tisha:

Chenonceau:

Oh! I didn't know that about the Chinese textbooks. Thanks for sharing. And yes... I think the Science textbooks are pretty thin too in view of the content tested in exams. The textbook teaches LESS so that the kids can learn MORE from... from... from the air and soil of Singapore.

:hi5: Ha ha, can't agree with you more. The science text books is only full of Qs. You will never find the answers in any part of the book. I even discussed this with DS's form teacher. She said that sciece is taught more as a discussion and hands on. Which means that the answers to all the Qs in the text books are revealed during the classroom discussion. Interesting way of learning for sure, but is it possible to remember 100% of all the discussion acurately by all the students. And what if a student is absent for a few days due to illness? There sure should be some refernce material to fall back on. I can't agree that classroom discussions and experiments can replace text books. Thru some kind friend we learnt that there is this thing called guide book available in Popular for science. Ever since we completely ignore the text book and rely on the guide books instead. But I have to say that this system of relying on external material is not fair for those who cannot afford(and also the ignoramus :lol: ) .

On hindsight, if school books were enough then it would affect the economy for sure, since the bookstores and tution/enrichments would run out of bussiness.

Sorry a bit :offtopic: here, I'm mainly ranting bout science.

Chenonceau:

Oh! I didn't know that about the Chinese textbooks. Thanks for sharing. And yes... I think the Science textbooks are pretty thin too in view of the content tested in exams. The textbook teaches LESS so that the kids can learn MORE from... from... from the air and soil of Singapore.

chamonix:

During my son's first P1 PT meeting last year(Mar/Apr), the teacher told me outrightly she expected her students to know (read, write and use) every single character in their Chinese textbooks well. That was only her minimum requirement.


I take it that to do well in Chinese, parents would have to coach their kids or send them enrichment centres for more exposure.

Chenonceau:

I realized something odd about our primary school language textbooks today. The level of difficulty of the language printed in a Primary 5 textbook is about 2 years easier than the level of difficulty in the Primary 5 exams. After examining Little Boy's Chinese textbook in detail (something I have never done because I had never found them useful in preparing Little Boy for the exams, and therefore intuitively ignored them). It occurred to me to ask myself why today. Why don't I find school textbooks useful in preparing Little Boy for exams? Why did I spend years fighting with Grandma trying to get her to ignore the Chinese textbook when helping Little boy with Chinese? And why was it that Grandma's stubborn focus on the textbook produced a downward trend in Chinese grades?


These are obvious questions that I, like most parents, did not ask.

For more on this... http://petunialee.blogspot.com/2011/02/of-what-use-textbook.html .

teh_oh:

...what leaves me perplexed is that while the examination/education standard has become more challenging over the years, the textbooks standard did not catch up. This leaves a big gap between those who can afford external help and those who can't. Compared to the textbooks used in my time, I thought our ...

Chenonceau:

I realized something odd about our primary school language textbooks today. The level of difficulty of the language printed in a Primary 5 textbook is about 2 years easier than the level of difficulty in the Primary 5 exams. After examining Little Boy's Chinese textbook in detail (something I have never done because I had never found them useful in preparing Little Boy for the exams, and therefore intuitively ignored them). It occurred to me to ask myself why today. Why don't I find school textbooks useful in preparing Little Boy for exams? Why did I spend years fighting with Grandma trying to get her to ignore the Chinese textbook when helping Little boy with Chinese? And why was it that Grandma's stubborn focus on the textbook produced a downward trend in Chinese grades?


These are obvious questions that I, like most parents, did not ask.

For more on this... http://petunialee.blogspot.com/2011/02/of-what-use-textbook.html .