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Education of Chinese children in Britain : a comparative study with the United States of America

Owing to immigration and natural growth, there has been a significant increase in Chinese children in English-speaking societies. When these children are brought up and educated in Britain and the USA, Chinese parents are quite anxious that their children should maintain the Chinese identity and some traditional cultural values through the learning of the Chinese language. In order to satisfy Chinese parents' aspirations, there has been a growth of Chinese supplementary schools within the Chinese communities in both Britain and the USA. To respond to the 1977 EEC (European Economic Community) Directive which requires the teaching of the official language(s) of the host country and the mother tongue/culture of the migrant/ immigrant children in schools of the member states, some British state schools in London have made Chinese language education available during or after school hours since the early 1980s. Despite the provision of Chinese language education by the voluntary and maintained sectors, problems of underachievement at school and cultural adjustment of some Chinese children remain unsolved and ignored. The intent of the thesis is to investigate some of these problems of the Chinese pupils in British schools and see the extent to which that education provision within the Chinese community and the maintained sector has met the needs of Chinese pupils and the aspirations of Chinese parents in Britain. i Similar education provision is also found in San Francisco and New York City. The two American cities are therefore chosen for the comparative study to see how far that some of the American bilingualbicultural education policies can be successfully incorporated into the British (London) system to improve the education of Chinese pupils.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:243980
Date January 1988
CreatorsWong, Yuen-Fan Lornita
PublisherInstitute of Education (University of London)
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/7501/

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