A friend of mine, a mother of a P2 student, called me at night few days ago. I was asked to help her with some Math questions. One of them is very interesting, here it goes...
A snail is trying to climb a 20m wall. Every morning he climbs 5m up, and every night he slides 2m down. How many days does the snail need to reach the top of the wall?
Sounds simple, right? But I think it is a tricky question for an 8-year-old girl. I am wondering if my kids next time will be able to solve this question by themselves when they are in P2. Hmm...
Talking about raising kids and the education system in Singapore, Ihin and I have decided to take our kids' education in our own hands. We saw so many cases whereby a teacher, be it a school teacher or a tuition teacher, does not emphasize the basic fundamental of Mathematics. It is sad to see that in a quite famous-all girls-school here, the whole class of P3 students fail their Math paper. I saw the paper, it was not difficult. But it needs a strong fundamental to do it. I guess the teacher does not have enough time to teach and go through the concept deeply, thus the students have very shallow understanding. Not forgetting the fact that it is not easy to find a tuition teacher with a strong understanding too. But seriously, if I compare the number of subjects in Singapore and Indonesia, I can't figure out why Singaporean students seem more stressed compared to Indonesian students. We learned about 12 or more subjects in primary school, and all were examinable. Yet, we had an ample of time to study and joined ECA everyday including Saturday, and still maintained good grades and good understanding, and we can still enjoy our childhood. No stress, we played like normal children too.
So, is it the system's fault? Teacher's fault? Parents' fault? Most of Indonesian students have a stay-at-home mom. Is that the reason?
Well, I don't know the answer, and I should not blame and point finger here. But one thing for sure, my husband and I have vowed to teach our kids ourselves, at least for Math and Science. We have seen a lot of case studies, and it is scary to see some experienced teachers could not even answer slightly tricky Math problems...
