times tables

Don't know if anyone else out there has a child trying to learn the times tables.    Well, there's the rote method, which seems to work for a lot of kids.  But some of them (who shall remain nameless in this house) have a bit more difficulty with the rote thing.  So I found this rather cute little video to teach the 3, 6, 9 tables using tic tac toe, and they have a couple of others, like the 7x (which I personally always struggled with).

in the service of

I've been having a series of very interesting conversations with my daughter recently which I'd like to share with you.  I'm not sure how it all started, but I suspect it was with the series of books my son and I are working through that she sometimes lies in on - about Humphrey the hamster,  (starting with The World according to Humphrey).  To make an extremely brief summary about what it's about "Humphrey's views underscore the importance of knowing the full story before making judgments, and his presence makes a positive difference in the lives of the people he meets. "


In her grade they've started a new system of giving kids yellow and red cards if homework isn't completed, and I found myself having a slight distaste in her reporting of who was getting the yellow cards each day (often the same person).  Finally, I said to her that I didn't think that any child or person for that matter would wilfully and deliberately put themselves in a position whereby they were constantly getting into trouble and risking punishment and that she should perhaps spend some of that energy in trying to find out the reason behind what was going on.  Yesterday evening she reported back to me.  It's a little girl who's parents both work and her mother is away from home a lot.  "now I understand," she told me "even if you don't really help me with my homework, you're here to make sure I do it or in case I have any questions.  And maybe if you weren't around I'd also find it much harder".  


Now, any of you who have kids will realise this is a brief summary of a conversation that's been going on in drips and drabs with pieces happening in between getting in and out of the bath, sitting in the bus, walking to her cello lesson, brushing her teeth, chatting after lights out, whatever.  And it makes me grateful for the privilege of being about to be around when these questions and statements and musings of my kids happen to fall out of their mouths.


In between the discussions of "why" kids wouldn't or couldn't do their homework we've been having a long extended conversation over a couple of months on the whole competitive academic thing.  She's in a class with a bunch of bright competitive early developers who have also been given every opportunity in the past and ongoing by their parents to excel academically.  Instead of discussing the merits or otherwise of Kumon and tutoring and late nights and lots of activities with you my dear readers, I've been listening to what my daughter has to say on the matter.


Fortunately she's not intimidated.  Rather she's questioning why anyone would want to learn the 1000 character classic by the age of 3, if they're going to be learning it at school at aged 8.  "What is the point?" she's asking.  I'm not sure what the point is.  To make their lives easier when they're 8? I don't think so, because now they've moved onto even harder and more challenging things.  And then came the crux of the matter.  What do we do with this talent for learning and ability to grasp school things more completely at a faster rate than others?


Is learning and knowledge for our own gratification? Is it for a number on a piece of paper or a perception in the minds of our parents, teachers or classmates?  What if we have all this but without the knowledge or insight that it can be used in the service of others?  "What about that girl getting the yellow cards?" I challenged her.  "what are you doing to help her?"  There was some thinking going on.


Later, once she'd internalised it all and pottered around a bit getting ready for bed, she'd externalised it again and went into a long story about someone who was very talented in Wushu, always got perfect scores for it and who the teacher often asked to demonstrate things to the class.  Her observation was that he did it at a speed and in a manner that was designed to impress everyone with his own skills rather than help anyone around him, and "what's the point of that".  Good I thought, the principle is sinking in.  But I still had to ask and prompt "and so if you're excellent at English or math or Chinese and can do it really fast, what is the point of that?"


Don't get me wrong, she's a very helpful little girl, and sometimes sits down with her brother for ages working through things with her with a patience and love that is wonderful to behold.  But he's her precious brother.  My dear son on the other hand, for all his struggles, announced the other day he needed to go around to our younger neighbours house to help her with her Chinese as she was having some difficulties.  He just gets it, and he gets it on his own without the discussions.  How different is the view from the bottom of the class to the one from the top?


And now at 5am, unable to sleep again, I have to also ask the question of myself.  All I know and all I can do and think.  What is the point of that?  Is this blog making a difference? Or should I be spending my time doing something else.  What about my learning Chinese? What is the point?  Besides the character and understanding, it has taught me a vast amount of empathy.  But what am I going to do with it?

What wasn't asked

I've been thinking a little about all the questions I've had about ISF / Schooling etc. and then yesterday I was listening to a talk by the principal on values and reconciling the schools values with the IB values and the values of the individual families making up the student body.  And then I was thinking that actually rather than my reader asking too many questions, I was missing questions, questions regarding things that possibly may be more fundamental than the curriculum, tutoring, ranking, facilities etc.  I'll mention a few things that I think are also important to look at when looking at a school.  In no specific order by the way!  This is not any school specific, just some general comments.  As always, you're welcome to join in with your own suggestions.

1.  Celebration of the child

Who is placed central in the equation of child, institution, teacher, parent?  By nature of the beast, schools have to cater for the 80% in the middle.  But what do they do with the 10% on either side of the distribution curve?  Are they celebrated and allowed to come into their own? Or are the top 10% enjoyed as they're "easy" and the bottom 10% either tolerated, medicated or otherwise pathologised and labelled.  Can children with unique talents that are not necessarily academic come into their own and feel they're making a meaningful contribution to the school community. Is there space for that? Is there time and opportunity for that?  Do you hear people only talking about getting into Ivy league schools, or is there also talk about passions and interests and other options for a fulfilling life.

2.  Energy
At the risk of sounding new age, when you go there does the place feel alive and crackling.  Are kids happily and enthusiastically going about their learning?  Is energy flowing in a positive and productive way both from students to teachers and vice-versa (this can be very classroom specific, but you can also get an overall feeling).

3.  Sense of community
The NY Times had an interesting op-ed on volunteering the other day.  It's easy to confuse a lot of volunteering for creating a sense of community.  Sometimes the most active people in the school are actually creating a little clique and thereby excluding a lot of other people.  When you talk to parents in the school - do they know the other parents of the kids in their child's class?  Do they know  the names of all the kids.  Do they feel part of the school community?  Do they feel wanted and needed (and not just for hours of volunteering).  Would they pull together in a crisis?  What happens when a subsection of the school community puts on a show, or enters a competition? Is it just the parents of those children or does everyone come to cheer them on and give them support?  Are there parents undermining the school even as they are part of the community?

4.  Values, Respect, power distance and all that
By that I mean the feeling you get when you deal with the school.  Do you feel there is a huge distance between yourself and the principal, teachers and other staff?  Are you treated as a number or as a person? (I have a suspicion the same will happen to your child later if that's what's happening to you at admissions.)

There is that thing of respect.  Self-respect, mutual respect, respect for teachers, parents, respect for the child and the individual and respect for making it all work together.  Do the kids respect the people working in the school (including the cleaners and guards)?

Do they have all sorts of values on paper and in bright signs?  What does it look like down on the ground?  How about bullying?  Of course it will occur, but how is it dealt with?  Not just how is the victim treated, but what happens to the bully.

What is the over-riding value?  If it is academic excellence what happens to the ones who aren't academically excellent?  If it's sport, what about the non-sporty.  What about wealth and conspicuous consumption?  Is wealth a value from the parents that creeps insidiously into the school and over-rides other values?  Look at pick-up and drop off time.  Do some people with large cars feel they are more equal than others?
What kind of charitable and community events is the school involved in? Is it real or lip-service?  

5. Down time
What is happening  during children's down time?  Is there space? Are there facilities? Are they able to occupy themselves in a positive proactive way?  Do kids hang out with each other? Have play dates? Unstructured time together?  Is there any down time?

6.   Problems
What happens when there is a problem?  Is it ignored?  Who is made to feel responsible? Can the problem be separated from the person?  Is there a sense that we're in this together to make it work or is the family quietly or not so quietly and discretely asked to leave or made to feel they have to leave.  I know at least one school in HK where all lines of communication were completely severed the moment their child was diagnosed with an issue (which the school didn't pick up on), no human contact and they were more or less forced to look for a different school for the child, and even after they left it's never been spoken of.  You can imagine how they feel.  Parents also have a need for closure and human contact.  Empathy.  Don't imagine that everything will always be smooth sailing.  You have no idea.  There is no crystal ball.

Academic levels

Q: academic level of chinese, maths and english compared to other schools with ib system?


I'll start off this discussion by saying that I have no problems with the level of academics at ISF.  I'll also say that I don't spend a lot of time (actually no time at all) comparing or discussing the academic level of my children with other people either within ISF or outside ISF.  Thereby I may just make everything I subsequently say completely invalid, but that is my caveat to what follows.


My children came from an IB school which was rather free and easy.  When they entered ISF they had gaps in writing, reading and maths.    ISF has largely closed those gaps (with a bit of extra effort from ourselves), plus has given them an unbelievable fluency in Chinese.


IB is a framework.  Within that framework, schools set their curriculum.  Which leaves room for interpretation and decisions at what stage / age specifics are filled in.


The curriculum at ISF is demanding.  A few weeks back, someone with kids at the Canadian school (also IB) saw my kids doing homework inbetween their music classes and commented to me "that stuff is hard!"


It's hard for me to comment on the Chinese, but they're speaking it, and reading it and writing it.  My G3 child does all 3 better than I do after a rigourous year of full time university study.  Most "moderate" Chinese parents I know are extremely satisfied with the level.  Some "extreme" Chinese parents comparing their kids to those in local Chinese schools complain that we need more, more characters, more poems, more homework, more tests, more vocabulary more everything.  I say, let them have more - on their own in the privacy of their own homes and leave the rest of us out of their fanaticism. 


Seriously though, the biggest problem for non-Chinese families is vocabulary.  (Warning - scary information to follow) Our word banks start from a very low base and our kids spend most of their time trying to play catch-up.  Just think about it.  The average 5 year old has a vocabulary of 1500 words in their native language.  By age 6 that has increased to 5,000 to 14,000 words (and the kids we're dealing with are not on the low end of the scale) and they're adding words at a rate of 5-10 per day. They can produce sentences of 5-7 words in a (mostly) grammatically correct structure.  A non-Chinese speaker has to get all that and more within a year or so.


How about the (mostly) Cantonese speakers?  The subject of overlap between Cantonese and Mandarin is not without it's political overtones.  The best information I could find was a quote from DeFrancis ("The Chinese language: Fact and Fantasy") which says that the overlap is:  Grammar 80%, vocabulary 60% and pronunciation 40%.   I haven't read the book, so I can't vouch for the validity of the numbers, all I know is that the Cantonese speakers in my class appear to learn Mandarin with the greatest of ease!


I will also say when I speak to other multi-lingual families, such as my French or Dutch friends, their biggest concern for their children is that they're not picking up vocabulary in their native languages fast enough or as fast as their peers "back home" are doing.   ANSWER - read, read, read to your kids in the target language and then read some more.

Mathematics - they receive this in both languages with not much overlap between which topics are given in which language.  For the English component of maths they use "Everyday Mathematics" (which I personally hate, but it appears most teachers do too and teach around it) and they use the text for a grade higher (so G2 uses the G3 textbook)

The last time I attended a curriculum meeting on this, I wrote the following:

"the school was attempting to explain the universe of primary school mathematics and how it was combining 'chinese' maths with 'western' maths to give our children access to a well rounded mathematics experience and knowledge. Apart from the more obvious things, like the fact that that subvertive notion of negative numbers is introduced earlier in "Western" maths than "Chinese" maths, and "Chinese" maths is better with number theory and notions of lowest common denominator etc. etc. There are different learning emphasis. For Chinese maths it is on computational skills, practise, attitudes, habits i.e. a content and manipulation emphasis. For Western maths, it is on play, experience, material, inquiry, generalisation, communication , reasoning, handling data - i.e a process emphasis. And the quote (I forget from whom) that "without content, you can't apply process" - did I hear just a cheer from all western parents world wide?  All very interesting, and enough to leave me feeling - great, my kid is literally getting the best of both mathematical worlds."

English - as we're native speakers in our family (at least most of us), this is the least of my worries.  Certainly I don't have the impression my kids are falling behind.  Initially I had some concerns that they were not getting enough exposure to writing in English, but I'm not sure if that was since they were little and not capable of really writing much anyway, or because the school was initially favouring speaking and reading for the non-Native speakers to catch up.  My biggest concern would be that apparently they've changed the curriculum and text book about 5 times in the last 7 years (hearsay), which is pretty frustrating for the rather hard working English teachers and I think may lead to some of the turnover in the teachers.  They seem to vacillate between teaching it as a first and a second language.  My kids don't get any extra tutoring in English and I don't think they're behind their peers in reading or writing.  All I do with them is make sure I read to them every single night before going to bed from a book which is higher than their own personal reading level.

I'm not sure how well the Chinese student body is faring in English - I have heard some grumbles, but that's not an issue I'm worried about personally, and certainly English is much easier to catch up with than Chinese.  Also given they're only spending 30% of their school time on it, I'm pretty impressed.

The school does participate in all kinds of standards based testing that is world wide, and I think the scores are pretty much OK.  Of course there are huge variations between children and within a child for various subjects, but I'm a firm believer in time and persistence which will iron out the differences sooner or later.

You also need to listen very carefully to the school.  It's a 12 year process.  So at any one given point within the process they're going to be "ahead" or "behind" in either language.  So comparisons along the way are mainly useless.  You've got to compare your child to the expectations of the school at any point for any subject and ask if your child can meet those standards, and if not what you and the school is going to do about it.  And I can tell you, those standards are not paltry.  The school is very rigourous academically (see note on homework) and it's very easy to fall behind if you're not vigilant, and you need to ask for help on time if there is a problem.