changes in 60 schoolchildren learning to read either Chinese or English. “Nobody has ever done this across two writing systems,” Dr. Eden said.

In ways that ancient scribes never imagined, text has transformed us. Every brain shaped by reading, whether it is schooled in Chinese or English text, measurably differs — in terms of patterns of energy use and brain structure — from one that has never mastered the written word, comparative brain-imaging studies show. “There are real differences that emerge because of literacy,” Dr. Wolf said.

Some social psychologists speculate that the brain changes caused by literacy could be involved in cultural differences in memory, attention and visual perception. In January’s Psychological Science, MIT researchers reported that European-Americans and students from several East Asian cultures, for example, showed different patterns of brain activation when making snap judgments about visual patterns.

No one knows which came first: habits of thought or the writing system that gave them tangible form. A writing system could be drawn from the archaeology of the mind, perpetuating aspects of mental life conceived at the dawn of civilization.

“Once you have different writing systems in place,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Richard Nisbett. “They may reinforce the perceptual and cognitive trends that preceded the invention of writing. They may go hand in glove.”

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://tinyurl.com/6c4gax