School Examinations Too Difficult

[mgnvr]

beanbear:

mgnvr:

I agree this is social engineering at work. What can we do to say NO to this social engineering?!? Is it too late for our children?

You begin by looking at the choices you have and the tradeoffs and benefits for each choice. Each parent in our sphere of influence can choose to speak up especially in areas where our children's voices are drowned, we can choose together with our children what are reasonable goals for them while maintaining their physical, emotional & spiritual well-being, we can choose to do and not do what we think are unreasonable work/demands from the school, we can choose to encourage our children when unreasonable standards are imposed on our children.

Some may think these are limited choices, hence there are more drastic choices, you can say NO to public school and homeschool your child, you can choose to find out alternative pathways to educate your children once compulsory primary school education is over.

I've chosen to stay in the primary school system but will keep my options open for Secondary school. I've also chosen not to do certain things the school imposes on my children eg unreasonable supplementary classes that I think are of no use. I've chosen to focus on skills learnt & making progress rather than absolute marks my child gets at exams. I've also chosen to help my child see their academic struggles as opportunities to build resilience & a never-say-die attitude. It's not about pursuing academic excellence but it's about when life deals with you lemons, you make lemonade. Through each difficult, very trying hurdle at each exam, looking at my own children fail or scrape through with borderline marks after working so hard, I've had to confront my own choices as a parent and ask myself, what do I choose to do now? Each time, I pick myself up after feeling demoralised for a few days, then have a talk with my kids and we say let's charge forward, plug the gaps, work hard while still playing & enjoying life, and move ahead.

Thank you.

[Mychildren]

beanbear,


You're very positive! Need to learn from you. My children's marks do affect me especially when I don't understand how come the results like that???

Not paying attention in class or don't understand what's been taught or I did not push him hard enough???

Life still need to go on. Sad or happy, its up to us to decide it. Bad can become good or better the next time. So why make us miserable?

Yes, this is good written by beanbear:
Each time, I pick myself up after feeling demoralised for a few days, then have a talk with my kids and we say let's charge forward, plug the gaps, work hard while still playing & enjoying life, and move ahead.

In fact, marvellous!!!

[beanbear]

Mychildren:

beanbear,


You're very positive! Need to learn from you. My children's marks do affect me especially when I don't understand how come the results like that???

Not paying attention in class or don't understand what's been taught or I did not push him hard enough???

Life still need to go on. Sad or happy, its up to us to decide it. Bad can become good or better the next time. So why make us miserable?

Yes, this is good written by beanbear:
Each time, I pick myself up after feeling demoralised for a few days, then have a talk with my kids and we say let's charge forward, plug the gaps, work hard while still playing & enjoying life, and move ahead.

In fact, marvellous!!!

Thanks very much for your affirmation!

I've got good days and bad days. On bad days, I also scream and shout at my kids \"we've done this so many times, why can't you do it?!!!\" My kids all see their crazy mama at her worst. Then I reflect and feel remorseful for treating my kids badly when it's not their fault. I apologise and make new agreements with them.

My kids are quite funny, when the angry moments are over, my DS1 (the one in P6 now who's also a great pal to me - I enjoy talking with him a lot, sometimes more than my DH even!!), he will role-play my angry face and how I talk to them and we have a good laugh.

DD has a tough time learning especially Maths because she has learning difficulties and in the past 2 weeks, we've been doing daily maths - our goal was 30 problem sums and 60 MCQ per week. We've been tracking each day, how many gets done, how many she does without help and how many she gets correct and we review the work daily. After failling badly in SA1, DD knows she needs to put in the work, she complains but she still does the work. That's resilience-building. I tell her, we can do anything we set our mind to do. After one week of practice, I made her cry when I blew my top. I felt bad and then decided that I will be her cheerleader for the 2nd week of practice. I smiled at her, didn't react to her complaints and just kept teaching her when she couldn't understand how to do certain sums. I saw it really made a difference to her motivation & commitment.

Today we had a breakthrough. I gave her a past year paper from a top primary school, just to have a sense of how she'll fare. She actually got full marks for Paper 1!! Her face was beaming and she was so motivated to do Paper 2 after that. It's not about the full marks. It's about believing that you can do it. Her renewed confidence is more precious that the marks. I didn't expect her to get full marks - she really amazed us. Of course, under real exam conditions, she may or may not fare equally well. I'm fully aware of that.

Mychildren, I'm sure you love your children very much and like all parents, you desire for them achieve and feel the pain & disappointment when they don't. The question is \"how do we help our children make progress and to keep trying while maintaining a loving relationship with them?\"

[weatherbee]

beanbear:

Mychildren:

beanbear,


You're very positive! Need to learn from you. My children's marks do affect me especially when I don't understand how come the results like that???

Not paying attention in class or don't understand what's been taught or I did not push him hard enough???

Life still need to go on. Sad or happy, its up to us to decide it. Bad can become good or better the next time. So why make us miserable?

Yes, this is good written by beanbear:
Each time, I pick myself up after feeling demoralised for a few days, then have a talk with my kids and we say let's charge forward, plug the gaps, work hard while still playing & enjoying life, and move ahead.

In fact, marvellous!!!

Thanks very much for your affirmation!

I've got good days and bad days. On bad days, I also scream and shout at my kids \"we've done this so many times, why can't you do it?!!!\" My kids all see their crazy mama at her worst. Then I reflect and feel remorseful for treating my kids badly when it's not their fault. I apologise and make new agreements with them.

My kids are quite funny, when the angry moments are over, my DS1 (the one in P6 now who's also a great pal to me - I enjoy talking with him a lot, sometimes more than my DH even!!), he will role-play my angry face and how I talk to them and we have a good laugh.

DD has a tough time learning especially Maths because she has learning difficulties and in the past 2 weeks, we've been doing daily maths - our goal was 30 problem sums and 60 MCQ per week. We've been tracking each day, how many gets done, how many she does without help and how many she gets correct and we review the work daily. After failling badly in SA1, DD knows she needs to put in the work, she complains but she still does the work. That's resilience-building. I tell her, we can do anything we set our mind to do. After one week of practice, I made her cry when I blew my top. I felt bad and then decided that I will be her cheerleader for the 2nd week of practice. I smiled at her, didn't react to her complaints and just kept teaching her when she couldn't understand how to do certain sums. I saw it really made a difference to her motivation & commitment.

Today we had a breakthrough. I gave her a past year paper from a top primary school, just to have a sense of how she'll fare. She actually got full marks for Paper 1!! Her face was beaming and she was so motivated to do Paper 2 after that. It's not about the full marks. It's about believing that you can do it. Her renewed confidence is more precious that the marks. I didn't expect her to get full marks - she really amazed us. Of course, under real exam conditions, she may or may not fare equally well. I'm fully aware of that.

Mychildren, I'm sure you love your children very much and like all parents, you desire for them achieve and feel the pain & disappointment when they don't. The question is \"how do we help our children make progress and to keep trying while maintaining a loving relationship with them?\"

:goodpost:

[janet88]

School exams are tough as it is, and getting tougher.

Teachers just give past year exam papers to the class…get kids to mark themselves. What is this ? Are we sending kids to school for this kind of teaching? Heard friends who have kids in diff schools (P6) are facing same thing. Quantity given, not quality. Totally disillusioned.

[janet88]

mummy of three:

Sometimes they copy and the schoolteachers don’t seem to care!

Son is fed-up going to school.
Homework is marked by swopping his paper with classmate...teacher will tell the answers. Go to school for what ? Just yest after school, son asked me for a file. You know for what ? The teacher is going to give them past year papers and as such, need to file them. :faint: this is called PSLE preparation ??? This is the way kids are prepared ? :slapshead:

[moomel]

I’m a tuition teacher and I can vouch for the failure of our system at times. My secondary 4 student gains little from copying answers off the white board. I have to go through the worksheet with her to ensure she has learned something. I wonder what other students are doing, especially if they do not have a tuition teacher.

[janet88]

moomel:

I'm a tuition teacher and I can vouch for the failure of our system at times. My secondary 4 student gains little from copying answers off the white board. I have to go through the worksheet with her to ensure she has learned something. I wonder what other students are doing, especially if they do not have a tuition teacher.

My tutors do give past year exam papers...but that's after he/she has taught. Getting past year papers done is a form of exposure to what type of questions can appear. It cannot be used as a form of teaching. Sadly, our schools are NOT teaching sufficiently to prepare students what will appear. Why are the tutors doing the job for teachers? What's the point of going to school?

[moomel]

Truthfully, I am doing the school teacher’s job. Singapore has fee education but not quality. Imagine 40 kids to one teacher plus the teacher has to deal with admin and projects. The one to one tutoring is when real learning takes place. Problem for parents also is searching for a good tutor. Tuition agencies are packed with undergrads and inexperienced ones. I recommend all parents to get tutors from word of mouth, not agencies.

[janet88]

moomel:

Truthfully, I am doing the school teacher's job. Singapore has fee education but not quality. Imagine 40 kids to one teacher plus the teacher has to deal with admin and projects. The one to one tutoring is when real learning takes place.

We should be celebrating TUTORS' Day, not Teachers' Day.
Dumping admin, CCA & projects on teachers is idiotic...these stuff take away time meant for precious teaching. As it is, 40 kids to 1 teacher is very tough. Doing all those unnecessary stuff makes the teacher tired and perhaps to a certain degree, disillusioned with his core job.