Complacency vs Consistency
Today is the final PSLE paper and it has been a real journey beginning earlier in the year. As they say, keeping up with your homework and a daily dose of consistency is the sure-fire path to success, as opposed to doing last minute scurrying around, trying to clear stacks of printed test papers from other schools. We don't seem to practise that.
Actually, for us, it is a bit of both. This “consistency” concept, can you really trust it? Would you trust the mind of a 12-year-old to actually absorb material and knowledge on a basis which you would consider constant and reliable? Somehow, even though studies claim that kids have brains like sponges, the ones in my family seem to be somewhat leaky – so it’s still down to last-minute cramming, scrambling to do up papers at the dining table after meals, late night Q&A sessions with Dad just before bedtime. That seems to have become the norm – and although we’re not quite sure if it really works, nobody wants to take the risk.
Anyway, Shannon managed to secure a spot in School of The Arts – which itself was a challenging and stressful experience (for parents) from having to gather all the documents, certificates, testimonials, photos and videos – all to be submitted carefully online, merging, compressing, trimming, PDFs, MP4s, making sure not to leave anything out. After which she had to attend auditions, interviews and an IQ test of sorts. I think just to make a student go through that experience would have been worth the time and effort (I guess it depends on how you see it) from a growth and pressure situation which could easily make or break many young kids.
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| Shannon at 5 years old getting ready for a ballet exam |
But we decided to let her give it a shot – after all, she started dancing at 4 and figured since we invested her youth into dancing around in pink leotards and tutus, we might as well see if it can play a part in determining her educational and professional destiny – of course, we consulted her. “Shannon, would you like to continue dancing for the next six years of your life?”. “Erm, what do you want me to do? OK.” They say, children, as like blank pieces of paper which gradually get filled up as they grow – some get filled a little faster than others.
Once she qualified, suddenly all the exam stress seemed to magically disappear – which is not really what you want to happen. The student still has to pass the exam and qualify for Express – which is not that tough, but with a mindset of complacency and relaxation, things could still go wrong. So we had to keep her on her toes, remind her that in life, you have to always try your best regardless of the situation, tell her that the school still had the option of chucking her out if she didn’t do well, convince her that the qualifying mark for Express was 270. But you’d still find her playing with the spring of her pens, shopping stars all over her home-printed test papers and busy texting her friends. This, of course, would be followed by screaming and shouting and another 15 mins of “seemingly focused” study.