the local school system -- what I would change if I could
My facebook status update today read as follows: "The local school system. The greatest contribution to the degradation of the parent-child relationship in Singapore."
One of my old friends from secondary school days posted a comment to that, which spurred me to write this entry. He asked, "What type of school system, in your opinion, would not contribute as much to this said degradation?"
Honestly, I don't know. There is no one perfect school system, imho. Every parent will have his or her likes and dislikes, and how they cope with the system will in turn define to a certain extent how their children deal with it. But what I would really like to see done away with is the over reliance on that national exam that our kids take at the age of 11-12.
Yes, that one.
It's true that our education ministry has moved away from emphasis solely on results, as evidenced by the introduction of holistic assessments for P1 & 2, and DSA for entry into secondary school. But how much of this is just window dressing? After all, in the early months of my son's P5 year, I was told by one of his teachers that he needed to buckle up and start working hard, "we can smell PSLE already". Oh. My. Goodness.
And take the so-called holistic assessments for P1 & 2, for example. What really happens is that the kids get assessed on their weekly speliings and from these, a certain percentage of marks will go to the end year grade. So it's weekly stress. Then they have performance tasks, which really, if you see the paper, is just the cabbage known as the mid-year exam being termed a rose. It still stinks like a cabbage, though, with Sections A through C, MCQs, short answer questions, and problem sums. Sound familiar?
And DSA is yet another stressor. Yes, the schools are given latitude to take in the students they wish. But what isn't expressly stated is that they have quota limits -- there is a maximum number of children they will admit under this scheme and they will reserve a good number of places for admission via the good old PSLE T-score. So the brilliant students take the places, and the not-so-brilliant-but-still-more-than-decent ones -- the ones whom this scheme was perhaps intended to benefit in the first place, still have to study their brains to mush in order to get that magic number for admission.
Our children are not perfect. As it is, they are dealing with the stress of growing up in this imperfect system. Add the stress that we parents bring to bear on them, whether willingly or not, and it's a whole lot for little shoulders to bear. I consciously made the decision to be the hands-off relaxed parent for my girl after being a gorgon of a dragon mum for my son, and honestly it's not any easier on my blood pressure or my liver. I still chew on it daily, but for different reasons. And now, unless I want my girl to flunk out of P1, it's time to bite that bullet and turn into Dragon Mum again.
Which brings me to my wish, which is, for someone brilliant enough to come up with a system to take the stress off us parents of lesser mortals. Don't think it will happen in the relevant portion of my lifetime, though.
One of my old friends from secondary school days posted a comment to that, which spurred me to write this entry. He asked, "What type of school system, in your opinion, would not contribute as much to this said degradation?"
Honestly, I don't know. There is no one perfect school system, imho. Every parent will have his or her likes and dislikes, and how they cope with the system will in turn define to a certain extent how their children deal with it. But what I would really like to see done away with is the over reliance on that national exam that our kids take at the age of 11-12.
Yes, that one.
It's true that our education ministry has moved away from emphasis solely on results, as evidenced by the introduction of holistic assessments for P1 & 2, and DSA for entry into secondary school. But how much of this is just window dressing? After all, in the early months of my son's P5 year, I was told by one of his teachers that he needed to buckle up and start working hard, "we can smell PSLE already". Oh. My. Goodness.
And take the so-called holistic assessments for P1 & 2, for example. What really happens is that the kids get assessed on their weekly speliings and from these, a certain percentage of marks will go to the end year grade. So it's weekly stress. Then they have performance tasks, which really, if you see the paper, is just the cabbage known as the mid-year exam being termed a rose. It still stinks like a cabbage, though, with Sections A through C, MCQs, short answer questions, and problem sums. Sound familiar?
And DSA is yet another stressor. Yes, the schools are given latitude to take in the students they wish. But what isn't expressly stated is that they have quota limits -- there is a maximum number of children they will admit under this scheme and they will reserve a good number of places for admission via the good old PSLE T-score. So the brilliant students take the places, and the not-so-brilliant-but-still-more-than-decent ones -- the ones whom this scheme was perhaps intended to benefit in the first place, still have to study their brains to mush in order to get that magic number for admission.
Our children are not perfect. As it is, they are dealing with the stress of growing up in this imperfect system. Add the stress that we parents bring to bear on them, whether willingly or not, and it's a whole lot for little shoulders to bear. I consciously made the decision to be the hands-off relaxed parent for my girl after being a gorgon of a dragon mum for my son, and honestly it's not any easier on my blood pressure or my liver. I still chew on it daily, but for different reasons. And now, unless I want my girl to flunk out of P1, it's time to bite that bullet and turn into Dragon Mum again.
Which brings me to my wish, which is, for someone brilliant enough to come up with a system to take the stress off us parents of lesser mortals. Don't think it will happen in the relevant portion of my lifetime, though.