It's a week after New Year. School has started. My girlfriend had to go back too. She teaches. The week past by fine. Then on Friday, something happened that left her thinking, which she told me about. That left me thinking.
Once orientation's done in the first two days or so, lessons start. On Thursday, she was relieving a couple of periods for a teacher who was away for some reason or other. It was math class. After explaining the steps of the new topic and giving out the assignment to the new batch of primary 1 students, two students cried. One after the other. Apparently, they were afraid of making mistakes in their work. And that bothered them enough to cry. Needless to say, she had a lot of reassuring to do. So that was the incident that left us both thinking.
Why are kids afraid to make mistakes? As a child, these are the times to make as many mistakes without shame. It's their learning years. They're entitled to their fair share of mistakes.
Or are they?
This led to a sensitive and controversial question. Are kids being raised to feel ashamed of making mistakes?
And to end the questions: If they're so afraid of making mistakes at their young age, how about when they're older? How will they handle their personal challenges that require some guts be it in career or in relationships?
Mistakes are part and parcel of how we learn and improve. Observing the failures of others also helps better ourselves. To paraphrase a quote I remember reading once, "A smart man learns from his mistakes. A smarter man learns from the mistakes of others."
To conclude this little thought with a personal opinion, kids need their parents' support and assurance that it's perfectly fine to make mistakes. As long as they learn, pick themselves up, dust themselves off, move on and try again, it's alright. In doing so, they learn a lot more than just the lesson of the task. They get additional lessons in determination and letting go. Lessons in dealing with success and failure.
It's how we live.
It's how we grow.
I learnt to cycle that way.
Food for thought,
~K
maybe it's because of the "all in high stakes" education system we have here. You have one chance and one chance only to succeed.
ReplyDeleteThat's why parents are overly concerned... which is understandable...
Definitely.
ReplyDeleteOur society/Govt over-stress on meritocracy, so much so that everyone is afraid of thinking out of the box.
And this of course is noticed by our children.
Very sad indeed!
yup, I'd say that this mentality amongst Singaporeans breed a very efficient but sterile society.
ReplyDeleteHi Isaac,
ReplyDeleteYes, it certainly does seem that people here have only one chance to succeed. Milestones like PSLE, N, O, A levels for example can either make or break a child's future. Labeling a child "clever" or "average" or "below average" based on these test results especially at a young age, may not be appropriate as some children learn faster than others.
I recommend reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell for more insights (linked under my recommended books). Perhaps the education system directors here should read it too and look into this matter for ways to improve.
~K
Hi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't know if the kids notice this but I do feel that there's a lot of added stress on them these days compared to years ago.
Oh btw, could you leave your initials next time, I find it quite weird referring to anyone as anonymous =) Thanks for commenting btw. Very much appreciated and hope you like the postings.
Cheers,
~K