Parents' intervention in education

‘For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.’ (Ecclesiastes 7:12)

‘Keep hold of instruction; do not let go; guard her, for she is your life.’ (Proverbs 4:13)

I have been giving tuition for free to this Primary 3 boy since February this year. He comes from a disadvantage home. So far, the progress he made has been slow though I put in my best efforts. May be this has to do with lack of parents’ intervention and strategizing in his education. I do think parents’ involvement plays a significant role in helping a child to do well in life later on. Education is the primary means here for socio-economic mobility. However in recent years, children from more successful people are found to do better than those from the lower-income families. Things have changed compared to the past. Children nowadays are generally less ‘self-reliant’ and motivated. So if they are left on their own, they may not do well under the present highly competitive education system.

Is every school a good school? I don’t think so especially for secondary school level onwards. Just ask those who are teachers. They will tell you that resources are not the same for all the schools. How do we assess a school? Again the most objective method is academic success. Given a choice, no parents would want to base their choice of school for their kids on non-academic yardsticks like arts, music and sports. Academic success is the most recognizable form of success in life to most people, so is our society. Just look at how scholarships are awarded. We are still far from giving our children a more well-rounded education which involves also areas like character development and nurturing compassion for humanity.

Parents can strategize their children education in different ways. One of them is through private tuition. Private tuition has its place for certain situations. Classroom style of tuition generally is not so effective but one-to-one tuition benefits academically weaker children like this boy, who do need help in what they could not understand in class. In a typical class of forty students, it is impossible for teachers to give individual attention to each child. Ironically, examination questions have becoming tougher over the years! In the past, I used to think that primary 3 is still a ‘play year’ until I taught this boy. In fact, primary 3 seems to be a ‘defining’ year , where a child has to build a good foundation so that he can handle well for his upper primary education.