The concept of an 'active ingredient'

Now this is something that came out of a discussion I had with my reader Chin Lam Toh and I think it makes an interesting discussion. This is what he claimed in a comment he left on my previous post: " your claim that new activities won't change a person's character is somewhat erroneous or needs more qualification, since I have seen Junior's good friend blossom from a shy little boy to quite the "ham" after joining ELDDS."

I disagree fundamentally and I stand by what I said that new activities cannot and will not change a person's character. In today's post, let's discuss this issue and I will point out why I think Mr Toh's attitude reflects a problem when it comes to Singaporean parenting. So why do I think Mr Toh's take on the issue is so wrong? I go back to my "miracle slimming tea" story where two friends of mine spent a lot of money on a packet of "miracle slimming tea" which consisted of no more than tea, bits of dried fruit and flower petals. They were sold the story that this tea would make them thin without any additional dieting or exercise and they were so keen to believe the sales pitch they refused to look at the ingredients list of the 'miracle slimming tea' and ask fundamental questions like, "wait a minute, what is the active ingredient here? Why will this tea make me lose weight? Why am I paying so much for this tea?"

Would you like a cup of miracle slimming tea?

In the case of the "miracle slimming tea" - there was no miracle, not without any active ingredients. The only way the tea would lead to any weight loss was if you drank the tea instead of having your regular meals - so by that token it would be the act of foregoing the meal that would lead to the weight loss, rather than any special active ingredients in the tea that would cause the weight loss. It was a bit of a con to say the least - if you simply drank the tea and didn't change your eating habits at all, you wouldn't lose any weight at all.

I want to talk about the concept of the 'active ingredient' - this is a term you will find on products like toothpastes, cosmetics and medicines. The same product without an 'active ingredient' is but a placebo. So, for any kind of process that can produce a positive change, we need to identify what the 'active ingredient' is - otherwise, it is as useful as a 'miracle slimming tea': a product which promises a a great result but actually doesn't have any active ingredients to do anything. It is time to scrutinize the list of ingredients, to understand how the process works.

So what is the active ingredient in the slimming tea?

Let's think about toothpaste for a moment - there are two components to the cleaning process when we brush our teeth. Firstly, there is the actual brushing itself (whether you're using an electrical toothbrush or a good old fashioned toothbrush) which dislodges the bits of food, plaque and other bits of crap on your teeth and then there is the active ingredient in the toothpaste (usually fluoride) which helps prevent tooth decay and gum disease. If you were to brush your teeth with something like mayonnaise or whipped cream, guess what? It would still go a long way to clean your teeth because of the brushing motion of the toothbrush (as long as you completely rinse out the mayo/cream completely at the end of the brushing), but you should not then walk away from the process thinking that the tomato ketchup played a positive role in preventing tooth decay. It is always necessary to break down the process and identify which component played a positive role, which component play a negative role and what factors are neutral.

Hence, Mr Toh is so focused on the outcome of Junior's good friend (who shall be abbreviated to JGF from now on) experience that he has completely ignored the process. Can ELDDS really deliver such a miracle? What is the "active ingredient" then which can actually deliver such a change? The benefits of fluoride in toothpaste and drinking water for the prevention of tooth decay have long been proven by scientists - can we try to identify what it is about ELDDS that can deliver that change we are seeking in a child's character?

Mr Toh seems to swear by the power of ELDDS

In the case of ELDDS (English language debate and drama society for those of you not acquainted with that acronym), let's look at the ingredients of the activities there and examine whether or not this can deliver a miraculous transformation of character. I am speaking as someone who has done plenty of TV work, modelling work as well as stage work professionally as an actor, so I am in a good position to talk about the ELDDS experience since that's where it has all started for me, back in secondary school all those years ago. So, what I want to find out is if there are any special ingredients in the activities of ELDDS that will effectively change a person's character? Let's look at the activities associated with any ELDDS club then - this is is not exhaustive but you will often find the following:

• putting on plays
• improvisation exercises/drama games
• debate practices 
• entering debates against other schools
• incorporating singing as part of the performance
• incorporating dancing as part of the performance 
• working in a team to reach a common goal 
• learning/memorizing lines for a play
• learning/memorizing points for a debate 
• researching a topic in preparation for a debate

What happens when you put a child on a stage like this?

There are of course plenty of other things I could add to that list, but I am interested in the process of how Mr Toh thinks that doing some or all of these activities can fundamentally change a person's character. This is what I call "believing the marketing hype". Sure you can make a student go through all of the above activities, but I am still looking for the 'active ingredient' that will create the change in the child that Mr Toh has talked about. In any case, you can make a child do all of the above activities - but there is absolutely no guarantee that your child will rise to the occasion when you put him on a stage in front of the audience.

The fact is, there isn't any kind of 'active ingredient' in any of these activities - some children who do these activities will enjoy them, others will not. Some children who do these activities will excel in them, others will find them a struggle and produce dismal results. The reason is that all children are different - some have natural gifts that will make them excel at these ELDDS activities, others are not gifted and will find these activities difficult and challenging at best. I think back about my time at drama club in secondary school - the most talented actors would get the lead roles as they would rise to the challenge, whilst those who were less talented would get the small parts and very few lines.

Limpeh is no stranger to the world of TV.

Here's a memory from my secondary school days: I remember my friend Norman who was roped in to play a small part in a play - he only had six words in the whole play which were something like, "Are you alright, are you hurt?" (He has to say those lines as he witnesses another character fall down.)  Everyone just assumed that oh Norman only had six words he'll be fine, nobody bothered to check on him as everyone else had pages and pages of script to remember. When we finally got on stage and the other character fell over, Norman stared into space for a second, frozen with fear, then he said, "Eh, why you fall down one?" in epic Singlish. Cue palm to forehead. Not only did he miss his cue, he couldn't get his six words right. The audience erupted in laughter despite the fact that it wasn't supposed to be a joke. It couldn't have gone more badly wrong. Sure enough, after the show, everyone blamed Norman for messing up his six words and he turned around and said, "I told you guys I couldn't act, but you wanted me to help. I warned you that I was not an actor but you all didn't want to listen to me." So - where's the active ingredient to ensure that Norman had a positive acting experience? There wasn't any - Norman walked away swearing he would never ever be involved with the drama club ever again, probably quite traumatized by the moment when everyone in the audience laughed at him. 

Allow me to state the obvious - children get the most of out activities that they do well in. In terms of building up our confidence, we need to find an activity, an environment where we're good at something and feel good about what we're doing. Allow me to use an analogy: I speak French fluently as a second language and I feel extremely confident when you put me in front of a French person and I get to 'show off' to them just how good my French is, especially if I have an audience of people who can witness me rising to the occasion and switching comfortably from English to French without missing a beat. I usually walk away from a conversation in French feeling upbeat, cheerful and optimistic, especially if the French person compliments me on just how good my French is. It is that vote on confidence that makes me feel more and more confident about my French and it helps me build my self-confidence.

In sharp contrast, I often get frustrated when I have to speak Mandarin. I had a frustrating conversation on Skype the other day with my dad when I was forced to deliver a geography lesson in Mandarin - oh let me get off my chest. This is something I can easily explain in English but to do so in Mandarin was an uphill struggle. We have had a lot of rain in the UK recently, it's been an extremely wet and mild winter. We usually get snow in winter but it's been about 5 to 10 degrees way too warm for snow. I tried to explain this to my dad who just plain doesn't get it. He thinks that rain = cold, the more it rains the colder it gets. "In Singapore it is very hot all the time but when it rains, it feels cooler so surely if it rains more in England, it should get colder, right?" No. I explained that temperature and precipitation are not correlated like that - the key determinant of temperature is the origin of the wind: a northerly blast will bring very cold air from the north, bringing with cold and dry conditions. An easterly wind or north-easterly is most likely to bring snow, whilst a southerly or westerly wind will bring mild and often very wet conditions.

Instead of acknowledging that he was wrong and he asked me yet another question, "How come we have hail in Singapore?" Oh damn. I had to deliver yet another geography lesson in Mandarin. I tried, I really did and I struggled to get the right words - listen I have a degree in geography from a top British university and can easily explain all of this in English (and French for that matter) without any difficulty but to so in Mandarin took me right out of my comfort zone. I was frustrated and ever so annoyed with myself because I knew exactly what I wanted to say in English but couldn't quite express myself in Mandarin. That experience was not a vote of confidence, quite the opposite! I walked away from that conversation with one message in my mind: my Mandarin sucked as bad as my dad's geography.

So you see, you can't simply say, "I'll let my child learn a foreign language as mastering a foreign language will build his self-confidence." It's just not that simple - my experiences with French and Mandarin have quite the opposite effects on my self-confidence. You cannot simply expect a positive outcome each time you enroll your child in a new activity - that's just being stupidly optimistic when you assume a positive outcome. As a parent you need to monitor the situation carefully and check if your child is actually suited to that activity or not. Be prepared to act if it becomes clear that this activity is not a good match for your child and that your child, well... for want of a better word, sucks at it.

Placing a child in the right activity can bring out the best in a child. However, if there's nothing to 'bring out' in the first place, there's really nothing even the best coach or teacher can do apart from suggest trying a different activity more suited to the child. Thus I want to point out that it is wishful thinking on the part of the parent that they can enroll their child in any course and all it takes is the right environment or coach to bring out the best in their child - well, it simply doesn't work like that I'm afraid. A good sports coach is like a good gardener (yes it is time for yet another gardening analogy) - if you give a good gardener an peach plant, then the gardener will be able to make the peach plant grow strong and robust in order to produce a great harvest of big juicy peachess. But if you give the gardener a pot of weeds and demand that the gardener turn that pot of weeds into a healthy peach tree that will bear loads of fruit, then that's never going to happen. Time for a reality check, please. Teachers are not magicians.

Peaches grow on peach trees - only. 

This is when I point the finger back at the parents at accuse them of 'outsourcing parenting' - which is a big problem in a place like Singapore. I have talked about this before in a previous blog post: this was one of my most popular posts from last year in fact when I talked about Singaporean parents working so hard that they do not perform many of the most basic parenting tasks. Instead, all this parenting has been outsourced to either grandparents, paid help (nannies, babysitters, maids etc) or hired professionals (tuition teachers, sports coaches, school teachers, teachers etc). Heck, some parents expect NS to sort their sons out and deliver some kind of miracle!

Many Singaporean parents are hoping that all these other people they are outsourcing their parenting to will do a good job and they are selectively picking evidence to convince themselves that this is a formula that does work. So when Mr Toh picks one boy who is doing well in ELDDS, he convinces himself that simply enrolling the child in the right activity can make up for years of neglect by parents who are too busy to care for their children. It is a terribly simplistic take on the issue - one that I have to deal with right now.

Mr Toh, with all due respect, you are totally wrong. But Mr Toh, please don't take anything I am saying here personally. I am talking generally about parenting here, not specifically about you.

The self-confidence of a child is something that is fostered very early in the child's life - these are patterns that emerge from when the child is just learning to express himself from the age of about 2 or 3 years old, such patterns become deeply ingrained in the child's subconscious  and will condition his responses in social situations much later in life. How the parents and carers of that infant react to him will have a huge impact on the child's future self-confidence. For example, is the infant encouraged to discover things about the world around him? Is the infant receiving a lot of interaction from adults around him? Are the efforts of the infant to communicate constantly rewarded or is the infant effectively ignored by the adults who would rather watch TV than to read to the infant? Is the infant encouraged to play or punished when he makes a mess or makes too much noise?

All these factors start shaping the child's behaviour and personality from a very young age. One would assume that the parents are responsible for most of this process at that age - and if the parents are too busy to take care of their own child, then they should at least be leaving the child with someone who knows exactly how to nurture a young mind properly. If a child is damaged by irresponsible, neglectful parents by the age of 5 or 6 (eg. allowing them to watch TV passively for hours a day in their early years instead of engaging them in educational and social activities), then trying to undo that damage already inflicted on that poor child is an uphill struggle to say the least.

So for a parent to then turn around at the age of 15 and say, "oh my kid has no self-confidence, I know I'll enroll him in ELDDS and let the teacher there fix the problem for me, just don't ask me to fix my own children's problems." I just wanna scream at just how misguided this parent is. Let me spell it out to you plainly: if you child has no self-confidence at that age, a lot of that is because of your poor parenting skills and you expect someone else (like the teacher in charge of the ELDDS CCA) to fix your problem for you, a problem that you caused in the first place? Yeah right. That teacher doesn't have any 'active ingredients' to fix the problems in your children - get real! The teacher just comes to school to do a job, not perform miracles for you.

We don't know how good this teacher in charge is and if s/he knows what s/he is doing - even though I went to the best schools in Singapore, I had my share of bad teachers along the way. And besides, even if the teacher is good - the teacher is not a magician. You cannot expect this teacher to perform miracles - you cannot give this teacher a pot of weeds and expect s/he to turn it into a peach tree with boughs heavy with juicy, ripe fruit. No, you're being totally unrealistic in your expectations of just what this teacher can possibly deliver and on one hand, that's unfair on the teacher and on the other hand, I just wanna scream, "you're a parent, now act like one and do your job as a parent instead of expecting others to do it for you damnit!" So going back to Mr Toh and Junior - I'm wondering if Mr Toh has ever tried to personally tried to raise Junior's self-confidence by personally intervening, instead of looking to outsource this task to someone like a teacher at Junior's school?

Can parenting be outsourced?

Here's the problem with Singaporeans and teachers - perhaps it is an Asian society thing but teachers do enjoy quite a high social status in Singaporean society and a lot of respect is given to the teaching professionals who are responsible for nurturing the next generation. This high social status has translated into an unrealistic expectations of what they can deliver in the classroom or in the school's CCA activities. I would like you all to take a big reality check here. The teachers are just doing their job, I am sure some of them do it very well but whether they do a good job or not - there is no performance related pay here. The teachers get paid exactly the same whether he fixes the problem child and turns him into a scholar, or if that same problem child flunks his exams and ends up unemployed.

Take Junior's basketball coach for example, it is so convenient for him to turn a blind eye to the fact that Junior was running away from the ball and not participating in the activity and what does he do when he is confronted by Mr Toh about the situation? The teacher actually blames Junior for being too passive, instead of taking responsibility for the situation. Talk about a bad teacher who ignores problems! Surely this should prove to Mr Toh that you cannot trust teachers like that to fix the problems in your children - any student activity (be it ELDDS, basketball or a school band) can only be as good as the teacher who runs it.  So there's really no incentive for a teacher to perform any miracles for you parents - so I wouldn't make any assumptions about a teacher delivering any kind of miracle for your child.

When I work as a gymnastics coach and deliver a lesson, sure I want my students to have a good time. I want the lesson to be safe so that there are no accidents and no one gets hurt. I want my students to improve their existing skills and hopefully learn something new as well. My job ends there - my responsibility extends as far as health and safety, making sure the gymnasts do not get hurt during the lesson. If a child happens to derive a boost in his confidence because he performs well in my lesson, then I say, credit goes to that child for having done well - I cannot take all that credit and claim to be some kind of miracle worker. Indeed, I cannot guarantee that every child enjoys my lesson and so much of that depends on whether or not the child can actually do the skills I am teaching in the gymnastics class.

Let me give you an example: just last week, I was a judge at a local gymnastics competition in London which brought together the gymnasts from many different clubs and schools. One of the most talented gymnasts from my gymnastics club freaked out at the competition - she saw that there were many good gymnasts there and she just started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she just said, "Alex, I really don't want to do it, please don't make me do it." Fortunately her mother was there and I sat down with her mother and talked about it. She would not stop crying until her mother said, "okay you don't have to do it." It was a pretty poor outcome, but there was nothing else either her mother or myself could do at that stage. No amount of goodwill or good intention on my part could have changed the outcome - much to my frustration. There was absolutely nothing else I could have said or done at that point.

As a coach, I have done my job in actually teaching this gymnast the skills she needed to perform at the competition (which she had executed flawlessly in training). I could teach this girl how do perform back flips, front somersaults and she has probably one of the most powerful front handspring vaults in her age group in London. That's the technical stuff with gymnastics - but when it comes to coping with the pressures of performing in front of a big crowd of strangers, sorry but that was not something I could fix. I tried my very best to encourage this crying child, I even pointed out to her that her fellow gymnasts that she had trained with were all competing with her - but this coach had no 'active ingredient' or 'magic wand' to bring about a change in that child when it was most needed. My ethos is that if you train hard, practice enough and have a routine that you can execute flawlessly in training, then you should be ready for a competition. That was just the way it was when I was a child myself - back then my coaches didn't have any special formulas for us to cope with 'stage fright' either. Some people just cope better with this pressure than others.

So with all this in mind, yes I think that children should definitely take part in activities like ELDDS and sports - but by the same token, it is necessary for the parents involved not to have unrealistic expectations about what their children can get out of the experience. We don't have any active ingredients or special formulas to deliver the kind of changes that some of you parents expect of us and you parents refuse to acknowledge that fact, then not only are you letting your children down, you're setting yourself up for disappointment when reality bites. Stop putting teachers and sports coaches on pedestals - we're not here to solve your problems. You need to sort your own children out, you can't outsource that to us. Teachers will do their job, but they need you to do yours as well, as parents.

Why has Mr Toh such unrealistically high expectations of CCAs?

I'm sorry if this piece sounded quite harsh on Mr Toh - but I hope you understand that I mean well and am merely lending my perspective as a gymnastics coach here. All I am trying to do is give all parents out there a serious reality check here and if you really care about your children at the end of the day - I know that Mr Toh cares deeply about his son, but it seems that he has been fed some misleading information along the way and I am just trying to redress that balance here. I would like to end with a Chinese proverb: 江山易改秉性难移 - that translates as "the mountains and rivers may change, but it is hard to change a person's character." It is often interpreted as the Chinese version of the English saying, "A leopard will never change its spots." I think there's definitely a lot of truth in that.

As usually, if you have any comments, please let me know your thoughts below. Thank you very much for reading.