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Aug 13, 2012

Advanced-sitis

Is it just me that I feel my kids are victims of "advanced-sitis" syndrome of our school education system? I feel like every thing in school is designed for the kids to be "advanced." It's always about who has advanced subjects, advanced technology, advanced facilities, advanced teacher. What happen to having the basics???

For a long time, I've been ranting, inside my head, how impractical our school education system has turned into. But I kept it because if I don't like the school system, then I should be pulling my kids out from it, not whine.

My youngest is 4 years old. When I enrolled him, I was expecting him to be in nursery, the very 1st level in pre-school. But some recent changes in our education system, which they called K-12, demanded that at his age, he should be in Kinder 1, the next level. Kinder 1 already expects the kids that they know the alphabets and numbers and maybe algebra.

During enrollment, knowing Mati's talent, I asked the school staff if they could just put him in nursery. But they reasoned out he would be delayed if he'd be in nursery. So they advised me to enroll him in some summer class or teach him during the summer time the alphabets, numbers, and how to write his name. So he could catch up with the Kinder 1 level.

Of course, the good mother in me did not do any of it. I mean, seriously, hello, it's summer vacation!

So now, Mati and I both suffered the consequence. He always has to take his reading / writing exams twice. I'd asked twice the teacher if I could downgrade Mati to nursery but they always reasoned out that he'd be delayed. I told them that I really do not care about my kid being delayed. There's such thing as catch-up. But then they assured me that he's also too "advanced" to be in the nursery; mati's quite good except that he does not know alphabets. Duh!

So after getting a LOT of notes and messages for him to practise writing alphabets at home, I finally got the message --They want ME to teach my kid the alphabet. I know mothers are supposed to be the 1st teachers of their kids, but they certainly cannot expect us to learn the 26 alphabets in a few months. I remember when I intern-ed for a pre-school back in college, one letter was taught for days.

I'd been "tutoring" him the alphabets in such a lazy manner. And, it showed that it was not effective as we still get notices and messages to study.

So Mati and I finally got into a pact -- one letter per day. But not before becoming a monster to him (the details are horrible). We will study one letter per day.
If I'd still get notice and messages to study, I would send the below chart so that the teacher would be updated about mati's "advanced" level.

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