How shifting the budget from extra lessons to trips of discovery makes more sense for children in the 21st century.
With schools heading into the June holidays, are you planning to get your child to sign for extra tuition classes – either for better grades or for personal enrichment? Well, there is a better way to prime children for success in the 21st century. Take them on a journey of discovery instead.
Parents seem to think that spending money on tuition for their children is a better investment than giving them new experiences that are not part of the school syllabus. Our competitive school system is partly to blame for this attitude, and parents also have the mindset that success is measured by the universities their children go to and the jobs they get.
Singaporean parents have been known to place a great premium on their children’s education. A survey conducted by insurance company AIA Singapore in 2021 on 1,000 households showed that irrespective of whether the families earned between $2,000 and $8,000 a month or raked in more than $14,000, many spend more than 20 per cent of their household income on their children. This was 2.5 times more than what they put aside for their retirement.
Many parents want their children to stay ahead of the game and would not mind buying or renting choice properties to increase their children’s chances of getting into popular primary schools. Next, they will prep their children to get into the sought-after Gifted Education Programme or Integrated Programme offered by independent schools.
After getting their children into these schools, parents continue to sign their children for these additional classes for fear that they are not able to keep up with their classmates. It is an endless cycle, creating stress for both parents and children.
My husband and I have taken a different tack. We believe that the trips we take our son on will equip him better to face the challenges that life throws at him, better than any high-end tuition that improves his grades. Sounds silly? Hear me out.
Since the time I was pregnant with my son, I have been reading parenting books voraciously. Not just books like What To Expect When You Are Expecting, but a wide variety of books written by pedagogical experts, futurists and child psychologists to find answers on how to bring up a child well in the 21st Century.
Of course, I want my son to do well in life. Doing well in life in Singapore often means getting our children into good schools and later a renowned university, so that they can land well-paying jobs.
Though we would have liked our son to get into these top schools, we were not prepared to spend the kind of money that many parents put aside to give their children a leg up in life.
Do we then dare to buck the kiasu parents’ mindset and have a longer-term picture of what is needed for him to thrive in this volatile and unpredictable world?
It is with in mind that my husband and I decided we should not give our son a tuition “crutch” when he entered formal school. We taught him to pay attention in class and consult his teachers, as there will be little help outside school. With the savings from the “minimal tuition” policy, the budget was allocated to our family travel fund.
We believe travelling opens up children’s minds and teaches them how to navigate the unknown. Often, our trips do not go according to plan. With every hiccup we face on the road, our son gets to witness how we overcome problems.
One incident which stood out was a landslide on the Karakorum Highway on our trip to Xinjiang, China that made the road impassable to traffic. It was a trying time, with darkness descending, and we were not dressed for the cold. Thankfully, help finally arrived and our son, who was seven years old then, seemed none the worse for the experience, having seen how we weathered the unexpected turn of events.
Another memorable incident was when we lost all our luggage after touching down in Iceland. Not wanting to spoil the first stop in our itinerary, we went ahead to soak in the famed Blue Lagoon geothermal waters, dressed in the white T-shirt which the airport staff gave us when our luggage did not arrive.
Such mishaps have not only made our family trips memorable, but have given our son a wealth of experience and life lessons far beyond anything that extra hours with a tutor could ever give.
We have also visited places like Cambodia, Mongolia and Yunnan in China where the cultures and way of life are so different from ours. The numerous trips we took to an orphanage in Cambodia showed my son how people in other parts of the world made do with very little. It helped him put things in perspective, and taught him to be less materialistic in life.
21st century skills needed
Grades and technical knowledge alone will not be enough to help our children navigate the future. In fact, many books written by pedagogical experts and futurists advocate that schools downplay technical skills. Instead, they emphasise general-purpose life skills, such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, adaptability and resilience. There is consensus that a lot of the knowledge imparted in schools today will likely be redundant by 2050.
“What is important is for our children to cultivate mental flexibility to deal with the relentless pace of change and have great reserves of emotional balance to repeatedly let go of what they think they know and feel at home with the unknown,” said historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 Lessons For The 21st century.
Unfortunately, cultivating mental flexibility is not something that you can learn in class by taking extra lessons in mathematics and science.
If mathematics and science do not figure high up in the knowledge and skill sets our children need in the 21st century, then it might not make sense to spend huge sums of money for extra tuition classes just so he could gain a few extra marks in these subjects.
The role of parents
Many people think being a good parent means being able to ensure their children get into the best university. And by doing this, their children will then land good jobs, and lead happy and fulfilled lives. They then spend a disproportionate amount of their household income on their children.
Child physician and psychologist Leonard Sax wrote an enlightening book titled The Collapse Of Parenting – How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups.
In it, he offers a vision for what role parents should take, which has little to do with making sure our children ace their examinations, build their athletic prowess or swell their list of accomplishments so that their university entrance application stands out. Instead, parents should remember that their fundamental role is to prepare their children for the challenges of the adult world and real life.
It is very difficult for parents – me included, to accept the fact that a successful life does not necessarily equate to a fulfilling one. There is nothing wrong in being ordinary if the child when he grows up has meaningful work to do, a person to love and a cause to embrace.
I have to constantly remind myself and my son that the sense of his worth should not depend on being accepted to top universities, so that he would not be devastated when he receives his first rejection letter.
Whenever I feel insecure regarding my son’s grades, I remember the words of Chinese business magnate Jack Ma: “Our children do not need to be in the top three positions in their class. Being in the middle is great, as this kind of middle-of-the-road student has more free time to learn other skills.”
And, if I may add to his wise words, more time to learn them while seeing the world and embracing the unknown.
[This was first published in The Straits Times on 21 May 2023]