Thursday, April 9, 2015

Their struggles and tuition

This is solely my own personal opinion and experience as a mother.

I believe every parents and children have a love-hate relations with tuition at any point of time. Personally I am not against sending children to tuition (I had been to tuition myself while my other siblings had none; and now my children are in one).

I am against those parents that over-loading their children with so many tuitions or classes that cause the children to have less ample rest and playtime. I think it is important for children to have a life balance of learning, development as well as playing and resting. After all they are children once and how fast they are growing up.

It is hard on parents to decide on what tuition is right for their children - is this tuition centre good, can the teacher teach my child and can my child learn something from the tuition centre. We, parents always want the best for our children but some how we are unable to help our children academically so we have to rely on tuition centre to help and fill that empty post to teach them. Some parents expected their children to excel in exams after attending the tuitions and put the blame on the tuition if their children did badly in exam! Sigh!

From the children's perspective, either he or she loves the tuition teacher or the other way. Back in Sibu, both Jan and Jay were very fortunate to have a good and loving tuition teacher. She will give them some kuihs (as her mum make and sell kuihs) to her students and when it is Teacher's Day or last day of school, she will organise a party and each students have gift to bring home. And both Jan and Jay loves to go to her tuition till to the extend they requested me to send them 30 minutes earlier before the tuition starts. Jan's marks also improved while Jay able to finish his school works without me worrying about it.

It is hard to find home-based tuition teachers in Kuching and even if there is any, it would be very expensive. Tuition is a serious business nowadays. Few years ago I did dreamt of open up a tuition centre but alas. Those were the days.

It just happened hubby's cousin recommended me this tuition centre called MEB the other night when she came to visit us. It is a language enrichment programme and their teaching method is 1 to 1. I like that as each student's needs and learning levels are different. 

Jay is a slow learner or you can said, currently he still does not know how to write his full name (He only knows his first name) and recognise words! In 5 months time, he is turning 6! Yes, that bad. I worked so hard last year on him that he able to write all the 26 alphabets and know addition and substraction. I am happy to say that he does show some improvement in spelling this year. Last year I would only get him to memorise 2 words out of 10 words but this year I get him to memorise 5 out of 10 words. And he got those 5 words correct!

I know boys are usually late bloomers than girls but I feel that I must push him more this year. When he goes to Primary 1 next year, it may be slightly late and he may not be able to cope with school well by then. So you can guess that I am a little panic for my 2nd child. Now and then, I am trying to communicate Chinese with him and correct his English but he can be a very stubborn and rebellious boy.

The tuition teacher did assessment on Jay and suggested to me on using soft approach to teach him. He needs encouragement and incentive to learn. Not hard approach as scolding, reprimand or punishing him for not been able to learn. Sounds good to me. I think I did make the right choice here. And Jay was happy to go to tuition by himself on Thursday.

As for Jan, like past years, I bought some revision and exercise books for her early this year so she can learn and revise when she has the times. I could teach her English and BM myself. She is easier to coach than Jay, who gave me the headache and test my patience. I do not overload Jan with more tuitions as I knew that her weaknesses is her Chinese. So I am sending her to Chinese tuition only.

The tuition teacher agreed with me as after her assessment, Jan's Chinese is one level lower than what she is supposed to be now. No problem with English and BM. And she has her piano class as usual. That is her interest and she loves it very much.

I asked Jay the other day whether he would want to learn music but he told me he does not have interest. So I did not push him further.

Personally I think that would be enough for my children for time being. I enrolled them to tuition based on their needs and I being a banana, feel it is necessary (and without much choice!) to let the tuition guides them in Chinese.

I hope no one would ask me to enrol them in this and that classes. I know some parents do but not me. I just want my children to lead a happy childhood; not been thrown into those "kiasu" world and have "no life" during their childhood.

11 comments:

Nancy Chan said...

This is the biggest struggles for parents whether to send their children for tuition or not. Tuition is very expensive nowadays.

Libby said...

Balance is the key word, too bad you are in Malaysia, if not I can help you find a good tutor because I am a tuition agent too

Merryn said...

I totally agree with your post. This is the exactly the reason why I lost out on a campaign recently. You see, I was approached by a milk company for an advertising campaign. In that campaign, I am supposed to portray a mom who pushes her child to academic excellence and makes him go from one tuition to another to another to another until one day he drops 'dead' and request for an ice-cream break...

I immediately said NO as I don't believe in children as young as Ethan to be going for tuition. So even though it is only for advertorial purposes, I vehemently refused to portray that kind of mother. I don't believe in pushing your kid to excel. I believe in motivation. In soft approach. But because of that I lost a huge chunk of income. It was one of my biggest project but I lost it :(

ChrisAu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ChrisAu said...

errr... my son just message me yesterday saying he's very stress. Alamak... a 11 year old boy know how to say 'stress'.
Anyway, his school is a top one in JB and we really cannot help it but to send him for tuition and almost everyone doing it. It's a daily tuition since Primary 1. His school does streaming yearly based on the students' results and it won't do him good if he is placed in a class full of slow learners or rather the naughty ones.
Anyway, we got him a tuition teacher now and he's no longer going for daily tuition. However, his homework still loaded.... sigh...

Anonymous said...

I'm glad my girl did not go for tuition...other than a couple of months before the exam in Form 3 - she went to the BM & Maths examiners to familiarise her with what was expected in the exam. Other than that, we guided her ourselves.

At times, tuition may do more harm than good...but may have to send if the ones teaching the subjects in the schools are not good, many around. Will have to know who the tuition teachers are though - many useless ones out there. Some big centres - they hire part-timers, housewives...at a very low pay. If you are lucky, you will get the naturally good ones even though they are not teachers. Best to look for those from the schools - the ones with a good reputation, many from the schools are also hopeless - doing it all for the money.

Princess Ribbon said...

Agree with you about not stressing the kid.. Some parents want to ikut peredaran masa, everyone is doing it, so they want to do it too, kiasu.. But sometimes I am kiasu too, but not over kiasu la..Talk about tablets and youtube, some is alright, but not all the time..

Somewhere in Singapore said...

Best not to stress the kids, and not to pressure them into classes that they are not of interest...

Sharon D. said...

I agree with you, Rose. I cannot imagine a childhood of 'all studying and no play' and by play, I don't mean sitting on the sofa with a tablet...lol! ^.^

Small Kucing said...

each child is different. some do well with tuition. some just need their own time.

mun said...

Just see what the child needs and has interest for. No need to push and push to go for many enrichment classes.