Age 10 & 12 commit suicide ?

mckool_2000 SG

What has gone wrong when within a month in April 2000 two primary school students committed suicide. What is bothering them, what other thoughts could have bothered them so much as to take away their own lives ? A 10 yr old and a 12 yr old kid, what other insolvable problems could have meant that taking away their lives is an easy way out to end their problems. Their early lives are encircled by forces of dark, invisible nature detrimental to the young and vulnerable inner minds.

Young minds talk among young minds sharing the same thoughts, having the same problems unresolved; --- the fire spreads. If nothing is done, the results could be disastrous epidemic.

The trend in the Primary education has over the years, reached a rather unhealthy level affecting both the students and the parents. The trendset is quite obvious as what was primary education in the 1970's as compared to now. Standards were raised both intellectually in terms of school curriculum as well as the grade of teachers now teaching in primary schools. Graduates are employed to teach primary education which means that parents have a higher expectations from these batch of qualified teachers. Well, if it is quality teaching that ensues, naturally a student of normal intelligence will both enjoy and benefit from the syllabus the educational system provides. But as a matter of fact, school curriculum working under pressure from these qualified teachers has proven not to be successful. There is a prevailing 'kiasu syndrome' that encompasses the livelihood of these teachers not to mention the keen competition among teachers. And coupled with the competition amongst various schools these has somehow led to a deviation from the clear objectives set in the role of primary education system. I am not against qualified teachers but then this scenario actually exists.

To measure up to the yardstick, a degree holder will definitely has to prove to the world that his teaching methods are logically superior than one that is not. He has to protect himself by dishing out loads and loads of schoolwork to the students. This means to show to the parents that the teachers are providing a form of quarantee that by completing these massive loads of school assignments, the students would be resourceful enough to handle any examinations. Also, the teachers' expectations would be very much higher. Each teacher will handout a sufficiently 'kiasu' amount of homework enough to occupy and tire out the student everyday without fail. The amount of schoolwork given out not by one teacher alone but by four different teachers of four different subjects is enough to cause the primary student to sit by his desk the whole day. Does this meet the objectives of the educational system? I doubt so.

Classes in schools are given different treatment delineated by their performance. The so call 'A' class classroom is specially air-conditioned and to 'beg' the students to perform well so as to boost up the school's reputation, so-and-so is willing to come up with his salary to reward the class if the class results is better than other schools. Other students who is slow and has performed poorly are neglected.
Education is fast becoming a commodity, a commercialise trade which has the basic interests to serve the ultimate purpose of achieving reputations, fame and glory.

To add woes to this vicious cycle, concerned and 'kiasu' parents who are worried that their children may lack behind the school curriculum; as the intellectual standards of primary education had been raised to the extent that even some of the questions in the assignment worksheets have profounded most parents, these parents resort to further educating their children by sending them to tuition centres cum inviting tuition teachers to personalise coaching for their children. Wow, does this sounds dynamic ?
Not so dynamic when you are in the shoes of these little souls. Not only these little souls have to appeased the unabating lashing of schoolwork from their school teachers, they would also have to complete all the tutorials and handouts from their next level of tuition centre teachers and hometuition teachers because these teachers too, have to answer for the sake of their students' results. You can imagine how stressful and miserable the primary student is. On top of this, the Primary School itself will also demand the student to sit in for extra lessons after schooling hours up to 3 or 4 p.m. if the student is already attending the morning session. Just imagine, at a tender age like theirs, they would have to sit from 4.30 p.m. onwards up till 11 pm or near midnight just to do all these work notwithstanding the fact that when they fall ill, or take one day MC from school they will be miles away from the previous day work; some parents even forced their child to continue working while they are sick - good grief ! ..... It frequently happens to a kiasu parent. And usually if they could not finish the school assignment, they will have to wake up at 5 a.m. to finish the bulk. As a result, they had only 5 to 6 hours of sleep due to sheer pressure.

Concerning the higher standard of primary education curriculum, I personally found that the relative standard in primary education has been raised to a level far above the standard back in 1970's or 80's. The syllabuses covered more depth in every subject and the area of coverage has widened extensively. This is more apparent from primary three to primary six. It is not unusual to find complex problem sums in Mathethematics that even astounded most parents for as to this level of maturity exhibited in a particular topic in that subject requires a child of certain calibre of intelligence to work within an express time-frame to answer these questions in both assignments and examinations. Stress is healthy but if levels have gone beyond their limits, more harm could be done to these students, exhausting their mental capabilities as well as their physical well being. Only the very brilliant ones can walk out of school not so tensed up but how many of the not-so-brilliant ones can take the sheer pressure from their kind of schoolwork ? I think Education has to be looked in from a different perpective point where appropriate systems apply to a particular age group of students and not look far too beyond a standard that is difficult to cope and cause retrograding results. We need to be in the shoes of these little souls in order to see their pressures from all angles.

LittleMan SG

Your post is so long, it really makes me feel bad if i don't reply, haha Smile

Your topic is :Age 10 & 12 commit suicide?

However, your post gradually leads to educational system. So are you implying that the suicides are due to the unmanageable pressures from school/tuition centres ?

I can comment about the educational system but not the suicides.

I myself have been a tutor for many years. Both private tutor and tutor in tuition centres. I enjoy teaching and I do have students in primary schools. My youngest student was primary 2 (age 7)

here's my experience :

Heavy syllabus ?

You mentioned that the primary school syllabus has changed as more details are incorporated, but from my experience,it has not changed much if you are talking about Science, Maths and English though it has changed trememdously for Chinese, especially those who is doing higher Chinese.

I can understand when students complain about their Chinese, but not when they are complaining about other subjects.

Parental involvement

Parents are getting over-involved in their children's education. In my generation, if my parents were asked to see my teacher, it would be a BIG hoo-haa, but nowadays, teacher-meet-parents sessions are too common. Some parents even "volunteer" to see the teachers every now and then to understand how their children have "progressed".

I had a student (sec 1) whose mother joined the "Parents Committee" in his school so that she can "monitor" his son. My goodness ! She even forbids her daughter (sec 4) from answering any phone call from her frens unless she has finished all her homework. I am not making this up, I saw it with my own eyes.

From my observation, parental involvement started after teachers are not given the authority (caning etc) they used to enjoy in school. Teachers started to have problems with the students and find it hard to control them hence resulted in the parental involvement.I think the side-effects is greater than we can handle. Now the parents are over-involved. You know, those house-wives sometimes have nothing better to do but to compare their children. Such comparisons can put great pressures on the student.

I once had a primary 5 student whose mother always compares him to his neighbhour's daughter. That ger always does better than him and he felt humiliated everytime his mother praises that ger and asked him,"why can't you be better?" His mother had obviously hurt his pride terribly. On one occasion, he even cut himself with a pen knife and said he "feels no pain". Who knows, one day he may just cut his wrist. He is only primary 5.

Are the tutors overdoing it?

I as a tutor always try to understand the child's interests, personality, preferences and abilities and apply the appropriate methods of teaching. I will also talk to them about their parents, try to know what kind of parents they have (cos i know parents play a very important part in a child's education nowadays). At the same time, know how much work they have got to do from schools and other tutors. From these info, i will give them the appropriate amount of workload.

From my knowledge, many tutors do not practise what i do. They simply throw homework to the students (buy as many assessments as possible) and expect the students to finish them. If not, they will be scolded or the issue brought up to their parents who will later "take appropriate actions".

To us tutors, we have to answer to their parents. If there is no improvement, we ourselves feel paisei. I had once quit an assignment because I could not make the student improve (but i gave some excuses for my resignation so as not to hurt the child).

But some students really do need pushing. I once had a student who I taught for 7 months. Within that 7 months, he had not completed even one piece of homework. Can anyone tell me what should i do ? And many students who need tuitions are this type of students -- students who need someone to push them.

Does the fault lie in the educational system?

Our educational system adopted the ying(1) cai(2) shi(1) jiao(4) method. This resulted in all those streamings and classifications. This system itself is not wrong, in fact very effective. If a class is too heterogeneous, there will be great difficulty for the teacher to teach cos he will not know what pace he should set. If too fast, the slow one will have problems, if too slow, the faster ones will be bored.

However, such a system has side effects. Parents become crazy about their children's streaming and are willing to go all the way out to help the student get into a good class without even considering if the child could cope in that good class.

I would say that the educational system is not at fault here. It is the side effects that is causing all the problems. The parents have responded wrongly to the educational system.

What kind of attitude should parents have then?

I personally think that the primary school syllabus is to trigger the children's answer-seeking mind. It is to cultivate interests in the students and make them want to know more.

At the same time, teach them some basic knowledge which will help them in their future education.

Most importantly, is the learning process. I think the children have to learn how to learn things during the primary school period.

Unfortunately, all the interventions from parents have prevented these objectives from being realised.

Parents are too myopic and are only concerned with the child's short term achievement and have neglected the child's long term well-being.

Parents are also not being supportive and encouraging. One of my students (primary 6) once complained to me that his parents will scold and cane him if he does not do well in his tests and exams but he receives no praises when he does well. The parents take for granted that it is his duty to do well.

No doubt, a student's responsibility is to do well in his studies, but we must remember that a child's pride is extremely fragile. Their thoughts have not matured and they don't have strong opinions of themselves like we adults do. Therefore, they need reassurance and encouragement from adults, especially parents and teachers who they will regard as role models. If you mark them as good, they will think that they are good. If you mark them as lousy, they will think that they are lousy. And they will carry the label with them for a very long time.

Conclusion

Children nowadays are guinea pigs to the new educational system. People of our generation will be able to see the side effects of the parents'responses to the system and hopefully learn from it.

I hope we can focus more on the attitudes of the parents instead of the educational system. For a system is died, but a person's reaction to a system makes whole lot of a difference.

[This message has been edited by LittleMan (edited 22 April 2000).]

moose SG

Lookinbg back at education,i wish to ask you all,how much of the stuff that were taught to you do you really apply in your work today?Do you apply the law of physica everyday in your work,do you do calculus everytime when your work requires you to do it?I only wish that the education system teach something relevant that the children can apply in real life instead of some abstract concepts that they will not see once they join the rat race, Smile ))

LittleMan SG

You are wrong moose. Education is not about teaching you things that you can use DIRECTING in your work. It more about sharpening your thinking and analysis skills.

Why are tops engineers being employed as financial analysis in big banks ? Because their skill of analysis is strong and they are much better with numbers and charts than accountants or biz ad students although what they learn in Uni can not be directly applied in the financial industry.

Education is a process of teaching you "how to learn" and hopefully, when you step into the society, you can learn things all by yourself without the help of any teachers. Even if the school do teach you things which you can apply DIRECTLY in your work, the requirements of your work will change with time ! When things in the working world change, do you go back to school again ?

I believe you have heard of this phrase :

It is better to teach you how to fish than to give you the fish.

Education is teaching you how to fish.

And with the broad base knowledge, one can be more creative cos he has more "sources". You may not use your knowledge directly, but you never know when you will use it.

Look at my fren Belittled's post in the "procastination" thread in Chit-Chat, he used Newton's Law of Motion to explain human nature ! HOW BEAUTIFUL !!

moose SG

I fully agree on the teach a man to fish example,but what i am trying to get across is is the normal general average worker in singapore who after going through the singapore education system apply eg calculus,dy,dx or some other complicated laws of physics into his everyday working life.I am trying to say that our education system should be about trying to teach people to learn,that i fully agree,but to also learn things relevant that every person who goes out into the working world will experience like how to handle office politics,i bet schools never teach that,they only place emphasis on hard facts and not enuff emphasis on things like how to handle office politics which for me,i know i will need to help me survive in the working world and is more handier than newton's law of physics or how do i handle dy,dz Smile ))

LittleMan SG

a course on office politics ? You aren't serious are you ? Sorry sorry, but it sounds farnie hehehe :p

well, do you know that office politics defer from place to place ? Btw, if we have come up with a solution for office politics then this working world will be a great place liao lor ! hehe :p Even the pros can't solve it, how to teach ?

Education only teaches you the basic skill to survive, whether you will survive well or not depends all on yourself.

moose SG

Hmm,office politics is just one example of something we all face in the working world,i know it sounds funny lah,but i meant that that singapore government should teach something that will help us with our EQ instead of always harping on IQ as a person doesn't only need to be smart to survive in the world outside,but need to be streetwise also Smile ))

LittleMan SG

moose,

ok lah, i suan u enuff liao lah.

but things like EQ cannot be taught directly. It is slowly developed through activities in school like ECA, campings, team projects etc.

moose SG

Yap,EQ cannot be mugged or studied like Maths,English etc etc,but i hope that schools place more emphasis on EQ and maybe even give it equal weightage with academic subjects as i feel that singapore institutions of learning always place more on IQ only Smile ))