The father had, coped with the changes in the education systems currently very well, by allowing his own two children to develop freely, translated…
The current system of education is like a mass production line, whether it be undergraduate, graduate, even to middle and as young as elementary school, every child, upon entering into school, gets a label, like those canned foods: you studied at such-and-such academy, he’s a gifted and talented student from so-and-so university. For their own vanities, or for the sake of getting that spot in the workforce for their young, as parents, we’d done everything possible, from when the kids were too young, we’d started, sending them to those highly acclaimed academies: spent a ton of money, buying the suites, so our kids can be in the school zones of those great schools, to help them create a colorful résumé of their afterschool, extracurricular activities, filled up our kids’ normal lives with an assortment of activities………if you exert the above behaviors, you may have had the “Parents’ Mass Hysteria”. This sort of collective anxiety, had made me recall how from before, when a certain brand of sneakers had a limited edition product, that everybody lined up for, and in the process of lining up, fights broke out, and people got trampled on, walked over too.
The purpose of education is not in creating the exact same products, instead, education should focus more on morality, the cultivation of abilities, and creative thinking and problem solving processes. If the raw materials are identical to begin with, then maybe, the production line method would work; but, humans are born different compared to one another, and so, the production line method of education won’t work. And, if you’d still gone forth with the belief of “one-size fits all”, then, you may push your own children into the molds that didn’t fit them to begin with, and killed off their areas of interests and disregarded what they may have originally been good at to start with. Growing up, I’d rolled around in my first-choices of schools, but after I’d started working in theatre, I’d realized, that everything I’d learned, were only the theoretical, I couldn’t apply the knowledge in real life, and so, for my two children, I’d carried this belief in teaching them: having a viable skill is the most important thing of all. And, currently, I couldn’t tell which direction they will be developing toward yet, but I firmly believe, that getting them into the various fields of interests, will help them, find a direction which they will be, happy, setting goals in that realm for themselves to achieve.
not my photograph…
Because of work, I’d often needed the computer, but I’d held firm to the beliefs, that my kids don’t get into contact with high-tech products before they’re in the third grades. And my wife, she’d taken the kids into the libraries since they were very young, and they’d carried home, two dozens of children’s books at a time, and, as they got older, the contents of their reading materials went from the picture books to the novels, sciences, detective novels, literary works………the children absorb the information through reading very quickly, and we’re in awe, at the speed to which they’re processing the information that come into their possessions.
As my older girl made a grade of over ninety on a Chinese exam once, my wife asked me if it was time, to buy the practice tests? I’d told her, that the abilities in language is definitely not from how many test questions you get correct. And after discussing the matter, we’d decided, to keep on using reading materials, to help our children improve their verbal abilities, and not go with the flows of the schools’ examinations. When my son was just nine, he’d started reading the original texts of The Three Kingdoms, I’d asked him, “Can you understand The Three Kingdoms and The Outlaws?”, he’d replied, “Some, I can’t really understand, but I’m intrigued by the stories in these books, it made me want to read it some more.”
and this, would be how the mind processes things!
And now, my two children are in the first year of high school and middle school, they’d never been in a cram school ever, never had tutors, and the problems they couldn’t solve, and needed my help can be counted on one hand too, and, they’d gotten into their middle school years without any difficulties. Other than rushing in their homework assignments at the last minute, I’d never seen them needing that last minute cram session for their tests, and what’s amazing was, they’d made high marks on their exams at school, and are always among the top scorers on the exams. But, after my daughter went to the high school of the University of Education, her first sectional exam, she’d gotten to the eight hundredth place, and she’d gotten a firsthand knowledge of how you sow causes what you reap, and ever since, she’d improved on average, two hundred placements ahead on every one of her sectional exams (hopefully, she can keep up with this); without the cram school sessions, private tutors, she was into the comic club at school, loved board games, and just bought her first sewing machine, in preparation for her first costume contest………I believe, that so long as she’d wanted to improve herself, and she has goals to work towards, nobody can stop her from her dreams.
And this year, on the national examinations, nobody scored a perfect school from the schools, a lot of parents are getting worried over this, even the teachers are getting, agitated too. As the lab rat parents of the new education reforms, we are, in the same boat of the whirlpool of anxieties, I want to remind everybody of this simple, but hard to put into work rule: motive is the determinant of the result of learning, and the cramming methods is destined to bring about failures.
In the end, I want to share with you all, something from my memories: a little five-year-old girl is about to enter into her kindergarten years, back then, “Harry Potter” was the thing, in order to help her like school, the father took her hand as they approached the school, and pointed toward the campus, then said to her, “Look, we’re at Hogwarts! Where you will study, for the next six years!”
And so, this father has a VERY open attitude on how his own children choose to learn, he’d learned not to push them to excel in the academics, because he realized, that there are more important things than making the good grades, and, he’d allowed his own two children to develop as their interests take them, and, because he’d never pushed his kids to study, his kids became self-motivated, and, they were able to readjust their own study habits accordingly, and that, would hoNotw intelligent children are “made”, with parents who don’t breathe down the kids’ necks, and this father realized, that having his kids feel motivated themselves is the key of success in their studies, and he’s right, because he’d proven that already!
Life, the Obstacle Course 