Education

Education has the power to change everything. Therefore, most of people need to go school to receive education and gain the knowledge. Education can take place in formal or informal settings. Informal education is a unique system, and is situated within an individual. It may occur in a variety of places, such as at home, work, and through daily interactions and shared relationships among members of society. Formal education is a common system, it is more or less the same in different countries. It is divided into such stages as preschool or kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and then college or university. However, when I came to Canada, I compared the formal education system, and found out there are many different aspects between my homeland, China, and Canada.

The first difference is in the homework and books. In my homeland, students always carry a heavy and big backpack to school; inside the bag there are many different textbooks and workbooks. After school, they have to do a lot of homework even from kindergarten. However, in Canada, students have just a little homework to take home, especially during the holidays. Once my son’s school had a reading program, he needed to borrow one book from the school library to read every week. During a holiday week, I thought he should borrow two books to read during the holiday week, but he returned the previous book and no book was borrowed because of the holiday week. The backpack of my son is still heavy and big, but inside there is always a lunch bag, library books, and some drawing papers. Even though there is a little homework, sometimes students need to spend more time on their presentations and research.

The second difference are major exams and score ranking. In my homeland, students need to take exams to move into high grades for every stage. Especially, from the primary school to the secondary school, and during the final years of high school or early years of university, those stages are very important phases because it is a significant milestone in students’ lifetime achievement. Therefore,students have to study hard to make every effort to get a high score. Parents need to to help them out a lot. Meanwhile, those major exams and other assessment periods typically give students more stress and mental burden. However, there is not any exam for primary school in Canada. EQAO is only for Grade 3 and Grade 6 for school ranking. Unfortunately, my son also missed the opportunity of taking this one test because the schoolteachers went on a strike.

The third difference is special education for students with special needs, especially students with autism. Whether in my homeland or other countries in the world, autism is on the rise. They need more special tutors to pay more attention to them and to take a good care of them. In my homeland, their parents do those things. While in Canada, there are many groups and associations who give those students more help and good care by providing meaningful activities and interesting programs.

The fourth difference is activities. In my homeland, besides the shortage of public sports places, and expensive activities’ fee, there are a lot of homework, thus most of students have no time to attend any activities. However, in Canada, most of students participate in at least two activities every week. From Monday to Sunday, my son’s activities are piano, swimming, art, baseball, hockey, basketball and soccer. He is very busy, but happy.

You really cannot compare all the education systems. Each of them has its pros and cons. However, I like Canada’s education system, because it gives students more creativity, imagination, and initiative.