A Mother's Dilemma
My children and me have just completed 1 tutoring session. My eldest son who's 8 is already doing reading & comprehension questions for Bahasa. It could be just my age but I find that there is now a huge expectation on such a young person to perform well academically.
I also find it hard to reconcile the teaching of other subjects compared to Bahasa. For English, they have just been taught the greetings and how to spell them. For Maths, they are starting to count in groups of tens and hundreds. For Science, they have just begun to classify living and non-living things. Why on earth that for Bahasa Melayu they're expected to answer reading & comprehension questions; create sentences and short essays; complete a 'pantun'; create questions based on a statement of fact.. isn't that too high a level for a beginner? Are we trying to make learning Bahasa so difficult that people will get frustrated and drop it altogether? Or are we positively trying to create a Bahasa scholar from the masses? Maybe it's the latter.
My other beef is whether there has been proper delivery in class. My son is expected to write complex sentences without being taught about subjects and predicates. He is baffled whenever he's expected to write sentences in Bahasa and I can see how. 1 other thing, is anyone teaching Bahasa vocabulary to these children? I observed that my son faced a challenge in understanding the content of the text. Maybe it's just me. I have taken my "Malay"-ness for granted. I have too many English books in the house. Maybe I should pay DBP a visit one of these days to stock up our Bahasa books collection. I feel slightly overwhelmed by the pace of it all. And yet I must remember that my children must be allowed to enjoy their childhood.
What I will do is firstly to attend the PTA meeting next month. There are certain things that I have to clarify with the teachers. Subject content and delivery is one. Timetabling and heavy schoolbags is the other issue. If there has been too many complaints by parents of heavy schoolbags, why isn't anyone doing anything about it?
I also find it hard to reconcile the teaching of other subjects compared to Bahasa. For English, they have just been taught the greetings and how to spell them. For Maths, they are starting to count in groups of tens and hundreds. For Science, they have just begun to classify living and non-living things. Why on earth that for Bahasa Melayu they're expected to answer reading & comprehension questions; create sentences and short essays; complete a 'pantun'; create questions based on a statement of fact.. isn't that too high a level for a beginner? Are we trying to make learning Bahasa so difficult that people will get frustrated and drop it altogether? Or are we positively trying to create a Bahasa scholar from the masses? Maybe it's the latter.
My other beef is whether there has been proper delivery in class. My son is expected to write complex sentences without being taught about subjects and predicates. He is baffled whenever he's expected to write sentences in Bahasa and I can see how. 1 other thing, is anyone teaching Bahasa vocabulary to these children? I observed that my son faced a challenge in understanding the content of the text. Maybe it's just me. I have taken my "Malay"-ness for granted. I have too many English books in the house. Maybe I should pay DBP a visit one of these days to stock up our Bahasa books collection. I feel slightly overwhelmed by the pace of it all. And yet I must remember that my children must be allowed to enjoy their childhood.
What I will do is firstly to attend the PTA meeting next month. There are certain things that I have to clarify with the teachers. Subject content and delivery is one. Timetabling and heavy schoolbags is the other issue. If there has been too many complaints by parents of heavy schoolbags, why isn't anyone doing anything about it?
posted by elya at 6:36 pm
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