February 24th, 2005
The Fear Factor
» motherhood
I was talking about premium preschool during my last post, because my friend A and I was chatting over this issue of whether it is necessary to enrol the kids into such establishments, especially when they charges seven to eight hundred plus dollars or more a month.
Actually, we were talking about when we started writing composition during our primary school days, and what we wrote about. I still remember very clearly my first composition was about a dog. We weren’t really writing a passage, it was like writing several relevant sentences and joining them together, like:
I have a dog.
My dog is brown colour.
My dog is call Doggy. (Actually, my dogs were Oscar, 狼狗，狐狸狗 and GaoBu“狗母”, but they weren’t very nice names.)
He likes to eat bones.
I like to pat Doggy and I love him.
I am quite sure I wrote something like that in primary two or primary three. But I heard that children nowadays are expected to write essays when they entered primary one. Essays ok, not short sentences. I have also heard rumours saying that teachers will summon parents of kids who don’t really know how to spell or write proper sentences and lecture them over not equipping the kids with the necessary command of English. Might only be rumours, but the excerpt below probably isn’t rumour:
Excerpt:
Gabriel Ching, seven, Anglo-Chinese School (Primary)
I am Gabriel and I am seven years old. Last year, I was in Primary 1. I like my school very much. I was very excited about starting school. I packed my bag the night before. I put in my books, pencil box, water bottle, a jacket and a snack for recess. I woke up at 6:30am and my daddy took me to school. I had been to my school before so I knew what it looked like. When I reached school, I saw a very tall clock tower with no numbers on its face. There were many students in the auditorium. I had never seen so many students before. The auditorium was gigantic. I said goodbye to my daddy and a teacher showed me where to sit. We sang some songs and the principal talked to us. We then lined up and walked to our classroom. I liked my classroom because the board at the back was decorated with sea creatures. My form teacher took me to my table. Each of us had one green table and a maroon chair to ourselves. I felt like a big boy. - Young Parents
That was what got my friend A and I nervous. We probably didn’t even write like that when we were in primary six. I only learnt the word “auditorium” during my JC years. But that might because my previous school never had one. Anyway, that was from a primary two student. I wonder what the English lesson is like nowadays. Children reading long passages? Answering comprehension questions? Writing ESSAYS? What if my children never learn English prior to her primary education, or what if my child only knows ABC to XYX and a handful of vocabularies? Can such a child survive? Oh yes, and I think the lower primary kids do challenging problem sums nowadays. I don’t know how a child without reasonably good English could even understand what the question is testing him.
Anyway, that got us to the topic of those premium preschools. Parents always like to measure the effectiveness of their curriculum by assessing whether their kids are independent, confident and speech competency. And my friend A told me, her friend’s child who refuse to speak at 18 months was sent to MMI and now at 24 months, talks non-stop. My friend A also visited some of these preschool, found out that their language lessons are mainly taught by native speakers - the kids talk with an ang moh accent or Mainland Chinese accent. I guess that is one reason why parents don’t hesitate to dig deep into their pockets; beside getting less nervous attacks, they are really satisfied with the curriculum and consider it worth for money.
February 24th, 2005 at 8:02 am
That’s why go home school. Lets kids be kids. Let them learn on their own pace. Equip them with the right attitude to learn, they will do fine later.
February 24th, 2005 at 9:14 am
My P1 girl’s English homework for the weekend is to write 5 sentences about a given topic (like: about yourself, first day in school, Chinese New Year, etc) and this started on the 2nd week since she began P1. I don’t know about others, but I have to spend a fair bit of time coaching her. I agree with you, since when did schools start setting such high expection in English? On the other hand, her Chinese lessons till now still at hanyu pinying and strokes (笔划) stage, things that she and most of her classmates already learnt in kindergarten. I just find that this extreme imbalance of emphasis is all wrong.
February 24th, 2005 at 1:16 pm
The hanyu pinyin issue is something which will make me grumble and complain non-stop for three days. I am totally against this new pinyin first, hanzi later and recognition first write later method here for our primary school kids. Using China as a refereral guide to embrace this method is simply *!&$%&.
February 24th, 2005 at 10:40 pm
I’m a Pri 1teacher actually. My sch uses the “My Pals Are Here” series of English textbooks and workbooks, and for the 1st unit, kids are taught to read words like shirt, blouse, pencil, eraser, ruler, and names of the different body parts (eyes, ears, face, knee, foot, etc).
Having taught 3 batches of pri 1 kids… I know that in almost every class of my neighbourhood sch, there are at least 1 or 2 kids who cannot read or count properly and who need more personal coaching from teachers. E.g. there is one boy in my class who can’t even write his name properly. Cannot copy words well also. I also have one girl who doesn’t even know she has ten fingers when I told her to count them today. These are basic skills that children should have mastered in kindergarten. We teachers always wonder how come their parents aren’t that concerned that their own kids can’t even do basic stuff like that. Some parents just shrug it off and say “I don’t know what to do with him”. Win already. We teachers also donno what to do lor.
And yes, composition writing starts in Term 1. Just 5 short sentences. Even journal writing. Don’t ask me how or why. Most Pri 1 kids can’t even read or write a decent sentence by themselves, unless they come from families who are English-speaking.
I don’t like the system. Pri 1 kids are pushed very hard to catch up and meet the high expectations. Higher order thinking maths questions are found in pri 1 exam papers. Maths papers are full of English words. If English fail, of cos Maths sure fail. You set difficult exam paper, of cos the kids cannot do it. They are just not ready. And yet our bosses blame us for not preparing them well. Sigh.
I’m quitting teaching very soon actually. Wanna spend more time at home with my little one, and also becos I’ve had enuf nonsense from the system. I worry for my little one… next time when she has to go thru the nonsense as a student. Scary.
February 24th, 2005 at 11:21 pm
cookiedough, thank you for providing us an insight into primary 1 English. As a teacher, it must be tough to handle students with a very huge gap in their language competency. While trying to teach and engage those English savvy ones, I hope most teachers will be more accomodating to those kids who come from non-english speaking background and help them catch up with the rest. But from what you have mentioned, the system doesn’t seems to provide any time frame to facilitate this catching up process.
I am not sure if people will label us as quitters, but I have seen so many disillusioned teachers who used to have such passion in teaching leaving the service. Some of them might not be those who can produce straight As students, but many of them are the kind that are able to inspire and instill the right attitude in learning or living a worthwhile life. They probably had enough nonsense, like you.
February 25th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
This is depressing. I’m not sure about home schooling, but definitely, the system sounds ridiculous. Children should be allowed to be kids. We had our childhood, surely our kids should have theirs too.
May 7th, 2005 at 10:07 am
TrackBack from huileng’s sketches of happenings:
August 14th, 2009 at 6:18 am
And Gabriel Ching (whose essay u put up) was homeschooled until he went to pri school!