Hopes and dreams – Defining society for future generations
In a recent girls’ night out, a friend was asked this question – what are your hopes and dreams for your children?
We did this up for Elias for his 6th birthday party.
He says he wants to be a fighter pilot when he grows up.
That is his dream for himself 🙂
My earlier post on “Allowing my child to fail” generated so many discussions, that I thought it will be good to write further about it. Upon reflection, I have decided to write it from the angle of my hopes and dreams for my boys.I am sure we all have hopes and dreams for our children. But actually it is not an easy question to answer, if we want to go beyond “to be happy and successful”.
Quite a few mothers responded to the post with the view that while we want to allow our child to fail, it is difficult to do that, in our Singapore system.
Yes, it is difficult. I struggle with my parenting choices all the time, and I think that all through my children’s growing-up years, there will be many circumstances which will challenge my way of thinking and my decisions.
But for me, I always try to start with my personal convictions, and move out from there. Whenever I see myself wavering in my actions and decisions, I will ask myself – do I still hold the same convictions, and are my current actions and decisions in line with them? If not, I should either change my convictions, or change my actions and decisions.
I hold this value firmly in my heart – that every child is created for a specific purpose and given a specific set of talents so as to enable him/her to fulfill it. This means firstly, that my style of nurturing is child-centered – my role and goal is to help the child find his dream, and to help him fulfill it through skills training and character formation. Secondly, this same child-centered nurturing style should be applied on every child. What the second point means is that every child, regardless of his family circumstances, should be given the chance to thrive in his area of passion.
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| My boys, whom I love to bits. You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be that ONE thing which you are made to be. |
What has this got to do with my hopes and dreams for my children?
My hope firstly, is that my children will similarly be steadfast and have the integrity to align their personal convictions to their actions and decisions. Secondly, I hope that they will understand the importance of the dignity of each individual and take it upon themselves to help people fulfill their destinies too.
In order to realise these hopes for my children, I must demonstrate my own steadfastness in holding onto my convictions. In this particular instance, given my convictions, I must believe that every child can thrive even in our Singapore education system. The best way to demonstrate that belief, is to put my own children through it.
Some mothers also felt that things will not change, until the system changes. I hold a different view. This was what I wrote in my facebook page:-
“I think that policy makers will embrace anything if it makes political and economic sense to them. Government will always throw the ball back to the citizens. For every parent who says he wants less homework, they will bring up examples of parents who want more. So for the change to happen, the tide must turn. If as individuals – parents like us – we are not willing to take the risk of having our children fail, I don’t think that the Government will take the risk of the nation going that way. The change won’t come top-down. I believe it can happen bottom-up”.
This is a difficult choice for any parent to make. It is always easier for us to take risks with our own life than with our children’s lives. Yet, is failing in school that bad?
A friend said that the school is a risky place to fail. I think that school is the place where the child learns and I would rather he learns to deal with failure as a student than later in life. If failing in the Singapore education system is so serious and painful, that makes it an excellent place to learn. Without consequences, we will not learn. The more painful the consequences, the more the lesson will stick. (The issue is also not about whether the child gets discouraged from the failure. The issue is about whether the parent continues to encourage and affirm the child of his worth.)
In any case, I also wrote this:-
“Many “fail” in school today, and not everyone of them turn “bad” or fail in life – they just walk a different path. I have heard that the Normal (N) and Normal Tech (NT) students are the ones who are most grateful to teachers – the Express stream students, or those from the top schools feel that for teachers to teach them, it is their job. It is the N and NT students who will come back and appreciate the teachers for the life lessons they taught them. I find that sad, and if going into Express will make my child that way, I would rather he not do so well.”
There is nothing wrong with wanting our children to do well in school. In fact, we should always encourage our children to excel in everything that they do. However, we have it do it with the understanding and acceptance that every child is made differently. The pursuit of good academic results is not wrong. It is the relentless pursuit of academic success as the be all and end all, which is the problem.
I do not know how long it will take for things to change in Singapore. If it does not happen under my watch, my hope is that it will happen under my children’s watch. If it does not happen under my children’s watch, my hope is that it will happen under their children’s watch.
In reaction to the post, another friend shared about her mother’s differing academic expectations of her brother and herself. Her mother expected her to do better in her studies than her brother. The reason was that the mother knows that she is more able than her brother. I am impressed that the mother had understood the importance of accepting and nurturing her children in their area of strengths and I am amazed that she had no gender bias, something which runs counter to the Asian culture, at least during those times. My friend was inspired by her mother to be a different sort of mother. I hope my children will be inspired the same way through the way they are being brought up.
Do I have any nagging regrets? Yes I do. Now that I am looking through the thick book on “Choosing your Secondary Schools”, I wonder whether I should have worked harder at registering my children in a brand-name school with affiliation so they have a better chance of getting into a higher-ranked secondary school. I am fully aware of the advantages (and that is not just in the area of good academic results) of being in a brand-name school, as I wrote earlier (PSLE – Social Leveller).
Again, I check back with my convictions – do I still believe that my child has an equal chance of success, no matter what school he goes to?
I have an answer, but it is not direct, and it is not from looking at the circumstances around me. My answer reflects my hopes and dreams, for my children, for all children, and the world in which they live. I believe that every child must have an equal chance of success, no matter what school he goes to, no matter what the circumstances of his childhood are.
So I will let my child walk the same path, that many ordinary children of ordinary parents walk. I will strive with him, and pray that his life will demonstrate the fulfillment of that conviction.
I want to define society, and not let society define me. I want to do it through my own life, and through the lives of the generations after me. My hope is that my children will do the same.
PS : I found this excellently written blogpost by Christy at the Unhealthy Obsession with Happiness on the same topic, from the perspective of a young person.
I was the very product of parents who allowed me to fail. I did badly in PSLE but that really knocked me in my brains. But i learnt. I learnt the hard way that if i didn’t put in effort, there will no good grades. From then on i worked hard (and got good grades). It was also then that i changed into a person who enjoys and is willing to put in my best for all the work i do. So, yes, allowing a child to fail, isnt all that bad. BUt it takes a courageous parent to do that.
Thanks for sharing. That is a good story on failure. I really like the idea that no one can really succeed without having first tasted failure. I also think that we dare to try harder if we are used to failures. I think there is a difference between trying hard because we fear failure, and trying hard without fear of failure.
I think it is really difficult for us to allow our children to fail because we think we have the capacity to help our children avoid failures. That was something many of our parents did not have, e.g. my parents werent educated, they could not teach me English, nor advise me on what course to take, etc. I think parents today have a more difficult struggle precisely because we have much more resources on our hand. It seemed wrong somehow, not to use whatever is within our power to help our children succeed.
Could I quote from an author John Holt ,who wrote How Children Learn, about his convictions on the school environment and failing in schools…
“What all too often happens there is that they learn to see school challenges as threats, which they usually are, not just because you have a good chance of failing to accomplish them, but because if you do fail you are almost certain to be criticized, shamed or even punished. They become so used to dodging and escaping these daily threats that they fall more and more out of the habit of challenging themselves, even outside school. Their school-learned fears infest the whole of their life. The world, which has once seemed at least neutral if not actually friendly and tempting, begins to look more and more like an unpredictable and dangerous enemy.”
Food for thought…
Hi Elaine! Thanks for your comments. I like it when you visit. You always make it think 🙂
For this, I asked my two school-going kids for their responses. Elias’ was an emphatic “Yes”. Given a choice, he would not go to school at all. Elkan said : “Well, that’s true. So parents have to help their children not to avoid it, but how to solve it.”
I spent some time talking to Elias on this. If you have read it, I previously wrote about how disappointed he eventually became with school, when he started off P1 so excited.
However, after all these years, I don’t see him becoming more cowed by school – he is the same adventurous and engaged boy I see. In fact, we just came back from a school carnival, because his school is going through re-development, so this is the last time he will be there. He is the one who brought us around. He wanted to show us the band room, his classroom, his brother’s classroom, the eco garden, fitness corner, and to all the “forbidden” areas and through the “forbidden” paths.
In fact, seeing the children back at the school where they spent much of their childhood inspires me to write one on school. Soon, I hope 🙂
But I understand what the writer meant. It is precisely because it can be true in some context and for some children, that I feel that I want to keep my children within the school system. So they can give me the perspective as a child. Thanks for sharing the quote, I really appreciate the different perspectives.