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American family education also has a long history. By the time capitalism was experiencing a rapid development, modern pedagogy and psychology had been founded, which greatly boosted the development of American family education researches. The contemporary documents of American family education can be pided into two groups by their contents. One is stories of popular reading, such as The Art of Education. The other is some guidance and advices on American parents aiming at the problems in family education. The related literatures are Raising Good Children and Right from Wrong and so on. In America, many books on family education are based on psychology. Take the Raising Your Child for example, the book gives an account of the common characters and rules of children’s growth and it believes that children’s growth is a comprehensive result of the local human, nature and the society. From this perspective, the children’s growth is interpreted as a highly social process by the author.
In regards to contents, a brief understanding can be acquired in some related books. First of all, Aristotle pides the virtue into two categories. The first is intellectual virtue and the second is moral virtue which needs to be implemented in children’ daily practice. So Thomas Lickona, as a leader of character educator, puts forward that the contents of American education should also contains the moral education, which includes a series of core values and the cultivation of characters. “I always try to inculcate respect and responsibility as an important part of core values into family education. It has been proved right in the long human’s history, which can help the development of inpidual characters. And this is the foundation for the existing of society.” (Lickona, 1997: 23) Moral education is an essential element of family education, since it plays an important role in children’s character. Secondly, in America，many educators do not hold that the students ought to memorize the knowledge they can not understand at the early age．The famous educator in Harvard James Grant said in a learning family education forum, “In the western, there is long tradition to study Plato who thinks learning should not be forced on young children. That young learning should be easy and fun so there is no emotional stress thing associated with learning. It is important that parents allow children to be children”. American family education is much like to leave the children grow up freely with high randomness and it doesn’t set any targets for children. American parents think the process has the priority over the outcome. For instance, people of all sorts can be invited by American schools to give their students a lecture, such as a nurse, a doctor, or a firefighter. The aim of this is to give students a brief impression about the society and all kind of jobs. In American family education, arousing children’s interest seems a bounden duty for parents. Parents respect their children’s willingness. “What impress me most is that they respect children since they are very young—parents will not force kids to eat; children will not be scolded heavily if they make mistakes; parents will not be in an authoritative manner if they want children to change clothes, and so on. Americans are particular about the way and the tone when they talk with children.” (Ailin, 2005: 82)