Education-related

Just a couple of thoughts i think are noteworthy enough for me to pen here before i turn in for the night. Ahh.. it's an early workday tomorrow.

1) Couz brought up an interesting thought tonight that kinda reasonates with what i thought some time back. She said if she had my level of Language, namely English, she would have been using it elsewhere in this world.. i.e. teaching overseas.

This had crossed my mind before. Teaching overseas. Perhaps it's fear, perhaps it's comfort zone, but i have not found the guts within me to step out yet. And of course, the lower pay in comparison(from what i saw in some websites in the past when i contemplated the idea).

But this possibility may materialize in the future.. Singapore's syllabus may one day reach a point where I might not find viable to teach here anymore. Much as I love the challenge in tackling a new syllabus and learning it, there is just no platform for home-based tutors to master new changes, i.e. workshops etc. Thus far, i have to rely on my teaching friends and online resources. My strengths are in Grammar and Syntax mainly.. and i wanna be able to utilise it to the fullest. They are probably best used in helping students who really cannot even handle English at its basic, i.e. countries where English isn't the first language.

So what couz said did jolt me. I will see.

2) A conversation with a student today brought up this thought i had in mind for some time. It was one of those whatever-i-am-learning-now-i-will-not-even-use-them-in-the-future kind of conversations. It is interesting to note that this is a question that never really crossed many of our minds (i mean the 70s-80s kids). Don't do well, you will surely not do well in the future. Perhaps it is the fear of being left behind and getting the back-end of jobs that pushed us to give our best in whatever we do, or be THE best. It was this fear that propelled me to do well because I did not want to be sweeping streets or cleaning toilets (ya the old grandma story). AT EVERY STAGE OF MY ACADEMIC LIFE. Because by accessing the next stage, you need to pass the current one, isn't it? The key here is not even about the stellar results.

The key is the drive and motivation one should innately possess, no matter at what stage in our lives. It is rather disturbing to realise that many young ones nowadays do not possess this. They feel it is just frustrating to master subjects and skills that are "forced" on them, they do not have the least bit of interest in it. On top of that, there are too many success stories floating in the all-too-accessible World Wide Net of billionaires who made it big and they were school dropouts. I distinctly remember the purpose of such stories is to inspire the slower learners, that there is always a second route in life, and NOT to be used as an extremely convenient excuse that oh well, these people were dropouts, so come on, I am able to make it without learning all these crap now too.

I mean, come on. Realistically speaking, if you feel self-entitled now to own that piece of success in future, well, all i can say is, you will always feel self-entitled. Self-entitled that the opportunities are going to open for you. Self-entitled that whatever your parents left you will never run out. Self-entitled that there is always going to be someone to take care of you and clean up your mess.

Again we will see.

And i end off with these two articles i found pretty inspiring for my second point in this blog entry.

1) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ironshrink/201208/why-i-dont-care-about-my-daughters-self-esteem

2) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/why-smartphones-making-us-dumb-022810060.html