Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
16 December 2008
HOMESCHOOLERS DINNER
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
MALHEN’S KV Soon and I recently met to discuss holding our second
Homeschool Networking event. Some of you might remember what fun we
had all those years ago at Lakeview Club. Well, we decided it’s about
time to hold the second. Here’s the official announcement:
————————————————–
HOMESCHOOLERS DINNER GET-TOGETHER
==============================
January 10, 2009 is the day you won’t want to miss. The time has come
for homeschoolers around the country to reaffirm homeschooling as a
legitimate lifestyle choice for living and learning.
Let’s come together to celebrate freedom, individuality, and learning
diversity. Let’s come together to affirm family and community, and
acknowledge the unique talents of our young, meet other homeschooling
families, listen to inspiring testimonies, enjoy live performances,
make new friends, and strengthen our faith in learning beyond schooling!
We are extending this invitation to everyone who’s got an interest in
homeschool, whether they are affiliated to MALHEN, HOMEFRONTIER,
MALAYSIAN HOMESCHOOLERS UNITE,etc. Invitations will be extended to
some VIPs and academics, and we will keep you informed as the date
draws nearer.
Date: January 10, 2009
Time: 6.00pm-9.00pm
Venue: Lakeview Club (Portabelo), Subang Jaya
Admission & buffet:
RM 45.00 (Adults)
RM 15 (Children 12 and below)
Closing date: 25th December 2008
TENTATIVE PROGRAMME
================
6.00 - 6.30pm: Arrival of Guests
6.30pm : Welcome by David Tan & K V Soon
6.45pm : Sharing session
7.15pm : Dinner Begins
9.30pm : Dinner ends
Dinner Performances: HS Show & Tell
Sharing by homeschooling students and families be it a song, an
instrumental piece, magic show, a testimony, or a slide show.
Just tell us and we will give you a slot, email to
beyond.schooling@gmail.com
You can also email me at dbctan@gmail.com
If you’re on Facebook, you can also go to Home’s Kool to sign up.
Thank you and happy holidays!
26 November 2008
What’s happening to our children?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
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.
13 November 2008
Am I qualified to teach?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
I was quite surprised to read that the Education Ministry is once again reviewing the Education Act 1996. It appears there is a bill that requires all teachers in educational institutions (kindergartens to colleges) to be registered with the education department before they can teach anyone. That doesn’t sound too encouraging to homeschooling parents who are already nervous about dealing with mandatory education for primary kids. It does make you wonder what sort of repercussions it will have on parents who educate their own children at home. The new amendment isn’t law yet, but MP for Sungei Siput, Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, has raised it in Parliament in August 25, 2008. You can read it here.
Interestingly, homeschooling mom Momie Tullotes in an article titled Can a Parent Be a Homeschool Teacher Without a Degree, writes that while a teaching degree may be helpful, it is not necessary. What a homeschooling parent needs is determination and dedication. Read her piece here.
Beyond legal issues, parents often wonder if they are qualified to teach their own children. To be qualified means so many things! Common fears cited include a poor grasp of English, lack of education, and an inability to discipline one’s own children. It is unfortunate that many parents in Malaysia feel that homeschooling can only be conducted in English. This is certainly not true. HSLDA has links to homeschooling groups in Taiwan and I am pretty sure a simple search will lead any seeker to more links.
Apart from the issue of language, I can understand the anxiety at the very thought of educating one’s children. Here’s an article I came across that addresses this question: “Am I really qualified to teach my own children?” The writer Richard J. Prystowsky spells out what he sees as crucial links in parent-child teaching. He says:
My intention here is to help parents—especially those new to and those thinking about homeschooling—who are struggling with the questions of whether or not they really are both capable of teaching and qualified to teach their own and whether or not they are (or would be) acting responsibly by homeschooling their children. To this end, I offer a discussion of the following personal traits, which, in my nearly twenty years of college teaching, I have come to see as being essential for anyone to possess who desires to be a good teacher, that person’s profound knowledge of her subject matter or in-depth training in teaching notwithstanding. (Note: one’s being “certified” to teach is not synonymous with one’s being “qualified” to teach.) My greatest mentors possessed these traits, although, to the best of my knowledge, none had taken a single course in educational theory or methods. If you yourself have or are striving to have all of these traits (the following list is not meant to be exhaustive), then you are probably fit to teach your own. On the other hand, if you lack and have no interest in attaining them, then perhaps you ought not teach either your own or anyone else’s children. (Read the rest here)
His is a helpful list (non-exhaustive, as he writes), but again, the stress is on desire and determination. Hmm. Thousands upon thousands of parents who have homeschooled their children couldn’t have agreed more.
5 November 2008
Is college overrated?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
Not a day passes without someone asking, “So, what about college?” Homeschoolers like everyone else wonder if at the end of their journey they each have what it takes to enter college. Now here’s an article by Charles Murray of the Wall Street Journal who wonders whether we’re making too much of college certification and degrees:
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”
You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that’s the system we have in place.
Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different purposes.
Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.
The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree. [Read more]
It was also interesting to read another opinion piece by Marty Nemko that pretty much says that a Bachelor’s degree is way overrated. His argument is not so much the value of the degree, but whether it means anything when studies repeatedly show how little undergraduates actually learn in college:
College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below “proficient” levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.
Unbelievably, according to the Spellings Report, which was released in 2006 by a federal commission that examined the future of American higher education, things are getting even worse: “Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined. … According to the most recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, for instance, the percentage of college graduates deemed proficient in prose literacy has actually declined from 40 to 31 percent in the past decade. … Employers report repeatedly that many new graduates they hire are not prepared to work, lacking the critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today’s workplaces.” [Read more]
4 September 2008
All I really need to know…
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
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]
1 September 2008
Do schools kill creativity?
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
If you have not visited the TED website before, please do. TED means Technology, Entertainment, Design - an annual conference that attempts to provoke and inspire by bringing together some of the world’s most influential thinkers and performers. There’s a lot that’s fascinating, and certainly, a lot more that won’t necessarily go down well with everyone. But there’s so much that are provocative in the best ways.
Here’s a talk by Sir Ken Robinson that’s simply titled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Now with a title like this, you wonder if there’s something that might resonate with homeschoolers.
Sir Ken argues that we’re living in a world where our definition of intelligence has shifted, and where paper degrees do not mean as much as they used to. He tells his audience that intelligence is (a) diverse - multi-facetted and varied, (b) dynamic - interactive, and (c) distinct - creative (“Creativity is having original ideas that have value”). And creativity is sadly neglected in our schools today, to the detriment of society. Check out Sir Ken.
23 July 2008
Singapore’s ‘teach less learn more’ schools
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
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…..
18 June 2008
20 reasons to homeschool
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
I found this while I was surfing. Struck me that although Malaysian homeschoolers are a world away, the sentiments apply. Tells you what a global phenomenon homeschooling is and how similar we all are in so many ways! Click to enlarge view.
26 May 2008
Beginning homeschool
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
How do you make kids sit down to learn at home? How do parents teach the higher grades? Won’t homeschoolers miss out on socialization? Will it affect their character and social skills? What if I start homeschooling my child after primary school?
Homeschoolers are asked these questions all the time.
I wish I could offer a cut-and-dried response to these common queries put to homeschoolers. There isn’t (simply because every home is different) although it’s probably safe to say that there are some commonalities across the board. Also, there are no perfect situations, only opportunities. Parents who educate their own children at home hope and pray their kids will turn out well. The truth is the journey has only just begun. Our homeschooling kids are at different points and milestones along the way, and who they are or what they will become is just unfolding. So we’re all a work-in-progress -parents as well as their children - counted as `saints’ by our heavenly Father, yet saints in the making.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about homeschool is that it is schooling’ that is carried out at home. The image therefore, is of a conventional classroom now scaled down but imported or adapted to the living room or kitchen table. Some parents have the idea that the one-on-one situation with mom as tutor and junior as student is an attractive proposition because, a) there’s going to be a lot of attention given to the student b) there’s going to be a lot more Junior will absorb in the personal tutoring process, and c) obviously, the potential for academic excellence is going to be greatly advanced.
Speaking as a former teen, that’s as much fun as a torture chamber. Why bother with homeschool then? Might as well stay in a conventional school.
It is possible that some families may homeschool this way (to each his/her own I say) but that’s not how I understand homeschooling to be, nor is this how it is practiced in the homes of most if not all homeschoolers I know. My own home would certainly be dismissed as a slacker’s paradise; parents who imagine homeschools to be a miniature academe peopled by diligent children sitting ramrod at their desks studying, will be sorely disappointed if they drop in our home for a visit!
In the first place, homeschooling is more than academic learning or formal scheduled study. It is providing a child a secure home to realize her potential holistically. It is equipping her for self-directed learning, training her to be resourceful and independent.
Seen this way, the homeschooling parent does not consider herself as a tutor but a facilitator. We’re seeking a balance. Life itself is one big classroom or a laboratory for creativity, discovery, a safe place for learning from one’s mistakes. Conventional schools with their over-emphasis on exams and books and tuition offer little time or space for self-discovery and imagination. The difference between a happy pre-school kid of 4 years and an anxious, bored, schooled kid of 7 years is staggering. Which is tragic considering how many great minds, inventors, and writers, owe their greatness not to hours of mugging but to playing and tinkering about while in their formative years as young children.
Certainly there are sit-down periods, but informal learning constitutes a significant part of a homeschooler’s education. Eventually the role of parents as their child’s facilitator is diminished until personal involvement is no longer necessary or a primary concern. Inculcating this attitude and outlook in a child when she is younger pays off when she grows older. Parents will quickly find that their initial fear of being unable to teach the ‘hard’ subjects becomes irrelevant because the homeschooled child will and often does surpass her tutor.
Taking a child out of school at 13 years to homeschool is not uncommon, but some parents admit to struggling with weaning the teen from an entrenched and usually peer-dependent lifestyle. A lot of families do succeed at ‘deschooling’ a child for home education but it entails more effort since you’re developing a new circle of friends at the same time as picking up a new learning culture.
Then there is the whole issue of learning styles and gender. Different children learn differently according to Howard Gardner’s (among others) multiple intelligences theory (Frames of Mind, 1983). Again, boys are psychologically and developmentally different from girls. Given these variables, parents do their children a great disservice when their idea of education is one-size-fits-all. It isn’t and it doesn’t. The good thing about homeschool is, a child gets to learn at her own pace and in her own style.
It should become clear by now that homeschooling is a radically different way of looking at learning. I often tell friends it is a whole new lifestyle requiring some drastic makeover in my expectations and value system. But what about socialization, people ask? Simple observation confirms that socialization in all its negative modes is precisely why our present schools and society are having so many problems. The right question ought to be, what kind of socialization do I want?
Homeschooling promotes positive socialization. It’s insulation (as opposed to isolation) during a child’s most impressionable years. And contrary to popular myths about homeschool, it takes place in a real world instead of the artificial one that is merely made up of children of the same age. In that unreal walled–up world called ‘school’ with its sterile classrooms, children wear the same uniform, read the same books, pick up the same bad habits and prejudices, conditioned by a system that rates their self-worth against exam marks, and discourages anything but conformity. Urgh. Then there’s that persistent interrupting bell that only Pavlov’s dog could love!
While this is going on, our homeschooling kids are reading a variety of books, getting involved with community service, interacting with people of different ages, building rafts and swimming in the river, traveling, hiking up Maxwell Hill by themselves, helping in the zoo, and participating in debates and mock trials. Sure, we families have to do it ourselves to make all this happen. But that’s where the pleasure lies! Above all as parents we have the time to provide a steadying influence, adult modeling, moderating and interpreting the challenges of life against an agenda set by other parties, institutions, and vested interests.
Finally, I wish I could conclude that homeschool is the answer to our educational and institutional ills. It is not. And it will not be for everybody. It may be that other families and children are doing well following conventional routes – national schools or private, international schools or learning centers.
But those of us who have chosen to educate our children at home believe it is the better way. It is more worthwhile embracing a radical alternative that matches the values we hold - including our love for God - which we hope to pass on to our children. We do this in the process of equipping them with skills to engage the world with more than paper credentials. It appears research is on our side, because homeschoolers are by and large academically above the national average, assimilate well into society, and are unafraid to march to the beat of a different drum.
Homeschool is a long way from becoming mainstream in Malaysia. But things are changing, and opportunities for tertiary education are opening up. Technology and community resources are making education at home more and more viable and accessible. So. Should you homeschool? Can you homeschool? The question our family would ask is, why won’t you?
By David BC Tan
3 August 2006
Raft play
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Uncategorized.
While other kids were mugging away in arid classrooms homeschoolers had themselves an adventure of sorts at the Lentang Recreational Forest off Karak Highway. It was a nice and breezy day and we had the river all to ourselves. That would have been impossible if it were the weekend where day trippers and gawkers would have put paid our little experiment. A ranger did stop by to ask what we were doing seeing the amount of bamboo trunks we hauled up to the riverbank.
The object of the excursion was a raft-building expedition that was part of the group’s project. Nothing fancy you know, just get the bamboo raft to float, and that’s it, they told me. Taking care of the project logistics was part of their project as well, and I thought they pretty much acquitted themselves. Lots of bamboo, lots of tools, lots of bread and dogs - marshmallow even!- way too much food too, lots of spunk. The kids were supposed to do all the work but some of us couldn’t help but lend a hand, or more than just a hand - you know moms and dads. Me, I put on my best imitation of the invisible man. Nevertheless we all had a really good time. Now, the kids will have to figure out if they did good.
