Parents play a very important role in children’s development, but that doesn’t mean that parents should spend all their money in educating their children. Or else, it would be unfair to them. However, some modern Chinese parents often send their children to the best schools or even abroad to England, the United States or Australia without caring about the money. They also want their children to take extra-course activities where they will learn a musical instrument or ballet or other classes which will give them a head start in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is, the better it is. So the parents will spend an unreasonable amount of money on education. Even poor couples will buy a computer for their son or daughter.
However, what most parents fail to see is that the best early education they can give their children is usually very cheap.
Parents can see that their children’s skills vary, skilled in some areas while poor in others. What most parents fail to realize though, is that today’s children lack self-respect and self-confidence.
The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents aren’t teaching them the most important skills they need to be confident, happy and clever.
Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing housework.
Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It’s an enjoyable but difficult experiment. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and gradually to finish his job successfully. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and a lot of self-confidence.
Some old machines , such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your children to play with will make him curious and arouse his interest. He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities aren’t merely teaching a child to read a book, but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important.
【小题1】According to this passage, there are some problems with _________.
| A．the Chinese children’s skills |
| B．the education system of China |
| C．the Chinese parents’ idea of educating their children |
| D．the Chinese children’s hobbies |
【小题2】The writer of this passage seems to agree that parents in China _______.
| A．are too strict with their children |
| B．are too rich to educate their children |
| C．are too poor to educate their children |
| D．have some problems in educating their children correctly |
【小题3】We can conclude that cooking at home helps children_________.
| A．benefit from it and prepare themselves for the future |
| B．learn how to become strong and fat |
| C．learn how to serve their parents |
| D．make their parents believe that they are clever |
【小题4】The last paragraph shows that_________.
| A．broken radios and television sets are useful |
| B．an engineer must fix many broken radios |
| C．one’s curiosity may be useful for his later life |
| D．a good student should spend much time repairing radios |
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