Your kid must have tuition... OR ELSE...
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last night, I attended one of the talk @ our neighbour commitee center. This lady who give the speech talked about how she help her daughter from average score student to 2A and 2A* top student after PLSE. Basically she quit her job and use about 8 month time to teach/tutor her daughter. from the way she describe of what she did, it seems like quite a lot of work to do as a mother, even better than the tutor.
Now the world is no longer the same compare with our childhood time. Teacher teach how much and we learn how much. Parents involvement is very limited. only the worst student go to tuition.
Now, It seems our primary school teacher can only teach the basic and concept. when during the exam, the school will make more challenge questions. If the child doesn’t explore beyond what they learn, doesn’t know how to apply the knowledge to more difficult questions, they are just getting average result. so, the parents either hire a tutor or coach themselves in order to get A.
As Chief mentioned, we are @ the crossroad. The question is how we strike the balance? -
amylqf:
...Basically she quit her job and use about 8 month time to teach/tutor her daughter. from the way she describe of what she did, it seems like quite a lot of work to do as a mother, even better than the tutor....Now, It seems our primary school teacher can only teach the basic and concept. when during the exam, the school will make more challenge questions...
Personally, I feel that any child will do well in school if there is a dedicated stay-home parent tutoring the child at home. However, I feel if this is not done properly, it might set up an artificial environment (it's equivalent to hot-housing) and creates unhealthy dependency of the child on the parent to monitor and control every single aspect of the child's life. The purpose of scoring all A's in school may become the be-it-and-end-all of life for both parent and child.
The children I really respect are those who do well even with parents who doesn't give a hoot about their studies. These are the children who will grow up with purpose-filled lives of achieving targets they set for themselves, and NOT by their parents.
Also, it may be too sweeping to say that teachers today do not teach. They do, but they have also come to expect their students to be more advanced than teachers of our time. And that is entirely our fault, because in our eagerness to ensure our children to be ahead of whatever is taught in class, we have put our children through external lessons. So if most children have such lessons, those that don't become a minority and the teacher can only point this out to their parents out of concern. Of course this would appear that the teacher is \"promoting\" tuition.
The only way to resolve this is to lower the PSLE standards so that more students can make the bar. This will make parents realize that they are overdoing their involvement in pushing their children. However, in a nation that values progress and moving on to higher and higher bars, it is unlikely that such a proposition will ever be supported by MOE. -
ChiefKiasu:
Same sentiments.
The children I really respect are those who do well even with parents who doesn't give a hoot about their studies. These are the children who will grow up with purpose-filled lives of achieving targets they set for themselves, and NOT by their parents.ChiefKiasu:
Cannot agree more. Think we may have hit a point of no return now until a major disaster hit us(eg. too many suicides, children skip school to joint protest on the streets, mental institutions cannot cope with fast rising demand anymore...) .......then perhaps review and action will be taken.The only way to resolve this is to lower the PSLE standards so that more students can make the bar. This will make parents realize that they are overdoing their involvement in pushing their children. However, in a nation that values progress and moving on to higher and higher bars, it is unlikely that such a proposition will ever be supported by MOE.
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ChiefKiasu:
And that is entirely our fault, because in our eagerness to ensure our children to be ahead of whatever is taught in class, we have put our children through external lessons.
Not me. I'm very kiasu, but I feel that I rather spend the time teaching my gals things that is not taught in sch by her teacher. From what I have heard, those kids who are taught in advance of the sch syllables, they usually do not pay a lot of attention during class, becasue they already went through the text book with the home tuition teacher, and I feel this is not a good habit to cultivate. -
mumwgals:
I had a long conversation with the Chinese teacher in Molin today. According to her, a number of schools are indeed sticking to the \"Teach less, learn more\" mantra. She interpretes this as the creation of a tougher environment in which children are tested not ONLY on what is taught in class, but a significant amount is on material not covered in class.ChiefKiasu:
And that is entirely our fault, because in our eagerness to ensure our children to be ahead of whatever is taught in class, we have put our children through external lessons.
Not me. I'm very kiasu, but I feel that I rather spend the time teaching my gals things that is not taught in sch by her teacher. From what I have heard, those kids who are taught in advance of the sch syllables, they usually do not pay a lot of attention during class, becasue they already went through the text book with the home tuition teacher, and I feel this is not a good habit to cultivate.
The question is, how on earth do we parents know whether we are teaching our children AHEAD of what will be taught, or if we are covering material that will not be taught, but examinable in schools? The whole \"Teach less, learn more\" thing confuses the heck out of me. -
[quote]a number of schools are indeed sticking to the \"Teach less, learn more\" mantra. She interpretes this as the creation of a tougher environment in which children are tested not ONLY on what is taught in class, but a significant amount is on material not covered in class.[/quote]
My gal is in primary 1 studying in one of the gal school. I had a shocking first half of the year to realise the fact that there is no way that today's children can lead a carefree childhood.
As a \"dun bother' mother, I blame myself for not preparing my gal well for P1 and I learnt my lesson after the mid year review. Indeed, I realised that the school doesn't teach much and what they do is to access the children with worksheets. I still do not know what do they teach for P1 English?
My gal obviously did not do well for SA1 and hence during the June holidays, I enrolled her to a few enrichment courses and I taught her in advance for her Maths. The only subject that I enrolled for her prior to P1 was Chinese TianHsieh.
Now, I feel so ashmad of myself as a mother for not spending the effort to groom her. I hope it is still not too late as without tuition or enrichment courses, I supposed there is no way for my gal to be able to cope with the worksheets and exams and expectation of the school.
For my case, my view is that I think enrichment centres are a better choice than private tuition because they know the MOE syllabus very well and they teach in advance with well prepared teaching materials. However, they are very expensive and hence I guess I have to cope with the \"hole\" in my pocket. But then, what to do?
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ChiefKiasu:
In my elder gal's current sch, so far, there was always one question that was not taught in class at all in her Math paper, CA1 & SA1.
I had a long conversation with the Chinese teacher in Molin today. According to her, a number of schools are indeed sticking to the \"Teach less, learn more\" mantra. She interpretes this as the creation of a tougher environment in which children are tested not ONLY on what is taught in class, but a significant amount is on material not covered in class.
The question is, how on earth do we parents know whether we are teaching our children AHEAD of what will be taught, or if we are covering material that will not be taught, but examinable in schools? The whole \"Teach less, learn more\" thing confuses the heck out of me.
Some schools in Singapore are not using any textbook for teaching English, even for P1, they use literature & poem to teach.
There are many things to learn beside academic stuff. I'm not highly educated, I only teaches my gals basic soft skills and life skills. I'm still learning, so hopefully can impart more values in both my gals.
Quote :
'Life skills are important because they help us to navigate in life better. Many skills are not taught in schools because of the tight curriculum and it is often expected that people know or will be able to pick as they go along their journey in life. However, not all of us are the same.
There are different life skills to name a few: parenting skills, listening skills, anger management, survival skill (rescue, diving), basic first aid, basic risk management, being street smart, able to take care of oneself, able to do personal budgeting, interpersonal skill, and so on.
These skills are helpful to make us resilient and not to fall prey to cheats.'
I have covered most basic soft/life skills which I see deem for my elder gal to pick up, and I'm going into the second level of it now.
For academic or general knowledge, she can always pick up material that she is interested in and ' do research' from reading (but I do screen tthru her reading material, just to make sure that they are ok for her age). She reads because she is interested to find out more, how deep it is to dig into the topic, I leave the decision to her. As for sch, if she could not understand what was taught in class, she could always ask, I may not always have the answer but we can go & find out, that's the reason why we have revision. -
When my child was in P5, she scored 70+ in her Match SA1. During the meet teachers session, the Match teacher told me, knowing that my child was not having tuition all the while "She is a passive learner, she needs to change her learning attituite. I think she needs help, maybe you should send her for tuition"
When I reached home, I told my child about the teacher’s comment but being a parent that is always against tuition, I told my child "No, I am not going to send you for tuition" I told her she had to learn to be an active learner but not thru tuition. For any questions that she could not understand, the first step is to spend time studying the question. We went to book stores to look for similar questions and solutions and some Math guide book. However, certain questions were too difficult for us to solve and hence I encouraged her to seek help from her school teacher or classmates. And now, she is coping well and her marks are improving.
The only enrichment class she has attended during her 6 years of primary school life are those organised by the teacher or school during the P6 time.
I feel that a child should be trained to solve the problems they encounter. Being a parent, I can give her guidance on the path to go but I cannot be holding her hand and walk her along the path. At least this is my methology, not only for studying but also for many other problems she has been facing.
I agree with her Math teacher that she should change her learning attituite, from passive to active but I don’t agree of sending her for tuition. -
snowyqueen:
[quote]a number of schools are indeed sticking to the \"Teach less, learn more\" mantra. She interpretes this as the creation of a tougher environment in which children are tested not ONLY on what is taught in class, but a significant amount is on material not covered in class.
My gal is in primary 1 studying in one of the gal school. I had a shocking first half of the year to realise the fact that there is no way that today's children can lead a carefree childhood.
As a \"dun bother' mother, I blame myself for not preparing my gal well for P1 and I learnt my lesson after the mid year review. Indeed, I realised that the school doesn't teach much and what they do is to access the children with worksheets. I still do not know what do they teach for P1 English?[/quote]
Hi snowyqueen,
When you say you didn't prepare her well, what do you mean? Could she read and write by the time she went into p1? Could she count , add, subtract, multiply and divide? I am very torn between wanting to be kiasu and wanting to just let them have a childhood. The kids these days are a pitiful lot. As parents, we want the best for them. IF we don't push them, they may not be able to catch up. If we push them too hard, they may end up in a mental institution. Also, not everyone can afford tuition and enrichment classes. So what's the solution to all this? -
daisyt:
...When I reached home, I told my child about the teacher's comment but being a parent that is always against tuition, I told my child \"No, I am not going to send you for tuition\"...I feel that a child should be trained to solve the problems they encounter. Being a parent, I can give her guidance on the path to go but I cannot be holding her hand and walk her along the path. At least this is my methology, not only for studying but also for many other problems she has been facing...
Hi daisyt, the parental support you gave to your daughter, teaching her how to approach problem solving and the importance of independence is highly commendable. I am happy for you that your daughter is mature enough to respond to your guidance, and I'm sure she's appreciative that you are not critical of her performance but instead focused on addressing the causes.
However, may I ask why you feel so strongly against tuition? In several cases, parents may not be best equipped with the know-how to teach their children certain subjects eg. I teach my son math and science while my wife takes the languages. We engage a Chinese tutor for him because both of us are rather weak in that area. And when I teach math, I find the syllabus has changed so much that I find myself struggling to explain concepts and at times I'm not even sure if I'm teaching the correct technique. The good thing is, of course, we get to understand how difficult it all is for our children first hand.
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