Ronale
(?)Community Member
- Report Post
- Posted: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 16:04:46 +0000
I understand a bit the motivation of both sides. Parents will want their children to get a good start in life - getting into an elite school can help, and being in a kindergarten attached to that school can be the starting point. Educators in general will try to give children time to be children, because if people start to hire tutors for three-year-olds, it can easily escalate to levels I've heard about in Asia (Japan, Korea). Going to club practice, school, other club practice, tutoring, then home to do homework? Not quite how I imagine childhood should be spent. I doubt parents would want that for their children either, but they will want to give their kids as many opportunities (and certainly no less than that neighbour's kid can have). And yet I don't approve people marking children who 'might have had tutoring'.
I think it does make sense to differentiate and start selecting brighter students - or to be more exact, students with higher motivation for studying - at some point before junior high. I would say before high school, to give people who are interested in academics and want to keep studying a possibility to learn things faster go deeper in the fields that they are interested in. But some kids might decide early on that they want to go to vocational schools, so there should be an option for that. It's admirable when people know what they want to do, but I guess it's a bit too early to expect it from a 4-year old who has no idea what options are even out there.
I think it does make sense to differentiate and start selecting brighter students - or to be more exact, students with higher motivation for studying - at some point before junior high. I would say before high school, to give people who are interested in academics and want to keep studying a possibility to learn things faster go deeper in the fields that they are interested in. But some kids might decide early on that they want to go to vocational schools, so there should be an option for that. It's admirable when people know what they want to do, but I guess it's a bit too early to expect it from a 4-year old who has no idea what options are even out there.