SEPTEMBER 13 — They are only 12-year-olds but are woken up to study at 5am, self-learn for three hours after school and attend tuition three times a week in the evenings. All these on top of their full-time education in Year Six.
Parents, obsessed with success and wanting their offspring to conform to their image are resorting to such heartless preparation to get their children coveted places in secondary school.
The soaring cost of extra-curricular coaching, in some cases up to RM100 per hour, is not an issue to them. Contemporary life?
“Tuition, extra home study and taking a child to a higher level at an earlier age are vital. A teacher with a class of 30 cannot always give my 12-year-old girl the attention she needs,” says Marian Shukry, 34, who believes she’s taking the right approach to her daughter’s education.
When I told Marian that her way of micro-managing her daughter’s primary education didn’t put her child in a mix of outdoor, academic and community outreach, she replied: “What would you know about the stress of putting a child through school?” Wicked, Marian?
Perhaps I wasn’t the right person to have asked that question given that my only daughter is 28-years-old and I haven’t experienced the current odd route of primary and secondary education being filled with parental tears, anxiety and tantrums.
To many like Marian, they are just doing a parent’s job and preparing their children for the big wide world, even if it means depriving them of their childhood and forgoing sporting activities.
Clearly, children under pressure will struggle with pushy parenting. In such an environment, even the most laid-back of parents can find themselves forced to compete by being strict and regimental.
By all means give them extra help, but don’t let them forget what it is like to be a child. They need to have fun.
So why would any parent put their child through such an ordeal?
Perhaps it’s the system that can’t provide an acceptable level of education. Perhaps it’s mum and dad’s desire to boast that their child scored straight As in the UPSR.
And what do the children learn from this? That academic success is all that matters?
If only parents could see that it is character that is really important and teach their children the virtues of honesty, humility and compassion.
Honesty was thrown out of the window when it emerged that the UPSR Science and English papers had been leaked on the Internet, implicating tuition centres, parents, teachers and education department staff.
It’s disturbing that an exam paper for primary school children was leaked. These young ones should pass because they are capable instead of being assisted criminally by irresponsible people who want glory without sweating it out.
The leaks pollute not only education but also the younger generation. If someone wants to destroy a nation, one has to ruin the educational system, the backbone of any country.
You wouldn’t be surprised if an exam paper at secondary or university level had been leaked, but this was just Year Six — a new low for Malaysia.
That should concern civil society because an enduring disease that had been operating with apparent impunity has just stung primary education.
Cheating in examinations is a serious offence that brings with it a sense of conspiracy that falls under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
No one should come in the way of the culprits being subjected to the OSA because the sanctity of exams and the quality of education are in question.
We want those who breached the confidentiality of the question papers, from control to examination halls, to face the full force of the law. Otherwise, there is a definite risk that this unwelcome episode will go unchecked.
Panicky parents with skewered perspectives need to calm down. Your children need more than just a good education. Let them enjoy their childhood. Let them play with other children as they always have done.
Parenting is increasingly competitive. Bringing up a child should be about realising and achieving their individual potential, not turning them out to be what you think they should be. If parents don’t understand and demonstrate the difference between right and wrong, how do we expect the kids to?
To the parents who want to buy exam answers for their innocent ones, what if they depend on cheating their entire lives? Do we want a culture of corruption rooted in the future of Malaysia?
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
