Archive for June, 2009
29 June 2009
Ice-skating homeschoolers in Malaysia
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool Profile.
Homeschool Profile: The Phillips Family
The Phillips girls Laura (10) and Kristiana (8) are passionate about ice-skating and believe it or not, they picked it up here in tropical Malaysia! (Watch them on YouTube) Their mom R’deen tells us about their homeschooling journey and how ice-skating became a part of their schedule.
How long have you been homeschooling?
We’ve homeschooling since 2004!
What got you into homeschooling?
I have a lot of friends who homeschool their kids, and since we travel a lot, it’s a method that makes the most sense. Also with me being Filipina and my husband American, we thought this would be a good way to make sure they get Philippine and American History/Culture as part of their education.
Tell us a little about your homeschool.
Our girls are using Sonlight which is a wonderful program and works well for our family. I would say that the actual “schooling” time we spend when we sit and read and discuss is about 2 hours a day (I’m using Core 3+4 with both girls right now). But I wouldn’t limit their learning to these 2 hours alone. If something comes up we take the time to answer their questions, or we may even do craftwork that may or may not be related to what they are currently studying.
What do you enjoy about homeschooling?
Top of the list would be the flexibility it offers! Another thing is, I get to invest enough time in training my girls not just in academics but also in discipling them, building into them godly character. I also get to customize our lessons and discussions to what the girls are interested in at the moment or what we are dealing with as a family,
Are there challenges you face homeschooling your daughters?
I need to be really disciplined in the use of my time. If I feel lazy, then we don’t get much schooling done. I’m glad the principal, Mr. Phillips (that’s my husband!), is usually around to make sure discipline is maintained.
Tell us about Ice Skating. How did your girls get into it?
Three things: 1. Watching the movie ‘Ice Princess’ 2. Watching girls in beautiful costumes doing fancy things on ice, and 3. Laura got inline skates for Christmas 4 years ago and wanted to learn to how to use them! We thought ice skating would transfer to inline skating, but they enjoyed ice skating so much we ended up giving the inline skates away! And we thought ice skating would be a perfect PE activity! My girls sure keep fit and healthy.
How long have they been ice skating?
The girls first started skating early 2006 and they learned it at skating classes offered at Sunway Pyramid Ice.
How has ice skating been good for you all?
Aside from the good physical exercise they get from skating, they also learn some very important life skills such as, working together in a team, patience while working on a new skill, handling frustrations when the training gets tough and demanding, good sportsmanship, etc.
They have made a lot of good friends through ice skating. We see them not just at the rink but they also visit, have meals, or have play dates.
Laura enjoys team productions because it’s fun for her to be working with friends. She also enjoys the challenge of learning new jumps or other elements. Kristi enjoys going fast and she enjoys doing programs and skating to music. She also loves choreographing her own dance.
Is there anything about ice skating that they don’t like?
Laura doesn’t like falling and getting wet and cold. Kristi didn’t like getting dizzy, when she was first learning to spin. I don’t enjoy the demanding schedule: early morning and late night practices. We’re thinking of cutting back on our skating hours and commitment.
That sounds like a lot of time on the rink.
When we’re not preparing for any competition, we skate twice a week for about 3 to 4 hours. But during competition season, we skate twice as often sometimes even as much as 6 times a week!
What other special challenges do you face ice skating?
It depends on how much time and money you want to invest into skating (or whatever sport or hobby for that matter), but if you don’t watch it in can run your life! At the last competition (Skate Nationals back in March) we were at the rink almost every day! And one of our coaches said we should decorate a corner of the rink and put up pictures on the wall since it was our second home!
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About the Philips: R’deen is married to Timothy and they are currently residing in Subang Jaya, Selangor. R’deen enjoys all kinds of craft and creative things, especially scrapbooking, sewing (mostly her girls’ costumes), and more recently, bejeweling. She also enjoys planning and hosting parties!
Apart from ice skating Laura loves to read. She also enjoys writing books and making up games to play with her friends. She has a pet hamster named Amanda Lin.
Kristiana recently caught the reading bug, and likes writing poetry. Her pet hamster is named Squeaky.
Both Laura and Kristiana are participating in Skate Malaysia 2009 and you can check out their events on the website. Details are also on Homefrontier’s NOTICES.
28 June 2009
Just for laughs!
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: humour.
25 June 2009
Upcoming events!
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement.
UPCOMING EVENTS!
MALHEN MEET-UP with KV and Wai Leng in Ipoh, Sat 27 June
JPS Debate in Subang Jaya Fri 26 June
SKATE MALAYSIA 2009 at Sunway 2-5 July
John Maxwell LIVE in KL 6 July
Malaysia International Christian Artists Show 11-26 July
A ROCHA CONFERENCE: Biblical Environmental Stewardship 18 July
Check out full details on NOTICES
24 June 2009
What were we thinking?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Guest Writer.
GUEST WRITER: Bill Smith
The other day I was rifling through some old computer disks in search of one I could copy some files to. To my amazement, some of the disks still worked. More amazing was one Microsoft Word version 5 file I found from 1993, our first full year of “official” homeschooling. The file was named simply “WHY.doc.”
I opened this little mystery nugget to find the brave declaration by parents of a six-year-old, parents who dared against cultural tide and conventional reason to homeschool. We lived at the time in a different country, far from support groups and curriculum fairs and far from American homeschool pioneers who could assure us we weren’t crazy.
Here, we took our stand, though the neighbors thought us alien in more than nationality. Here we did what no one trying to fit into a foreign culture should do—homeschool. There were so many doubts and so many sleep-delayed nights pondering what could be wrong with us that we would risk ostracism and damage to our six-year-old and her little sister. Each morning, mothers waved their children down our little street of tightly-packed houses toward the government school. Only our school-age child remained at home. What was wrong with us? What were we thinking?
And yet, the desire to educate our children at home would not hold back. Inside, we knew we were committed. Outside, we doubted and even grieved for the relationships strained by our decision. It was then that we realized we could not maintain this stand against the “natural order” of modern society unless we agreed on a “declaration.” Like Luther at Wittenberg, the colonial signers at Philadelphia, and lesser-knowns whose words have been lost, my wife and I made a list titled “Why We Desire Home Education.” I can tell you now that there were at least five and a half reasons. (Either that was enough or later editions of Word don’t read well the old version 5 files.)
In 1993, we nailed that list to the door of our minds to fend off doubts and doubters. We placed our John Hancocks under the fifth-and-a-half point to remind ourselves that even if no one else agreed with us, at least we agreed with each other. We also agreed that this was God’s direction for our home.
We have entertained few doubts since 1993. Making that list and agreeing on our course together set a foundation that we could point back to and remind ourselves that, even if what we do sometimes seems wrong, we do it in full agreement. Even if we and our children endure difficulty because of it, we know that we began this homeschooling voyage in faith that it is right for our family.
The decision to homeschool is still not easy for many. To sustain that decision through internal doubts and external opposition, making a list, agreeing together and posting it on the mind’s door is a great beginning toward staying the course.
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ABOUT THE WRITER: Bill Smith is father to two home educated girls and husband to one extraordinary homeschool mom. Bill and Derri Smith authored The Character Series for home education, and they provide values-based book reviews at BookAngles. Their current work is to prevent human trafficking. The above article first appeared at HomeschoolEnrichment.com
23 June 2009
Honing public speaking skills
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Extra-curricular Activities.
Note: One of the longest running activities involving homeschoolers in Kuala Lumpur/Petaling Jaya is the Junior Public Speaking Club. Here’s a post by homeschooler Daniel Dusanjh about the fun the kids (and their parents) have had through the years:
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By homeschoolers, for homeschoolers would best describe the Junior Public Speaking Club (JPS for short). And while the club is young in more ways than one, that does not quite hold true for some of the things we speak.
Fancy a topic about terrorists? Or how about a roundtable discussion on issues affecting Malaysia, with some inevitably heavy political commentary? Coming up next will be a debate on the dangers of Facebook to society. All this with a core group of members mostly no older than 18 years of age. (Click on NOTICES for JPS Debate info).
Every once a month JPS meets. Step by step and sometimes unwillingly, its members conquer the fear that has been described by grown men as “worse than dying”. Some of us take to it like fish in the water while others have to be very gently persuaded to stand up and speak.
Of course, we juniors are wisely guided by our mentors- the mums and maybe a few dads as well. This is where JPS gets its homeschool flavour – parental involvement. Which helps, a little.
Even then, as the club gets older, a group has formed known as the “seniors” – veteran members who have been with the club since its early years. Of course, still not much older than 18.
So we have our speaking aspect, usually involving table topics followed by prepared speeches. But much more than that, JPS is where its members get to speak up in as comfortable an environment as possible – under the watchful eyes of their parents.
It is not all about speaking of course, food and games being the staple extra activities. But there’s more here, for example leadership. Now, JPS is perhaps the only place where you get to be a leader – like it or not.
Everyone older than 14 (age, as always, flexible) has to stand up for the position of vice-president where they have to tell the members why they deserve to be appointed to that position. If appointed, expect to serve a full one and a half years of six-month terms – from vice-president, president to ex-president.
Yes, you do learn a lot here, much more than you would expect. It may sometimes be a scary and tiring experience for some, but it is invariably rewarding.
As its members are young (and must be young!), turnover among members tends to be high. A couple of years back, JPS was aging and losing members to college and relocations. Now, it is best described as teeming with new young members – very young, in fact.
Being a regular at JPS for a little over two years, I can certainly say that the club has had its fair share of ups and downs. But with the fantastic leadership it’s had over the years (by the brave and willing presidents – not to mention the mums who are the backbone of JPS!), expect the club to continue for a few more years to come.
The writer is an ex-President at JPS. The Junior Public Speaking club meets every last Friday of the month, 2:30-5 P.M. at Subang Jaya Gospel Centre. Young ones and their parents are most welcome to join or observe.
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Photos: Upper three – table topics; mid two – JPS in the park; bottom three – National Unity Roundtable, Daniel Dusanj with special guest Tricia Yeoh
17 June 2009
The feminist mother-educator
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Parenting.
I first came across this post about feminism and homeschool at childofnarnia‘s blog. I was piqued because when my wife gave up her career, there were mumblings about ‘wasting your education’ and all that. What interested me was the revelation that there was some sort of feminist backlash at women who decided to abandon their career – highly educated ones at that – to stay home and educate their own children.
These mother-educators are giving up good-paying jobs to homeschool and nurture their kids. You know, in an age where women no longer have to be chained to the kitchen sink, more and more are deserting hard-earned gains in gender equality to embrace a pre-Women’s Lib (as it was called then) male dominated social order. Shocking! But as the writer Wendy McElroy argues, what women are abandoning is the singular agenda of feminist self-interest in favour of choice – in this case, finding fulfilment as a mother raising and homeschooling her own children. So is there a tension or contradiction between feminism and traditional values, or is homeschool a step backwards for women? Read on, and you decide.
Homeschooling constitutes a revolution in education. But it is also one of the most significant trends to affect women and families in decades, especially since it is led by mother-educators. Homeschooling is part of a social shift by which women are moving back toward traditional family values, not because they have to but because they want to do so.
Analysis of homeschooling has focused on the children—and properly so—but the relationship of mother-educators to feminism deserves investigation in its own right. Homeschooling is a trend that mainstream feminism is resisting because the teaching at-home mom threatens many of the values it espouses, including financial independence.
The tension between homeschooling and feminism arises not from feminism per se, but from the politically correct version that has dominated the movement for over a decade. PC feminism regards the traditional family as a training ground for patriarchy—that is, for the white male culture that oppresses women.
Fortunately, other schools of feminism view staying at home as simply one more choice that a self-respecting, intelligent woman can make or reject, depending on her goals in life. Individualist feminism is one example. For this school of feminism, freedom means having every peaceful choice possible and taking personal responsibility for all your actions. In this framework, one woman’s decision to stay at home is not politically better or worse than another woman’s choice to become a CEO. Both are personal matters. Both express the core of true feminism: choice.
Read the rest here. (Warning – really long post)
16 June 2009
The parent as teacher
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Parenting; Teaching.
My own understanding as an educator and homeschool parent is eclectic at best, and may come across as poorly conceived to some. Homeschooling is so much a DIY project I don’t think anyone has the last word. In any case, I do hope my experience will give impetus to your own homeschooling journey and help you do better as a parent-teacher.
When I last wrote that teaching a child at home required ‘different skills’ I may have inadvertently implied the application of formal pedagogical models and textbook procedures at home. My apologies. That’s furthest from my mind (although I admit I am sold on Freire’s ideas that teaching is about lighting a fire, not filling a bucket, nor comparable to banking). ‘Skill‘ may not be the right word to use, but since it describes a facility, a way of doing things, it’s not inappropriate to see it as an ability that can be learned or improved – meaning, parents can only get better the more they work at it.
Anyway, first things first. Not long after our family decided on homeschool, I realized I had to unlearn all my presuppositions about teaching and schooling. There were many! The reason is, our ideas about teaching (and learning) are invariably drawn from our days in school.
School, I’m sorry to say, is generally about coercion and conformity, and often completely out of step with what’s going on in the head or heart of a student. The rules, the performance trap, fragmented syllabus, political agenda, etc. Schools are an experiment in social engineering, and classroom teaching has a way of becoming nothing but crowd control. Unfortunately it’s this invisible curriculum that socializes and conditions our minds and informs the way we think our own children ought to be taught.
Of course beyond form and structure, we’re just as influenced by our teachers good and bad – the ones who tormented (in my case, an Encik Ismail) and those who inspired (Ms Pillai who taught literature and planted subversive political ideas into our innocent heads). Isn’t it also interesting that we remember our teachers more than the schoolbooks that we were spoon-fed from?
I’m sure our schoolteachers were people with good intentions, and the ones who inspired may have been great models. Yet when school’s out for the day, teacher didn’t have to come home and live with us.
What I am trying to say is, the homeschool teacher is first and last a parent. As children learn what they live, so parents teach by the lives they lead. If you are a homeschooling mom or dad, know that the line that separates educator from parent does not exist. If at all it’s there, it’s a mere crease. “But don’t you feel trapped? You don’t have your own space if you’re with your children all day,” a journalist once asked. My wife Sook Ching replied, “ Why should a mother feel this way when she’s spending time with the children she loves?”
This is really the first great lesson about being a parent-teacher. You’re not going to cut it if you view your kids as a life sentence. Love bears all things; our children are a wonderful gift from God, and we’ve got as much to learn from them as they have much to learn from us. Once you get this part right, the rest is easy.
12 June 2009
Happenings in June
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement.
I’m trying out something here.
Ever so often we get notices of events and garage sale on our forum site. I thought I should also post them here.
Please go to the NOTICES page for more details. A couple of homeschoolers are clearing out books and stuff, there’s a Character First seminar, and 2 other interesting forums. Also look out for a notice regarding a debate conducted by our Junior Public Speaking Club.
The above are happening in June.
10 June 2009
Wanted: Good teachers
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools; Teaching.
If there’s one thing practically all of us are in agreement, it is this: something is terribly wrong with our education system but no one really knows how to fix it. So it no longer surprises anyone to hear that some institutions of higher learning are deliberately lowering standards to ensure their students pass crucial exams. Now isn’t this rather unbecoming – and curious – of academia, especially when an institution’s reputation could well be shredded by this kind of hanky-panky.
On the other hand, what is the public to make of the exam achievements of our primary and secondary school kids then? Following every public school exams we are feted to stories after stories of beaming students with strings of As. In March this year, Education Ministry director-general Datuk Alimuddin Mohd Dom announced that in SPM 6,277 students scored straight A’s in all subjects compared with 5,060 in 2007. From the total 1,676 scored A1s in all subjects compared with 892 in 2007. So are Malaysian school kids getting smarter? Not so it seems.
It is common knowledge that a lot of tertiary students including these same straight As students are underperforming in college. They are doing so poorly, lecturers have to lower the bar so that the numbers look better. College lecturers I know admit the practice is so rampant no one bats an eyelid.
While fingers are pointed at colleges and universities for these regrettable lapses, educators trace the rot to secondary schools.
“We know of students who got straight As for PMR coming into our centre and they literally can’t string together sentences properly,” says Tan Poay Lim, principal of Creative Horizons Language Centre.
“Numbers of distinctions now are so high but the performance is still so low. Put the two and two together and you know that our standards have dropped.”
With 20 years of teaching experience behind him, Creative Education Consultancy managing director Alagesan Arumugam has seen certain trends in the public school examinations.
“I have assessed some of my students and find it hard to comprehend that they are distinction students,” he says. “On my tests, they would get 55% but end up getting 1A in SPM. It does look like it’s relatively easy to score an A these days.” [More]
According to this report, low standards in schooling assessments are apparently the culprit.
So what’s the real problem here? Is it the language, the medium of instruction? Is it the lack of state-of-the-art facilities, computers and projectors? Crowded classrooms? The teaching methodology perhaps? Should we blame the curriculum? Or the ridiculously unimaginative textbooks our kids are fed with?
If you think this is a peculiarly Malaysian problem, do a bit of googling. You’ll see that in almost every civilized country, there is just as much concern about declining education standards. Among critics it is thought that less political interference and more diversity, choice and competition will do the trick. Leave it to market forces, so they say. Surely, it is argued, if parents were given a choice of schools they prefer to send their children to, good ones will grow while bad ones would fold.
But according to The Economist (25th April), recently published research by the Institute of Education showed that neither choice nor competition has improved education standards, at least in the UK.
Significantly, a lot of research already shows that the answer lies in the hands of teachers. Good teachers, that is (See here and here). However while no one doubts that good teaching matters, there is little consensus about what makes a teacher effective, or what constitutes a good teacher. Meanwhile in education circles, the argument whether a certified teacher makes a qualified one continues to rage. According to conventional wisdom the more knowledge a teacher possesses (or the more training a teacher undergoes), the better qualified this teacher is.
Which is why critics of homeschool love to question if parents have what it takes to educate their own children.
For sure more training and more qualification can only improve teacher quality, but do they always translate into better teaching? On this point the jury is out. As numerous reports such as the ones mentioned suggest, conventional schools aren’t exactly doing a good job either, even with all the emphasis on training and certification. Besides, why isn’t more done to turn out better teachers?
My take is that a classroom teacher and a homeschooling teacher are two different things. There’s a world of difference between teaching a class of 40 children according to a set syllabus, and educating your child at home. Obviously, the parent-child dynamics in the comfort of home are different. A parent as teacher is really a resource person and facilitator. This doesn’t mean teaching a child at home is less demanding; it just means it requires a somewhat different approach, employing different sets of skills.
This is already a long piece, so I’ll write about being a parent-teacher in my next post.
4 June 2009
Off to college
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: College/University.
The education terrain in the country is constantly shifting, so an educator reminded me at a recent meeting. Expect admissions policies to change as well. Especially when the Ministry of Education gets a new Minister every few years. College-bound homeschoolers who are thinking of admission into colleges in Malaysia are understandably jittery.
Do private colleges accept homeschoolers anyway? Should I sit for SAT or IGCSE O Level? Will a college take me in if I have neither? What if I am an unschooler? Do I have to show competence in Bahasa Malaysia? Why isn’t my SAT 1 score sufficient for admission? Questions, questions. To help unravel this Gordion Knot, I met up with the CEO of Life College and her helpful staff. Here’s a summary:
ADMISSIONS
All colleges registered under the Ministry of Higher Education offering approved/accredited Diploma programmes require that a Malaysian student has completed and passed SPM (pass BM and credits in 3 other subjects) or its equivalent, such as IGCSE O Level, UEC (Chinese Unified Exam), etc.In Malaysia, MQA (Malaysian Qualifications Agency) has the sole authority to decide what qualifying exams are acceptable. All colleges are subject to a list of officially approved entry exams given by MQA. Since the MQA is not familiar with homeschooling curricula and systems (and neither are homeschooling curricula on the approved list), this poses some difficulty for colleges that may want to admit a homeschooler.
YEAR 11 & SAT 1
This explains why SAT 1 is not sufficient to get a homeschooler into a local private college. In keeping with MQA requirements, a student must have successfully completed SPM “or its equivalent.” In homeschoolspeak, this means a Year 11 certificate or transcript (Year 11 matches the required “SPM or its equivalent” milestone).On top of that, many colleges have admission staff who may not have heard of homeschool or SAT. Therefore it is necessary to explain what is homeschool, and how a homeschooler’s course of study and achievements are measured vis-a-vis the conventional SPM route. Parents will have to help admission staff unfamiliar with homeschool understand how a homeschooler has attained the necessary preparation for tertiary studies.
THE IGCSE O LEVEL OPTION
Granted this hurdle, it is now clear that IGCSE O Level is possibly the least problematic and the best means forward in a homeschooler’s education pathway into a private college in Malaysia, whatever curriculum he or she may be using (Sonlight, AOP, ACE, Abeka, etc).Homeschoolers can easily set aside a year to prepare for the O Level as a private candidate. They can sign up and study the necessary textbooks (minimum 3 subjects) at home,or sign up at tuition centres offering O Level. Several such centres have been set up in KL/PJ in recent years (such as this). The O Level is offered by Cambridge and London boards and here’s a short description by a student.
However, Life College throws homeschoolers a lifeline: show proof of Year 11, and send in your SAT 1. If a student is enrolled with a learning centre using AOP (Alpha Omega Publications) or ACE School of Tomorrow curriculum, a transcript confirming he/she has successfully completed Year 11 attached with SAT1 paves the way. (I have been given to understand that a fee is payable for the release of an official student transcript from some centres). In any case, according to Life College, a personally prepared transcript is just as acceptable.
TRANSCRIPTS
What’s a transcript, you ask? Unlike a resume which records activities and extra-curricular achievements, a transcript is simply a record of a student’s course of study for the years the child has been homeschooled. What is of particular interest to a college registrar would be a student’s study particularly from Grade 6 and above.Because many homeschoolers do not have grade assessments (unlike those using textbook curricula such as ACE and AOP), these transcripts help College registrars unfamiliar with homeschooling understand what have been studied. Parents could bring along their child’s textbooks, but this is entirely up to you. I would think a properly written transcript with clearly defined courses completed is sufficient.
But here’s a caveat. While most private colleges are happy to receive a homeschooler many are concerned that they meet MQA’s stringent regulations. As such, some colleges may not accept a personally prepared transcript. Only when they can map an education pathway equivalent to SPM, can the college justify this homeschooler’s admission to MQA. However, there have been cases where a personal interview with parents and the prospective student will open doors (sometimes with conditions).If you have doubts, please see the relevant college registrars.
BAHASA MALAYSIA & YOU
All Malaysian students in private colleges have to take the Bahasa Malaysia paper if they do not have a credit for that subject in their SPM. In addition they have two other compulsory LAN papers Pengajian Malaysia (Malaysian Studies) and Pengajian Islam (Islamic Civilisation) or Pendidikan Moral (Moral Studies), which are taught in Bahasa. As such, it would be advantageous for all homeschoolers intending to study in local private colleges to obtain and maintain a good grasp of the Bahasa.
Read also my previous entry:Next stop-university
The thing about homeschool is the array of methodologies and convictions. Some folks disavow structures, preferring the unschooling option. Then there are those who subscribe to a Bible-based curriculum. Others stick to a regimented course and do not stray from the recommended curriculum. Still others have a more flexible approach determined only by the end of a child’s education. Whatever the method or curriculum, if your homeschooler intends to be in a local college (in this case, a local private college) all your effort will haave to dovetail into an acceptable document that satisfies college authorities. Of course college isn’t the be-all and end-all. If that’s not your child’s preferred route, that’s fine too.