| Relationships: Father-son Chinese language "Get him a new tuition teacher!" said Mum. Personalised one-to-one tuition at around $40 per hour 2 times a week for the past 2 years. The result? Failure in Chinese and there are 5 months more to the Primary School Leaving Examination, PSLE). It is a deep inner feeling of sadness for the sole breadwinner father, $300 spent per month on Chinese tuition resulted in poor grades and failures. If this failure continued to the PSLE, the son will be relegated to the bottom schools and from then on, no chance to get a university education in Singapore as passing of the Chinese language is a condition of entry. "He would be kicked out of his school (which has a popular secondary school); don't even think about going to the university !" said mum in an unhappy voice. Can an 11-year old be mature enough to fathom the sadness of his parents? Even if he can, will he be concerned? Giving up tuition to save money was one proposal by this young man sometime ago as he felt he was not doing well. Is it due to his genes? Maybe his parents are stupid, but they were graduates and academically, must have done well as it was much difficult to get into the Singapore University 40 years ago Dad had been top student in his primary school. "It was much easier 40 years ago," to top the class, was the reply and therefore easier to get into Raffles Institution, the premier school. Parents don't believe they have stupid children. Is it due to the fault of the tuition teacher? The teacher reported that he would not do his homework most times and even lost his tuition books. He would want to do minimal homework or none at all. The boy does not like group tuition and does not want a change of tuition teacher. Is it due to the fault of the school teacher? He is mixing with classmates who don't care much about studies and the teachers must have given up hope on a class which is at the bottom of the cohort. Exceptionally good teachers can motivate a class of mediocre students, but then there must be exceptional principals to motivate the teachers. Is it due to the lack of hard work? Sufficient time needs to be spent on any subject to gain competence and dad could see that there was no interest in the Chinese language for the past few years, despite Chinese tuition and Chinese drama classes at the primary one level. The problem here is due to a poor knowledge of the Chinese vocabulary. Read a Chinese book a week as the family does not speak Chinese at home. Write more as vocabulary cannot be learned just by reading. Subscribe to the weekly newspaper for students. These are easy to suggest. You can bring a horse to the river but you can't force it to drink. Maybe he should be given the chance to fail. Maybe he will learn when he is posted to a school not of his choice. Expectations now are just to pass the Chinese language and not even to excel to get into Raffles Institution. That aspiration to follow in Dad's foot steps to study in his secondary school was extinguished long ago. It is always a big sadness for most
Singaporean Chinese parents when their sons fail Chinese at Primary Six. Some
migrate to Australia where they need not bother about Chinese studies and be bilingual.
But this is running away. Can sons truly experience this profund sadness and
pay attention to his weakness? We will know 5 months later. Send mail to [] with questions or comments about this
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