reddiechan:

It's just a policy decision, not law. To enforce this kind of petty stuff as law would mean having to have it drafted into the relevant Acts/ Regulations, listing out intended punitive measures etc, and having it enacted thru parliament. Just too frivolous to even think about it.

Sorry, not law, you are right. But it is still what the minister says. Well, I guess you can choose to follow what that guy says, whoever you prefer to know him as. Just wondering why this is so important, why are scores so important?

Anyway, if they choose to hold you against it, they will. Whether or not you have violated any law. Why go against a minister, especially when his request is as reasonable as this?

Don't forget that even through a screen name, your IP address is so easily tracked. :slapshead:

Nebbermind:

2ppaamm:

I thought the education minister gave strict instructions not to do this. Are you going against the law? :siam:

There's no law...just wishful thinking...

good to see that you've been lurking

Yeah, but I hope this won't cause KSP to be closed down man. There are very few things the minister cares to address, and this is one. What's the point of listing the top scorers? What value does it add to us as parents? Just kaypoh for what? This site has been a blessing to many, by putting so much effort in doing this, I am wondering if it is really worth the while.

But again, this is just my 2 cents' worth. I also kaypoh hor...

I thought the education minister gave strict instructions not to do this. Are you going against the law? :siam:

My opinion is that most people enjoy mindless chatter, but of different kinds. Get an autistic child to talk about his world: of only dinosaurs and of only numbers or of the stars. See how they can chat no-end. Get them to talk about their imaginary friends and repetitive counting. They can go non-stop as well.


I think all humans are about the same, we just have different preferences, gifts and abilities. To those who love things that are not usual, or are gifted differently, we just need to get into their worlds to understand what make them click and what make them want to chatter forever.

Sadly, we put people in a box and then treat them the way we think we should. Sometimes, I think that animals are treated better, allowed to have their own personalities and freedom, without being put in a box, labeled and classified.

For our kids, autistic, gifted, smart, or stupid (no such thing, ok), they are still great and to be enjoyed and spend time with, chat and gossip with. Just different things. Gifted or not, autistic or not, our job remains the same: to provide the best opportunities for them to be themselves, to nurture their love and to be with them, we are just stewards (or stewardesses).

Before we know it, the opportunity to affect their lives will be over. I’d rather not worry about how gifted my child is, but do what I can to make those childhood years the best for them. Clever or stupid.

pingsped:

Having a gifted label should buy her a bit of space.

I beg to differ. It is better never to be labeled, good or bad. It is always better to bring the kid up believing they are normal, but that they are capable of doing great things if they work hard. Gifted individuals do not have a better life, often misunderstood and seldom reach their own potentials. The more gifted, the more problematic. The best individuals are those between top 1% to 10%, higher than that, problem, lower than that, also problem. Just different problems... hehe...

Nebbermind:

But some geniuses are not driven by the need of friends

Maybe, but most people want friends, but when they do not know how, sometimes they just resign to the fact.

Being socially awkward and poor surely disadvantages anyone.

My experience has been that the gifted child will have ‘behavioral’ issues from P1 to P3, when the classes are conducted at ‘normal’ pace for the majority. The more gifted, the more problem. Hehe… Once they get to the GEP, things get better. For some, even in GEP, they continue to be under-challenged and therefore display ‘behavioral’ issues the teachers normally cannot cope with, since giftedness is poorly understood in schools. I certainly hope this will not be the case for you.


And even if the child does not display behavioral issues, girls seldom do, the problem of being underchallenged and the underlying consequences still persists. So how will you circumvent that? In any case, here’s just a little headsup. I just wished someone had told me earlier.

All the best!

quixation:

pingsped:

Thks for your reply.


..Her specialities are dinosaurs, animals & human body. My husband lost a word game on herbivores to her.
Math seems to be pretty good these days.

I'm planning to sign her for art class at rush-me-not or heArt studio on wed morning, then go grandparents' place. So she skip Sch every Wednesday. Hopefully, it'll work out.

Your girl likes dinosaurs?! Wow, my girl is not alone! she is my Dino princess. I dont know when she started liking it but now we end up with a library full of dino books and a cabinet full of Dino figures and those interaction toys from Dinosaur Train..Her ambition is to be a paleontologist. Her bday last year was dino theme and boy was it hard to find..and going to the Disney show, i realized she knows more dino names than Disney princess and prince names..its very good to know another little girl is into Dino as much as mine.. I also realized that she is also into animals and human anatomy. so maybe they are really into Science.

She is begging for Young Scientist whole set but we just bought like 10 Roald Dahl books as she is now totally engrossed in MR Dahl's books. Oh BTW, she is 6 this year going p1 next year.

I had the same experience when my maid left and we decided to let her try CC from her montessori but she hated it..she didnt change in behavior (aggression or temper) but she became very unhappy, she can just stare outside the CC window and tear up (*i heartpain thinking of it*). That made me so worried. She also started to speak very weirdly with a lot of singlish. spoke to her, She said she misses her old school. so i let her back for 3 days in her old Montessori and boy, you can tell the difference on those 3 days when she will sleep early, wake up early with a big smile. So i had a very deep conversation with my little 5 year old 1 night and then it dawned on me, she was bored at the CC ! the teacher even told me, my girl helped to \"teach\" her classmates Maths!! Whatever they are teaching at the CC, she was already taught. So except for Chinese class, she was not interested in the school and because her classmates were unlike her Montessori friends where they could talk all about dinosaurs, books and animals. She told me her cc friend said there wasnt such a thing called Montessori, they only know T.Rex and Triceratops, they dont know the digestive system and the teacher told them Japanese people ate Dolphins raw, her CC friends all speak with \"Leh, lor and la\", they scream and shout in class, that she cant talk to them about different books and etc.

Then 1 day, i picked her up from CC earlier coz we were going to a musical. The chinese teacher was asking the class wats the word on the board, my girl raised her hand. But coz everyone else was shouting different answers, she said the answer out and a little boy (whose mother was a Chinese teacher) tried to cover her mouth and then pulled my girl's hair.. The teacher obviously saw it coz she was pointing at my girl to answer. The boy didnt stop, he pulled her ponytail once more and this time I shouted from the window \"HEY STOP!\"

Realizing i saw, the teacher then told the boy to said sorry to my DD. Later DD said thats not the first time that little boy didnt like her to answer the questions.

So i stop her CC immediately.. i can tell how unhappy she is..now she is happily back at her Montessori school and she looks forward to school everyday even reminding me about her spelling , show and tell dates..

I guess she now can look forward to new things being taught in school and can discuss alot of stuff with her schoolmates..This has made her happier..Also she like to do worksheets as i already made it a habit for her to do \"homework\" at home, this is to set a routine for her..so she knows she must finish the important things first before play.

BTW, we bring out her book all the time in her bag so she reads her books whenever we wait for food etc. Besides her Lego Chima Speedorz, i also found this PAD and she loves doing it everywhere. Sadly Popular only has 1 type so now i searching from ebay or Amazon. This engages her too. Now, i print mini worksheets taken from internet & make into a small \"PAD\" and also imported worksheets on my tablet that has a stylus pen on S Note so she does the \"Worksheets\" on my tablet.

Here is the photo of the PAD. if anyone sees other titles, please let me know too.. thanks!

So what's going to happen when she goes to P1 when everyone is noisy and teachers got no time to watch and we cannot look into the window? Sometimes, we put in all the effort at preschool and everything just goes back to where we started... :scratchhead:

I am not sure if teaching away is the thing to do, but like most parents here, I believe in over-immersing the child with materials, but never to force him/her to study or work at them.


When you do so, you provide the opportunities but not forcing the child to do something. If we force the kids, like I have seen many Singaporean parents do, the child will lose his/her passion and of course the motivation very early in their school years.

When my kids were little, I just filled the house with lots of books, all kinds of books, I had a library of at least 1000 to 5000 books (lost count now, and I threw out some last year). But I do not force them to read, I also did not teach them to read.

I also filled the house with lots of paper, pencil and coloring materials, but I have never sent the kids to any art class or painting classes. I also remove televisions. Consequently, the kids just pick up the paper and drew comics and read lots of books. That made it easy for them to pursue their education especially in the tertiary years as they needed to read fast and think fast.

Perhaps the best thing I did was to stock the house with great things, and whether it is sports equipment, books, activity books, paper, pens, musical instruments etc, it really does not matter, as long as the kids have access to them, but the grave mistake, I believe is to kill their interest by stressing the importance of learning up everything.

My two younger kids replaced the need for books through digital reading materials and the Kindle. Maybe because of our need to move from country to country, it become much more convenient and useful to have a digital program.

If it is of any interest, here is a reading program that I advocate, and I have to be honest here, that I have a stake in this, hoping to educate children in 15 minutes a day, less than the time needed to poo. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=385842248213486&id=141781045952942

fable:

2ppaamm, quite a bittersweet post that. Wonderful that they are so involved, but sad that parents feel that they need to be. What happens as the kids get older and it gets harder to handhold and micromanage?


I'm curious about the number you use - 97% of our kids going for tuition. Where is this number from, and does it include all \"enrichment\" or academic tuition? Tuition at any point in their lives, or at the given point in time when the survey (?) was undertaken?

The number comes from ST. http://goo.gl/edjkYC

Probably higher now. You are right, while great parents can sustain for a while, everything falls off after they reach their teens. Some parents might hold on longer but never forever once puberty and rebellion set in.