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Over the summer, I had a conversation with my friend about how easy it is these days to over-schedule our children. I was amazed at the story she told me about her experience in Singapore. Here is Susan’s story in her words: What I recall from my time in Singapore, it was approximately 33 years since Singapore had gained Independence and had developed a fairly strict, structured school system of its own. From a young age, the children attend school for 5 full days per week, bringing home backpacks laden down with books & workbooks. They were so heavy that kindergarteners & first graders (equivalent) could barely carry/drag them! The children have a long day at school; typically both parents are working full time in order to afford the cost of living in Singapore. Evenings are spent on homework. In addition to the full school week, most or many of the children have extracurricular activities on Saturdays, such as violin lessons, piano lessons and swimming lessons. Then on Sundays they might see their creativity tutor or an academic tutor to get ahead of the class or have foreign language lessons. This story sure speaks to the value of free-time , and to the importance of allowing our children to fail and learn from mistakes. Thank you, Susan!! What are your thoughts? What do you think a Creativity Tutor would do? Would it help? What additional lessons can we learn from this story? Coach Nancy http://www.myparentingsource.com/community/blogs/nancyp/default.aspx
The issue behind the creativity tutors was in large part cultural (primarily ethnic Chinese culture), but also a result of the new Singaporean culture & learning style implemented there. Independent thinking in young children is not encouraged nor is developing critical thinking a part of the teaching philosophy for more mature students. Students are encouraged in memorization and rewarded for rote learning.
Many British and American companies had established their Asia regional headquarters in Singapore (which was developed as a multinational headquarters location for large companies in the event that when Hong Kong reverted to the Chinese mainland authority in 1997 it might no longer be friendly toward western businesses.) These British and American companies typically relocated one of their vice presidents to live in Singapore to be the Regional Vice President for the Asia-pacific rim, with the thought that they would be able to cultivate local managers to one day assume the regional vice president role.
What so many of these companies experienced was that their local employees were unaccustomed to making decisions for themselves, for example, for the departments for which they were responsible or for projects for which they were supposed to be the team leader. Supervisors or "team leaders" would defer to their immediate boss on virtually any decision, then the manager would defer to the director for a decision, and the director would elevate it to a vice president. After more than a generation of students had gone through this education system and gained work experience, they were unused to brainstorming & developing possible solutions, critiquing or ranking ideas, testing the waters, working around any failures that might result and ultimately coming up with a workable solution. Granted, in the local culture, any kind of failure is humiliating and not permissible. In an effort to avoid anything which might be deemed a failure, it was preferable to not make any decision or provide a recommendation at all.
When the multinational companies with regional headquarters realized how unlikely &/or unsuccessful the promotion of a local resident would be to a leadership role in the organization, many of the parents working in these companies saw how different the decision-making process was & began to devise ways to develop a new model for their children. As a result of the new demand for a more socratic method & open approach to learning, advertisements began to crop up in the local newspaper for Creativity Tutors!
