Primary school maths: A vicious circle (from TODAY May 8)
-
Being a teacher myself, I fully understand the frustrations parents feel. After all, I’m a parent of a P4 as well.
I feel guilty, very guilty of robbing my child of her childhood.
When I was studying, all I did was finish my homework and
that’s about it. I had time to play with my neighbours,
No tuition or enrichment. My mum was a teacher too and
she did not teach me at all. I was on my own.
But I turn out fine.
But sadly, this is not the case now.
More resources are available,
but questions are ridiculously difficult.
Some of my child’s p3 maths paper questions
are found in a p5 test paper of another school.
It was not taught, but they are expected to know?
No wonder she can’t do, only those in p3 who are
learning p5 stuff will know.
But if I do not step in and help, my child would be struggling and
failing, and feeling so bad about herself.
I’m not blessed with a smart kid who can figure things out herself.
So I have to step in.
I pity the kids these days. -
szepinge:
Thanks for sharing esp given that you are a teacher yourself.
But if I do not step in and help, my child would be struggling and
failing, and feeling so bad about herself.
I'm not blessed with a smart kid who can figure things out herself.
So I have to step in.
Well, how many kids can figure things out themselves for tough Math sums?! At that age they definitely need some form of guidance. The difference is in the quality of teaching in her school and how fast the kid can absorb and apply.
So our kids are mostly like yours. :hugs:
Your kid is normal.... It's the expectations and difficulty level that are abnormal. -
szepinge:
Thanks for sharingBeing a teacher myself, I fully understand the frustrations parents feel. After all, I'm a parent of a P4 as well.
I feel guilty, very guilty of robbing my child of her childhood.
When I was studying, all I did was finish my homework and
that's about it. I had time to play with my neighbours,
No tuition or enrichment. My mum was a teacher too and
she did not teach me at all. I was on my own.
But I turn out fine.
But sadly, this is not the case now.
More resources are available,
but questions are ridiculously difficult.
Some of my child's p3 maths paper questions
are found in a p5 test paper of another school.
It was not taught, but they are expected to know?
No wonder she can't do, only those in p3 who are
learning p5 stuff will know.
But if I do not step in and help, my child would be struggling and
failing, and feeling so bad about herself.
I'm not blessed with a smart kid who can figure things out herself.
So I have to step in.
I pity the kids these days.
I have spoken to a few teachers with kids around my DS (P2) age. Their concerns about our education system are similar to other parents.
100% think our primary school kids’ childhood are sacrificed in our current education system.
91% think primary school maths is a vicious circle.
88% think unabridged PSLE past years' papers help to reduce our kids' stress and workload.
But the total number of people who have voted so far is quite small. Is the majority feeling the same way too?
To all parents, please vote by visiting the following links.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35406
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35402
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35434
:thankyou: -
Chenonceau:
So the expectation is that every parent must all learn the content in primary school so we can teach our kids? In that case, what is the school for?Laura02:
I agreed that learning the model method is quite challenging, but how can we expect our kids to master the model method, if we ourselves give up on trying to learn it. What sort of message are we giving our kids if we say to them \" Ah girl or Ah boy, mummy and daddy don't understand your maths, but die-die you must not only learn it, but must also score 100% for Maths.\" it isn't fair to them.
You actually KNOW parents who don't bother to help their kids... who don't bother to gve their kids tuition AND still expect their kids to score 100? Then who is funding the billion dollar tuition industry?
And if your child fails Math, you will look at him and say... \"It's ok. Fail, is fail lor... you're just not capable. I am not giving you tuition nor extra help. Go ask your school.\"
:goodpost: -
extracted from blinkymummy.blogspot.com
blogger writes about it here
RE: Standards are unrealistic
\"If so many pupils require tuition, it means our education system has failed in its basic goal of imparting the correct skill sets.
My wife, a university honours graduate, quit her job to coach the children at home, but is herself exasperated at the standards required of pupils today.
I have yet to observe any beneficial effects of pushing children so hard in primary school, apart from high stress levels and sapping of intellectual curiosity.
Besides removing the joy in learning, another side effect of today's education system is that my children hardly have time to enjoy childhood.
They have less time to play outdoors, to read their favourite books (which is a great way to improve one's English), to explore new hobbies or to learn about the world around them - all because of so much homework.\"
It's intriguing to see so many adults getting upset over these P5/P6 maths questions.
(Check out the number of reposting of and comments on the above-mentioned letter to the forum!!)
(A) Misunderstanding the National Examination System
The point of the national exams is, obviously and if you haven't already figured out by adulthood, to segregate people into different grades (social/intelligence tagging).
To achieve that, the exams will have to include questions which CANNOT be solved by most people. What's the point of only setting questions which can be solved by EVERYONE or even by most people?! DUH?! Now that's certainly being 'unrealistic'.
If the public education system only stops at teaching what's required for most people to get a job, then the maths syllabus need only include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
But surely stopping at this level will limit the horizon of one's mind, right?
Don't you wanna expand your (or your child's) mind by learning about complex mathematical concepts?
How can one say that learning such concepts limits one's creativity?
Learning such concepts is in fact the way that one gets introduced to extreme creativity!! DUH?!!
The current education system is nothing more than a super stringent set of training for the brain. Just like a super 'siong' training for one's muscles... for say a national 'brain' sport.
If you prefer for your kid 'to have a childhood' and as such minimise time/effort spent on the drills, training, pain, failure etc, then by all means allow your kid go wild at the playground, watch TV, play games on the iPad, dress up as a princess Kpop star coz that his hobby etc, right after he's learnt his ABCs and 123s.
But remember, while your kid is 'having his childhood', someone else's kid, with the aptitude and is willing to put in the hard work, has moved ahead. With all that training and practice, he is getting really good at this 'brain sport'. His 'head muscle', i.e. the brain, has become more familiar with the drills, the different possible scenarios, the different level of challenges, and have developed the stamina to withstand a 2 or 3-hour examination and even a series of 2-hour exams over a few weeks.
This 'poor childhood-less kid' will 'make it to the national team', while your kid, who may have learnt the basics of how to dribble the ball or how to swing a racket, will find it difficult to excel at this 'brain sport', and perhaps cannot even finish his exam questions on time.
(B) You (the tertiary-educated adult parent) can't solve it, doesn't mean other people's 11-year-olds can't
Rather than thinking that 'current standards are unrealistic'... Perhaps these complaining adults (many who have made it to university) ought to realise that maybe... just maybe... the standard of (P5/P6 Maths) exam questions they were used to was in fact... too 'accessible', i.e. too low.
You got lucky and made it through the hoops back in the 70s and 80s when you were a kid, doesn't mean your kid is gonna be as lucky too.
(I'm really quite surprised that most people (e.g. my peers) do not realise how lucky they were, and not because we are 'sooooooo clever' to make it to a SAP school and university.)
Times change. Population profile changes. The hoops change too.
There are many many parents out there who are willing to invest dollars and hours of grilling, tuition, supplementary classes etc in/for their kids to get that 'A'.
And there are more and more kids with 'all As', not to mention their impressive 'portfolios of CCAs, intellectual pursuits/achievements, community work, internships/attachments' to ensure that they have an edge over their 'all As' peers.
Grades, wages, social status etc.
It's all relative, isn't it?
Just have to work harder and harder.
Actually, I'm just glad that we ain't South Korea or Taiwan or PRC.
Their national exams, and the attendant competition amidst a much larger population, are way more grueling and unforgiving than ours. -
Modelling is a pictorial method. It is a good method to understand basic abstract problems. However, once those basic problems are scaled to higher levels of complexity, the solution requires a more abstract tool, which is algebra.
That is why in secondary schools, they don't use Modelling anymore, simply because pictorial methods have their limitations.
Yes, modelling can be used to solve complex PSLE problems, but it is a mind bender. If a child knows both algebra and modelling well, it is likely the child will use algebra for highly complex abstract problems, simply because it is more intuitive to use abstract methods to solve highly abstract problems.
The physical nature of drawing boxes, splitting them and aligning them is just too cumbersome to solve abstract problems with large numbers.
Take an example, the Before, After type of questions that is so popular in this forum. You'll have to draw boxes for Before and After. It is so much easier to just put: Before: 2u, Transfer - 36, After = 6u
Thus 2u - 36 = 6u. If there are 2 unknown variables, just solve for a a pair of simultaneous equations. Of course, the ground work must be laid to teach the child algebra and simultaneous equations.
Most of the heuristics are just there to eliminate one unknown from a 2 unknown variable equation, so that students don't have to deal with simultaneous equations. The main objective of the Unchanged Total, Unchanged Difference, Unchanged Quantity, Gap & Difference, etc.. is to reduce the set of simultaneous equations to just one equation with one unknown, so that students do not have to grapple with simultaneous equations.
I believe it is easier to teach them simultaneous equations and not have to worry about which of the 10 or so heuristics to use.
The downside of using equations is that it is difficult to formulate the equations, especially if you're just starting out. I've developed a methodology for easily formulating the algebraic equations and I'm sharing this method with parents in free workshop classes. If you're interested, you can visit this thread for more details. http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=32278. Do register your interest in the thread so that I can track the response. When there's enough for a class, I'll conduct one. -
Joule:
Blinkymummy is the mummy of a cat called Blinky. She views Ian's letter through the prism of her own past experience with education in Singapore. I too had a great experience in Singapore education a few decades ago. I don't think she really knows what is happening in primary schools nowadays.extracted from blinkymummy.blogspot.com
blogger writes about it here
RE: Standards are unrealistic
\"If so many pupils require tuition, it means our education system has failed in its basic goal of imparting the correct skill sets.
My wife, a university honours graduate, quit her job to coach the children at home, but is herself exasperated at the standards required of pupils today.
I have yet to observe any beneficial effects of pushing children so hard in primary school, apart from high stress levels and sapping of intellectual curiosity.
Besides removing the joy in learning, another side effect of today's education system is that my children hardly have time to enjoy childhood.
They have less time to play outdoors, to read their favourite books (which is a great way to improve one's English), to explore new hobbies or to learn about the world around them - all because of so much homework.\"
It's intriguing to see so many adults getting upset over these P5/P6 maths questions.
(Check out the number of reposting of and comments on the above-mentioned letter to the forum!!)
(A) Misunderstanding the National Examination System
The point of the national exams is, obviously and if you haven't already figured out by adulthood, to segregate people into different grades (social/intelligence tagging).
To achieve that, the exams will have to include questions which CANNOT be solved by most people. What's the point of only setting questions which can be solved by EVERYONE or even by most people?! DUH?! Now that's certainly being 'unrealistic'.
If the public education system only stops at teaching what's required for most people to get a job, then the maths syllabus need only include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
But surely stopping at this level will limit the horizon of one's mind, right?
Don't you wanna expand your (or your child's) mind by learning about complex mathematical concepts?
How can one say that learning such concepts limits one's creativity?
Learning such concepts is in fact the way that one gets introduced to extreme creativity!! DUH?!!
The current education system is nothing more than a super stringent set of training for the brain. Just like a super 'siong' training for one's muscles... for say a national 'brain' sport.
If you prefer for your kid 'to have a childhood' and as such minimise time/effort spent on the drills, training, pain, failure etc, then by all means allow your kid go wild at the playground, watch TV, play games on the iPad, dress up as a princess Kpop star coz that his hobby etc, right after he's learnt his ABCs and 123s.
But remember, while your kid is 'having his childhood', someone else's kid, with the aptitude and is willing to put in the hard work, has moved ahead. With all that training and practice, he is getting really good at this 'brain sport'. His 'head muscle', i.e. the brain, has become more familiar with the drills, the different possible scenarios, the different level of challenges, and have developed the stamina to withstand a 2 or 3-hour examination and even a series of 2-hour exams over a few weeks.
This 'poor childhood-less kid' will 'make it to the national team', while your kid, who may have learnt the basics of how to dribble the ball or how to swing a racket, will find it difficult to excel at this 'brain sport', and perhaps cannot even finish his exam questions on time.
(B) You (the tertiary-educated adult parent) can't solve it, doesn't mean other people's 11-year-olds can't
Rather than thinking that 'current standards are unrealistic'... Perhaps these complaining adults (many who have made it to university) ought to realise that maybe... just maybe... the standard of (P5/P6 Maths) exam questions they were used to was in fact... too 'accessible', i.e. too low.
You got lucky and made it through the hoops back in the 70s and 80s when you were a kid, doesn't mean your kid is gonna be as lucky too.
(I'm really quite surprised that most people (e.g. my peers) do not realise how lucky they were, and not because we are 'sooooooo clever' to make it to a SAP school and university.)
Times change. Population profile changes. The hoops change too.
There are many many parents out there who are willing to invest dollars and hours of grilling, tuition, supplementary classes etc in/for their kids to get that 'A'.
And there are more and more kids with 'all As', not to mention their impressive 'portfolios of CCAs, intellectual pursuits/achievements, community work, internships/attachments' to ensure that they have an edge over their 'all As' peers.
Grades, wages, social status etc.
It's all relative, isn't it?
Just have to work harder and harder.
Actually, I'm just glad that we ain't South Korea or Taiwan or PRC.
Their national exams, and the attendant competition amidst a much larger population, are way more grueling and unforgiving than ours.
I have noticed that parents who maintain that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our system are usually (not always) highly intelligent parents with kids in lower primary, with time to spare coaching. I wonder what these parents will say when come end P4 and P5... and even P6, their kids fail for no reason other than that tests examine what was never taught because of some theoretical principle that states \"A test where students score 100 is a too easy test. Of course, these parents may teach ahead. They may find it normal to do the school's job... but some will realize that as much as they teach ahead, the school will then test further ahead.
There are DIFFERENT types of testing... testing to differentiate is ONLY one type. It's just like people maintaining that chilli is the only spice and put chilli and ONLY chilli in all their dishes from breakfast to dinner. I don't understand why schools ONLY do differentiating tests as if testing had no other purpose than to differentiate. In some types of tests, serving different purposes. You WANT some people to score 100%.
We have sent people abroad to study testing methods which teach them ONE TRUE WAY and they come back and impoverish our educational system with ONE type of testing - differentiating standardized tests. Every theory/methodology has limitations. It is harmful to apply the same theory/methodology blindly thinking it the ONE TRUE WAY. We should do more in schools than differentiate.
Someone (a high flying teacher) told me yesterday that schools they need to diagnose what kids don't know. Therefore they put in questions that they haven't taught. Seriously? What logic is that? If you haven't taught, can you not assume they don't know? Do you need to test to diagnose what you haven't yet taught? -
Chenonceau:
:rotflmao:
Blinkymummy is the mummy of a cat called Blinky. -
mamemo:
:scratchhead: What Chen said is TRUE!! It really was/is a cat!
:rotflmao:Chenonceau:
Blinkymummy is the mummy of a cat called Blinky. -
Nebbermind:
:scratchhead: What Chen said is TRUE!! It really was/is a cat![/quote]
:rotflmao:mamemo:
[quote=\"Chenonceau\"]
Blinkymummy is the mummy of a cat called Blinky.
Yup, I know...
I was laughing at the irony of someone who does not have kids to write this blogpost.
From her intro, she sounds like a scholar though...
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