A Fairy Tale Module in Primary 1?

Counting down 4 months before K enters Primary 1. I think I am less enthusiastic than I should be, instead of giving him more preparation work for primary 1, we are taking it easy.

A little too easy I think, as the only classes he attend weekly are Chinese enrichment classes. I have to admit that Chinese is just about the only subject that makes me a tad nervous about Primary 1. Yesterday, it just dawned on me that there is this other subject that I have not taught him; Fairy Tales.

I have discovered that your child needs to have the knowledge of fairy tales, specifically, politically correct fairy tales. See this photo taken from a friend, who shared her child’s answers from a segment from an actual Primary 1 English Test  Paper on Facebook.

Pri1 1Photo used with permission from the mom

So the child was penalized for not knowing her fairy tales, or rather, stories that are in their right structure and order. Handsome princes can never be turned into snakes by fairy godmothers, and castles should always be beautiful, but cannot be on beautiful green fields.

Really, I don’t see anything wrong with the answers she provided. There are no grammatical or spelling errors. and the language structure is correct. The teacher must have added a politically correct fairy tale module in her evaluation of these answers, thus, the child will not pass based on her slightly varied take to what is deem as a right representation of sentence structure in fairy tales.

I assume that the purpose of this question was to get the child to test the child’s ability to; re-arrange the sentence, identify and build sentence parts and probably capitalize sentence beginnings and punctuate statements. This questions were likely meant to test the child’s skills to select the appropriate language structure and become an independent writer. So then, why is the child being penalized for not knowing her fairy tales?

This, I believe, is just a common example of how conformity is being inculcated in our local education system. Success through education is determined by exam results, which have marking schemes to follow. There is only ONE right answer to every question.

I thought about what I will do if K encounters the same things when he start Primary school next year:

1. Meet the teacher, and explain my view on why this answer should be marked as correct. However, this will be dependent on whether I have already sized up the teacher to find out more about her personality. If she is open and accommodating to parental feedback, she might feel a little apologetic and then change her marking on the paper. Or if the teacher is by-the-book and inflexible, my child might get unnecessary attention amongst the 29 other kids in class or just get ignored eventually.

AND / OR

2. Explain to child that conformity is part of societal expectations, model answers and behavior is needed to get approval from teachers and school. However, share with child that his answer is correct according to English language structure and rules. And continue to encourage creativity in modules of creative writing, problem solving and life in general, apart from school.

Frankly, I think this is rather sad, but so real in our educational system. Here’s my proposition for Singapore School Education that embodies how I see it at this point;

Singapore Primary School Education – Train your kids to be square pegs to fit into perfect square holes for a box.

Likely Responsible for coma-tosing your child’s creativity over time.

I can’t help but to be cynical when I see things like that, and wonder what then happens to the round pegs, triangular pegs, the oval pegs, or how about those pegs which don’t really have a defined shape.

In the meantime, I need to get my hands on a fairy tale book to do read-alouds with the little boy.

Do share what you will do if you encounter this situation with your child. Will you take it in your stride and just address it with your child separately, resign to the situation and not pursue it further, and/or choose to speak to the teacher?

*This post has a follow-up post that will address some of the comments shared, do read the post here. 

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Common Sense and Common Courtesy are not too Common

Taking public transportation can provide some fodder for observation into human behavior.

A couple of weeks back, I took the public bus and sat in the middle of the last row of seats. Teenage guy from NJC pressed bell, I stood up and let him step out of the seat. He refused to get out of the seat, craned his neck to look out for his bus-stop, waiting for the perfect moment to leave his seat, like a second before the bus stopped.

While I was stood there, hanging on to the pole for dear life as the maniacal bus driver drove frantically towards the next bus stop. I desperately clung on, waiting for the youth to leave his seat. As he walked passed me, I had to restrain myself from whacking his head with my handbag.

What’s wrong with some of these youths? Are they so overwhelmed by the academic demands in their scholarly life that they don’t know how to be embarrassed or show some consideration for the people around them? Have some parent’s obsessions with their academic performance caused them to neglect teaching their children basic courtesy and be sensitive to their surroundings?

My other pet peeves with youths, include those who walk right into little kids. I have reminded K each time when we are a mall, to look out for those ‘young people’ around Uncle Nick’s age (my brother’s age, the 16 – 21 year olds. I apologised for the stereotype, if you are in this age group and reading this!). To always be alert and make sure he does not walk into their path. Or move away from their path if he sees them walking towards him, if not risk getting knocked over.

 

Do the ‘Hide and Seek’

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How am I training my son to be alert and aware of his surroundings? Hb and I do the ‘Hide and Seek’ very often in public places. When K is occupied looking at toys and things that interest him, Hb and I duck and hide behind a wall, or deliberately walk away from him. SOP for him is to come looking for us calmly and then asking nicely that he wants us to stand next to him while he looks at his stuff.

The first ‘Hide and Seek’ was attempted was he was 4, quite a painful one for the boy to learn. We were at a Toy shop and hb and I did our ‘running away’. When the boy looked up, he could not see us in his usual line of sight, and he ended up frantically looking for us, while we were watching him from behind toy shelves. He was upset by this incident, but he has since learnt that he needs to be alert each time he is in a public place.

We still do the ‘Hide and Seek’ when we are out in malls and the boy makes the point to look up for us while looking at his things, and is quick to catch up with us when he sees us walking away. So we have trained him to be quite alert for a 5 year old.

Crazy cruel parents, maybe. Stressful being my kid, very likely. But I think this is so necessary for a child to know, albeit learning the hard way.

 

Courtesy is for You and Me

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What other common courtesies I have taught him to practice often?

Make eye contact with people when they talk to you, respond when you are spoken to, and for goodness sake, always spare a thought for others, and not just yourself. Be considerate. And most of all don’t forget the magic words, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’. And you really don’t need to be reminded to greet elders, or your friends’ parents.

He hasn’t quite mastered all these common courtesies and will need reminders from time to time, but these things rank really high on my important-things-to-teach-my-child list.

As for those who need a crash course in learning common courtesies, I think we desperately need to bring back SINGA the Lion for the young ones (but please do something about his outfit!).

Singa

And how about a Korean-eques looking male/female dreamboat with doe eyes, who sings and dances fabulously and will always mind her ‘P’s and Q’s’ for the youths? Could be useful as a reminder for the parents who have forgotten about teaching these courtesies to their kids. Whatever works.

 

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Lessons on Assertiveness

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I used to have a problem with being assertive when I was a young adult. Always struggled with saying ‘No’ when someone tried push their opinions on me or tried to get me to do things their way. Then I end up feeling fed up and resentful that I have to see things through, just because I did not have the guts at that moment to stand up for myself.

I became a lot more assertive after becoming a mom. In fact, it all started with an episode at work, when I was being unfairly evaluated at a year-end appraisal due to being pregnant. I presented my case to regional HR for the unfair treatment, but was prepared to move on to a new job after that episode. I was severely ‘marked’ by my boss who hated my guts, but thankfully, I found a new job after 2 months.

I encountered two episodes this week on how assertiveness might / might not work to a person’s advantage.

The first episode happened when I had to make a trip down to ACRA to get some paperwork completed. While at ACRA, at the customer service counter, I was brushed off by this lady who obviously had little idea what a customer service job entails. I tried to bring up my issue three times and all she did before listening what I had to say, brushed me off and told me that I had to make my payment at the internet kiosks on site.

After struggling for like 15 minutes, I realized that the issue could not be resolved with a simple click of the button. I went back to the customer service counter, tried to tell this lady at the counter that I was experiencing a problem, but got brushed off 2 more times, as she continued to insist that all I could do was to make payment at the kiosk.

At that moment, I lost patience, and raised my voice, “Now you listen! I am having problems with my payment, as your system put my application on hold since yesterday. You have to stop telling me to go to the internet kiosk and make the payment, as the method does not work anymore for me. I do not want to make my way all the way here, and be told to use the internet to the make the payment, when I could have easily done it at home, if I did not have this problem. So are you able to help or not!”

She started fumbling with her response when she realized that she had to manage a not so happy customer in front of her. She answered weakly, “You never tell me.” I raised my voice at her again, and said, “Did you bother to listen in the first place? You didn’t! All you did was to brush me off many times when I tried to bring up this issue to you!”

Within the next 5 minutes of this exchange, my problem was solved.

Could I have done it differently? Probably not. Giving her that nice, gentle, and understanding response will not have solve my problem so quickly. Sometimes, one have have got to be assertive, especially when it comes to dealing with lousy service.

The second episode happened in an underground carpark, as I was in a car with K, waiting for hb. A lady came along with her supermarket trolley, knocked on the window when she saw K seated at the driver’s seat, who was pretending to drive. She opened the car door and said to K, “Young man, you cannot be in the front seat, turn off the engine now, as you are destroying the environment!” As I was seated behind the driver’s seat, I opened the door and asked the woman if I could help her. She immediately blasted at me with these words, “You are very irresponsible, to leave the engine running, you will destroy the environment! How can you do that, turn off the engine now!” I looked at her, with a deadpan expression said, “Sure…” and then closed the car door.

By now, I was actually quite taken back by how someone could infringe into my personal space, be so aggressive towards me and to tell me what to do with my car. Even though I was fully aware that I was not environmentally responsible, by leaving a stationery car engine running, and have the air conditioned in the car turned on for the sake of our comfort. But to hear it in such a rude, aggressive and self-righteous tone, just prompted me to ignore the point that she was trying to make with her speech.

About 5 minutes later, she came around to my car again, open my door one more time, and starting blasting at me, “I told you to turn off the engine, how can you leave the engine running like that, and you have been doing it for the last 5 minutes!” By this time, I was getting quite irritated by this intrusion of my privacy. But I just looked at her in a deadpan voice and answered, “Why don’t you stop driving altogether then?” With my rebuttal, she got even more indignant and started, “This is a shared environment, by doing this, you are destroying our shared environment. How can you do this, you better turn off the engine now, it is a shared environment…” She continued repeating the same words about how this was a shared environment to people who walked pass her, and was ignored.

All I did after her speech, was to reach out for my car door, closed it and I continue talking with K. While from the corner of my eye, I saw her stand outside my door for another 10 seconds before walking back to her BMW car and driving off in a huff.

This lady chose to be assertive at the wrong place, wrong time and at the wrong person. All she did with her assertiveness was to pushed my wrong ‘buttons’. I was in my ‘rebellious teenager’ mood where the rebel in me just said, “Just make me.” For that moment, I just refused to be coerced into doing anything.

For the record, this lady did not look crazy. She was dressed neatly, spoke proper english, carried herself like a normal person and looked like she had a supermarket trolley filled with organic goods. But she sure has got lousy EQ. If she had approached me differently, or told this to me in a different tone or manner, I would have willingly or even felt embarrassed enough to turn off the engine immediately. In fact, I can’t really tell if she was being assertive, or just plain aggressive.

How would you have responded if you are being confronted with such assertiveness or aggressiveness, like in this instance?

 

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