Children and education

In March/April every year, I see splashed on the front page of the newspaper stories about outstanding students who have scored a string of As in the PMR and SPM. I was blinded by the number of As these students scored. When I was in school, scoring 10As in SPM was a big deal. Even then, my school mates and I have whispered amongst ourselves "How to study for 10 subjects ah?" Now, we have students who score up to 15 A1s! Why am I not jumping for joy for these people? Why am I not impressed?

What brought about thinking aloud about the state of education system? What I'm about to express is strictly from the point of view of a mother to a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old.

My daughter goes to a Chinese medium school in the city. It is a well-known school with a good reputation. Most days, I coach her on her homework. With Mandarin, I help her wherever I can as I have limited knowledge of Mandarin. With every subject, I encourage her to ask her teacher if she doesn't understand what is being taught. Laura seems to be coping well in school, getting A and stars for her homework done. However, when she couldn't do her Bahasa Melayu, I mean Bahasa Malaysia (can the Education Ministry please make up their mind??), I was shocked to discover she is VERY weak in BM, not being able to understand simple words and definitely not able to string a sentence without help. Doesn't help that the BM syllables for Std 1 is extremely difficult! They are already making sentences and using words like "pelawas". How many pupils in Std 1 know what "pelawas" is? Ironically, BM is a subject taught every day in school.

How does one learn languages? Laura is brilliant in English. She can read and understand story books, eg books by Enid Blyton (Blue Dragon categoery when I was a kid). Stories of elves, goblins and magical faraway lands which are written in simple English. Did she learn to read from school? Yes, she did. She learned phonics and very quickly was able to make out words and soon learned to read books and such. Why? Because she grew up speaking English. Laura is coping well with Mandarin, having learned a lot of words and able to make simple sentences in Mandarin. She speaks to her schoolmates in Mandarin, even though her first language is English. Why? Because everyone speaks Mandarin in school. So what is established here? Laura is strong in the two languages which she has heard being spoken and which she speaks. She has learned subconsciously the language structure and also what word means what. How is BM taught in school?

Every day, she brings back stacks of workbooks - Maths and Science in English, Maths and Science in Mandarin, English, BM, Mandarin. Some subjects have two workbooks. On top of that, she writes pages and pages of words. Eg of what's in her workbook, make a sentence from jumbled words:

buaya tajam Gigi sangat

She didn't know what buaya means. She also didn't know what tajam means. How did she know how to do her homework? In class, her teacher gets them to pull out their workbook. This is the same workbook she'll be facing at home. The teacher asks them to read out the words, which presumably everyone can. Then asks if anyone knows how to make the sentence. The students who know raise their hand, those who don't keep quiet. Student who gets picked makes the correct sentence. So the teacher writes down numbers on top of the words. Gigi = 1, buaya = 2, sangat = 3, tajam = 4. Viola, even weak students know their homework now. Alright, everyone knows how to do their homework. Nobody said anything about them UNDERSTANDING what they're doing.

This applies not just to BM but also English. So with this method of teaching children, the obsession with workbooks, the students just aren't learning anything at all! What happens to families who do not use the languages regularly? The same applies to non-English speaking students who studies in the school. Do the teachers speak to the students in BM and English? Do the students hear stories in these languages so they know the flow of the language? Do the teachers encourage the children to interact in these languages so the children get to practise what they hear? Do the teachers make the lessons fun by playing games so that what is taught is memorable to little 7-year-olds? Obviously not!

What is the solution most parents choose when faced with kids who are weak in school? Send to tuition! So the poor kids spend hours in school, get home and have to face homework, rush to tuition and then deal with homework from tuition.

(school + homework) + (tuition + tuition homework) = exhaution, frustration and still not understand

Something is wrong with this equation...

Some people may argue with me that more students are scoring 10As and above then when I was in school. How many of these people actually understand what they learned? Did they go through years and years and years of past year exam papers to spot the questions that are coming out? Then muck and memorize what they need to score?

I can't help thinking that Einstein, Newton, Franklin, Curie will not have achieved anything if they had gone to school with this education system. In the first place, they wouldn't have had time to explore and experiment. Also, they wouldn't have had the time! And there isn't any space at home with postage stamp-sized land with 4 walls and a roof which we call houses here. But that's another post. Here's what could have happened:

Newton sits under an apple tree (or if you prefer a mangosteen tree). His mother comes out and shouts, "Isaac, come in here to finish your homework now! You have to get to your Science tuition at 3pm, then swimming at 4pm and art class at 5pm!"

or...

Benjamin Franklin takes out his kite (alright he was already a grown up by then but play along with me here) and he heads out the door. His father hears him and asks, "Ben, where do you think you're going?"

Franklin: "I'm going out to fly a kite"

Franklin Sr: "Fly kite? You finish your homework already ah? No need to go to Maths tuition meh? Is that thunder I hear?"

Franklin: "I've finished my homework and my Maths tuition changed to Sat morning already"

Franklin Sr: "Eh, I hear thunder lah. You better not go fly the kite lah. If it rains you'll fall sick and you will have to miss school. How to catch up?"