Primary school maths: A vicious circle (from TODAY May 8)
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fightingmom:
they won't do anything about it till the next general election. Maybe can visit the PM's facebook page and give opinions there. Try the top down approach. It has been shown that bottom up is not going to go anywhere. Looks like they haven't link population issues to education concerns yet.
Thanks for sharing !coast:
TODAY Jun 14, 2012
http://www.todayonline.com/Voices/EDC120614-0000109/A-parents-battlefield-approach-to-education
A parent's battlefield approach to education
From Donna Ong Yen Nee
Updated 04:05 PM Jun 14, 2012
I refer to the letter \"A parent, a teacher or both?\" (June 8). As a parent of two children in Primary 4 and 6, and a toddler, I have given up on Mathematics.
To survive in today's primary school environment, my husband and I have had to divide and conquer. He is more adept at numbers and takes on the task of learning the maths syllabus and teaching our children the heuristic maths model solving.
To us, it is mind-boggling that in the real world, financial problems are solved expediently by algebra and not heuristics. We are confused by the Education Minister's remarks that the Education Ministry is preparing our children for the future.
What we learnt in the past has put us in good stead for today. How revolutionary will future work challenges be? Are we preparing our children for these or creating more challenging academic benchmarks to filter the scholars from the non-scholars?
Faced with the tide of today's age-inappropriate academic requirements, many of my highly educated friends have given up their careers to be a parent and teacher to their children.
Imagine the loss in economic productivity when parents have to do the job for schools. Other parents have to slog harder at work to fund increasingly exorbitant private tuition fees.
In my household, my husband is the \"head of department\" for Maths and Chinese, and I cover English and Science. It may be only four subjects, but we struggle to keep afloat. If our children do well in one examination, the next one is surely going to be tougher.
I have had to study the entire Science syllabus so that I can teach my children how to align their answers, through memorisation, to the key words found in the teacher's answer sheet, to ensure they do not lose too many half marks.
Our children are not taught to be creative or have an inquiring mind. I dread to think about the school environment that awaits my two-year-old.
I used to think that raising children in the toddler years were tough, but when my elder children started primary school, I realised that the worst was to come. I hear the academic rat race is worse after primary school.
My husband and I feel like we have two full-time jobs: One in the office and one as a home tutor, even though our children already have private tuition for all subjects. Our expanded roles are indeed exhausting and squashes any thoughts of having more children.
Wonder how many more feedback MOE needs before they do something about it ! :sad: -
cimman:
:roll:
they won't do anything about it till the next general election. Maybe can visit the PM's facebook page and give opinions there. Try the top down approach. It has been shown that bottom up is not going to go anywhere. Looks like they haven't link population issues to education concerns yet.
Giving feedback to MOE is like... :stupid: -
kwcllf:
oneheart:
I agree that teachers are not equipped to teach or do not have the passion to teach...just join MOE cos of stable rice bowl.
From my experience, not all teachers are competent in teaching the syllabus. I hv two primary school kids and it is tikam tikam with regards to the quality of teachers you get. So no choice, have to educate ourselves to educate our kids at home.
Totally agree with the \"tikam tikam\" bit , my p4 DD in a popular girls' school has this male Maths teacher this year who tends to talk to himself. Kids dozing off in class, reading story books , not doing homework, completed revision papers with score 9/100 and he is totally unfazed. When the SA1 results came out with average score of 70% for the whole class, he told the class \" its not the end of the world\". Really got to admire his indifferent attitude . After much complaints from parents, I heard he is leaving the school.
Another one of my DS PSLE teacher planned her wedding one day after their prelim exams so you can imagine how busy she was 3-6 months before PSLE with her grand wedding instead of the PSLE kids' progress.
Of course, there are many good and dedicated teachers who make huge differences in the kids' lives but you just need one to destroy a whole class of 40 kids. Just be beware of such teachers who for whatever reason teach in primary schools. Talk to your kids and their classmates regularly to keep abreast of their \"classroom experiences\". -
I agree that it is a vicious circle. Now, working parents canāt cope with studying to learn the concept and technique and then teach our kids but have to resolve to signing up more tuition for our kidsā¦
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6200 likes for Ian Tan's post!!!
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36800&p=778872#p778872 -
oxyleo:
Hi oxyleo,
As for the reply from SEAB about the panel of experts they assemble, and the quality of the paper, comprising of Easy, Average and Difficult, a few interesting questions come to mind:
(1)(a) Would you know if SEAB imposes a T&C on its panel experts involved in the paper setting that anyone leaving the post is required to fulfill an appropriate number of years of gardening leave from the education industry, and is disallowed to take up any role in the private education industry, such as joining or setting up enrichment centers to profit from his/her expertise? I hope any research on this shows such T&C exists.
(b) I also noted that the letter states that some school teachers are involved in the paper setting. I wonder if any transparency on the school teachers involved would help, so that we can ensure a more arms-length approach in how these school teachers are involved with the P6 cohort in their schools. If we see a trend in certain school teachers from certain schools being involved repeatedly, and their schools repeatedly trump the exams, it should warrant an appropriate authority figure looking into the matter.
I am quite disappointed to find out that educators could indeed profit from their prior MOE involvement (in this case GEP):-
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=30726&start=50
So what you mentioned above could happen too. Maybe one day we can get the actual PSLE past years' papers from external vendors too!