After reading Jenny's passage about kids' bad behaviors, I thought a lot about it. One primary reason is that behaviors of grown up affect children a lot. Let's look at living environment around kids. Most teachers in elementary school are female, they'd like to talk about beautiful clothes, richness of boy friends, salary and so on. I don't think they have more responsibility than teachers before (It's just my idea). Most of young teachers are struggling to get Bachelor's degree, they use all kinds of methods to make it. For example they find out the teacher who will inspect the exam and hope to cheat later, some of them hire college students to replace them to pass the exam directly. Teachers act in that way, how can we hope them to behave before children? Sometimes I think teachers are more likely actors, not teachers. They only take teachers as a play role in real life. Maybe many female teachers in elementary school object my idea, but it's true. Let's back to the family. Most parents tell children to obey the norm and to be polite to others. The problem is that they themselves don't act in that way. They drag the children to come across the crossing road while the red light is on; they tell children not to speak anything when the thief is stealing others' wallet; they spit or litter anywhere when roaming in the streets; they abuse others for not getting the seat on the bus. There're too many examples to support my idea, I won't list them one by one. Children are always confused by those behaviors. Sometimes they will speak out, "Daddy, you shouldn't litter anywhere!" "Don't be silly, no one saw us littering, further more the cleaner's task is to clean the street, she will lose her job if she has nothing to do!" It seems that the excuse is very abound. What's shame, what's chicanery? Parents hope children to be honest, but they teach them cheat themselves before they know it. Children don't know what's true or false, they just follow parents or teachers. My aunt's son is about 6 years old and he's very smart. She tells him to eat up all his food and shouldn't throw it away. The boy remembers the rule very well. Sometimes he really couldn't finish it but he dare not give it away. He manages to give the food he left to other children. Even they throw it into the dustbin he won't pay attention to it, for he doesn't do it by himself! Children always say hello to guests without any passion, because they just do that in parents' desires. In a word they don't grasp the true meaning of what parents or teachers teach. Back to our topic, the entertainment does a great effect to children too. Children are curious to new things. They're fond of cartoon, TV play series and surfing online. They admire famous stars and try to imitate them. I don't think it's bad for them to do so, because it's natural when they're young. But the problem is what's the play about. I can divide the play children are fond of into three types roughly. One is love story. Every role in the play has several lovers, which love him/her from the depths of their hearts. So the triangular love is the main topic. The role usually divorces with one whom it doesn't love and get married with one whom it loves really. We know it won't happen in real life often, but the children don't think so. They think divorcement and finding a lover is just a wonderful game. Yesterday I red an item in newspaper, a boy says to his mother, "If you beat me any more I will tell father to divorce with you and marry with another pretty aunt!" . The other two are about ancient plays and policemen. It seems that every one can be emperor, prince or princess and they could give up their predominant station for the sake of love. I don't think children get benefits form them.
In a word children just imitate by parents or teachers' behaviors, to teach children to be a good one we should be a good one at first.
Azure