Okay, rant time...
The other day, I was at a very popular bookshop which sells all the assessment books so that it is frequented by all the parents, tuition teachers and school teachers of school going children.
As usual, I'm looking at books that are supposed to be for children my children's age. So I'm flipping through kindergarten books and I've come to the conclusion that Singaporean children are born reading. Why do I say this? I come across a K1 book subtitled For K1 kids who can't wait to go to K2! (talk about preying on the insecurities of kiasu parents!!!) and in this book, meant for 5 year olds, are pages of five sentence stories after which are followed by questions to answer.
I remember bits of one page. The instructions are "Read". And the sentences below go something like, The magician does tricks. A dove flies out of his hat. We are all delighted.
I'm like.. WHAT?!?!? Delighted??? No way. I think the part where the children learn to sing ABCDEFG is in vitro. And within a week of birth, they know all the individual sounds, and in about a month, they move on to consonant blends, and before way before they turn one, they've mastered tricky sounds like /ight/ and /ough/....
Okay, maybe it's done another way:
Parent: 5 year old, read this to me.
5 yr old: ???
Parent: Magician! You don't know how to read magician??? Write it 10 times for me!
5 year old writes magician 10 times.
Parent: Keep reading.... What!!! This word is deLIghted! deLIghted!!! understand??? Spell it 10 times here!!!
Who cares what the book is sub-titled. Gullible parents will buy it anyway.
And then, (get this.. there's still "and then") I come across the much sought after: "Prepare your children for P 1 Maths" series. Yes, it's the end of the year now. It is high time to start the K2s (6 year olds) who are going to make that big leap to Primary one NEXT YEAR to get a head start NOW. So the book was filled with, what else but primary 1 work. Not foundational work to bridge any learning gaps the child might have. Who are the people who write these books, I wonder??? And who are the people who buy these books.. when they could just buy the "official" primary 1 books instead???
Why is it so needful to get a head start on Primary one material? Well, if they don't and they start learning all that P 1 stuff when they are already in P 1, they'll be lost and un-able to catch up when the teachers at school bulldoze their way through the maths syllabus and 100 plus worksheets they have to cover but never have the time to mark. Makes soooo much sense to me. What is it that the school is doing that so necessitates all this loads and loads of behind-the-scenes prep work? Why isn't anyone complaining that the school isn't doing it's job when the children have to do their learning outside of the school????
ARGHHHHH!!!!
Okay...rant over. I'll be back to the happily busy chubby mommy of 4 type person when I catch my breath again...
Comments