All of a sudden, I wished with all my heart that Joey doesn’t need to start Primary School soon.
I know she still has two and a half years more to go before she actually starts Primary School, but it already is starting to freak me out.
I had a chat with a mother the other day, and reality hit me on the head like a rock. She’s a mother of two Primary School kids – One 9, and other, 7, and both are studying in a rather renowned good Primary School. When she shared with me that both her kids are taking various enrichment classes during the weekends, I thought she was being kiasu. I always thought that the school’s curriculum was more than enough, plus her kids’ school was supposedly one of the better ones in Singapore. After all, wasn’t that how we grew up? As a kid, all I needed to do was to pay attention in class, finish up my homework at home and the play for the rest of the day! Weekends were purely reserved for playing!
Apparently, she was not being kiasu. She was just doing what every parent is doing now! In fact, almost all the kids in her children’s classes are in some forms of enrichment classes – Chinese, abacus, calligraphy, Mathematics, etc etc, and if any kid does not attend any enrichment classes, they will remain the average student in class and will always get mediocre results in the examinations. The fact that they will always be mediocre among their peers can have a detrimental effect on the development of their self-esteem, and that’s why parents of today dump in truckloads of cash into the ridiculously expensive extra-curricula enrichment classes. They know they are putting their kids through immense pressure and extra work, but what can they do? If they do not follow suit, they will be plagued with guilt that they are short-changing their kids and depriving them of the chance to fulfil their fullest potential.
We both agreed that because of this, the Singapore Education System is flawed. Simply because it has created an unhealthy situation whereby the kids from poorer families will lose out to the richer ones because they can never afford all the enrichment classes. It also instils the spirit of competitiveness in the kid to always need to get ahead of his peers in everything he does. Not exactly a very nice trait in my opinion.
How do I strike a balance between developing my kids to their fullest potential and letting them have a wonderful and fun childhood? Kids should be allowed to dream, imagine, soar and do whatever they want. Keeping them within the boundaries of a structured and regimental education system is hardly my idea of fun.
I wish things were as simple as it was during my time. Sigh.