Archive for December, 2009
28 December 2009
Another look at Winning
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschooling Achievers; One From The Archives.
Now that you’ve put the Christmas rush behind you, here’s One From The Archives to help you with priorities for the new homeschooling year. I first wrote this piece titled ‘Winning While Losing’ back in 2003 (!) and looking at it right now, it’s a timely reminder that’s worth another read.
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HOMESCHOOLERS ARE MAKING WAVES EVERYWHERE AREN’T THEY? Take the story of Aussie twins Katherine and Edward Alpert for instance. They finished high school with a grade point average of 97% while their mates were just ditching their Pokemon cards. Now, at the ripe old age of 12, both twins are scoring distinctions in their Bachelor of Arts degree programme. Parents Felicity and Garry are obviously proud of their kids’ achievements and admit to working long and hard to nurture their academic prowess.
Wait, there’s more. The highly motivated twins are also into cricket, and competing in an upcoming song and dance contest. And as homeschooling prodigy Katherine herself says, “Yes, there’s nothing that I think I can’t do.”
That’s the sort of thing that gets my goat: homeschooling achievers oozing self-confidence by the truckloads.
All these fantastic stories do something to you, don’t they? Sure, there’s a vicarious thrill reading them, and you relish the fact that yes, one day your kids are going to show ‘em too. Because they are homeschoolers, and because that’s what homeschoolers regularly do: they make the headlines (for the right reasons).
That’s when you wake up with a rude thud as posterior meets terra firma. So, why aren’t our kids in the news? They don’t spell right, they don’t get their sums correct, they have problems getting out of bed before 10 a.m. In the meantime, Mum’s tearing her hair out nagging them to quit horsing around and get some work done. Compared to Katherine or Edward’s brilliance, our kids might as well be chewing on pacifiers. Good on you, Felicity and Garry! Now, if only you could look our way and do something for our boys.
One of the hardest lessons about homeschooling is coming to terms with limitations ~ ours, and our kids. Some parents after reading about the amazing feats of super moms and dads (and their super-achieving brood) find their convictions skewered by a deepening sense of incompetence. Others, after another frustrating school day, ask if they have lost the plot or missed a vital formula in the Secrets to Successful Homeschooling.
Let’s face it: homeschooling families come in all shapes and sizes, wrapped mostly in a bundle of nerves. Although redeemed and born again, many parents remain as John Cheever puts it, “ransomed to their beginnings” and it shows. We go through life, with God’s help, undoing the knotty baggage of our past piece-by-piece, one day at a time. It’s as Paul declared when he wrote, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on…toward the goal…” (Phi 3:12). Coming from a man who earlier shared about his weakness being perfected in God’s strength, his is a fitting word for a kiasu world obsessed with Number One.
Two months ago, our son Elliot had a brush with humiliating defeat. Having done extremely well in the preliminary round of a Spelling Bee organised by a leading retailer in KL we thought the tantalizing prize of a computer was certainly within his grasp. But 5 minutes into the finals a week after, in front of an audience of anxious parents and journalists, he slipped up horribly on the first word, and was immediately out of the game. Our resident Scrabble and Boggles champ made his way back to his seat holding back tears. Later when asked what he had learnt from that debacle, he attributed his loss to jitters and “over-confidence.”
Then came the family’s failure to make it to the summit of Mt Kinabalu at the end of last year. All gung-ho and raring to go, we were laid low one after the other by altitude sickness in the wee hours of the chilly morning and had to turn back.
Soon after, while sipping hot tea and nursing a bruised ego at the Laban Rata rest house 11,000 ft above sea level, I noticed our boys were in uncommonly good cheer. “Look at it this way Dad,” said Ethan, “we made it this far and it is no mean achievement, you know.” Well, that’s a positive way of looking at failure.
We are not all winners; not many of us will have great exploits to boast. Our children, bless them, may not be Katherines and Edwards. But by God’s grace, we are always more than what we began with.
By David BC Tan
Jan 22, 2003
23 December 2009
Homeschooling is Parenting
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Homeschool Profile.
Eileen Lian of Parenting Works posted an email interview with me on her website titled, Homeschooling is Parenting. The website is pretty neat, with lots of advice and tips for raising your children. Parenting Works’ tagline says it all – Where Children Come First.
More importantly, the articles on the website attempt to articulate an Asian point of view which I’m sure will appeal to readers in our part of the world. Parenting may be universal – the teaching of respect and values, nurture of one’s children, the value of hard work, the importance of discipline, undergirded by love, etc – but its practices are surely culturally diverse. Do check out Parenting Works.
23 December 2009
Throw Out Your Perfect Standards
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Guest Writer; Social awareness.
This is an excerpt from a speech given by Amy J. Delph at the 2008 EDISON Youth Achievement Awards Ceremony. Public service is a component of the award and here Amy is speaking about the need to do longer term public service projects and the benefits such projects have. Amy is the director of EDISON Enterprises, a company that specializes in programs that promote critical and creative thinking. Several homeschoolers have had stints with EDISON as well. You can find out more about these programs by calling her at 012-658-7587 or visiting the website.
A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I READ a disturbing report about events in Haiti. The report began with this line, “It was lunchtime in one of Haiti’s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. Charlene, 16 with a month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau. ”
I read further to discover that the price of food had gone up by 40%, not just in Haiti, but in many Caribbean island nations. People like Charlene make up 80% of the population of Haiti and they get by on less than $2 U.S. dollars a day. Two cups of rice (back then in January) cost .60 cents. When they cannot afford the food the poor turn to eating dirt cookies.
Food shortages and hunger are just one issue. We’ve all seen how high oil prices can reduce opportunities for education, health care and other needs for people. We also have natural disasters like cyclone Nargis and the earthquake in China. While we will always have natural disasters, poverty, environmental pollution, and other problems, the severity and frequency with which we are seeing these events take place sends a strong signal that we can no longer sit on the side lines and let others take care of the problems.
We don’t even have to go across the ocean to see the urgent calls for public service. We find them right here in our back yard. And by that I mean the extraordinary change in the political landscape of Malaysia. The results of the March 8th elections have shaken things up considerably and open opportunities for more voices to be heard and more avenues to take action. Furthermore, I believe the results have underscored an important principle of democracy and that is citizen involvement. That doesn’t mean only in political ways. Involvement in democracy includes concern for the sustainable well being of fellow human beings as well as of the environment in which we live. It includes awareness of and concern for human rights and a willingness to consider the views of others.
I believe we are in a unique time period. If we fail to promote a culture of civic involvement among both adults and our youth, then the new democratic space will close. Either the old powers will reassert themselves or new powers will gain control. We must remember that democracy requires us to be active stakeholders. We must not lose sight of the original roots of the Greek notion of government and democracy, which is citizens working together to determine the character and direction of their society. Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher wrote, “All persons alike should share in the government to the upmost.
And so I have identified 3 important reasons why we should focus on voluntary public service:
The first deals with effectiveness of longer community service projects. The other two touch on the urgent signs that tell us that we dare not neglect community involvement.
But that is probably not enough to motivate you. Many of us are already aware of these issues, but we still resist active involvement. I think American writer and political activist Paul Loeb summed this resistance perfectly when called it the “perfect standard.” The perfect standard includes: The perfect time, the perfect cause and the perfect activist.
The Perfect Time
With the “perfect time” people believe they shouldn’t begin working for social change until the time is ideal. When the children are grown, when it’s not an exam year, after I finish my studies, etc. But we must realize that there probably is never going to be a time in our lives when we are not facing some kind demand or pressure. Paul Loeb says, “Instead each of us faces a lifelong series of imperfect moments in which we must decide what to stand for.” While we wait for the ideal time to arrive, weeks, months and years pass by. Our whole lives can go by before we fine the “perfect” time to get involved.
The Perfect Cause
With this one we want something that is easy to do and we will see results quickly and there is a perfect plan of action. In other words there is no uncertainty and the cause is already a winner. It has to be in the right location and must fit our schedules perfectly. As we wait for the perfect cause we squander repeated opportunities to involve ourselves in the larger community for causes whose reasons may be imperfect and whose outcome is far from certain – in other words, causes that are real.
The Perfect Activist
For this barrier, people of all ages feel they have to have all the knowledge and all the abilities required before they can get involved. They feel they have to have absolute understanding of the situation before wading in. That may be true of the fireman who walks into the burning building, but it is not the case for lending a helping hand in your community.
We don’t need absolute knowledge to get involved; we only need to have a sincere desire to make a difference. That desire is the starting point that puts us on the road to learn. We learn as we go, we learn from mistakes, we learn from our experiences and we learn from trial and error.
Take Tara Suri. When she was 12, she accompanied her parents on a visit to their homeland of India. While she was there, she was touched by the extreme poverty she witnessed all around her. When she returned back to the States, she decided to do something about it. Tara decided to raise money for orphanages in India and the Sudan. Did she know a lot about these orphanages or special techniques for raising funds? Did she have a lot of contacts that she could mobilize to raise millions of dollars? No. Tara started with what skills and knowledge she had. Her first effort was a bake sales and recycling used soda cans. Then she got her friends involved and started a club called HOPE. Step by step she and her friends worked on this problem. She has since joined forces with another NGO to form a website called Turn your World Around were she offers encouragement and practical help to young people who want to get active in making a change in their world.
The problem with our notion of the perfect activist is that we don’t think of people like Tara Suri. We look at people like Martin Luther King Jr. at the height of his influence and we think we need to be like that. But we have to remember that even Martin Luther King didn’t know everything about civil rights leadership before he started and he made mistakes and had failures too.
We do not make things worse by getting involved; getting involved helps things get better. In fact “knowing nothing” makes us easier to be around and easier to work with. We have no ego to get in the way! We should be like Tara Suri and take action despite our fears and less-than-perfect preparation.
How do we characterize a socially active person? Another wonderful quote from Paul Loeb says, “We are people of imperfect character, acting on the basis of imperfect knowledge, for causes that may be imperfect as well.” It seems to me that Mr. Loeb’s standard is one we can all live up to.
So we come back again to the question of, “What’s next?” Although as the leader of Edison Youth Achievement Award, I have answered that question, it reminds me of a saying about leadership. “If you think you’re a leading and you look back and no one is following, then you’re just taking a walk.”
The question has to be answered by each of you. If we are able to lay down our perfect standard, we can become an advisor for EYAA, opening an opportunity for five more youths to have the chance to grow in ways they never expect, just like you heard in today’s speeches. If we lay down our perfect standards, people like Charlene Duma don’t have to go hungry. And if we lay down our perfect standards we can shape this nation’s future rather than leaving it to rot in cynicism and indifference. How will you answer this question today?
14 December 2009
Home-schooling at Desa Amal Jireh
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
Here’s another report in the STAR on Desa Amal Jireh (Desa Charity Village or DAJ) a home for underprivileged children in Broga near Semenyih. Children who did not previously have a chance at a proper education are given one. It’s commendable work and worthy of every support. Do check out the news report, and take a look at the photo and its caption:
“Classroom setting: It may be home-schooling but students at the Desa Amal Jireh Home School observe school hours and are suitably attired for studies”
While I am delighted at the good work that DAJ is doing, I cannot understand why the centre’s operators and the reporter (who should have at least put in a modicum of research) insist on calling this HOMESCHOOLING?
Surely one purpose for the acquisition of knowledge is to clarify meaning and enlarge one’s understanding. Words are important, and that’s why what they mean and how we use them have far-reaching consequences. When definitions are misapplied it does little favour for the cause of homeschool; worse, it simply confuses the public, spreads misinformation, and completely misrepresents parents who are really homeschooling by educating their own children at home.
My previous post on DAJ and ‘homeschool’ may be found here.
10 December 2009
Between a rock and a hard place
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools.
WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO SAY about the depressing state of education in the country that hasn’t already been said? Despite all kinds of reports decrying the social costs of shortsighted education policies, Malaysia’s descent down the educational ladder is still leaving families both bewildered and infuriated.
Gains in other countries have left the nation’s schools and institutions of higher learning way behind (read what one opposition leader said about Malaysia’s TIMSS 2007 ranking)while flip-flop politicians and nationalist interest groups squabble over English as a medium of instruction, affirmative action, and racial quotas. Even de facto Pakatan leader Anwar Ibrahim has been quoted saying he’s not in favour of English as a medium of instruction in schools:
“This issue has become a controversy for far too long. We consider this policy a betrayal of Bahasa Melayu as our official language. But how we do it should be decided by educationists and with consideration towards the national education policy. This includes not forcing our children to pass English as a compulsory subject in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) as this will result in many students, especially in rural areas, to fail.”
Meanwhile, the merit of a single-stream educational system is once again being touted as the magic wand to stop the rot and promote unity. That’s bitter medicine for a lot of parents. No one is holding their breath of course. But what options do parents have in Malaysia’s blighted educational landscape? Here’s an overview of some hard choices:
National schools
These are government schools that have been largely abandoned by non-Malays due in part to allegations of institutionalised racial and religious tendencies. According to a report, 93% of Malays attend national schools, 90% of Chinese attend Chinese vernacular schools, and 70% of Indians attend Tamil vernacular schools. Some 5 million Malaysians are in national schools (primary and secondary), but the absence of a significant number of non-Malay children in the classroom is telling. Race and religion notwithstanding, a lot of parents will tell you with a straight face that if national schools were any good there would be no reasons to leave.
Vernacular schools
More than 100,000 Indian children are taught in 525 Tamil schools according to 2007 figures. Many are in deplorable condition, and some classes were even held in warehouses and under trees, says Selangor state executive councillor Dr Xavier Jayakumar.
On the other hand Chinese vernacular schools are thriving and bursting at their seams. Often seen as a vanguard of Chinese culture, these schools are popular among Malaysian Chinese and an increasing number of non-Chinese too (60,000 at the last count). DAP leader Lim Kit Siang wrote in 2006 that Chinese primary school enrollment had more than doubled to 636,124 since Independence. These schools enjoy minimal government handouts but admirably, the Chinese community raises millions every year to keep their schools afloat. There is an undiminished surge in admissions to these schools due to their perceived educational excellence and discipline, contributing to a critical shortage of classrooms.
Private/International schools
Say what you will about the exorbitant costs of these elite institutions; the fact is 5000 Malaysians are currently enrolled in previously out-of-bounds International schools since admission was relaxed in 2006 (40% of places in international schools are now open to locals). At least 20 new international schools are slated to open soon much to the delight of middle-class Malaysians whose frustration with the local education system are being addressed by the promise of a superior learning environment and state-of-the-art facilities. American and British-style international schools lead the pack, offering O Levels and IB, but of late Global Indian International School has opened a campus in Kuala Lumpur.
Singapore schools
Not many people are aware that some 10,000 children cross the causeway from Johor to Singapore daily for their education. Again, parents forgo free education in national schools for higher than normal fees (school fees and biennial donations in Singapore dollars) to put their children through an English medium school in Singapore where the learning culture is perceived to be superior to Malaysia’s impoverished options.
Immigrate
Move abroad, preferably to Australia or New Zealand, get PR, or burn your passport and give your children an education and a future you never had. Not to worry, you’re in good company – over 300,000 Malaysians have moved abroad since 2008. Ostensibly for the sake of their children’s education, and most certainly because they feel in their bones their own country’s inescapable collapse and they don’t want to be there when it happens. People are voting with their feet and incredible as it may seem, the powers that be are looking the other way.
Homeschool
Now, this option does not necessarily sit well with lots of parents (or educators) although reports coming in from abroad attest to educational achievements above the national average. And there’s the rub: In Malaysia, homeschooling hasn’t been around long enough (no more than 20 years old); we’re just seeing the first generation off and there’s no available research to confirm if homeschooled kids are indeed succeeding or if it’s just spin. Admittedly educating one’s child at home will make different demands on different families and I am realistic enough to see that it won’t be practical for a lot of Malaysians at this point of the country’s development. Nevertheless, I am convinced it is a rewarding option and there’s no question of homeschooling if I have to do it all over again.
Learning Centres
This is where parents who like the idea of homeschool send their children to if they can’t (or won’t) educate their children themselves. You won’t catch me calling these centres ‘homeschool’, but who am I to contradict the vendors and operators who promote these places as such? As much as I am bugged by this misnomer, I’ll grant that these learning centres are doing families a favour.
Learning Centers are a relatively new phenomenon in Malaysia and almost all are set up by or affiliated to churches (which means they do not fall under the MOE’s jurisdiction). These centers subscribe to two well-known Christian homeschool curricula – AOP or School of Tomorrow – of which AOP ones are by far the more popular. My guess is, there must be close to a hundred of these learning centers today. As far as alternative education goes, they do fill a serious need although their performance is understandably spotty (many are staffed by well-intentioned but untrained educators).
So how do you choose? Caught between a rock and a hard place are you?
As a homeschooling parent, I know what works for our family, but I appreciate it’s not an easy decision to make. I have heard parents say how they wish they could homeschool but a) they can’t afford to have one spouse stay home, or b) they’re no good with children and couldn’t possibly teach them at home all day. Others claim that theoretically homeschooling sounds great but it’s fraught with too many uncertainties.
Once a mother told me that many homeschooling families in Malaysia were ‘failing’ – their kids in limbo, resisting discipline or instruction, with a number unable to get beyond basic arithmetic or even write a half decent essay. Where the fault lies will require another post. Writing as a homeschooling parent (I am aware of my own bias), there’s no need for homeschool to fail, and every reason why it can only succeed. But there you are – decisions, decisions, decisions. How will you choose?