Archive for the ‘News’ Category
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.
24 May 2009
A Quiet Revolution
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
The picture you’re looking at is a homeschool. Or more correctly, it’s a co-op class. Parents share resources, maybe hire tutors, and teach a group of homeschoolers a few times per week utilizing an agreed curriculum.
Tulsa World has an interesting report on the growing phenomenon that is homeschool as it takes place at home or in a co-op situation. Titled Homeschool: A Quiet Revolution, it’s a reflection of the times as more and more parents assert their right to educate their own children away from state regulation.
One of the things that come out clearly is that homeschool is a revolution that isn’t content to stay quiet these days. It remains somewhat controversial, and staying independent does not come without a fight in some states in the US as this report tells it.
The other thing that caught my attention is the issue of homeschool failures. Here’s what state senator Jim Wilson says:
“I’ll stipulate that nine out of 10 people who say they’re home-schooling are really doing it, and they’re doing a great job of it. I’ll stipulate that all these kids are going to grow up to be National Merit scholars, OK? All of them. Fine.
“That still leaves thousands of children being abused, because that’s what I think it is when you’re not giving a child an education — it’s child abuse. And I’m not going to just stand by and watch it happen.” [More]
R-ight. So what do state officials have to say about those who turn out bad after being schooled the conventional way, eh? I’ll bet there are thousands of them out there too. The fact is, no system is faultless; in every human enterprise there will always be instances of nonperformance and breakdowns. As much as parents don’t wish for it, things happen that unfortunately “gives a bad name to homeschool,” as some are wont to say.
This is really a fascinating report, balanced, and informative, highlighting the shape of home education as it is practiced today – without skirting concerns that homeschoolers should not be afraid to face up. There are interviews with real homeschoolers and responses from across the fence that say they do not oppose homeschooling per se, but that it needs to be regulated simply because there are kids who do fall between the cracks, or ‘child abuse.’
Go ahead and read it, and see if there’s something in it for homeschoolers in Malaysia.
9 May 2009
What half-decent parents do
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News; schooling.
Brit journalist Rod Liddle who writes for The Spectator thinks homeschooling is a farce and that we should leave teaching to the professionals. Titled, Who is right about homeschooling? you can read it here. Hmm. But I found a reply by one Amanda Craig to Liddle’s rather cynical take on homeschool (or ‘truancy’ as he prefers to call it). I’m reproducing her response here:
From Amanda Craig
Sir: I was interested in Rod Liddle’s article ‘Who is right about home schooling?’ (23 September) because I too have children at top private schools and have noticed large gaps in their general knowledge thanks to the detestable National Curriculum.
However, the solution is quite simple and does not necessitate removing them from their friends.
Stick a map of the world and a map of Britain up where they have meals, and they will learn geography. Make a time-line with them, and they will learn history. Listen to Radio Three in the car if you do a school run, and they will learn more about classical music than in a hundred music lessons.
Teach them, formally, how to draw. Watch familiar DVDs in foreign languages. Walk with them for at least half an hour every day, and talk to them about anything under the sun, including politics. Above all, keep reading to them every night, until they can read Jane Austen. It will only take an hour out of each day at most, is a total pleasure, and makes a huge difference to a child’s knowledge and self-confidence.
I went to a progressive boarding school where, as an academic pupil, I learnt almost nothing worth knowing. However, I got into Cambridge because I had a mother who followed these principles. All half-decent parents home-educate their children, in effect, until children learn to educate themselves.
Amanda Craig London NW1
20 April 2009
My home, my school
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
The Star ran a story on homeschool in their education supplement Sunday entitled, My Home, My School. Check it out and see what you think.
They ran these HUGE photos that sort of threw us off balance for awhile. The front photo with Sook Ching was rather, uhm, posy, because the reporter wanted a pix that showed a ‘typical’ homeschool. Tried telling her the pose was unnecessary and so untypical, but she insisted. Also, Sook Ching was a little peeved that the reporter spelled her name wrong (it’s not ‘Sook Chin’).
It’s not the first time that we’ve been interviewed, but this time you hear voices from kids who were homeschooled, and then got back into the mainstream, and then back again. Well. Then there’s our friend Jane whose family has conventionally schooled kids and one who’s homeschooled. And there’s Hafizah of Malaysia Homeschool Unite too. This spunky young mother of 4 is a strong advocate of homeschool – may her tribe increase! – and you can visit her blog here.
If I have any reservations, it’s the statement by the head of a private school that “school is still the best place to bring up a child.” But of course she had to say that, being a teacher. I’ll respond to that in another post.
15 April 2009
German family flees to US to homeschool
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
In Germany, a classically trained pianist named Uwe Romeike sold his grand pianos to move to the US in order to escape prosecution by German authorities. Romeike (roh-MY’-kee), his wife and their 5 children had defied the state’s Ministry of Education by homeschooling instead of submitting to mandatory education laws of the country.
Now isn’t this an undeniably interesting bit of news for homeschoolers anywhere (but particularly in Malaysia where compulsory education applies throughout 6 years of primary schooling) who are suspicious of state control. Families who wonder about the state of education in this country should pay attention to what German authorities are saying how schools are to perpetuate a “shared vision” of the German state. A similar mindset persist in Malaysia today.
Romeike took his three oldest children out of school in Bietigheim-Bissingen in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in 2006.
His oldest child, Daniel, had a health textbook that used slang terms to describe sexual relations _ including the German equivalent of the “F-word.” Other schoolbooks taught disrespect of authority figures and had images and tales about the occult, that included vampires and witches, Romeike said.
“It’s really different in public schools today than when I was in public school,” Romeike said. “They (the state) believe children must be socialized and all kids must grow up the same and act the same, otherwise they wouldn’t fit in society.”
German state constitutions require that children attend school. Parents who don’t comply face punishment ranging from fines to prison time. Germany’s highest appellate court ruled in November 2007 that, in severe cases, social services officials could remove children from their parents’ care.
Not long after the Romeikes removed their children from school in September 2006, the principal talked to the parents about their concerns but urged them to send their children back to class. A letter from town mayor said the couple would be fined 30 euros per child each day they weren’t in school. When the Romeikes didn’t comply, police went to the home the following month.
Susanne Neib, spokeswoman for Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Ministry of Education, Youth Affairs and Sports, said that when authorities learn of cases like the Romeikes, they visit the home to explain the benefits of public school.
She said the state tries to intervene against homeschooling very rarely, though she declined to estimate how often such cases arise.
The Romeikes went before a German district judge in 2007 to defend their homeschooling but lost, and higher courts refused to look at the case.
Donnelly’s group helped the family move last August to Morristown, where the Romeikes say numerous other families homeschool their children.
Meyler said the U.S. is more tolerant of homeschooling because of religion’s prominence in the country’s founding. Germany is more concerned about educating students equally, she said.
“The idea is homeschooling might lead to the emergence of separate societies that would not share the same vision of the (German) state,” Meyler said. [Read the rest here]
The idea that ‘unity is uniformity’ is dreadful beyond thought. When rulers cannot inspire, they indoctrinate. I say, if I were charged and persecuted for homeschooling my kids in Malaysia, do you think the US of A will take us all in?
2 April 2009
Erin the dictionary evangelist
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
What a fascinating story! I’ve just come across a writeup about lexicographer Erin Mckean’s brainchild that could effectively change our views about dictionaries. Mckean has embarked on an ambitious project to list every printed word online. She calls it Wordnik and it’s on beta right now. It’s not as pretty as I wish it were (compared to other online dictionaries) but you can sign up now to use it. “Ideally my goal is, before I die, to have some information about every word that’s ever been used in print,” she says. You can read the Christian Science Monitor story here.
As someone who uses online dictionaries a fair bit (yes, the voluminous dead tree editions that were trusty companions in years past are sitting on the shelf), I look forward to see how it’s going to measure up. The ones that I turn to most frequently are freedictionary and merriam-webster. Two features I look for in an online dictionary woud be audio streaming (so I can hear how a word is pronounced) and usage (so I know how a word is used). Freedictionary has a smart looking website that’s enough to keep you coming back if you love words, so I guess Wordnik has got to look better besides laying claim to having the largest number of words in one place (4 billion!).
Merriam-Webster on the other hand has a very practical interface for ordinary visitors. If you want more, youll have to pay a subscription. Now, I can understand why, but it’s a turn-off all the same.
Back to Erin Mckean. If you want to know more about this soft-spoken ‘dictionary evangelist’ as she has been called, check out Wikipedia. You can hear her talk about redefining dictionaries on TED. She’s actually a fun presenter who defies your idea about bookworms, (she actually referred to ‘steampunk’!). But uhm, the dress – she’s got to ditch that. Otherwise, what infectious passion she has!
23 March 2009
Homeschool interviews on radio
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News; Q & A.
I should have posted this earlier, but better late than never as they say! If you want to catch BFM 89.9 homeschool interview series, here are the details:
KV Soon & Wai Leng (Family Place): About Homeschooling
David & Sook Ching Tan (Homefrontier): A personal account of homeschooling
Chong Wai Leng (Family Place) & Dr Hasnah Toran (Faculty of Education, UKM): Homeschooling children with special needs
25 February 2009
A student’s nightmare
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
Everyone’s got a tale about the horrors of our Malaysian education system. Well, how about one from China? Asia Sentinel carried a translated and slightly abridged version of a Chinese student’s nightmare as a third-year senior high in Anhui Province. Tell me if it sounds familiar:
Nobody thinks anything of me. They all look down on me. I know this is a result of my father’s bad-mouthing me. During the summer vacation, I spend all my time helping out with household chores, and he just tells people that I am a slacker. All he cares about is that I get good grades. He used to beat me to make me see his point. Now he uses pressure tactics.
Just on the eve of the high school entrance examination, my father said something that I will never forget for as long as I live. He told me that if I could not get into (a certain high school that was supposed to be the best), I might as well kill myself. I ran into my room with tear-filled eyes – does my getting into a good high school mean more to him than my existence?
After I reached senior high, I have been suffering all kinds of ill health. This school term I have suffered two attacks of severe headache, each lasting for a couple of weeks. The doctor says that it’s caused by too much stress.
My father and my teacher only want good grades from me. But nobody ever cares about how I feel. My class mistress is always on the phone talking to my father to apply pressure on me. Every time I try to speak the truth, she looks untrusting and disdainful. All she can see is that my grades are slipping.
It’s amazing how universal the pain caused by schools. This one almost reads like a lament of a Malaysian student. You can read the whole sad story headlined, A High School Student’s Nightmare here.
15 January 2009
How the web is changing education…
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
Many parents have good reasons to fear technology. Those of us who have teens glued perpetually to the computer screen know the daily tussles that go on at home. Homeschoolers are not shielded of course, and learning how to use technology instead of being abused by it is a continuing struggle.
However here’s an interesting report on how schools are learning to live with technology and even channeling it to greater benefit. What’s happening is educators are coming to terms with the power of technology and are harnessing it to teach a generation of connected kids.
Web 2.0 technologies in particular have found a receptive audience among educators. Many use blogs to share ideas on teaching and technology, some of which might surprise students.
One idea in the teacher blogosphere: In the age of podcasts, kill off the classroom lecture, or at least rely on it less.
Why fill classroom time with passive listening in a chemistry class if it could be better used for practice and interaction? Lectures can be listened to at home as a podcast.
In response to another blogger’s post on the topic, Pennsylvania teacher Louise Maine suggests: “Students can listen to it as many times as needed, make notes of questions to ask in class, and maintain for a reference. We can require notes to be shown for evidence of work having been done.”
Shifting attitudes among teachers in recent years have been observed by others.
“There is a growing perception that student communication and online collaboration are important 21st-century skills,” says Jeff Patterson, president of Gaggle.net, a company offering safe email for students.
His company got off to a slow start after launching in late 1999. “Schools and teachers were just not ready for email and online communication tools,” says Patterson.
But now Gaggle.net manages nearly 2 million email accounts, offers student blogs, and plans to release more online collaboration tools. A seventh-grade science teacher in Indiana, Jeff Peterson, says students at his school use Gaggle to collaborate and manage files, “skills they will need to use in the workplace or in college.” [More here]
What this story tells me is, we’re raising kids in a whole new world. You either make peace with it, or find a hole beyond the farthest reaches of civilisation, dig in, and hold out (if you can). For homeschoolers, technology is really another big reason why educating one’s own child at home makes good sense. Wisely utilised, a connected homeschool beats a conventional school, ye olde brick and mortar set-up that has yet to make a paradigm shift (at least in Malaysia, it hasn’t).
Also, after reading this CNN report, you might want to check out some of the mentioned links. Fascinating! Check out….
Read Write Think- You find FREE resources and lessons plans for language arts and reading
SpellingCity.com – An online spelling programme that makes spelling fun while increasing a child’s vocab
Edutopia.org – A George Lucas educational foundation project (yep, Mr Star Wars himself) which discusses new developments in public school and what educators are doing to advance literacy
Thinkfinity.org – resources for parents, educators and students – from homework help to interactive games
Okay, enough for now. For more, let your fingers do the walking.
26 November 2008
What’s happening to our children?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
It’s difficult not to feel anything when you read news like this. This report first appeared in the NST recently. So who’s to blame? Society? School? Parents? The system?
KUALA LUMPUR: Four children go missing every day. One in three children has mental health problems.
One in 11 children scored straight As in their Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah this year.
These figures and the growing legion of obese children, with rising cases of Type 2 diabetes, high-blood pressure and high cholesterol level, have got experts wondering whether Malaysians have got their priorities right — focusing on educational excellence to the detriment of the children’s safety and health.
They are questioning if the misplaced focus could be the cause of the woes facing children.
The medical profession has blamed parents’ indulgence for the growing number of obese children and health problems such as diabetes, high-blood pressure and high cholesterol level.
Sri Murugan Centre director and founder Datuk Dr M. Thambirajah said everything began with the family unit.
He said in the past, teachers took it upon themselves to play the dual role of educator and parent.
“But today, because of the workload and pressure to perform, they can no longer play the dual role. It is unfair to expect that from them.”
Thambirajah said children from middle-class families faced competition every day in examinations, piano lessons, art classes and others. He said these children faced stress.
Human Dynamic child counsellor Wong Yee Men agreed that children were stressed out these days, but disagreed that this problem was confined to middle-class families.
“Today, both parents have their own careers. Children want their parents to spend time with them, period.”
Wong said she had seen an increase in referral cases from parents, teachers and counsellors for children with behavioural problems, learning difficulties or even emotional blockages.
“I feel the root problem lies with the parents.”
Wong said parents often brought back their “baggage” from work and this would have an adverse impact on the child’s life.
“For example, because of a bad day at work, the parent could have snapped at the child over a simple matter like watching television. This will stress out the child.”
Children’s safety has also become a crucial issue.
With more than 8,000 children reported missing over the last five years and more than 500 in the first six months of this year, experts are wringing their hands on what can be done.
Even the missing children alert system remains just a proposal.
Health-wise, our children are not doing too good, either.
Children as young as 7 are developing Type 2 diabetes as a result of their couch-potato lifestyle and high-calorie food.
Hospital Putrajaya, the referral hospital for diabetes cases in the country, has been recording an “alarming” increase in the number of cases.
Hospital Putrajaya paediatrics department head Dr Fuziah Md Zain said children with a propensity for Type 2 diabetes were usually the youngest in the family.
“We believe that because the youngest child is usually the pet in the family, parents give in to their demands for high-calorie food.”
The latest National Health and Morbidity Study showed that 20 per cent of children and teenagers in Malaysia have mental ailments.
The figure was 13 per cent in 1996.
Gleneagles Medical Centre Penang consultant psychiatrist Dr Zasmani Shafiee, during a Family Day gathering last month, said some 130,000 Malaysian children and adolescents suffered mental illnesses.
Selayang Hospital saw a 300 per cent increase in the number of children seeking psychiatric help in the past four years.
HELP University College’s developmental and counselling psychologist Dr Brendan J. Gomez said depression, stress, violence and suicide were on the rise among young people.
“It is a really worrying trend, and we want to try and address that problem right now.”
Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Faculty of Medicine consultant psychiatrist Associate Professor Dr Osman Chik Bakar disagreed that parents should be blamed for the malaise.
“Genetically, children are not the same, so parents need to approach their children by how they respond. Sometimes, a child can respond just by communicating with the parents.
“Other times, a more forceful approach is needed.”
He said other factors could also contribute to stress experienced by children such as influence from peers, media and Internet.
“We can’t protect our children from everything.
“After all, we live in very challenging times where everything is made available to them.”
National Union of the Teaching Profession secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng said parents could control and monitor younger children but it was not that easy with older ones.
“Parents should control their children but just how much can they control them?
“Cyber cafes, for example, are like a magnet for children.
“If the attraction is too great, how much can the parents control their children?”
Lok said the authorities should not allow cyber cafes to operate near schools and should stop schoolchildren from entering them.
“If it is difficult for the child to enter the cyber cafe, I think he or she will have no choice but to go home.”
Women’s Aid Organisation executive director Ivy Josiah said it was insensitive to place the blame on parents alone, as keeping a child safe was the responsibility of the whole community.
She said the focus should not be on parents but on creating a safer environment for children.
