About kids and schools and stuff
If you follow this blog, you will probably know that I am a Bad Mother. There are a whole slew of things that I am supposed to obsess about that I don't.
One of those things is schooling and my kids' ambitions. It's not that I don't care, but that I have a deep belief that true ambition can be seeded, guided, but never forced. At its very root, it has to come from the child.
So we come to the subject of my son. In year two or three, he sat a GAT test. I didn't know about this, and only heard that he'd been put in the GATS group from hearing about his daily activities. I certainly didn't ask for it. He was happy, and there was no need to move him. He sat the Selective test in year six, and I suspect him of deliberately flunking it. He did not want to go to cramming schools. Fair enough.
Fast forward to high school. He gets really good marks in all the science subjects, and never does any homework, but his real interest is music. I could do the evil mother thing and rage about his not-done homework, but he'd probably end up hating school, and hating me, and we have a low-conflict household here. Peace, and a private place for him to feel safe and chill out is more important to me than not-done homework, at least at this stage in his schooling. He spent a lot of his spare time writing a piece of music for the school concert band, and the teacher thought it was so good that it will be played at their tour to the US at the end of the year. The ultimate approval came from his co-students who have to play the piece.
The school does a lot with music (if you're in Australia, the names Liam Burrows and Darren Percival will mean something to you), but it's mostly popular music and a lot of jazz. My son hates jazz. He loves classical music, of which there is little done at school.
So he applied to go to the Conservatorium High School. When I said this to another mother, her first reaction was: but aren't you worried about marks? (Apparently, the school's average HSC score is not that hot).
I've spent a while thinking about it, but came to the conclusion: No. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck.
Because a mark belongs to him, not the school. Because any of the science subjects he might be interested in aside from music don't require high scores to get into Uni. Because he had an IQ test and let's just say that "above average" is the understatement of the year, and he's more than smart enough to do whatever he wants if he sets his mind to it. Because double music/something else degrees are not uncommon.
Because if he really wants it, there is a way into everything. Because his decidedly un-academic sister, an good-but-average student throughout her school life, has found her mojo and will qualify for medicine (which is the course that requires ridiculously high marks).
What matters to me is passion. What matters to me is that the interest comes from within and is his own. He can only do one major career-related thing with his life at any one time. Let it be something he wants to do, other than something I want him to do.
One of those things is schooling and my kids' ambitions. It's not that I don't care, but that I have a deep belief that true ambition can be seeded, guided, but never forced. At its very root, it has to come from the child.
So we come to the subject of my son. In year two or three, he sat a GAT test. I didn't know about this, and only heard that he'd been put in the GATS group from hearing about his daily activities. I certainly didn't ask for it. He was happy, and there was no need to move him. He sat the Selective test in year six, and I suspect him of deliberately flunking it. He did not want to go to cramming schools. Fair enough.
Fast forward to high school. He gets really good marks in all the science subjects, and never does any homework, but his real interest is music. I could do the evil mother thing and rage about his not-done homework, but he'd probably end up hating school, and hating me, and we have a low-conflict household here. Peace, and a private place for him to feel safe and chill out is more important to me than not-done homework, at least at this stage in his schooling. He spent a lot of his spare time writing a piece of music for the school concert band, and the teacher thought it was so good that it will be played at their tour to the US at the end of the year. The ultimate approval came from his co-students who have to play the piece.
The school does a lot with music (if you're in Australia, the names Liam Burrows and Darren Percival will mean something to you), but it's mostly popular music and a lot of jazz. My son hates jazz. He loves classical music, of which there is little done at school.
So he applied to go to the Conservatorium High School. When I said this to another mother, her first reaction was: but aren't you worried about marks? (Apparently, the school's average HSC score is not that hot).
I've spent a while thinking about it, but came to the conclusion: No. Actually, I don't give a flying fuck.
Because a mark belongs to him, not the school. Because any of the science subjects he might be interested in aside from music don't require high scores to get into Uni. Because he had an IQ test and let's just say that "above average" is the understatement of the year, and he's more than smart enough to do whatever he wants if he sets his mind to it. Because double music/something else degrees are not uncommon.
Because if he really wants it, there is a way into everything. Because his decidedly un-academic sister, an good-but-average student throughout her school life, has found her mojo and will qualify for medicine (which is the course that requires ridiculously high marks).
What matters to me is passion. What matters to me is that the interest comes from within and is his own. He can only do one major career-related thing with his life at any one time. Let it be something he wants to do, other than something I want him to do.