Foolmewunz
20th August 2011, 03:16 AM
This probably belongs in Forum Community, but I think it's probably more interesting as a comparison in this sub-forum than an OMG How Weird Is This thread there.
I'm the product of the US public schools - specifically, New Orleans in my earlier years. My grammar school (for non-Americans that's 5 years old to 11 y.o., inclusive - Kindergarten to 6th grade) was in the Tulane area and had great teachers from Tulane's teachers college - Newcomb. Plus, it was a different era - talking 1950s, here.
Segue to the 80s, and my daughter went through the public school system in NYC. I finessed (okay, cheated) her into the best grammar school in the city (PS 41 - The Greenwich Village School, as they styled themselves) and she worked her way into one of the elite high schools, Brooklyn Tech.
In both of those histories, thirty years apart, the overall impression (and admittedly we're talking the cream of the crop, not the dregs that were a part of many systems even in those years) was of a sort of casual attitude about the whole thing. Education was there for the asking. We took advantage of it. And what we made of ourselves in school and in our lives just sort of progressed from there. Of course, that's not my sole memory or impression, but I don't want to belabor the early comparisons so much as get to the topic.
Flash forward another thirty years. My son is going to be 3 in September, and we want him in a play group - just for a few hours an afternoon, so he learns to socialize and learns the things one learns from socializing - probably the most important thing for a child at this age. After checking out fifteen schools starting early last April (Sorry, over-subscribed!), I began to realize that Toto and I weren't in Kansas any longer. We finally found a fortuitous circumstance - a very good school opening a new branch within walking distance to us, and they were offering playgroups, or what I thought were playgroups.
Great school, great location, great staff... frightening price. They treat pre-schoolers like sixth graders. HK$ 5500 per month (USD 750), book fees(another HK$ 200/mo.), party fees (HK$100/mo.), and who knows what yet to come. But... I have to eat this for a year, then my company takes over tuition per the terms of our ex-pat contracts, so we can manage, albeit with a little belt-tightening. Oh, and uniforms... and such(see below), a lumpsum of about HK$1000.
Half-a-day, and they refer to it is K1 (that's because "you're starting so late"... yeah, the have a group for 2 year olds!!!). Game room, reading room, cafeteria, puzzle room, arts and crafts room. And the "curriculum", which when I was in pre-school would've been "eat paste, cry, jump around to music, wet self, eat more paste, go home", has them reading to three year olds from junior versions of the books they'll be using in the ensuing years. Weird. And sensible. But did I mention "weird".
So today's our orientation day.... Here's the list of his uniforms (and such).
Polo Shirt & Khaki shorts - Mon/Wed/Fri
Phys Ed uniform (white polo shirt and green shorts) - Tue Thu
White velcro closing sport shoes(and white socks) - to be kept in school
Jacket (windbreaker)
Cardigan
School bag(knapsack)
Library Bag (don't ask)
Party Bag
I.D. Pouch
And then comes the list of rules and regulations. In no particular order....
Temperature card to be returned every day with 8 a.m. temperature(kid's, not the weather, you ninnies) reading.
Special blue see-through bag/pouch for notes from school.
Homework bag (yes, HOMEWORK FOR A 3 YEAR OLD)
Child must wear his photo i.d. at all times.
Parent or guardian (or amah or auntie or whomever) must show up with the mate to said i.d. card to pick him up.
Parents homework - one book report every weekend - read with the child and fill in the parent side of the report, and have the child do the other. (He's 3 years old on Sept 29!)
Casual Dress Day - around the end of the month (see "Party Bag" and "Party Fees") - they have a party catered by Maxim's (top of the line bakery and legendary dim sum restaurant), "wear your best clothes unless it's a theme party, then you dress up per the theme".
And this was the handout/reading material before they sat us all down to go through things for an hour and a half. I have fourteen documents to still fill out, including the auto-payment form so my bank will transfer their money right on time every month. He has to go for a physical with the school pediatrician or his own - but must fill out all the forms that say he's, uh, well, 3 years old and not dying. (They have all of his vaccination records and such from our eleven previous interviews.)
Now, here's the interesting part..... This is Hong Kong. Check out the rankings of schools and we're second in the world, right behind Singapore. They take this stuff seriously, to say the least. All of the above, item by item, actually makes sense. It's just that all in one swell foop it's a bit much to take for an aging hippie like myself.
And they know their kids. You can believe I was listening very intently in all those eleven interviews and when the various teachers and admins were speaking today. They love the hell out of the children, they're all educated in the specific field (ECE) and seem to simply use all this bureaucratic stuff to create a proper environment. It's probably very sensible to get a little discipline into the kids in developing a "school routine", and even much more sensible to force the parents' involvement, but keep them at arm's length. They sounded and seemed very wise in that respect.
Oh, and the school year? 11 months. They get August off, and an extended Christmas and Easter/Spring break, plus a few extra days at Chinese New Year and for Chinese Festivals that your kids don't get, but they do not close down from May 31 to Sep 5 like we do in the US.
Part of me wanted to grab him and run for the door, and part of me was dissecting each little tidbit and saying, "Hmm, that's a good idea.... that makes sense.... that sounds like fun... " I'm sure we'll have cultures colliding at one point, but for the moment we're going into this with eyes open wide. Marcello loves it - spent the afternoon modeling his school polo shirt and grinning every time I asked him if he likes the school and teachers and kids. But - did I mention that he's not even three, yet? On the one hand, is all of this really necesary for this age? On the other - does it really hurt to have a solid infrastructure surrounding what for him will be three hours of yuks and giggles every day? It ain't exactly free-range child rearing, I'll tell ya!
And where are the mudpies? Doesn't anyone make mudpies any longer? I think they'd break out in hives at ths school if they saw some of the stuff we got into as pre-schoolers.
Still, though, I kept harkening back to my two direct experiences with US public education. There and then, we sort of just dropped the kids off and let the schools do their thing. Maybe that's where we went so woefully wrong?
(Oh, but I did pull over the young woman, an American, who's the Practical English teacher and tell her that if he comes home saying "ply" for "play" I'm going to sue them. The principal - 5'11" of very attractive Chinese lady - was raised in Sydney and slips into Aussie-isms in her speaking .... "We imphasize to them and would like you to imphasize to them at home, that school is ply...." Took me a couple of seconds to realize what IMphasize was, but "ply" for "play" was easy because she'd used it several times already and each time it was like nails on chalkboard. Poor kid's learning four languages already - English, Cantonese, Thai, Lao - and they're adding Mandarin.... No way I need him learning to speak Australian, too! :D )
I'm the product of the US public schools - specifically, New Orleans in my earlier years. My grammar school (for non-Americans that's 5 years old to 11 y.o., inclusive - Kindergarten to 6th grade) was in the Tulane area and had great teachers from Tulane's teachers college - Newcomb. Plus, it was a different era - talking 1950s, here.
Segue to the 80s, and my daughter went through the public school system in NYC. I finessed (okay, cheated) her into the best grammar school in the city (PS 41 - The Greenwich Village School, as they styled themselves) and she worked her way into one of the elite high schools, Brooklyn Tech.
In both of those histories, thirty years apart, the overall impression (and admittedly we're talking the cream of the crop, not the dregs that were a part of many systems even in those years) was of a sort of casual attitude about the whole thing. Education was there for the asking. We took advantage of it. And what we made of ourselves in school and in our lives just sort of progressed from there. Of course, that's not my sole memory or impression, but I don't want to belabor the early comparisons so much as get to the topic.
Flash forward another thirty years. My son is going to be 3 in September, and we want him in a play group - just for a few hours an afternoon, so he learns to socialize and learns the things one learns from socializing - probably the most important thing for a child at this age. After checking out fifteen schools starting early last April (Sorry, over-subscribed!), I began to realize that Toto and I weren't in Kansas any longer. We finally found a fortuitous circumstance - a very good school opening a new branch within walking distance to us, and they were offering playgroups, or what I thought were playgroups.
Great school, great location, great staff... frightening price. They treat pre-schoolers like sixth graders. HK$ 5500 per month (USD 750), book fees(another HK$ 200/mo.), party fees (HK$100/mo.), and who knows what yet to come. But... I have to eat this for a year, then my company takes over tuition per the terms of our ex-pat contracts, so we can manage, albeit with a little belt-tightening. Oh, and uniforms... and such(see below), a lumpsum of about HK$1000.
Half-a-day, and they refer to it is K1 (that's because "you're starting so late"... yeah, the have a group for 2 year olds!!!). Game room, reading room, cafeteria, puzzle room, arts and crafts room. And the "curriculum", which when I was in pre-school would've been "eat paste, cry, jump around to music, wet self, eat more paste, go home", has them reading to three year olds from junior versions of the books they'll be using in the ensuing years. Weird. And sensible. But did I mention "weird".
So today's our orientation day.... Here's the list of his uniforms (and such).
Polo Shirt & Khaki shorts - Mon/Wed/Fri
Phys Ed uniform (white polo shirt and green shorts) - Tue Thu
White velcro closing sport shoes(and white socks) - to be kept in school
Jacket (windbreaker)
Cardigan
School bag(knapsack)
Library Bag (don't ask)
Party Bag
I.D. Pouch
And then comes the list of rules and regulations. In no particular order....
Temperature card to be returned every day with 8 a.m. temperature(kid's, not the weather, you ninnies) reading.
Special blue see-through bag/pouch for notes from school.
Homework bag (yes, HOMEWORK FOR A 3 YEAR OLD)
Child must wear his photo i.d. at all times.
Parent or guardian (or amah or auntie or whomever) must show up with the mate to said i.d. card to pick him up.
Parents homework - one book report every weekend - read with the child and fill in the parent side of the report, and have the child do the other. (He's 3 years old on Sept 29!)
Casual Dress Day - around the end of the month (see "Party Bag" and "Party Fees") - they have a party catered by Maxim's (top of the line bakery and legendary dim sum restaurant), "wear your best clothes unless it's a theme party, then you dress up per the theme".
And this was the handout/reading material before they sat us all down to go through things for an hour and a half. I have fourteen documents to still fill out, including the auto-payment form so my bank will transfer their money right on time every month. He has to go for a physical with the school pediatrician or his own - but must fill out all the forms that say he's, uh, well, 3 years old and not dying. (They have all of his vaccination records and such from our eleven previous interviews.)
Now, here's the interesting part..... This is Hong Kong. Check out the rankings of schools and we're second in the world, right behind Singapore. They take this stuff seriously, to say the least. All of the above, item by item, actually makes sense. It's just that all in one swell foop it's a bit much to take for an aging hippie like myself.
And they know their kids. You can believe I was listening very intently in all those eleven interviews and when the various teachers and admins were speaking today. They love the hell out of the children, they're all educated in the specific field (ECE) and seem to simply use all this bureaucratic stuff to create a proper environment. It's probably very sensible to get a little discipline into the kids in developing a "school routine", and even much more sensible to force the parents' involvement, but keep them at arm's length. They sounded and seemed very wise in that respect.
Oh, and the school year? 11 months. They get August off, and an extended Christmas and Easter/Spring break, plus a few extra days at Chinese New Year and for Chinese Festivals that your kids don't get, but they do not close down from May 31 to Sep 5 like we do in the US.
Part of me wanted to grab him and run for the door, and part of me was dissecting each little tidbit and saying, "Hmm, that's a good idea.... that makes sense.... that sounds like fun... " I'm sure we'll have cultures colliding at one point, but for the moment we're going into this with eyes open wide. Marcello loves it - spent the afternoon modeling his school polo shirt and grinning every time I asked him if he likes the school and teachers and kids. But - did I mention that he's not even three, yet? On the one hand, is all of this really necesary for this age? On the other - does it really hurt to have a solid infrastructure surrounding what for him will be three hours of yuks and giggles every day? It ain't exactly free-range child rearing, I'll tell ya!
And where are the mudpies? Doesn't anyone make mudpies any longer? I think they'd break out in hives at ths school if they saw some of the stuff we got into as pre-schoolers.
Still, though, I kept harkening back to my two direct experiences with US public education. There and then, we sort of just dropped the kids off and let the schools do their thing. Maybe that's where we went so woefully wrong?
(Oh, but I did pull over the young woman, an American, who's the Practical English teacher and tell her that if he comes home saying "ply" for "play" I'm going to sue them. The principal - 5'11" of very attractive Chinese lady - was raised in Sydney and slips into Aussie-isms in her speaking .... "We imphasize to them and would like you to imphasize to them at home, that school is ply...." Took me a couple of seconds to realize what IMphasize was, but "ply" for "play" was easy because she'd used it several times already and each time it was like nails on chalkboard. Poor kid's learning four languages already - English, Cantonese, Thai, Lao - and they're adding Mandarin.... No way I need him learning to speak Australian, too! :D )