Monday, January 12, 2009

Little School House

In the recent weeks, I have discovered, almost by accident an entire community of moms in Singapore who believe in homeschooling. And I am filled with great admiration at the dedication and commitment they put in to not go with the flow and to not be caught up with grades, over- achievements and competition not between the kids but between the parents.

People I tell about this inadvertently ask me if it inspires me to do the same. In one word...No. Not because I don't believe in it but because I know my limits and I know that I'm good at spending pockets of time with my kids but I can't spend 24-7 with them trying to come up with things to stimulate them. Someone once told me that it took her a year to be able to accept that it was ok for her kid to not be doing anything. That she didn't need to make a lesson out of everything. I haven't gotten to that point yet. Well, I do leave the twins to do a lot of nothing but I haven't gotten round to not feel guilty yet. And at the same time, I don't have natural patience. Ironic that I am a teacher but I really don't have the ability to be repetitive and that's how children learn. Even when I was teaching, I hated repeating myself even though I had to out of necessity and professional obligation. I don't want my children to get the short end of the straw because I just didn't have enough patience to do what needed to be done or because I was shallow enough to want to go to the spa and get my nails done rather than come up with something for them to do. So I'm being honest, while I would like to be able to give my kids the best, the most fun, the most creative and the most beneficial intellectual experience, I don't think I'm up to it. Like I said, I can do it in pockets, but ask me to do it all hours of the day and with every single thing I do, I may be worse than sending them to school. Or I'd get a nervous breakdown from it.

But at the same time, I would like to keep myself from falling victim to the Crazy Parent Syndrome that most parents in Singapore are wont to. Moms are amazed that I don't know what Shichida is, that I frown at Glenn Doman (possibly because I am lazy) and I hate what Kumon represents. I know that there is always the danger that I could become one of them. I am a naturally competitive person. You can't be an athlete without it and you don't win races by being blase. And it's important that I don't channel my competitiveness negatively into my children. Some element of competition I guess is necessary. I think being totally chill could possibly be dire but once again, I'm coloured by being naturally competitive and being a product of our education system.

And it is this, that I am a product of our education system and now a sometimes unwilling perpetrator of it that causes me to think the way I do. I would like my children to go to school, because socially I had some very fun adventures in school, even though I think I had more horrendous, emotionally scarring ones. I would also like them to go to school because when it was there that I eventually found my friends and like-minded people. But I don't want them to come home with worksheets everyday (I used to hide mine under the couch, in the hope that my mother would not notice). I don't want them to be told they had to read but not given the time and opportunity to. I don't want them obsessing about physics when they would never ever use theoretical physics again after sitting for the exam. And I particularly don't want them to come home in tears because they were made to feel like failures because they didn't top the standard in what ever subject they were doing. And yes, this is me chanelling my experiences.

So the happy median? I don't know. Probably not homeschooling, although while I'm home, I plan to try to show them stuff and muck around, constructively and nonconstructively. I just know I don't want to start them on the wrong foot and send them to a place where they will be literally be forced to learn how to write before they know what drawing is all about. And while I do that, I will do my best at home to show them things, like how dough squishes in their hands, like how different it is to have wet and dry sand to play with. What hot is and what cold is. And to allow them to figure out what a snail is by trying to dig it out of its shell, although eventually I took it away from Baby J because I felt sorry for the snail. And I promise not to introduce the word "study" into their vocabulary until it is necessary. It is absolutely unnecessary to be studying flashcards at this age. At any age actually. Well, maybe when you're in med school and that's the only way to learn anatomy or physiology. But that's another battle for another day, somewhere far far down the road if they so choose to want to go to med school.



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7 comments:

  1. Thank you.

    At least I don't feel like the only mother on this island who don't believe in flashcards.

    I also happen to be crazily entertaining the thought of homeschooling. Can I know where did you find out about the homeschooling stuff here? Would like to find out more.

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  2. I tried 'Glenn Doman' on my now-7-yr-old when he was 1, but in retrospect I learnt I should have flashed letter-sounds instead of whole words. My kid started to read, about 4yrs-old, after he learnt letter sounds & pieced them together. Kinda like what I learnt from watching Sesame St when I was a kid.

    A good idea for you is to let your kids watch a host of children DVDs out there that use these flash-card/letter-sounds techniques--much like Sesame St but more focused and attuned to different age-groups. I found them in the local libraries (here in a Vancouver suburb) & used them while baby-sitting a friend's 10-month-old baby last quarter. The DVDs which he loved and could be totally engaged in for nearly the entire DVD durations were: Baby Inklings--Alphabet Discovery; Rock n Learn--Letter Sounds; Brainy Baby--ABCs. I refuse to believe he didn't learn anything from them--at the very least he definitely developed a love for looking at alphabets & words!

    The Sesame St DVDs involve too much storyline to engage a toddler but will probably appeal to kindergartners. According to research, Blue's Clues is actually the top-rated show for under-5s. Apparently, kids love to watch same episodes of Blue's Clues untiringly again & again. It's got to do with the pacing, repetitions, and invitations for audience response. When I was still in Sgp, Blue's Clues was showing daily and I used to record them for my kiddo to watch.

    There are also more-&-more Chinese educational DVDs sprouting up out there, which will probably be a good supplement for parents who aren't that strong in that language. Even my mom--who's a retired Chinese language teacher--used to play for my kid Chinese educational DVDs when she babysat him.

    Despite what everyone says about too much TV being bad for kids, in reality we can't interact with them every minute and we WILL likely end up letting the TV babysit them frequently. So, might as well let the TV do 'flashcards' on them while they're watching it!

    As for being a SAHM, I just want to say that I wish I had stopped work altogether when I had kids. Even though I was working only mornings, somehow the nature of the work sapped the energy out of me for the rest of the day and my parenting became routine & listless.

    After moving to Vancouver and becoming unqualified for anything worth doing, I'm a SAHM and the improvement in the quality of my parenting is significant. I know I can't speak for everyone--but I'm the type that becomes much better at something when I have plenty of breathing space to mull over things.

    When I recently felt the itch to start looking for work, I spoke to a lady who used to be a teacher in Sgp and who has now become a qualified teacher here in Vancouver. She encouraged me to continue being a SAHM! She said she wished she had more time to spend with her kids (now 14 & 16) when they were little.

    Recently a relative & her daughter came from Sgp for a visit. She used to be a teacher but stopped work after having kids. She's now doing free-lance tutoring. I've always been impressed with how well-brought-up her kids are--polite, disciplined, respectful, and doing very well in school--always getting scholarships and one of them being in medical school now. When I remarked to her about her kids, she told me that she was so glad she became a SAHM when her kids came along.

    Back in Sgp, in the course of my work, I met this lady with her 3 kids on & off. The kids were well-behaved, polite, happy, confident, so warm & close to her, and did very well in school. Guess what: she was another mom who quit work to become a SAHM.

    I know there are also stories of double-income families with successful kids that are ALSO close to their parents. But those are probably the very occasional super-achieving families and I've long realized I'm not one of them :-).

    Today's education system in Sgp is so highly-demanding it's almost like the kids themselves are embarking on careers or full-time jobs. It takes a fully engaged mom to be really on top of things--even if it's just making sure they do all their homework in a timely & proper fashion.

    Kids who have at least one parent that is clued into what's happening in their lives are less likely to become angry or to 'act out' when they enter their teens. With that emotional connection that comes from a parent whose energies are predominantly focused on them (I mean in a healthy way, not a 'kiasu' way), their teenage angst is more likely to find positive rather than negative outlets.

    YY.

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  3. YY,
    I agree that kids grow up better with one parent around and I'm happy that I have more time to spend with them and do things with them. Like you say, there's more energy to do things to engage them. Only thing with me is I always crave adult interaction and go a bit stir crazy if all I do is talk to the kids the whole day. So, that's my challenge.

    I'm out today looking for craft things to show them. But I will also look into the videos. We have a whole bunch of chinese videos that they like and watch ad nauseum. And I'm happy to announce, they know a couple of chinese words and can say it. :)

    Thanks for all your input. It's very very much appreciated. :)

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  4. Megan,
    Try Mamabliss.blogspot.com or http://www.mamalim.wordpress.com/.

    You gonna quit work to Homeschool Megan? Wanna take my 2 and form a classroom? Hahah. :)

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  5. Thank you for this post. I don't like flashcards either.

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  6. Regarding Kumon, there may be a different perspective here in Vancouver compared to in Sgp.

    I've just started my 2nd-grader in Kumon math. It's done out of necessity, to supplement what is lacking in the curriculum here, so that his math-potential won't become underdeveloped due to the slackness in the system. The math curriculum here in Vancouver is pretty good in content/concepts, but is sorely lacking in discipline & practice. I don't even know what he does for math in school. There's no math homework at all--at least not at this grade level.

    The kids who top math here are invariably Asians (Korean, HKgers, Sgpreans)--who attack math with a typically Asian 'drill & grill' mentality. But I think it's part & parcel of the whole culture and it's not easy to transplant that whole mentality here into the system just so that the white kids will become equally good in math.

    At the Kumon center, I also see a fair number of Caucasian kids. The principal of the center told me that for many of the Caucasian kids, they're in Kumon as a remedial measure, usually because they've been doing very badly in the subject.

    My kid so far loves the Kumon work. The curriculum starts right from the very basics, in stuff he already knows very well. They want the basics to become '2nd nature' to the students before moving on to something more difficult. For instance, he had to do dozens of sums in x+1 before moving on to x+2, & so on. So the very gradual increase in level of difficulty helps to eliminate any 'gaps' in the students' understanding or skills. Emphasis is on speed & accuracy.

    Kumon is so popular here that within a 5km radius of my home, there are around 7 centers!

    Kumon here also fills the gap that's largely filled by private tutors in Sgp. But if the school math curriculum here is already as 'solid' as the one in Sgp, I don't think I would have felt the need to enroll my kid in Kumon.

    YY

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  7. Thanks!

    Hmm, as attractive as it sounds, I think I'll pass on homeschooling your 2 kids. Haha...

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