Last Saturday I started my first guitar lesson in Germany and realize the difference between teaching methodologies in China and in Germany.
In China the teachers are more focused on progress of students. There are 10 levels and students have to pass the examinations to reach those levels. The guitar lessons are built to prepare students to pass the examinations as soon as possible.
In Germany the teachers are more focused to the basic technique. There is no pressure to pass any tests. The students can take time enjoying the practice and create great awareness of the playing itself. Teachers build a solid foundation for their students first.
Generally, in China the kids are facing much stronger competition which is reflected in everything they do. There are 10 levels for English, 10 levels for Piano, etc. Parents spend a fortune for education of their kids to send them to foreign schools or abroad. So teachers are under high pressure to deliver results.
Therefore I sometimes observed that most kids did not really have fun playing music instruments, but took the lesson, because their parents wanted them to do. Poor kids.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Second Profession for the Second Half of Your Life
People in our age may start to think about the following question: what would I do in my second half of the life?
Just take an example: I worked in Telecommunication Industry for last 18 years and can hardly image to continue in that industry for next 18 years until I would be able to retire officially. Even if I would like to, my employer with best intention may not be able to keep me that long.
A colleague of mine, a highly capable female professional decided two years ago to be a Yoga teacher. And now she seems to be extremely happy with that decision.
During today’s lunch I opened this discussion with few colleagues. I started saying to a colleague: “You are maintaining an image of a perfect detective with you cool look, a long coat, analytical capability and communication skill.” He laughed: “There might be a market for coaching for second profession for the second half of the life for you. But detectives are absolutely not what I would do.”
People with our experiences are extremely valuable when we focus on our strengths. And generally education in its broadest scope can be one of the areas you might want to look for opportunities. In that industry your value will increase when you get older, provided that you never stop adapting and learning new things.
Another growth industry will be something I would call “how people spend their leisure time?”. Think about how often you go to massage in China compared how often you go massage in Germany. Productivity will grow, efficiency will increase. People will work generally less time with more results. They will generally have more money and have more idle time. What are they going to do with the extra time and extra money? There is a market from macro economy perspective.
Then we have some well known growth industries such as alternative energy and health care. If you are working in one of the related industries, you are lucky and can try to move to one of the hot spots for your second half of your professional life.
It is your life and you absolutely deserve the best out of it.
Just take an example: I worked in Telecommunication Industry for last 18 years and can hardly image to continue in that industry for next 18 years until I would be able to retire officially. Even if I would like to, my employer with best intention may not be able to keep me that long.
A colleague of mine, a highly capable female professional decided two years ago to be a Yoga teacher. And now she seems to be extremely happy with that decision.
During today’s lunch I opened this discussion with few colleagues. I started saying to a colleague: “You are maintaining an image of a perfect detective with you cool look, a long coat, analytical capability and communication skill.” He laughed: “There might be a market for coaching for second profession for the second half of the life for you. But detectives are absolutely not what I would do.”
People with our experiences are extremely valuable when we focus on our strengths. And generally education in its broadest scope can be one of the areas you might want to look for opportunities. In that industry your value will increase when you get older, provided that you never stop adapting and learning new things.
Another growth industry will be something I would call “how people spend their leisure time?”. Think about how often you go to massage in China compared how often you go massage in Germany. Productivity will grow, efficiency will increase. People will work generally less time with more results. They will generally have more money and have more idle time. What are they going to do with the extra time and extra money? There is a market from macro economy perspective.
Then we have some well known growth industries such as alternative energy and health care. If you are working in one of the related industries, you are lucky and can try to move to one of the hot spots for your second half of your professional life.
It is your life and you absolutely deserve the best out of it.
Monday, July 6, 2009
How to Raise Children Effectively? Continued
Last Friday we went to an India Restaurant at the Hong Mei Entertainment Street to celebrate for my second daughter Katharine receiving the school certificates. We are all very proud that she ended up with the second best student at her level. We are proud because she was not always liked that as her sister.
After she graded from primary school to high school (Gymnasium), she was pending between the score of 2 to 4 (with 1 the best and 6 the worst). My wife tried to help her to be better and educated her to be more disciplined. We knew that she is intelligent and talented in many ways. But my wife and she struggled for a long time. And one day I decided to try a new method that I learned from leadership training: making the change seems to be easy.
One day in a very casual atmosphere I spoke to Katherine: “Look. Would you try one thing for me? Try to improve only one point in only one subject, what ever subject you would like to chose, while remain the scores for all other subjects the same during the next semester.” It sounded for her to be easy to achieve, so she promised: “I will try.”
By the end of the semester, she improved one point not only in one subject, but in three subjects. We were very happy. We did not make more ambitions goal for her, but told her: “That is great achievement. For the next semester, would you try only to improve one point for only one subject you chose, based on your current performance.” She confidently said: “Yes. I will try.”
During all the semesters she continuously put more efforts. And the result today is really impressive with the average score of 1.3. In addition she has a great interest and talent in music and playing well guitar.
I believe that because of the pressure in the industries the management often set too high goals for people to fail, not to achieve. And while people fail, they develop a habit of failing and lose confidence in achieving. Since they can not meet the goals anyhow, why should they bother even to make any efforts?
What we can learn from Katharine is to make changes or improvements seem to be easy, so we can succeed and we have the ambition to overachieve, not because of the pressure coming from outside, but because of the inner drive to be the best we can be!
After she graded from primary school to high school (Gymnasium), she was pending between the score of 2 to 4 (with 1 the best and 6 the worst). My wife tried to help her to be better and educated her to be more disciplined. We knew that she is intelligent and talented in many ways. But my wife and she struggled for a long time. And one day I decided to try a new method that I learned from leadership training: making the change seems to be easy.
One day in a very casual atmosphere I spoke to Katherine: “Look. Would you try one thing for me? Try to improve only one point in only one subject, what ever subject you would like to chose, while remain the scores for all other subjects the same during the next semester.” It sounded for her to be easy to achieve, so she promised: “I will try.”
By the end of the semester, she improved one point not only in one subject, but in three subjects. We were very happy. We did not make more ambitions goal for her, but told her: “That is great achievement. For the next semester, would you try only to improve one point for only one subject you chose, based on your current performance.” She confidently said: “Yes. I will try.”
During all the semesters she continuously put more efforts. And the result today is really impressive with the average score of 1.3. In addition she has a great interest and talent in music and playing well guitar.
I believe that because of the pressure in the industries the management often set too high goals for people to fail, not to achieve. And while people fail, they develop a habit of failing and lose confidence in achieving. Since they can not meet the goals anyhow, why should they bother even to make any efforts?
What we can learn from Katharine is to make changes or improvements seem to be easy, so we can succeed and we have the ambition to overachieve, not because of the pressure coming from outside, but because of the inner drive to be the best we can be!
Monday, June 22, 2009
My Guitar Teacher and His Time Value
Since June 2008 I have started taking guitar lesson every Saturday. My teacher Mr. S is 24 years old, very talented in playing guitar and in teaching. He is always calm and patient and never gets angry.
26 years ago I also learnt playing guitar in Germany for one year and then stopped, since I was too busy with the study. When I think back, that time Mr. S was even not born. Now, he had learnt playing guitar well, had become a teacher with around 100 students. Time changes everything.
Mr. S has a regular job at the government institution. I could never figure out what he is doing there. My impression is though that the job must be boring, because he gives 40 hours of guitar lessons per week in addition to his regular job. He does it well and has fun obviously.
As a guitar teacher he works for a music school. Since the demand for leaning guitar is growing recently (talking about recession), he was asked to teach additional students. Because it is impossible for him to spend more time, he came to me und asked if I would be willing to take a large class instead of one on one lessons, so he can add more students.
The deal is structured like this. I would pay only half the price and would stay double the time with him. So the price per hour would be only one fourth. It sounds a good deal for me. He will take up to 8 students in the large class, so the total income for the school as well as for him per hour would be also doubled. This is a truly win-win situation.
The moral of the story: there is a limit of how much time you can work per week, even for a talented and ambitions Chinese like Mr. S. If you want to get more done, you have to increase the time value.
26 years ago I also learnt playing guitar in Germany for one year and then stopped, since I was too busy with the study. When I think back, that time Mr. S was even not born. Now, he had learnt playing guitar well, had become a teacher with around 100 students. Time changes everything.
Mr. S has a regular job at the government institution. I could never figure out what he is doing there. My impression is though that the job must be boring, because he gives 40 hours of guitar lessons per week in addition to his regular job. He does it well and has fun obviously.
As a guitar teacher he works for a music school. Since the demand for leaning guitar is growing recently (talking about recession), he was asked to teach additional students. Because it is impossible for him to spend more time, he came to me und asked if I would be willing to take a large class instead of one on one lessons, so he can add more students.
The deal is structured like this. I would pay only half the price and would stay double the time with him. So the price per hour would be only one fourth. It sounds a good deal for me. He will take up to 8 students in the large class, so the total income for the school as well as for him per hour would be also doubled. This is a truly win-win situation.
The moral of the story: there is a limit of how much time you can work per week, even for a talented and ambitions Chinese like Mr. S. If you want to get more done, you have to increase the time value.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
How to Raise Children Effectively?
On Friday 12, my first daughter Sophia finished the high school (Abitur) at the German School Shanghai. The whole family went there for the celebration. Sophia got the best scores at the school and received in addition three awards in Physics, in arrangements for different activities and for the competition of best foreign schools.
After the celebration some parents came to my wife and me and asked: “How do you raise your children?” This was a very good question. Honestly we never thought about it before. It is like to ask a slim person, how she keeps her body slim. Most likely she just does not know, because she was slim for the entire life. Sophia got always the best scores.
But when we reflected our experience with Sophia’s education, we may want to mention one thing that contributed most to her success. Sophia tried to do a lot of things in early years including writing creative texts, designing web sites, playing theatre, playing piano, participating technical camps and participating reading competitions.
During the course of years, she some times shifted the interests. What so ever jumped into her mind, we always encouraged her to do. When she was successful, we were happy with her. When she wanted to do something else we said that’s fine to try something new. For selection of university and subjects we never had any preoccupation and instead asked her to explore herself what she really likes.
So what did we really do in her development? Not much. We leave her in free run, encourage her to try new things and play some role models ourselves. And we are extremely happy with the results and the little time we have invested.
After the celebration some parents came to my wife and me and asked: “How do you raise your children?” This was a very good question. Honestly we never thought about it before. It is like to ask a slim person, how she keeps her body slim. Most likely she just does not know, because she was slim for the entire life. Sophia got always the best scores.
But when we reflected our experience with Sophia’s education, we may want to mention one thing that contributed most to her success. Sophia tried to do a lot of things in early years including writing creative texts, designing web sites, playing theatre, playing piano, participating technical camps and participating reading competitions.
During the course of years, she some times shifted the interests. What so ever jumped into her mind, we always encouraged her to do. When she was successful, we were happy with her. When she wanted to do something else we said that’s fine to try something new. For selection of university and subjects we never had any preoccupation and instead asked her to explore herself what she really likes.
So what did we really do in her development? Not much. We leave her in free run, encourage her to try new things and play some role models ourselves. And we are extremely happy with the results and the little time we have invested.
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