I teach tuition part time to help pay for my masters. Since my mom is teaching primary school Malay language, I just took over her standard 1 & 2 class.
You see, how well a child will turn out to be depends on how well taught/educated they are during their pre-school years. Parents [you] play a most important role. You teach the little toddler how to read and write well now, and you can be sure s/he’ll sail right through primary and secondary school.
You let the Indonesian maid do your job… that poor kid is going to have a hard time catching up in school. Or worse, s/he might never catch up at all.
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One of the most important skill a pre-schooler needs is reading. In fact, it’s the single most important basic skill. You can’t read, you can’t learn. So when I realise a child isn’t keeping up with the class, I’ll ask him/her to read something aloud. (I could literally die listening to how some of them read.)
When informed of her child’s weakness, the parent would typically ask what she could do.
Simple, just make sure that little brats of yours read… read out loud. Give the kid a simple story books or his/her school text books and make them read out loud to you. You can do it when you are driving in the car, cooking in the kitchen, washing, ironing, sweeping the floor, etc…etc…etc…
Now this is were most parents sub-consciously become defensive and blame their children. 9 out of 10 parents do this. I wasn’t aware of this at first until one after another parent starts blurting the same line to their children.
- “So, you heard what the teacher said, right?”
Then they may add any of these phrases,
- “You’ve go lots of story books I bought you at home, hor?”
- “You must read more from now ah.”
- “See, I told you the read more loh.”
For Pete’s sake… as if it’s not their [the parents'] fault.
It’s your freaking fault your sons/daughters is so damn stupid right now. Stop trying to cover up your arse. Stop trying to put the blame on someone else (your children). Telling them off in front of me is useless, I know you are just doing it for show. How about start teaching your children how to read properly?
You can’t expect 7-year old children to go to MPH and pick up a book to read on his own initiative. You can’t expect the school/tuition teacher to perform miracles on your children with only two hours weekly.
My job is to teach the brats, your job is to make damn sure the brats learn.
I am no expert, but I know this much:
Teach your children to read well as young as possible. This is the best head start you can ever give them.
disclaimer: photos of kids here are the smarter ones that I found cute, and a pleasure to teach.
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P.S. reasons for this rant?
- Because some parents are just plain irresponsible, thinking that tuition classes are the solution. Tuition class only helps if the children have good basics.
- Also, these ‘slow’ students are a real bitch to teach and they slow smarter students down.
