Waterloo... Couldn't escape if I wanted to...
My home is an exclusively English speaking home. Chris can spell English words he's only just heard for the first time. Yet, because of our educational culture where Higher Chinese is valued, emphasized and relied upon as a measure of academic success despite English being our official language of business, he has had no choice but to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the subject of Chinese just to stay afloat in school. Never mind that he can correct grammatical mistakes on our airwaves and visual ads, or that he has a vocabulary rivaling any Western native English speaker.
I think the emphasis on Higher Chinese is overrated. All it gives you is a maximum of 3 extra points added to your T-score at the end of the day, and that only if you are applying to a SAP school, which assuredly, with our background, he is not. But because it is the culture, and because not to take Higher Chinese at this stage would be to single him out as different from his classmates, and because he is at an age where fitting in is important, he has been gritting his teeth and slaving away at the subject.
I would estimate that he spends about 80-90% of his homework/revision time on Chinese, what with the insanely difficult worksheets, ting xie, comprehensions and compositions as well as all the corrections he has to do as well as home tuition (cos his ability exceeded mine 3 years ago). That means that in the remaining 10-20% of his time, he gets his homework/revision done for all his other subjects, namely English, Maths, Science, and Social Studies. Thank goodness he has natural ability in at least 2 of them, I say. But that does not equate academic success, there's still the long ladder of answering technique and exam preparation to negotiate before such natural ability can be harnessed into results.
Today, we received the Term 1 progress report from his teachers at school. It was a decent report, with the only unfair (at least that's how I saw it) comments being from his Chinese teacher, who stated that he needed to put in more time and effort in his compos and spoken Chinese. I was taken aback. I felt that she had not understood that Chris was already putting in a whole lot of effort, and that he was performing better than anyone from a similar non-Chinese-speaking background could be expected to under the circumstances. How much more could he do, when his other subjects were already being compromised?
Chris slept after his usual bedtime today. He was late because he was revising his Chinese ting xie. He has ting xie every week, and the moment one is over, he starts learning his ting xie for the next week, and goes at it for the next 6 days. Yes, that is how much effort he puts in, and I applaud him for it. He was so tired, he told me. And I sympathized, because crazily enough, the school has compulsory supplementary lessons, an oxymoron if I ever saw one, and these are held twice a week. Perhaps, if the curriculum cannot be completed in the school year, are we not then expecting too much of our teachers and children?
The teachers have blocked off one afternoon for their centralized meetings which means no school activities can be carried out on that day. Chris has Advanced Math class on another afternoon, and school choir on the last. That's his CCA. In fact, the choir meets twice a week, and already he has had to miss one of those practices because of the compulsory supplementary classes.
Just as he was about to fall asleep, he told me that their Chinese teacher would be holding remedial classes from this week onwards, on the afternoon where he has his other choir practice. I thought about it, set against a background of his effort, and I was of the opinion that he should go for the choir practice instead. Singing was good for him, I felt. It would help him decompress. So I told him, "Go for the choir practice. It's once a week in the afternoon and you've already spent the other 3 afternoons doing academic stuff." He needed a balance, which was what CCA was designed to do, and I could not see the rationale of taking that away to add in more academics when he had already given his 110% or more in that particular subject. I felt the afternoon of singing with his friends would do far more to reduce his stress levels, especially in this crucial year.
Surprisingly, he said he had to go for his remedial. His teacher would scold him if he didn't, he said. It was compulsory for him.
I really feel for him, my poor son, and for all the other poor 11 going on 12 year olds out there in similar boats. Can the Education Ministry not lessen the already heavy burden on these fragile shoulders instead of adding to it?
Can our children not be given a chance to play up their natural talents instead of being forced into a mold not of their wishing or their liking?
Being a child in today's education system is indeed a whole lot harder than when I was one, and truly, in Higher Chinese, i think both Chris and I have met our Waterloo.
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