Many of my Chinese friends have their kids attending private
schools or prestigious local public schools.
Their children take tests, do hours of homework and worksheets, and go
to after school programs to be drilled again in math, reading, writing, and
Chinese. They have grades for
everything and think about applying for famous universities early on. From what I learned by chatting with the
parents, the learning in these schools is not cooperative but competitive. In the after school programs, they often
preview the math concepts for the next year during summer and then review the
content and perfect their math skills during the year.
Coming from the traditional educational system in Taiwan, I
have a hard time dealing with school without homework, and learning without
rote memorization. Therefore, we
provide supplemental homework to enhance our girls’ arithmetic proficiency and
have them memorizing multiplication tables.
We can’t do much with their language art since we are not English native
speakers. I read to them every day
since they were babies, though. By the
time they were in 2nd grade, they’ve become avid readers and are
advanced in their reading skills. It’s
also fortunate that our girls can learn correct spelling purely from reading
and word analysis. My older daughter
didn’t have any spelling tests until this year in 5th grade. When her teacher started testing the names
of the 50 states and their capitals, some parents were questioning his
methodology, considering it violating the philosophy of constructivism
I love how my girls enjoy going to school and are quite
adept at dealing with social problems.
Their creativity is limitless and they are kind and helpful, quite
different from what I had experienced at school. When I was growing up, I gave up all my free time just so I could
get good grades and eventually passed the test to get into a good high school
and university. I used to love reading
but schooling took that away. For a
long time, I only read textbooks and avoid reading if it’s not going to be in
the tests. It was not until 20 years later,
I started enjoying reading again. I
don’t want my children to walk the same path and experience the same loss as I
did. Yet, looking at them spending more
and more time online and on watching TV, I cannot help but feel that something
is not right. I think that they need to
learn a lot more basics now rather than wait until those basics become relevant
later in their life. Yet, at the same
time, I don’t want them to memorize a lot of useless facts to pass the test and
forget them afterwards. All I want is
to seek the middle ground, for them to enjoy the fun of learning as well as manage the pressure of examinations and homework.
Before the school was over, my husband told my older
daughter that he was going to give her a challenge, doing 3 to 4 hours of
homework every day, 5 days a week. The
workload includes reading, researching, writing essay, math worksheets,
Chinese, and projects (my younger daughter has a similar challenge, but less
work). We also set a limit on their
daily screen time. At first, I’m a
little hesitant because all their friends are going to enjoy summer without
doing any homework. Yet, as the first
week passing by, I saw her showing pride in her accomplishment in completing a
presentation or an essay. Mmmm, maybe this is okay…. As parents, we want the best for our children but we will never
know if what we do are the best. Even
with the uncertainty, I still feel hopeful and that my girls are learning and
accomplish more than what I’ve done in a less “painful” way.
