Daily Lessons from Life 16 June 2009

"Tue, Jun 16, 2009 The New Paper - Parents take tuition to tutor kids with homework

IT'S not just the students who need extra coaching when it comes to their schoolwork.

Indeed, homework is getting so tough now that parents themselves are signing up for workshops and classes to learn how to better coach their children, reported Lianhe Wanbao.


Parents who tutor their own primary school kids are increasingly stumped by the level of difficulty in the homework dished out to their children.

Housewife Qiu Huilan described her cousin's daughter's experience: 'She is only in Primary 1, but she has so much homework to complete that she needed the help of her father and her aunt.'

But both grown-ups were unable to tackle the questions, which raised the issue of whether primary school homework is getting too complex.


Madam Qiu, whose son is also in Primary One, said she struggles while coaching him on his schoolwork.

It is an exhausting experience for both of them, and she has no guarantee that her son will grasp the concepts she teaches him, she said.


Primary schools are also responding to the rising demand for such classes. In recent years, more primary schools are organising workshops or training sessions on how parents can teach maths, science and hanyu pinyin.

Raffles Girls' Primary School also conducts workshops for parents to help them coach their own children."

This is a shocking news to me. The school system is obviously broken if the parents have to take tuition to teach their primary school children!! How could this be healthy!!

Lessons for me are:

1. when such phenomenon get reported, I hope someone in the high authority of the Ministry of Education starts to think long and hard about why is this happening? Is there something terribly wrong about our educational system or that the materials to be taught to a primary school kids have advanced so much that grown up could not handled it? Or that the adults need specialized training just to help their kids?;

2. the news report quoted someone from the 'training of the parents' industry and I sincerely hoped that it is not some 'hidden' advertorial to promote that particular 'private school' or 'private education provider'. He was talking about very basic learning methods and strategies that the Ministry of Education could have EASILY incorporate into the primary school learning system! Why do we have to get the adults, who are hopefully gainfully employed and producing GDP growth for the country, to take extra time to learn to teach their primary school kids! What ever happened to the school teachers and the school system for teaching these kids?;

3. 'crammed schools' and 'private tuition' are so prevalent in some Asia countries that every parents almost accepted it as NORMAL when it is definitely NOT normal! I am not sure learning earlier and earlier more and more complex subjects so that we 'so-called' get a head-start over the kids in the Western world on hard science and maths and others really give the future generation an advantage. I am more worry about those who could not make it and those who are late-bloomers!

May the Ministry of Education STOP all tuition schools and tuition education and take those money to provide better teachers and better allocation of time for the teachers to teach the kids PROPERLY!!