Q: Why do you refuse to acknowledge the possibility that he may be stupid?
A: I believe that different people are good at different things, you can't be good at everything. When I was at school years ago, I excelled at some subjects and struggled with others - was I stupid? Well my maths teacher certainly felt that way, whilst my English teacher thought I was brilliant. The fact is I had a brain that was wired for languages and not maths, so depending on which teacher you asked, they would have a very different opinion about whether I was stupid or not. I'd like to think that I'm pretty clever - in fact, part of the reason why I managed to get my current job is because I have given my employers the impression that I am (and these are their words, not mind) "scarily intelligent". I have managed to get into this position by simply focusing on the things I excel at, at things that I find easy (such as languages) whilst avoiding those that I struggle with (such as maths). This formula isn't exactly rocket science. So of course I realize it is not fair to judge my nephew on his weakest subject - that'll be like judging me on my maths skills and concluding that I am a really stupid idiot. Everyone's brain is wired differently so we'll find some tasks easier whilst others harder - even as a polyglot who speaks 25 languages, I am not fluent in all of them and even amongst those that I speak, I find some like Spanish and Welsh easier than German and Russian. So whilst I acknowledge that my nephew is really struggling with economics, I know he's good at other subjects like maths and physics. However, if he was good at absolutely nothing, then yeah if that was true, then I'll be the first to concede he's totally stupid - but no, I don't think that's not the case here.
Q: Wait, aren't your family members being quite mean to your nephew by labeling him stupid?
A: Well yes, it is harsh and cruel. I believe they are but allow me to explain why and give you a little context here. Everyone in my family has gone out of their way to help my nephew from a young age - in Chinese culture, we place so much emphasis on a child's education so if you love your son/grandson/nephew, you would go out of your way to help him with his studies. So put yourself in the shoes of one of my family members, my nephew is now 18 and you've tried hard for the last 15 years and if he is still struggling with his studies - we are left with the following possible explanations.
1. The student is so stupid that even the best teacher in the world can't help him. (Blame the student.)
2. The student is fine but you're such a stupid teacher you've let the student down. (Blame the teacher.)
3. The two statements above are both true: it is the blind leading the blind. (Blame both parties.)
I'm not here to judge which of the three scenarios it is, but admitting that scenario 2 might be the case would be to admit, "I'm a stupid idiot, I'm too dumb to figure out a teenager's syllabus at school, unfortunately I am completely unable to help a teenager with his homework." There's a game show in America called 'Are you smarter than a 5th grader?' (for my non-American readers, a 5th grader is usually 10 years old) and thus the UK version of the same programme is 'Are you smarter than a 10 year old?' The concept of the TV programme is simple: you get a bunch of stupid adults, put them against the smartest kids and humiliate the adults for not being able to solve simple programmes that 10 year old kids would be expected to do at school. Humiliating stupid adults on a game show is a relatively cheap form of entertainment (please see the clip below). So if the adults in my family have been unable to help my nephew with his school work and help him improve his grades, they are then afraid of appearing stupid - they don't want me to blame them for letting my nephew down so immediately, everyone starts saying, "it's all his fault, it's not my fault, we've all really tried our best but if he is really that stupid, there's nothing more we can do so please - don't even think about blaming us for this situation." Yes I'm quite disappointed that they have reacted like that because this is not about them, it is about my nephew's education and how best to help him. They seem to care more about the Asian issue ' saving face', about the possibility of that I may be judging them tha" caring about how my nephew might feel if he found out that they labeled him as "stupid".
Q: Is A level economics really that difficult to pass?
A: It depends on the individual, I find it really easy but then again, my brain is wired in a way to deal with the mental gymnastics required for A level economics. So imagine we have a big tree in the garden, we then ask the question: is it easy to pick the fruit at the top of the tree? A fit and agile human might be able to climb to the top of the tree to pick the fruit, but most of us might find that really quite scary and difficult. A monkey on the other hand, would do the same task with ease whilst for a fish, getting out of the water to climb that tree is simply impossible. So by the same token, just how difficult the subject is will really depend on the kind of brain you have. I just found out that my boss actually studied Russian for 40 weeks (but that was many years ago) but when I tried to speak to him in Russian, we could safely conclude that my Russian is still a lot better than his as languages simply do not come naturally for him - even if he admitted that he had a really good Russian teacher then. I don't think A level economics is that hard, but it does require a certain set of skills from reading comprehension to critical thinking to problem solving to analysis to thinking on your feet - I don't expect all students to hit the ground running and have those skills. No, it is up to the teacher to impart these vital learning skills to the students as part of their education. So my nephew's situation is made a lot worse by the fact that his teachers are very lazy and have not been giving him any individual attention - he is simply expected to just somehow figure out a lot on his own which is a big ask for a guy his age. So even if he is struggling, I really don't believe this is his fault at all - he is a victim of the system. And don't get me started on how utterly fucked up his teachers at his school are.
Q: Should A level students be expected to figure stuff out on their own rather than be spoon-fed?
A: I don't think that's a fair question - I'm sure my nephew would be able to figure stuff out on his own when it comes to physics or maths but he needs help with economics. Given that he is being forced to do a subject he has no aptitude for, I say it is only fair that he gets the extra help he needs. I do see the benefit in forcing students to do a subject outside their comfort zone, but it would be unfair to expect them to pick up the information the same way they would with a subject that they excel at. If you really expect A level students to figure out most of the syllabus for themselves with little or no help then fine allow them to avoid the subjects that they dread and have no interest in. You can't have it both ways.
Q: Can you get your nephew to score a good grade in the exam?
A: Yes I can but I need more time and that's the one thing I don't have. Different people learn at different rates and a lot of it comes down to aptitude and talent. Allow me to use an analogy from gymnastics. One of the skills I teach to my adult gymnasts is an aerial cartwheel which is essentially a cartwheel without hands. Is it difficult? I don't think so - it's not the kind of skill that most beginners will get within a few lessons but most advanced and experienced gymnasts can perform it with ease. So I had this lady we shall call Yvonne (not her real name) - she tried to learn it for years but to no avail, she eventually did it but after like five years of training the skill. Then I have this friend Adam who watched me struggling to teach Yvonne how to do it and he asked, "hey could I try what you guys are doing please?" Then sure enough, he got it on the very first attempt - oh yeah, that's how freaking talented he was. So if you're not very talented in gymnastics, it will take you five years to learn a skill that someone like Adam can figure out in just five seconds. Is it unfair? Of course it is, but if Yvonne is determined to do an aerial cartwheel, then she has to invest a lot more blood, sweat and tears than Adam to reap the same results - she has to pay a much higher price because of her lack of talent but if she is determined enough, we can get her there in the end, after many years of hard work. So the same principle applies to my nephew, sure I can get him there, but like Yvonne at my gymnastics club, he just needs a lot more time and help than those students who can grasp the complex economics concepts with a lot more ease because their brains are wired differently.
Q: So can stupid students actually do well in the A level exams by taking an extra year and paying for loads of extra tuition, could they then end up in a good university despite being stupid?
A: Well, yes and no. Let's be sensible and reasonable about this: staying with Yvonne, if it took her five years to a learn a rather basic skill in gymnastics, it then raises the question, why the hell is she even training gymnastics when she is clearly not good at it? Would that time have been better spent doing another sport or activity - could have achieved a lot more in that time with a different activity? So in an extreme case, if we take a below average student but give him not one but two extra years and all the help me needs to get great A level results, worthy of a top university - then what? You can take a student out of the schooling system to do that process privately but you're unlikely to persuade a top university like Oxford and Cambridge to give you that luxury. In any case, universities may smell a rat if they look at the student's age and realize that he is a lot older than the other students: that was indeed what happened in my case but I had a valid excuse - I had to serve 2 years 4 months of national service before I could pursue my further education and I only spend two years completing my A levels. But without a valid excuse, the universities aren't going to fooled by students who use this method to try to get into a top university - they would rather admit brighter students who can learn at a rate which will enable them to complete the course in the designated amount of time. If you allow the weaker student extra time to complete a degree, then what? The student then enters the working world and the employer is supposed to give the same provision? We have to break the cycle at some point given how pointless it is. Ultimately, we simply can't cure stupidity even if we can take these measures to make a weaker student get through an exam - let's not lose sight of that.
Q: But it doesn't seem fair that some weaker students have rich parents and thus can access private tuition to improve their grades whilst students from poor families don't have that luxury. That's why more rich kids make it to good universities and thus the rich stay rich whilst the poor get poorer. That's incredibly unfair.
A: If I may address that point: essentially, no amount of quality education can cure stupidity. Let's take an extreme example: if a rich man has a really stupid son and he is determined to get his son into a top university, he may resort to bribing the admissions department of the university to overlook the son's poor results and grant him a place in a course of his choice. But what happens next? The course is difficult because this is one of the world's top universities and simply attending the lectures and tutorial isn't going to cure the son of his stupidity - no, what is going to happen is that this son is simply going to fail every single assignment, test and exam because he simply isn't bright enough to learn like all the other students who have rightfully earned their place on this course. So let's imagine the rich man then bribes every single member of staff in the university to make sure the son manages to graduate despite having failed everything, all the rich man has managed to do was to get his son a degree by committing fraud - he hasn't actually cured his son of his stupidity. What do you think is going to happen when his son goes for a job interview and the gatekeeper starts asking difficult questions? Nobody is going to give this stupid son a job even if he does have a degree from a top university because it doesn't take a genius to realize that there's something terribly wrong going on here. Universities simply cannot cure stupidity - nothing can! Thus a degree is merely a way for people who are already intelligent to prove themselves and your intelligence is pretty much a genetic lottery and universities cannot boost your IQ. Yes life is very unfair indeed.
Q: So as a tuition teacher, are your expectations too high?
A: Allow me to explain the problem with the situation and allow me to compare it to gymnastics since we've been talking about it - when a gymnast participates in a competition and has to do a routine for the floor exercise, the gymnast will have to decide which skills to perform in the routine. If you choose to do a more difficult routine, then you have the potential to score much higher with a higher difficulty score but you are far more likely to make mistakes, this could result in a much lower execution score. The gymnast will compose a routine that is just right for them for the competition to maximize the scoring potential. Thus if the gymnast is injured or coming back after a break in training, then they can opt to compete a simpler routine because of the circumstances and the gymnastics judges will simply judge the routine presented before them. My nephew does not have that luxury. In an A level exam, you have to answer the question you have before you. So for example, if you encounter a question like, "what is the currency of Canada?" There is only one right answer, the Canadian dollar. If you know the answer, you get the mark in the exam. If you don't, writing something like, "I don't know what the currency of Canada is, but I know about other countries' currencies - here is a list of countries and their respective currencies." The teacher isn't able to offer you any credit for that kind of answer, even if you can correctly list the currencies of another 100 countries, marks are only awarded for the right answer to that question. Thus in this case, there's only one right answer and you either get the answer right or wrong, there's no grey area in between.
Q: But is this something you can really help with even if you are knowledgeable on the topic?
A: Given that this is the format of the exam we are dealing with, my aim is simply to help him get as many right answers as possible. When faced with a situation where we have either a right or wrong answer, my expectations are for him to get the answers right. The problem now is that I don't get to choose what questions to ask him - the questions I ask are the ones given to him by his school (for tests, for homework, past year papers etc). So it is his school setting the standard, not me. In any case, even if I artificially lower the standard by asking him easier questions, then it serves no purpose at all. There simply isn't an option for weaker students in the student to switch to an easier exam like an O level/GSCE or even PSLE standard economics exam. My nephew is supposed to take an A level exam at the end of this year whether he is ready or not: this has absolutely nothing to do with me trying to teaching him economics for the noble purpose of education and enlightening his young mind - no, this is purely an exercise to make sure he gets the best possible grade for this exam. So if he is going to get a D, I want to do what I can to nudge that up to a C. A lot of that is down to common sense and good exam techniques, so for example, if he encounters a question he doesn't understand at all - the sensible thing to do would be to not answer that question at all, so he can dedicate that time to questions he can answer more confidently. But what he would tend to do is to simply guess and just write loads that he has memorized from the textbook, hoping that something in the volumes of information he offers would contain the right answer - the chances of that strategy working is extremely low and thus it makes no sense at all to try to do that. Furthermore, his teachers at school are doing absolutely nothing to help him on that front - this is definitely an area where I can help him.
Q: Is there any point in forcing students to do exams in subjects they clearly don't like?
A: Well in principle, yes. In practice, I still have nightmares from the horrible maths exams I have had to do when I was a student. The argument is that in real life especially as working adults, we're going to encounter a lot of things that we're not exactly comfortable with and we have no choice but to just deal with it. I've had to face a lot of that recently when I started my new job - hopefully, within a few weeks I would have climbed that steep learning curve to a point where I have a much better understanding about all aspects of what my employers do but holy crap, it has not been an easy process! I need to point out that I'm not taking a job out of my comfort zone, it's not like I left banking to work in a vet's clinic: I was given the job because of my experience in fixed income products and was expected to hit the ground running - yet I still find adjusting to a new environment quite challenging. But of course, to avoid being challenged to learn something new at work like that means simply doing the same boring, repetitive task over and over again. This would eventually lead to boredom and that's why I am happy to be challenged this way in my new job. Besides, just because it it difficult to learn something new doesn't mean it is impossible to do it - my friend Matt runs marathons and there's an insane amount of preparation that goes into each marathon he participates in. But he tells me that all the blood, sweat and tears are worth it as completing each marathon brings him such a sense of accomplishment because it represents him overcoming adversity - if he can complete the marathon, then he walks away with the confidence that he can tackle any challenge life throws at him. Is the marathon easy for Matt? No, quite the opposite! But that is the very reason why Matt wants to do it; thus A level economics could be the equivalent of Matt's marathons for my nephew, this can be a rite of passage for him.
Q: Is your nephew making any progress after all your lessons?
A: Yes, I think so - I don't claim to have the perfect solution to this challenge but I think I'm making some progress. It's not like my nephew doesn't know anything, but he has poor grades because of his bad exam techniques. So I am encountering issues like he is rushing into an answer without reading the question properly; improving his reading comprehension is one of my key goals at the moment because understanding the question properly is half the battle won. I am busy picking the lowest hanging fruit at the moment, I'm choosing to focus on the areas where we can achieve the most results in the shortest space of time. For him to truly excel in economics would require such a fundamental rewiring of his brain that simply isn't humanly possible within the space of time we have before his exams - it would mean going back through time to address many aspects of his education in Singapore that have been sorely lacking. Thus in this context, my goals are actually pretty realistic, I want him to learn how to make the most of his knowledge and understanding in an exam situation. Like I said before so many times, his teacher really should be doing all this for him but given that he is getting little/no help at all from his teacher, it has fallen down to my two sisters and I to do what we can to try to make the best of a very challenging situation and it is good that we have more than one adult involved in this process because if it isn't working, then one of us would be able to say, "we need to evaluate our approach - I don't think this method works, so we need to try something different to get through to him." So far, we agree that we have managed to make some progress though we still have a long way to go of course and I do think it is important to remain optimistic.
Okay so that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Do you think we can label someone 'stupid' just because there is one subject that they suck at? Are clever people supposed to be good at everything or do we simply allow them to focus on their area of expertise which they can specialize in at the exclusion of everything else? Are my family too harsh in labeling my nephew stupid and is this an Asian thing? Should my nephew treat A level economics the same way Matt runs his marathons or the way Yvonne is trying to learn gymnastics? Was there a subject in school that you really struggled with and what was the outcome of that struggle? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
This may sound like a strange question but does your nephew actually care that he is doing badly in economics? Because from the way you describe it, he's doing very badly and its not like he can say "my friends are doing about the same" to brush it off. Part of reading comprehension is caring about what the other person is saying, or at least caring enough to want to go to NUS/NTU and not SIM. I don't think your nephew is stupid per se because he does well in math, so I assume he probably likes math but doesn't like economics or isn't aware of the consequences of doing badly in economics.
ReplyDeleteYes, he does care that he is doing badly in economics. My sister has reported that he has had sleepless nights and sometimes she can hear him crying in frustration after some of our tutorials when he fails to get the answers right. He spends hours, sacrificing his weekends and free time just memorizing the entire textbook and all his study notes but of course, there is just no way you can get through an exam at this level through rote learning without any real understanding of the concepts - the questions at A level economics are difficult and challenging. It's not just "please demonstrate that you have memorized chapter 16 - write down everything you remember from chapter 16 in the textbook."
DeleteThe problem with his situation is motivation - right now, the only motivation is, "if you fail this subject, you will not get into a decent local university and your future will be ruined." He wants to study engineering but the top courses for engineering at very competitive and if you get a really bad grade for economics, then your chances of earning a place on the course of your choice drops dramatically, so you had better study hard for your economics exam. A good teacher would inspire the students to want to understand how the world of economics works - this is especially relevant for me now because I'm now getting into the world of trading and seeing how some traders make 300% profit on a trade. That's how the rich get richer and the poor stay poor, like don't you wanna know why the world is like that? Don't you wanna have the attitude, "if you can't beat them, join them - I wanna be the top 1% that keeps getting richer whilst the rest of the plebs can slog away for the rest of their pathetic working lives earning peanuts!"
I don't think he is stupid because he is good at maths - I'm the complete opposite, I completely suck at maths but am good at what I do. Hence I think it is unfair to judge people on their worst subject. Heck, if you spoke to my late maths teacher at school, he would tell you that I'm a complete fucking idiot who has no future. Too bad he's now dead, otherwise I would be telling him that I am earning in a month several times more than what a maths teacher in Singapore would earn in a year and I still suck so bad at maths, bwahahahahahahahahaha. #evillaugh #yesiamevil
Just two more points: yes his classmates are struggling with the subject too. As for why he cares, it's not because he's passionate about the subject or that he cares about his future, I think it is a cultural thing. That if you do badly in a subject at school that's a moral failing: ie. your bad grades are a reflection of the fact that you're playing computer games, you're lazy, you're not hardworking, you refuse to study hard for the exam and thus society will think you're a bad person if they see that you have failed a subject at school because a good student would have found a way to get a decent grade for that exam. And I don't think he wants his family, his peers and his society to think that he's a good for nothing loser who is morally flawed when they see his poor grades - it's an extremely Chinese thing. It shocks me how Chinese my nephew is in that aspect, but then again, he does live in Singapore (whilst I have not lived there in an awfully long time - about 24 years mind you).
DeleteAlright so he does care about his grades and wants to do a degree in engineering. But it looks like the wrong type of care. The care about "face" with regards to grades. I think a more appropriate type of care would be "hmm, how does uncle Alex do so well at economics, even in real world economics where he has to study how trading works super fast even though he isn't as strong at math as I am? There must be something that he is doing that I'm not doing."
DeleteEh, now I question whether he is even doing math the right way. A lot of people also just memorize formulas in textbooks to use in the right situation on A level physics and math, but in the real world math and physics questions are closer to A level economics where you have to invent your own formulas haha. I'm sure the traders you work for can't just memorize a formula for trading and still make millions. It's probably just the singaporean education system then... Your nephew is probably memorizing the textbook in other subjects, it's just that that doesn't work in economics.
Btw I don't think anyone in the west would be as panicked about failing one subject but doing decent at other subjects as someone in Sg. It's only because there is no middle tier of universities to attend, and also no clear cut middle tier career path to follow. In America one can get by with attending a decent university with an acceptance rate above 80% and middling high school grades provided they get the degree and good job experience in between. Sg and other Asian countries tend to have an "elitist" mindset towards higher education. Elitist not the same way as the west where it means the children of the rich, but elitist as in only the top 30% smartest kids should go and the rest are uneducated low skilled labor. SIM is just filling an unfilled niche then. Where else do the middle tier students go? It's like Sgan society says to students "you're either a genius or an idiot, and we only provide career options for those two categories. Your A levels determine which bin you want to be in." It makes me think this some sort of relic of Sg's poverty days where there were only rich business/land owners, and poor uneducated labor. In the most developed countries rich and poor exist, but there's also a very large and highly educated and prosperous middle class. Sg seems to want to only focus on the upper middle and upper classes and neglect the rest.
DeleteThe way I see it, it is not the end of the world if he fails to get into a good local university, he just has to go abroad but they're hoping to avoid that possibility. I don't know just how well or badly he will perform in his exams but you've described the situation in Singapore very accurately. There's nothing for those who don't score straight As - a student with Cs will get put in the same category as the one who got Fs and they both end up in SIM, which isn't fair really. There is no middle ground option available in a country as small as Singapore - hence going abroad is the only solution. But yes, the whole situation is a mess of course. Right now, I'm trying my very best to see if I can bump a D/E grade up to a C - that's my objective and a fairly realistic goal. Just think about all his classmates who are going to end up with terrible grades because they're not getting the attention they need.
DeleteHonestly even with a C grade I don't know if that's good enough for NUS/NTU or the other two local unis, since that wasn't good enough for my uni in Sg (and I didn't go to NTU/NUS). My uni even posted the average of the grades admitted every year and it is usually AABB or ABBB. But with your nephew it shouldn't be about the outcome, but about the improvement. Further I don't think Sg is lacking universities due to their size. Denmark is a similarly sized country but has 8 public universities with 30k+ students each. I just think the PAP are a bunch of snobs who only want to spend taxpayer money on people just as rich and smart as they are.
DeleteI'll just talk about my uni (it's the pure engineering one). I knew some of the professors on the admissions committee, and they were not interested in creating more places for NUS/NTU engineering's rejects. In fact, they got in trouble with the Singapore government the first few years of being open because the government explicitly told them to admit 500 students/year, but the admissions committee decided to admit only 300 because "the grades of the rest of the applicant pool were too weak." They clearly had the space/money/manpower to admit an extra 200 engineering students who would otherwise go to SIM, but they didn't want to. Such is the elitist attitude towards higher education in Sg. The purpose isn't to help an average person secure a middle class future, instead its to educate a future Nobel prize winner.
Let's put it this way Amanda, I think my nephew is doomed by this current system. In my time, he would have been able to get away with a combination like double maths + 2 sciences (physics/chemistry) or even maths + triple science (physics, chemistry + biology) and get through his A levels without going near a subject like economics. By the same token, I took 4 arts subjects (geography, economics, English literature + Theatre Studies & Drama) thus carefully avoiding having to do maths. Forcing me to have done maths back in the day would have subjected me to the same torture that my nephew is going through right now, that's why I am very aware of the fact that he has been forced to do this against his will and that this would have never happened in the 1990s under the old system that I went through.
DeleteBut given that he needs a B at least for economics to be considered for the local universities to do engineering, it's a big ask to say the least. Right now, the way he is answering the questions, he's scoring around 40% - 50% (which is a D or E grade) and with better exam techniques, I hope to boost that figure to about 50% to 60% which would be a C grade, possible a B on a good day. Right now, it isn't a question of cramming more facts into his head, it's a question of exam techniques. Given how the subject of economics is based on the real world, it's impossible to predict what kind of questions he will get in the exam - no you have gotta think on the spot. There are the key questions: who, what, when, how, where, why. So if we look at two things: the Covid-19 pandemic and inflation, there are so many different ways to approach the topic. Say if we merely teach him about the effect the pandemic had on inflation in 2020, then he might feel ready to answer a question like that, but what if the question was, "who would this rise in inflation have a greatest impact on during a pandemic?" I can so easily turn a how question into a who question or a why question into a when question etc - so we go back to the basics: read the question carefully, find out what the question requires you to do, then go back to the material you have at your disposition to find out if you have the right answer and if so, how to present that answer to the question. This is what A level exams require you to do and I have no idea if we'll get there in the end, but as the uncle, I think I am his best hope. The alternative would be to get him a local tuition teacher who believes in (I quote my brother-in-law here) "pushing information" - if I may translate, he means rote learning. That means you simply give the student even more information - it is a fairly stress free learning experience whereby the student just sits quietly and listens to the teacher run through the material over and over again. But that's a far cry from my kind of teaching method which is to put him on the spot by asking him to answer the questions (just like he would in an exam situation).
Anyway, if he has to go abroad, it's not the end of the world really.
It is a bit cruel to reject a student with even one C from university. But I get why they chose to diversify the subjects, they want kids who are very well-rounded. Btw in the US when it comes to Harvard they want even more well-roundedness, as in being a gifted athlete is extreme bonus points regardless of what major you apply to. I could never clear that bar since I'm a pure nerd type who was always the slowest runner in PE class.
DeleteI know this isn't very helpful, but reading/listening comprehension is something that should be trained over years and not in a matter of weeks or months. It is baffling that the Sg education system trains rote learning up to O levels then suddenly expects creative answers for A levels. And yeah it's not the end of the world if your nephew has to go abroad. But even if he goes abroad, engineering programs also require students to take some humanities subjects in uni, so he still needs to train good reading comprehension after A levels. Well this just shows that learning is a life-long process and one has to play the long game.
Did you know that some countries take this 'well rounded' education concept to an extreme - in France, sports is a module that students can use to boost their grades for university admission. So I once met this 18 year old French guy at my gym who was using gymnastics this way, it's incredible. I just rolled my eyes and thought, damn if only I could've used my gymnastics back in the day instead of doing so many exams. But such is the French system, it's incredibly different. But if you suck at sports, the thought of having to include that in a part of your exams must be a rather worrying thought.
DeleteSo for his poor listening/reading comprehension skills, I can only do what I can so I realize that he's fucked from the start because of the Singaporean system and the impact I can make is limited - that's why I don't claim to be able to solve the problem, I am only aiming to nudge him from a D/E grade to a C grade, that's my very modest goal at this stage. His education has been fucked up from the start because he's an autistic student growing up in Singapore, where do I begin?
In hindsight I regret not putting more effort into doing well in sports as a child. I was envious of people who were really good at soccer/basketball, in the same way students envy others with higher grades in certain subjects thinking its just "natural giftedness." But these good athletes did train after school with academies while I didn't. I may not be a naturally gifted athlete, but a little hard work goes a long way to getting good at anything. Yeah I notice the Sg and UK model of university admissions does not really include sports or other after school activities, its mostly grades based. But people argue this promotes better social mobility because sports is usually only within reach of rich kids who go to rich schools, but anyone can study for an exam so the field is (more) level here.
DeleteYeah a C grade sounds reasonable, its proof improvement is possible(hope it continues into university). But yeah it sucks that the Singaporean system didn't train this skill sooner. Is rote learning just easier to teach and test? Also its not just people with autism who struggle to get an A or B in economics, even regular students struggle to write creative answers, which shows the system sucks for everybody too.
Oh I hate to be harsh but don't feel bad - with sports, you're either talented or you're not. It's one of those things: a good coach can do a lot with a gifted athlete but no matter how much hard work you put in, without at least a decent amount of talent, you can't become good at the sport. So much has got to do with the kind of body you have, the natural instinct. Take something like ping pong for example, the level of hand-eye coordination for you to react instantly when you see the ball coming back across the table and you have that split second to make a decision as to how to hit the ball back: I can as a coach tell you what you're doing wrong if you're playing badly, that's obvious. But can you actually improve even if I spend 2 hours yelling you for making mistakes, telling you what the mistakes are? No, there's something in your brain that needs to click and realize, oh okay, I get it, this is what I need to do instead to cope with the ball coming at me this way. A coach can't flick that switch in your head, you need to have that natural instinct to flick it on your own. So even if your sent a rich kid to me for gymnastics lessons, there's probably little I can do if the kid isn't talented at all in the first place.
DeleteRote learning is a last resort because of the student-teacher ratio - my nephew is in a rather large class and the teacher simply doesn't have the time (nor the inclination) to give him enough personal attention. So instead, if he does badly in a test, she punishes him with extra homework. But it's that kind of logic that demonstrates how fucked up the teachers are - look, the student fared badly in the test because he didn't understand the topic. Punishing the student with more homework isn't gonna solve the problem, what the teacher needs to do is to sit down with the student for hours and hours and hours to coach the student patiently to get the student to the point where he can understand the topic well enough to cope with it in an exam. Will a Singaporean teacher do that? Hell no, they're so selfish they don't care if you fail. The responsibility then falls on the parents to get the student external help via the private tuition system. The entire Singaporean system is totally rotten to the core. Not sure if you've heard, but a secondary school student in Singapore this week flipped out and killed a fellow student in the school with an axe - google it, it shocked me. He didn't even know his victim, just killed an innocent kid. The murderer tried to commit suicide before - this is how fucked up the education system is cos it pushes kids to the edge and then this one just snapped. I know when kids try to commit suicide, it's a desperate cry for help and attention, they're trying to tell their families, I am in pain please help me, this whole system is failing me so badly. This kid didn't get the help he needed but instead of killing himself, he killed a stranger, a 13 year old boy in the school. It is so tragic but sadly predictable given what we know of Singapore.
Well I was alright at basketball technique wise, so dribbling and shooting. I was even on the basketball team of my tiny high school and was a regular starter because I scored a lot. The problem was I was terribly unfit(fat kid), so it wouldn't matter if I dribbled and shot more accurately if I had 50% the stamina, strength, and speed of all the other players on the court. But as far as being naturally talented at sport, I definitely wasn't the most gifted athlete at my school. Though as an adult I do train cardio so I have good stamina when I go fencing. It can't all be technique, that's just biology.
DeleteYeah it's weird how the school system condones pain from studies, even though too much pain of any sort is bad for children. At the same time they don't condone pain from teen dating and heartbreak. I know what you mean by big classes and teachers not having enough time because I was friends with some high school teachers in Sg. They spend so much time preparing lessons for the whole class that they definitely don't have hours to spend on just one student. I see why you're hesitant to have children, each child is a gargantuan effort trying to help them on all their individual problems. Though to be fair this grades thing seems unique to Asia. I have friends from high school with middling grades who don't sweat about it at all in their 20s, and they're not even that wealthy. Some people are fine just making minimum wage, though they live in countries with strong unions and universal healthcare. Sg has neither. There are way worse consequences for being at the bottom of the food chain in Singapore than in say Australia or Sweden.
You're right that biology, being born with the right body for sports is very important. After all, I am sure you know the importance of being tall in basketball! But the goal is always to match the athlete to the right sport, being very tall is actually a disadvantage in gymnastics for example, where most female gymnasts are tiny. Svetlana Khorkina of Russia was once written off as too tall and she went on to win plenty of gold medals and when you look at her height, she's actually just 1.65 m tall, she's even shorter than me. But that's considered too tall for gymnastics mind you. It's not like she was 1.85 m tall!
DeleteAs for why I don't wanna have children, good grief, don't even get me started - I can write a whole post on the subject. I had a terrible childhood and now I don't even speak to my father, like I spoke to him once this year for like what, 5 or 10 minutes and even then I didn't enjoy it. He is so uneducated and stupid, like I have to bite my tongue and force a smile each time he says something totally stupid; it's painful talking to him I swear because he's that stupid. Imagine if your child speaks like that about you - what if I have a genius son who thinks I am a total idiot? Or flip it around, what if I had a son like my nephew who frustrates the hell out of me because he can't keep up with me intellectually? How would I deal with that a child who is either more intelligent or less intelligent than me? I don't know, but I don't have to deal with that since I'm not having children ever. No way, it's too much of an unknown, too many factors that are just out of my hands altogether and I don't like that.
Lol yeah I am pretty tall which is why basketball was a natural fit. But yeah different body types for different sports, in swimming you have to be tall but have longer arms and shorter legs. I do think there is some element of strategy to each sport though. The reason why I like fencing is because there's so many different ways to win and many tricks to try.
DeleteI don't think you have to be as smart as your child to get along, people just have to try to be empathetic to each other and find a common ground. But with your parents neither of them try very hard to ask you about your interests and your hopes and dreams. But its true that the people who are so enthusiastic about having children tend to discount the possibility that their child may be born with some kind of disability that makes life harder for both of them. I resent the parents who think they can just pop out a child, give them food and water, but otherwise leave the child to raise themselves.
It's not that I am looking down on my father but his poor social skills make our interactions very testing - that's the word. So rewind to the period when I was comparing my 3 job offers and coincidentally, I went with the job offer that was the most lucrative because I felt it was a sign that this company valued and respected me (and wanted me) the most. The other 2 job offers weren't shabby either but this one was the best. So I told my sister and father my decision making process (I'll skip the other technical details about the product and the company) - but you know what he did in response to that? He started ranting on and on about how I should not make the mistake of following the money - that money would not make me happy if I end up in a miserable work environment, if the people are not nice and I have to work crazy long hours etc. And I was like, did you even hear a word of what I said? I think I'm old and wise enough to make the correct decision when presented with 3 job offers, I know how to do a cost-benefit analysis to weigh up the pros and cons amongst the 3 options - I am very logical and analytical, I have the necessary skills to evaluate complex situations like that very carefully to arrive at the right decision.
DeleteBut no, my father feels the need to 'say something' in response - almost as if that's some kind of reflex action learned from the time he was a teacher. He feels that he needs to give some kind of wise advice to help me with my decision making process when really, he is in no position whatsoever to help. He doesn't know the industry I work in, he doesn't have a clue about any of these 3 companies that have offered me a job and he also doesn't know me at all - so he doesn't know what is important to me in my career and which company could offer that to me. He is starting from a position of total and complete ignorance about the situation; but more to the point, I wasn't even seeking advice. I was just casually telling my family, "by the way, I am changing jobs and this has happened." Yet he feels the need to 'give advice' based on one tiny piece of information that he could understand (that I took the most lucrative of the 3 job offers) and he was basically talking a lot of rubbish. Now what am I supposed to do in that situation? Do I say shut up you have no idea what you're talking about, stop embarrassing yourself already. What I do is just ignore him and then quickly change the subject, I don't need or want to scold him when he talks rubbish like that. But holy shit, he does test my patience because I know he is talking bullshit yet he thinks he's giving me wise advice and I am resisting the urge to tell him that I think he's not just an idiot, but he's probably the second most stupid person I know in my life - the title of the most stupid person goes to my mother. It's not a competition anyone wants to win, it is a race to the bottom but my parents definitely take the gold and silver medal there.
OK so how would I deal with such a situation if say you Amanda came to me and said, "hey Alex I've had three job offers and after much consideration, I picked this one." Given that I don't know anything about your industry, I would simply use questions to express interest in what lies next in your new job. So I would ask open ended questions like, "how big is this company? How long have they been established? Is the office far from your home? Will you use public transport or drive to work? How long would the journey take? What are the people there like, have you met all of your new colleagues yet? Are they entirely white American or is it a more diverse, international environment? What's the male : female ratio like in your new work place? Will you be able to work from home or are you expected to be in the office all the time? How old is your new boss?" And that's just a few questions off the top of my head that I could ask you and I could go on asking you more questions based on your initial answers. I am quite capable of showing interest in your new job and having a fruitful conversation with you this way even if I know nothing about your industry. Sadly, my father simply isn't capable of this kind of social interaction. I don't think it's rocket science mind you, this is just social skills 101.
DeleteWhat ticks me off the most about what your father said was his point about "you could be miserable if you're in a bad working environment" came with zero context whatsoever. It's not like in your previous job you were miserable and that happened because you only followed the money but didn't question the job interviewer about other things. I think that your father was miserable at his job, but that is totally irrelevant because this job offer is about you and not him. Asking questions to gain more context to give a better answer is so simple, yet people who can only think about themselves like your father can't do it. My mom is very similarly selfish and unempathetic, which is why I don't speak to her.
DeleteHmm, I don't know why I wouldn't ask all those things on the list of questions you would, I could probably only think of "is it close to your house or in another nice area?" or "is it a big company?" I don't have the best social skills, but I remember when I was a kid I'd try to talk to my dad and he'd scold me for asking small-talkish questions as "stupid" or "irrelevant", because he only likes pure-intellectual discussions about business/politics/science. But in hindsight I should've made the conclusion that my dad doesn't like small-talk, but many others do. I love my dad a lot, he can be very empathetic at times, but he wasn't perfect and small-talk is something he does for a living but hates to do in private.
Your father is hopeless, but how is your nephew when it comes to conversation? Did you tell him about your 3 job offers?
Oh that's why I don't even bother trying to talk to my father - his conversational skills are non-existent. I remember years ago, I had this bizarre lunch with him and two of his friends. And I thought, ooops this is gonna get awkward - are they going to ask me if I am married with kids (I am in my 40s remember) and would I have to come out to them in front of my father? But no, that never happened. My father's autistic friends simply talked about themselves. So friend A tells a story about what happened to him last week, the rest of them kinda just ignore him. Then friend B volunteers another story that happened to his family recently, the rest of them again don't respond to him. Then my father mentions something he read in the newspaper and nobody responds - it goes on like that. Nobody had the social skills to even ask a question to respond to what the other person said, it's shocking but that's how it is with people of my father's generation - they have zero conversational skills. At least the food was really good, so I just enjoyed the excellent Chinese food whilst silently judging them. They do make some attempt at conversations but holy shitballs, it's so different from what we're used to.
DeleteI told my two sisters and nephew on a group Zoom call about my 3 job offers and my nephew just sat that quietly and didn't say a word. He's like that, if the adults are talking, he never volunteers any information unless I specifically ask him a question to try to coax him into the conversation.
Jeezus your father's standards for social skills are so low one only needs a pair of functioning ears to count as a "friend", no replies or emotional connection needed. My mom also does that where if I visit her she'll tell me about random things she read in her Whatsapp group and I just don't reply because 95% of the time I'm not interested, and she keeps doing this anyway.
DeleteWith regards to your nephew I think talking to older adults is just not a thing in Asia. Growing up at Chinese new year events the kids in my family talked among themselves, and the adults talked among themselves. There was hardly any cross-talk between groups except when the older adults asked the kids about school or other topics relevant to them. In the West adults talk more to children in family gatherings or even at universities (like my department party recently). I'm not entirely used to it either, but with some empathy and the ability to gauge understanding most social situations are not too hard to handle.
LOL, I don't even think the ears need to function that well - his friends never seem to acknowledge whatever he says, they may as well be deaf or my father may as well get a dog and start telling the dog stories, the result would be exactly the same. I know what you mean about not replying - I don't feel the need to scold my parents for their poor social skills, it is what it is and they're not going to change. Any attempt to scold them for their shortcomings won't achieve anything as they're never going to change, so I just do what you do - I don't reply and change the topic. What is the alternative? I don't think there's a better alternative.
DeleteI remember growing up in Singapore, when I was my nephew's age, there were some adults who had the social skills to engage me and spoke to me as if I was an equal. Whilst there were others that dismissed me as a kid who didn't have anything valid to share with them, it is no coincidence that the adults who knew how to engage me were more westernized, like they were educated abroad rather than in Singapore, thus that developed this aspect of their social skills - probably because they were exposed to that aspect of Western culture when they were abroad.
Well if a dog's ears are fine even if their brain doesn't understand human words, then your father might as well be talking to dolls haha. They don't need food or water, and don't make a mess like dogs haha. But yeah it's not like I haven't tried telling my mom she has bad social skills. Every time I did she would scold me for being a disrespectful child. Some people can't be helped.
DeleteYes in the west they really value social skills and getting along with everyone. It's not that everyone in the west has good social skills, but their society rewards people more for it, and probably scolds them harsher for not having it. Similar to how in Asia one can get by being a nerd with good grades and not much else, in the west this is nearly impossible. Oh god recently I had a meeting with my boss where he told me "the science is fine" then proceeded to complain about my social skills. I could not imagine this conversation happening in Asia if my boss was Asian. If the science is fine, then nobody asks any questions.
Btw I just read your latest blog post. Wow I had no idea Dave is only 24! How did he find his feet so quickly in his career? It makes me wonder how clients feel about handing millions over to this very young salesperson. Also I think it's okay to mess up early in the job since you said you were moving to a slightly different field (the baking analogy?).
Well that's why some people find it easier to build relationships with pets than humans, pets are good listeners and you have lower expectations - you don't expect your dog to remember your birthday and that's why people love their pets so much, it is that kind of unconditional love. I think my parents should get a pet, but they won't listen to me. As for young Dave, they're not handing their money over to him to manage per se - it goes into the same investment programme that is run by the company. Dave essentially says, "we have the best traders in the UK handling your money, running the investment programme - they're not young like me, they're much older and a lot more experienced. You would be pleased to know that I will NOT be handling your investments." In short, he's but the middleman who has inserted himself into a process where he does only the initial sale - then he just sits back and takes his cut when the investment goes through. So he doesn't need to do that much but the earning potential is extremely high, that's why he has been making like half a million a month.
DeleteAllow me to use an analogy to explain Dave's role: imagine if we went to a really posh, expensive Japanese restaurant expecting the best sushi meal ever. If someone like young Dave was our waiter, we would be quite happy to let him bring us the food, pour us the drinks in the knowledge that there is a 60 year old Japanese sushi master from Kyoto in the kitchen preparing the sushi and that Dave the waiter is in no way involved in the food preparation. Such is the division of labour - Dave doesn't pretend to manage the investment or do the trading the same way the waiter would claim, "I hope you like the nigiri sushi, I made it myself earlier this evening." No in fact, the waiter in such a Japanese restaurant would probably say something like, "you're very lucky, master chef Satoshi from Kyoto is serving you personally tonight and he is extremely popular and famous for his sushi."
DeleteHmm, so would you say Dave is really good at hyping the traders behind the scenes? As a scientist I know just how hard it is to hype yourself up when speaking to the public, I would love if we had someone like "Dave" in the office to do all our presentations while we stick to doing the science. Btw, I'll continue this conversation on the other post since it seems more relevant there.
DeleteOK see you in the thread in the latest post. Thanks.
DeleteI would argue that certain subjects like maths and science are important whether or not the individual has interest in them so should be essential subjects in school. That way we won't raise more anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters (PAP supporters), or flat-earthers.
ReplyDeleteThen again i have an aptitude for science and math and never struggled in school with those subjects. This was also why i went back to school to study health sciences (anatomy & physiology, pathophysiology etc) and more advanced radiation physics.
Then again i am a believer in experiences. What you have never tried you will never know you would be good at. Everyone might have a hidden talent or two waiting to be discovered.
Thanks for your comment Choaniki - I think there's a huge difference between teaching a student maths & science and getting them to avoid being anti-vaxxers, Trump/PAP supports and flat-earthers. After all, all of the above probably did still do maths and science at school and still end up with a closed mind. So it's not a question of "these people didn't get the right information" but more a question of "these people weren't taught to look at both sides of the argument." Let's look at the way my nephew is being taught at school: he is being made to memorize massive chunks of information, he is asked to copy the 'model answer' and a lot of it is just rote learning, he is not taught to ask questions or have an inquisitive mind. Rather he is scolded for asking questions and rewarded for keeping his mouth shut whilst copying out the model answer. So it's a fundamentally the kind of learning environment he is in which is designed to turn him into a PAP-voting sheep rather than one that challenges the government and the status quo.
DeleteThis was evident in our lesson today - we had a really simple question actually and I asked him for a response using his common sense. And I gave him a clue, "think about your own family and this applies to someone in your family." I wanted him to think about his grandparents and how the elderly have different priorities to young people in school and working adults - but he just drew a blank and stared at me as if I was speaking Greek to him. He then in desperation tried quoting something from the textbook and I was like no no no, please go back to your family - can you list the people in your extended family for me please? Just trying to get him slightly off the beaten path to apply what he has learn in economics to his own family is a massive struggle for him because "his own family" is not a topic in his textbook that he can memorize, yet ironically it is a topic that he ought to know really well given that we're talking about his own family. Such is the problem with the way he has been educated in Singapore - typical Singaporean students are not taught to think, they are taught to memorize information and then follow orders. I suppose if you are running an army, you need someone like my nephew who will blindly follow orders because he wouldn't know how to think for himself but the irony is that my nephew is actually quite good at maths & science, yet it is this inability to think outside the box even with a familiar topic like "talk about your own family" that shocks me.
As for hidden talents, hmmmm. I am in two minds about it. On one hand, I did discover my hidden talent for languages very late in life at about 19 when I started learning French. I thought that I sucked at languages because I hated Chinese and sucked at Chinese at school, but then I realized, hey actually I don't have a problem with the Chinese language - I hate my father instead and he was a Chinese teacher. It was too difficult for me to say out aloud that I hate my own father, so I hated what he represented instead but now that I can be honest about my poor relationship with my father, I have embraced the Chinese language, removed that barrier in my head and have gone on to learn over 20 languages to become a true polyglot. There are indeed people like me who have had some kind of emotional trauma that have prevented us from even trying to do something that we're actually pretty good at.
But I think it is highly unlikely for someone to have hidden talents buried inside without some kind of trauma suppressing it. I know of this cyclist who really didn't want to even go near a bicycle before she turned 16 and was asked to take part in a race at her school. She was extremely reluctant at first because her older brother was in an awful accident when she was young - he was riding a bike when he got hit by a car, leaving him with terrible injuries. That created a fear in her head about bicycles but when placed in a velodrome in the absence of cars, then she could relax and let her talent come through - she eventually became an extremely good cyclist. Yeah a story like that with a good reason why her incredible talent was suppressed or hidden, otherwise short of someone being born into a totally poor family and having no chance at all to try anything, I think most people with some kind of talent would naturally allow it to come to the surface - whether or not they choose to do anything with it is another matter. I've come across so many talented gymnasts who never pursued the sport because they decided to focus on their studies or careers instead.
DeleteIf I may be totally blunt, with someone like my nephew, good grief, we have tried EVERYTHING to try to find out if he has a talent in something, anything. I even took the whole computer game thing seriously - like okay, he likes computer games, can he have a career in gaming? Does he have a special talent there that we can tap into - is he talented in something, anything?!?! The sad truth is that after 18 years, I've still yet to see any real talent in him for anything at all. With my gymnastics talent, I was already doing cartwheels and swinging on the monkey bars in the playground when given half a chance as a young kid and with my languages, for some reason, when I was bored in the army, I chose to taught myself French - I could have done a thousand other things to pass my time productively but I reached for a foreign language despite nobody saying to me, "learn French, you'll like it and you'll actually be really good at it." Even when I had good reason to suppress studying any language apart from English, that talent still found its way to the surface with no prompting at all. It just happened, quite naturally, if the talent is real, it will find a way of manifesting itself.
DeleteDear Sir,
DeleteRecall back the time that you have suffered badly under your parent. Now your poor nephew had their full time attention. Dealing with two mentally sick adults must have been horrible for him, and he is more likely to have crumbled breaking apart long ago.
Whatever talents or interests he have have been pushed aside, leaving time only for computer games, that is the only thing he can concentrate on without others disturbing.
Have you ever consider phycologist help for him without your parent knowing and presence.
Singapore's education system is built from kindergarten to raise obedient workers who don't question. The thinking part is all left to the scholars and the senior leaders. When our ministers and MPs lament that there is no creativity in Singapore that is basically the result of their rote learning methodology working as planned. After all the nail that sticks out get hammered down fast in Singapore.
DeleteHi there, if I may address the following points:
Delete1. Yes my parents are terrible grandparents but they can only have so much influence on my nephew especially during the pandemic, when they are shielding as they are elderly and vulnerable - this minimizes their contact with my nephew so I am not worried about them. However, my nephew has terrible teachers at school who are the ones inflicting the most harm on him and short of totally removing him from the Singaporean education system, I don't have a solution. Quite frankly, he doesn't need a psychologist - he needs to be transferred to an international school away from the awful, broken Singaporean education system. Whilst my parents are deeply flawed, thankfully my mother and brother in law are not and I have more faith in their parenting skills, thankfully.
2. Choaniki, you've hit the nail on the head. He is a product of the Singaporean system and he's great at memorizing the textbook but the moment I veer off the syllabus and ask him to use his own family as an example, his brain goes blank because his family is not a chapter in the textbook that he can memorize - yet it's not as if it is a topic that he knows nothing about. His brain simply isn't able to process information independently like that and depends entirely on spoon feeding - that's entirely the fault of the awful Singaporean system.
Sorry sorry sorry I just spotted a typo, last line of first paragraph: thankfully my SISTER and brother in law are not. My mother's autism is seriously off the scale I swear.
Delete