Of late, a group of parents who set-up a social media group have been in the limelight for championing Life Beyond Grades. They've managed to create a platform for ministers, ministries, and MOE to talk about our society's / parents' obsession with academic grades.
Personally, I have been following the IG of one of the key parent. She is a go-getter, a dynamic lady and I do find her personable and I do like her.
There is always a however somewhere isn't it.
However, due to the make-up of the group, I think that their outlook is inbred. Also, I feel that our MOE & ministries are just conveniently using them-- a bunch of outspoken parents, to convey what they had been trying to do and to undo the wrongs of yester-years. For instance, they announced that all government affiliated pre-schools will now abolish route learning Spelling, all K1s & K2s will not have to do Spelling from now onward. I am like..... roll eyes? Had they long understood early childhood, they would have long known that route learning is not suitable for young children, why do they need an initiative to front that change? Like roll my pair of big eyes lor. For your information, many private childcare do not enforce route learning Spelling in their curriculum, so, I feel that it is the govt that is outdated, not the education industry.
And there will be more to come! They've just warmed up.
Correction: They reiterated that they do not mean Grades are not important, they mean Grades are not everything. Grades do not define your child. They added that some children are just not academically inclined and that we shouldn't make those children feel worthless. If I tell you that the height criteria as a Netball Player is not important nor will it define you as a player because height is not everything, will you then be consoled with pity-points or empathy, and will you ever be tired of almost never winning?
I totally agree that Grades do not define our children. How many grown adults can define even themselves? And why do we need to have definitions? Words are so limiting. Why don't we deal with how all those limiting beliefs, low self-esteem come about. They are not just about having poor academic grades, they are about having poor SES and the cycle that some parents are trying to break out from. Many do not have the tools, the resources, nor the luxury of something called Chance.
Anyway, I am not gonna go on about this lah ok.
I am getting so lax until I am not doing much of any thing with KiCo......... I am doing the bare minimum called - Homework, and that's about all.
I do hope I can get up from my slumbering soon though.
I need to do an "Osaka".
I've watched several of her post match interviews on how she handled the pressure at Grand Slam Singles Tournament (Sept 2018) and the conflict she felt about wanting to win her idol, which she eventually did.
Naomi Osaka had been trained to look away and not to pay attention to an opponent when the opponent is kicking a fuss. Although she struggled not to care, she did her best not to care at her own crucial moment, which is a strategy to follow during competition. It felt conflicted because she loved her idol. But still, she had to cancel the noises and stay focused.
In her game, the currency will be the Scores.
In our educational system, the currency is Grades.
So until such time that our educational system changes its currency to something else, eg: Learning, then the assessments will be -- What's your learning (instead of what's your grades). For now, grades are the results of assessing what you've learnt. So until there are other benchmarks that our society accepts, we are all in for the long haul.
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