Lisafuller wrote: ↑Sun, 31 Jul 2022 3:42 am
There really isn’t much of a choice, at raffles it was very normal to fail and fail and fail, the kids would fail so much that they’d get very used to it, constantly working hard only to be left very discouraged. These kids were the same kids who were involved in CCA, but also were the kids who only focused on academics, so how do we explain this?
I don't think this really responds to what I wrote. There will be kids struggling everywhere. Some of the JCs set very hard papers to get the kids ready, and performance differs from where the kid scored at PSLE for any number of reasons.
The kids that are happy know grades or their ranking aren't everything. Quite frankly, a lot of it starts with the parents' attitude. There are parents with 2A rights into the SAP GEP Centres, could be called the hottest ticket in town. Yet not all parents feel the need to announce to everyone where their kid goes to school. Many of these parents just let the kid progress whether that means posting to the "top/elite" secondary schools, IP more broadly, or something else. In contrast, there are parents in these schools that have told themself it's a competitive environment, very stressful, etc, etc. Kid must be in this, must be in that, etc. The same could be said for any number of other popular schools with a large portion of kids scoring very well at PSLE.
If you talk about the environment and being surrounded by certain thoughts, which one of the above do you think is going to condition the kid to believe (even indirectly) that his/her school makes them important, his/her school is a key factor in who they are, his/her ranking in school is a determinant of what options they have ahead of themselves, he/she must do everything possible to make sure he/she qualifies for the “elite” or “top” band of whatever.
Some people chose to play the game with a different mindset (even those that go to top/elite schools) having learnt the pitfalls of such situations themselves. Yes, peers can influence the kids but it's not just the system and peers.
This is what I've tried to say in some other posts about the US. If the child is focused on certain types of schools/jobs and has the die die must try attitude then they are going to be stressed out there. It's not the school work or tests that drive competition and stress. It's the fact that there is limited vacancy and a lot of people want to get in. If your mindset is that your life/worth depends on [edited from no] making it, then you will be stressed.