Benghui’s Chinese homework-character recognition. You can hear him reading fluently in the background.
I have been going crazy. Benghui has been bringing his home work home. He goes to a Chinese language tuition school which charges Rm300 every three months. He enjoys the tuition classes. There are about fifteen students in each class and they read in unison. The work is graded from Book 1 to maybe 20 I am not sure. I only wish he practices his piano just as diligently.
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Mrs Bengbeng has been very upset because Benghui has been spending too much time on the computer. She has bought a set of specially recommended reading material which Benghui finds boring. All her ranting and scolding just doesn’t seem to move or motivate Benghui at all. He will sit there with the book and look busy and stop thinking.
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If you are living in my house, you will be pleasantly surprised and perhaps raise your eyebrows. Benghui can be seen reading Chinese and he reads it aloud. Surprisingly he reads it quite accurately as he mimics his teacher well. Mandarin has now become his favorite subject.
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Give tuition teachers a breather says SUPP Youth
I was out on Wednesday night with Xing Min. He was moaning the fact that his children are now without tuition teachers. These next few months are crucial for his children’s future. One is in Form 3 and the other in Form 5.
He explained that the tuition teacher called to explain the situation to him. The tuition teacher even offered to pay back back half a month being the balance for lessons yet to be given. According to the teacher, the school requires most teachers to give free lessons in school after school hours. This means the tuition teacher has no flexibility at all to give tuition.
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The topic for today is the school and society. The school has not disappointed society and society has not disappointed the schools in Sibu. Traditionally the public has always been been very supportive of the measures taken by schools.
There was an outburst initially at the beginning of this year when every student of a certain school was asked to make a compulsory donation of RM100 for development of computer facilities. One parent was heard saying that her whole month’s pay was gone as there were other school fees too and she had 4 children in that school. Based on my calculation she had to pay about RM800 in all not including school uniforms, shoes, school bus fares, exercise books and text books.
This week, Sibu parents are in a dilemma. The Sibu Division Education Officer, Charles Tiong has decreed that this Saturday, the14th of April, 2007 be declared Hari Permuafakatan Keluarga. The objectives are good i.e. to foster better relations between the schools and the parents.
Some headmasters and principals have taken it upon themselves to make this day a smashing success. They threaten to hold back the students’ report card if parents don’t turn up on that day to ‘force them’ to come.
This form of bullying from schools should not be condoned. To punish the students for their parents inability to get leave should not be encouraged too. Their parents’ jobs are their rice-bowls. Should society accept : I am headmaster/principal/Division Education officer. You have to follow what I say or else.
Using threats or holding back of a student’s property is not the best way to foster better relations. Are there not better ways to achieve this goal?
Do the schools have the moral and legal credibility to force parents to come to school for a few minutes and these few minutes will drag into hours as every one has to take a turn to meet the teachers while the principal delivers speeches blowing his own trumpet and other accompanying items thought up to enhance the occasion and recorded somewhere and which will be dredged up by the same officers when performance appraisal time comes.
Do all parents have to play the games dictated by these officers? Have we come to the stage where the education department is so bankrupt of ideas?
Enhance cooperation not confrontation. Spare a thought for the families of the students. Have Hari Permuafakatan Keluarga by all means but leave out the threats.
Source : India Times
It happened about a decade ago. A boy Rakesh was hauled up for not wearing the proper school trousers. He was then asked to stand outside the classroom as a punishment. Instead he joined a group of other boys to play in the school’s water tank.
All the other boys ran away when they saw the vice-principal but Rakesh could not find his clothes. He was taken naked to his office and beaten up. Rakesh felt the trauma of the incident and became withdrawn.
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Imagine for a moment you have a son studying matriculation in Labuan. Late one night you receive an urgent sms appealing for help. What do you do? What can you do?
The father in Miri called his relatives in Labuan for help. He also called his daughter in West Malaysia. The daughter was resourceful enough to get a police car in Labuan to go to investigate. The relatives also went to the college to investigate.
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I find it incredible that a study by University Kebangsaan Malaysia ( UKM ) has revealed that most high risk girls in an ‘unnamed’ state had experienced sex before. From the 3 month study , UKM’s Children and Youth Psychology specialist Dr Khaidzir Ismail, found that 886 from 887 case studies had experienced it and the study encompassed 20 students with disciplinary problems from particular schools with ages ranging from Form One to Form Five.
Now that the issue is out in the open, we need not to shove it under the carpet but instead to examine ourselves where have we gone wrong that these young girls have deviated from the norms acceptable to our Malaysian society. (more…)
Pic courtesy of www.barnados.org.uk
It was reported in the Borneo Post Feb 21st edition that the RMAF ( Royal Malaysian Air Force ) has set up a board of inquiry to investigate a ’severe’ case of ragging. Mohd Nazim who is the alleged victim in this case was ordered to splash water from a drain on his face, place his head into a rubbish bin, drink his own vomit, immerse himself into a filthy drain besides other physical abuse. (more…)
So far, Benghui hasn’t asked me about sex. However he did make sounds when Colin Firth got close to Renee Zelweger in a scene. It startled me as I didn’t realize he understood the meaning of courtship rituals. It was from the movie ‘ Bridget Jones : The Edge of Reason ‘.
Pic courtesy of the Borneo Post 04/01/07 (more…)
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