Archive for the ‘News’ Category
4 September 2008
All I really need to know…
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
I have been on the lookout for homeschooling stories from Asia, and was quite pleased when I came across this one. The article was first published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, titled “All I really Need to Know I Learned In Homeschool”.
At 19, Michael Joshua B. Gemina has accomplished a lot more than most kids his age—or adults twice his age even.
When he was 8, he learned to play the piano and started training in Aikido. The former allowed him to perform with the prestigious Philippine Research for Instrumental Soloists Children’s Orchestra, while the latter saw him become the youngest male black belt in Asia. He also took violin lessons under National Music Competitions for Young Artists winner Gina Medina and was 14 when he began playing the drums. Now a session artist for rock star Barbie Almalbis, Michael plays regularly for Victory Christian Fellowship Ministry in Alabang.
Did we mention that he’s also on a full scholarship at De La Salle University’s College of St. Benilde, where he graduates with a degree in music production come April 2009?
[Read the whole story here]
23 July 2008
Singapore’s ‘teach less learn more’ schools
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News.
There’s a very interesting report by veteran columnist Seah Cheang Nee on the evolving education scene in Singapore. The Singapore government in a ground-breaking move has begun to introduce new teaching ideas and subjects for their students primary and secondary. It’s early days yet, but the scale of change has already taken Singaporean parents by surprise.
Dubbed the “teach less learn more strategy” schools in Singapore are beginning to balance academic and non-academic subjects by incorporating practical studies as an elective or an exam subject.
Writes Seah:
The courses range from filmmaking to designing, from IT to nutrition and cooking, and from music and the arts to professional sports, and a new environment course for children.
School dropouts, who usually end up as lowly-paid, semi-skilled workers, now see new hope in some of these courses, which can lead them towards a non-academic career.
Some may even outshine their peers in the top elite schools in courses like cooking or designing or music composing. “That could make for a level playing field for the 21st Century globalised economy.”
A new type of futuristic schools has started operation in Singapore.
Here blogs take over from blackboards. Other teaching tools are video-conferencing, tablet PCs, pod-casts, 3-D software and interactive whiteboards.
Five “Future Schools” have been selected as pioneers to use innovative teaching methods that harness info-communication.
Tech-savvy Singapore, one of Asia’s most wired nations, will have 15 of these primary and secondary high-tech schools by 2015. (More here)
What are some of these new modules that have captured the imagination of students and parents alike?
- Innovation: Design and study of robots in primary schools, 3-D animation as an O-level subject
- Food Science: Training food innovators to produce new gastronomic products
- Business: Internships for students 14 to 15 year-old with major companies such as Nestle and MacDonald to learn how to improve operations
- Arts: The first School of Arts for Secondary 1 and 2 for ballet, music, and dance.
- Environment: Practical lessons in secondary schools on green issues, water management, air quality and air pollution
The reasons for such a make-over are obvious, for not every child is academically inclined. Besides, in this day and age, success calls for a new kind of worker – tech-savvy, innovative, skilled in practical sciences, competitive, as well as creative. It certainly calls for an individual who knows how to learn, and how to keep abreast and ahead of a changing environment.
While it is pointless bemoaning how Malaysia lags behind its neighbor, there is something instructive for us homeschoolers. It is time to acknowledge as Singapore has that global changes are demanding a new kind of workforce. If we but embrace this and allow our children the opportunities to think out of the box, break the mould of conventional study options, and explore new skills, there’s no telling how far they will go.
It seems to me that by deciding to homeschool, we have taken the first steps. And now, to continue pushing the envelope…..
3 July 2006
Bully!
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Commentary; News.
Two vicious cases of school bullying have got everyone talking. Both cases -one involving boys (Kota Tinggi), and the other girls (Miri) – were recorded on phone videos and widely circulated on the internet (on YouTube too, until it was removed!)The Malaysian Psychological Association wants to propose the implementation of a bullying intervention programme developed by Dr D. Olweus. “The programme attempts to restructure the existing school environment to reduce opportunities for bullying. We have submitted our proposal to the ministry (of education),” said Malaysian Psychological Association council member Datin Dr Noran Fauziah Yaakub.
The programme has met with success in schools where it is used in Scandinavian countries as well as the US. Basically it’s all about increased supervision, more parent-teacher interaction, a curriculum of courtesy and respect, and sanctions for aggressive behaviour (which I imagine are all a given in the first place). Schools are also expected to do the following:
- Place primary responsibility for solving the problem with the adults at school rather than with parents or students.
- Project a clear moral stand against bullying.
- Include both systems-oriented and individual-oriented components.
- Set long-term and short-term goals.
- Target the entire school population, not just a few problem students.
- Make the program a permanent component of the school environment, not a temporary remedial program.
- Implement strategies that have a positive effect on students and on the school climate that go beyond the problem of bullying.
Anyway, I say go ahead and give it a shot. What piqued my interest however was the first point – we’re to expect adult teachers at school to deal with bullying. The programme assumes that if bullying occurs, very likely the parents of victim and aggressor are not informed, or do not recognize the signs. That’s when schools step in to talk to all parties involved. There’s some merit in having an outside party to take charge, but it won’t amount to anything if the student and his/her family do not also take as firm a stand as schools.
I think it all boils down to character, which in the final analysis, is best inculcated at home. Why then are parents failing in their job to instruct their kids in basic decency and respect? Why do we keep hearing about the importance of ‘socialising’ when the only social skill kids are picking up at home and school is to ‘look out for number 1’? When a cynical media in an indifferent society displaces the basis for values and virtues, we should not be surprised when our kids turn violent. We make the world what it is today.
I can almost hear you ask: what if the parents are unable or will not do their job?
16 May 2005
Social Pariahs
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: News; Socialization.
CNN has a Back to School Special which includes a write-up on homeschool. While there’s the usual snapshot of a homeschooling family, nay-sayers weigh in their opinions too. This comes as no surprise as the National Education Association (the largest teachers union in the U.S) has been among one of the most vocal critics of homeschool for years. The National Association of School Psychologists is another group that charges that homeschooling deprives kids from developing social skills. Here’s an excerpt:
“Unless we are prepared to keep our children in bubbles their entire lives, we have to give them an opportunity to have some exposure to real-world problems so they can develop coping strategies,” says Ted Feinberg, assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Feinberg argues that as cultural understanding becomes more valued, social interaction and exposure to different people and ways of viewing the world are necessary components of education.
“It’s one thing to read about it,” he says. “Much of what we learn in life is a matter of interaction. I just wonder how that takes place in a home school environment.”
In any case, as Dr Gary Knowles of the University of Toronto said after years of study on homeschoolers, “Where did we ever get the idea that 2,000 13-year-olds were the ideal people with which to socialize other 13-year-olds?” As I see it, the assumption that interaction in schools develops coping strategies is a myth. If this is true, then what is self-evident is that schools aren’t doing a good job at all. The one single common denominator in the army of disillusioned, alienated, and self-obsessed youths and adults we encounter today is the fact that they have been to school.
David Guterson, the best-selling author (Snow Falling on Cedars) and homeschooling parent wrote in Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense that we need to look at society and question if schools are preventing it from unravelling or if it is a contributing factor.
Going further, Guterson argues that there is a world of difference between social health and financial success, between sound relationships and economic necessities:
“Those who assert that we are condemned to social struggle in order for our economic system to work assert by extension that we must live unhealthy lives. Schools should not be arranged so as to foment a perpetual and relentless social strife merely to prepare people to perpetuate the same arrangement when, one day, they go to work in the world. On the contrary, we should want our schools to aspire to something better.”
On the other hand research on homeschoolers turned adults since the 1990s suggest that being educated at home have not turned anyone into a social pariah. Instead, they tend to be entrepreneurial, professional, and independent, with a healthy connection with their families. What is also evident from research is that teenage homeschoolers are not angst driven nor do they demonstrate a desire to isolate themselves from their parents.
Homeschool is changing the paradigm in education. It may seem so obvious now, but it wasn’t very long ago that schooling was thought to equal education, or that schools are the sole repository of knowledge (okay, there are still many who hold this view). Above all, more and more families are now educating their kids at home not just because they see schools as a fading behemoth (which it is), but for reason of lifestyle too. Homeschool presents the best option for the life we choose, the values we cherish, and the goals we’re aiming at.
For additional stories, visit the following links:
First Wave Of Homeschoolers Come Of Age
Patricia Lines (senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and former researcher for the U.S. Department of Education) writes about the progress homeschooling has made in the U.S:
Homeschooling Comes Of Age