Abstract

Family education is an important component of the education. Family education is the basis of the school education and social education. Nowadays, with the development of economy, the education has been a hot spot of society. More and more people keep a watchful eye on education. Under the society with rapidly economic development and a large scale of only-child-families, more and more problems of family education have come out. A lot of educators hope to solve these problems by making researches on other countries’ family education.
This thesis takes American family education as the reference and stresses on the differences between American and Chinese family education, especially the differences on the methods. By learning the document literature, I make some compilations and researches on the family education in this thesis. This thesis is divided into four parts. Part 1 talks about the definition of family education. Part 2 talks about the similarities and differences between Chinese and American family education, especially the differences on education methods. In part 3, I will talk about the reasons of the differences. Part 4 is the conclusion part. And in the final part, I will attempt to offer some suggestions about the Chinese family education.

Key Words: family education; education methods; similarities and differences; cross-cultural study

摘要

家庭教育是大教育的组成部分之一，是学校教育和社会教育的基础。目前，随着经济的发展，教育已经成为社会的热点话题， 越来越多的人开始关注教育。随着中国经济的高速发展和独生子女家庭数量的增加，越来越多的家庭教育问题出现了。许多学者希望通过对其他国家的家庭教育方法的研究来解决这一问题。本文以美国的家庭教育为参照物，重点介绍了中美两国家庭教育的不同之处，特别是家庭教育方法上的不同之处。通过对文献资料的学习，在本文中我对中美家庭教育进行了对比和研究。本文分为五部分。第一部分主要是本文的理论部分，主要是家庭教育的定义；第二部分是中美家庭教育之间的异同，特别是教育方法上的不同之处；第三部分主要分析两国教育方法不同产生的原因；最后一部分是总结部分并提出一些建议。

关键词:家庭教育；教育方法； 异同； 跨文化研究

1. Introduction
Nowadays, with the development of economy, the education has been a hot spot of society. More and more people keep a watchful eye on education. But which is the most important factor among education? The answer is family education. Family education is the important component of the education. Family education is the basis of the school education and social education. Family education is the most important course in a child’s life. In nowadays, the international competitions are getting fiercer; it is all about competition of talents, especially the competition on the cultivation of talents. The basis of talents is education; the basis of education is family. According to Harry Chester’s Schools for Children and Institutes for Adults,  “Education is the development and training of the human being in all his capacities, spiritual, intellectual and physical….” Xiaoping Deng said, “The basis of a country's modernization lies in talents, the basis of talents lies in education, and the basis of education lies in family. China is a country with emphasis on the home education.”He also said: “Education should start with children.”