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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.
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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
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