Skip to main content

High time

My, it took some people a mightily long time to decide that (among other things): primary school should be less exam-oriented, primary school kids should have more PE, art and music lessons, fun activities for singles need not be confined to people of a certain age group or academic qualification, etc.

The changes can't come a moment too soon, especially the ones for the primary school kids. However, they will be much too late for the boy, who will probably have left primary school by the time things change. How sad.

Well, I have concluded, in Week 4 of Term 1, 2009, that Primary 5 is really quite jia lat. And who was it who said that the new Chinese syllabus was easy?! Aiyoh...

The serious aspects of life aside, my million dollar questions today are: Is Ana still in Melbourne? Will she turn up to watch today's semi-final?

Ha ha, tune in to Spain versus Spain, leftie versus leftie.
Labels:

Comments

fuzzoo said…
I think they could have saved themselves time and just learn from the international schools. I hear that the kids there enjoy school more and I don't think the kids turn out any worse off than SIngapore kids. If anything, probably they are more confident and articulate but that could just be their cultural/family background. Sure our schools do well in math and science competitions but it's the big picture, how well you eventually do in life that matters more.
2:31 pm
Anonymous said…
I agree fully with you, Fuzzoo. Let's see how things work out.
11:37 am
Anonymous said…
now i understand what they mean by teach less learn more: they ask the p5 child to do a book review but expect them to 'just do it' without first teaching them how. And give compre passages like "why are youths uninterested in practicing chinese culture and tradition" and you are expected to 'learn more' by attempting to answer questions beyond your 11 years! i mean, even adults can't answer things like, "so what do you think the author's opinion on the future of chinese culture is, whether there's value in it etc???" no wonder kids have no interest in chinese. it's just killing any little interest they may have. Teach-less, and go figure it yourself! X-tongfang
10:45 pm
Anonymous said…
What?! Was your K given such a question for Chinese compre??

Speaking of 'opinion', the boy took quite a while to understand the 'difference between fact and opinion' activity in the SS workbook. It's a great idea to teach this skill but I wonder how they ensure that all the children can grasp the concepts well.
10:29 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A lesson in love

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world. -Mother Teresa Most of the time my eyes just glaze over when I see article upon article of football news. One caught my glazing eye over the weekend, though - 'De la Cruz - Mother Theresa in boots' , because of the familiar name. Mother Teresa, that is. It was the first time I’d ever heard of this de la Cruz guy, an EPL player who hails from Ecuador (GNI per capita US$2,630; as a comparison, Singapore’s is US$27, 490 – source: BBC country profiles ). His is a great story to illustrate that famous Chinese saying about not forgetting your roots. According to the article, ‘Each month a proportion of that salary (about S$150,000) Reading pay him - be it 10 per cent in January or 20 per cent in February - goes direct to the village’ (where he grew up). (Picture and profile from here ) Here's what he has been credited for: 1. 'The 2002 World Cup,' de la Cruz reflects, 'finan
4 comments
Read more

True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the
3 comments
Read more

No wonder

According to a poll of about 300 people, reported in yesterday's Sunday Times, (how come nobody ever asks me these things?) , the Seven Wonders of Singapore are (in order of merit): 1. The Esplanade (a whopping 82 votes) 2. Changi Airport (53 votes) 3. Sentosa 4. The Merlion 5. The Singapore River 6. Food 7. Mount Faber and LKY (tie - 10 votes each) Some 'offbeat choices' which didn't make it to the top 7: aunties selling tissue paper at coffee shops, Singlish, kiasuism, 4D-Toto outlets and Newater (said someone of Newater: 'We are probably the only country with branded recycled sewage.' Well said, ha ha.). Maybe it's a personal bias but I feel that a 'Wonder' must also have strong historical and cultural/social value (so I'm rather miffed that Angkor Wat didn't make it to the 7 Wonders of the World; in fact it was never in the running for the top 7). Therefore, these choices are a little too modern for me. The Esplanade, for example, is a
8 comments
Read more