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There is a direct correlation between the optimism in a student and the success in studying. Just like the answer to the glass is half full or half empty, this concept is very much a question about the outlook and confidence of the individual. The optimism of students to how well they fare in their studies cannot be quantified easily but like with everything, it is always a matter of perspective.
So what is it about optimism?
Optimistic individuals tends to see the light. The light at the end of the tunnel. This tunneling effect blocks out all the other distractions and pains that comes packaged into an examination. This is akin to a 100m race and its training requirements. An athlete competing for a 100m race hits the gym, trains on the same 100m strip for years, only to feature in a race that lasts less than 10 seconds. Yes, other aspects of characteristics like determination, talent, etc is needed, but the optimist will definitely have an edge over the one that is pessimistic in this, who would have given up long ago, unable to see why one would go through it at all. It is about aiming for the light at the end of the tunnel and knowing that everything else will fall into place that gives the athlete a spring in their steps.
The same can be said for students who knows what they want. Aces in exams? Sure! Let’s go for it. Blocks out all the other distractions, and confidently knowing that it can be done.
How to keep a student optimistic?
Perspective. The ability to see it half full. Generally, the student that are optimistic tends to ask more questions and this is where teachers, tutors, and parents are required to be patient and explain without getting angry nor frustrated. How many students have tried asking but gave up the second time round knowing full well that their teachers will get angry if they didn’t get it the first time hands up! Yes, encourage students or your child to ask, and do not get angry if they don’t get it. Learning is heuristic in nature and requires students to gain the experience to attain mastery. If the student fails to experience it the first time round, it does not mean they are slow, it just means they are trying.
And trying is the best ingredient to success.
No one wants to be scolded. Especially if they are trying to learn something. And being scolded during their formative years are just sending out the wrong messages that will hinder their development.
In any learning environment, the basis of an education is the interaction between teachers and students. And the trust between students and teachers must be there to foster a strong bond in learning. The job of a student is to learn, and the job of a teacher is to teach. Failure to do this most basic requirement is usually the reason for an unsuccessful stint in school. A patient teacher who teaches properly but also encourages questions or repeats themselves to make sure their students gets it creates students who is unafraid to ask if they don’t get it. This creates a calm and trusting environment to study in.
With trust, confidence grows. With confidence, optimism grows.
Discipline, the main ingredient to success. Sprinkle with concentration, a dash of determination and double boil with patience. That’s the making of a properly executed education. In every education system around the world, the recipe above are quality prerequisites because students spends years in school before gaining their certification and joining the workforce. The need to have the discipline to stay on course, and the patience to knock in the hours (or in fact the years before they reach university and graduate) are what causes only a small percentage of students that can reach their goal of obtaining their degree. Even though over the years, this percentage has grown in Singapore, it still takes a lot of effort and consistency to win this studying game.
So what separates the wheat from the chaff?
Take the recent GCE “O” level results and ask the successful candidates what they did in preparation for their examinations and you will get the common reply of countless studying hours, sitting themselves down by their quarters. That takes discipline, and a matured mind. Its the ability to do more than just the ordinary, the discernment that the future grows brighter with a better education, and to find the energy locked within to do that extra mile. Again, this takes discipline. They could have been out playing, watching a movie, hanging out with friends or god forbid, playing computer games. Instead, they took the back-breaking path and stood firm in the face of distractions.
So how do we cultivate discipline and reap a successful harvest?
One of the most important ways to cultivate discipline is to complete tasks. And start when they are young. Tasks don’t have to be onerous, or even exacting as this will put the child off. It does not need to be annoying too, like taking out the trash or washing the dishes. It could be something fun, like games, or doing jigsaw puzzles, or even reading a book. The idea is to teach your child that whenever you set about a task, you should complete it. Think of what goes through the mind of someone running a marathon. Grueling, definitely. But add the sense of self accomplishment at the end of the race, and it all makes it worth it. That’s what we should help the child feel. That once you complete the task, no matter how arduous, the triumphant result outweighs its tribulation.
There are many times that children gives up too easily, and parents lets them do so. And, the parents completes it for them, or it just stops altogether. Its easy to see why this gives out all the wrong signals to the child. Inability to complete the job and see through the full cycle means that the child does not learn anything from that job. This could lead to pessimism that things cannot be done, laziness creeping in, and an unproven bout of self censure.
Its like baking a cake. Do up the dough, all the ingredients nicely folded in, let it rise, into the oven at 350, and out it comes. If you don’t try the cake yourself at the end, you will never know if you succeeded in baking a tasty cake, or it could be just a ho-hum piece of dough that you just created. Its the last steps that makes all the difference, self evaluation. When you are learning how to bake a cake, you have got to eat it too. Try it out, see if its any good, evaluate the outcome to see if its a success or failure, take notes on how it looks and tastes, and think of how the baking can be refined. Then set off and bake another cake, now improved, and that process gets repeated until you have a proud product that can win the hearts of many. (Nevermind if your kids complain of the copious amounts of cakes they have to eat before you get there) A healthy postmortem documentation of the process by oneself creates a greater self upon further refinement, an intimate knowledge of what has been done, and what else can be improved.
In every process of learning, there needs a leverage of self evaluation on the completed cycle. Students are taught by a teacher, learns it, understands it, practices sums of it, memorizes it and finally, gets tested on it. Something is missing from this formula. and that is “self evaluation”. For a good score in the final test, there is a need to self evaluate before being tested. To see if all the fundamentals of the class are properly digested. Much akin to the baking process, a baker who never tastes their own cakes, will never have a winning product. How can one sell something that doesn’t know how their products tastes? Its just silly. And that is what students must do too. To complete the cycle, a student must always evaluate themselves and improve themselves before they finally go for their finals. Making sure of this is imperative to a successful candidate. Knowing where went wrong, and correcting themselves gives them the confidence they need to attempt a major examination.
Again, that is where discipline comes into play. It takes discipline and determination for a child to sit down and study the needed hours but more if the child wants to complete every task and evaluate themselves to know if they are doing it right. Methodology, and creating an efficient learning program will help too in this case.
Generally, completing a task like a major examination takes years for the students and the daily grind of school could take the wind off of their sails by the time the examination approaches. There needs a steely determination and the discipline to keep themselves on track, with their heads up high and constantly be above of their curriculum to perform well. But if they complete their daily tasks consistently, eventually, they will complete their examinations with ease. Like a very popular Malay idiom, “sedikit, sedikit, lama lama menjadi bukit” (little by little, a long time later, makes it into a hill), doing well in their final examination is the culmination of all the small tasks that were completed earlier on in their studies. And sweet old Mr and Mrs Discipline gets you there.
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PSLE. Primary School Leaving Examination are the first educational hurdle of all Singapore students and has been a staple of our enduring educational system since its inception. So what’s all the fuss over the PSLE’s? First and foremost, it dictates the secondary schools that a child can go to. Secondly, it dictates the stream that a child will be studying as well. The current secondary school streams are Express, Normal Academic and Normal Technical.
So how do you support your child in this endeavour?
I’ve been tutoring kids for the last 15 years and there are 4 main categories that characterizes a successful PSLE candidate.
Intelligence
Gumption
Stamina
Determination
Intelligence
Developing the intelligence of a child. What are the do’s and don’t’s? The first thing I find that a child do very well is the ability to acquire information. Their rate of learning is ferocious as compared to us adults. I always find that the weaker students has parent’s who underestimate the learning velocity and potential of their child. Quality of information, and the rate of disbursement of information to the child are important for the development of the intelligence of the child. Useless information leads to refuse in the brain. And a slow learning rate makes them lag behind their peers. Things parents need to avoid like the plaque. The PSLE score is heavily linked to the intelligence of a child. And rightfully so.
How do we develop the intelligence of a child?
The simplest and cheapest ways to teach a kid is to go to a library. Instill the virtues of the public library system. This old school method still has a few tricks up its sleeves and are still a viable way of acquiring superb materials. Enrol your kids in interactive courses organized by the library. They generally have reading classes for kids, or introduces new interesting books to make a bookworm out of your child. These classes also tend to involve socializing for your child, and that is an awesome by-product of making more friends and learning social skills.
Read to your child every night. By far, the most effective way of disbursement of information. Take 20 mins out of your hectic lifestyle. Pick any topic and start reading. Your child will learn diction, as well as gaining knowledge in the process. Therapeutic, and bonding with your child as the by-product which works in your favour far down the path of a healthy relationship with your child. What else can you ask for?
Games. I have always heard parents tell me that their kids play too much games and not studying enough. True enough. But I have to say, in moderation, games does provide an intelligence boost that cannot be acquired otherwise. Games can be divided into three distinct forms. Traditional board games, computer games and physical games like basketball. They all have their merits and again, used in moderation, gives an edge to children both mentally and physically. Games teaches kids a passion to persevere, to win or to lose gracefully, to solve problems, to improve hand-eye coordination, etc. The list is too long to talk about here but I think you get the picture.
IQ tests. These are the tests administered by MENSA. We don’t need to test our kids IQ, we just want them to acquire a love for solving IQ tests. Just like in the show “The Da Vinci Code” where Dan Brown weaves his tale out of codes and IQ type of quests, the mystery and intrigue can be intoxicating to your child. IQ questions tends to develop a heuristic skill that requires out of the box solutions. Again, we are living in a highly paced evolving society that requires this skill set to properly survive as we can never anticipate what will happen tomorrow. So, definitely a worthwhile skill to have for you child.
Music and the arts. I have never once thought that music nor the arts can be bad for anyone. Economically, it might be a challenge. But intellectually, it can be stimulating and promotes creativity. Singapore have invested heavily into the arts in recent years. New museums, galleries, art schools as well as a budding local arts community are starting to transpire our 20th century Singaporean hardwork into a 21st century First World culture. Take your child to an art museum, go for a musical, enrol in an arts class. Get the creative juices going and maybe find a hidden Michelangelo or Yo Yo Ma in our midst.
The News. How current is your child to the news? Current affairs are an important but often neglected development in a child’s scope of education. Ask your child what happened today and involve them in the latest developments of the world. In this decade, the internet has linked our lives into current affairs that we cannot let our child be ignorant in this topic. Twitter and facebook dictates so. Social networks are abuzz with the latest news and links people tighter than ever. If we don’t know what happened today, we are just simply a non-participant in the society. And that is where our child needs to be. To be a participant in our society and have a voice in this world. It is simply not enough to just exist anymore with our global connections.
New technology. Ever heard of first adopters? These are a bunch of people who live to buy the latest technology. It is obvious how techonology can help making your kid smarter. The latest technology always creates high interests in the minds of children. Since kids are pretty new to this earth, its only natural that they should get the latest. They also seem to get it faster than we do don’t they? As in, kids always seem to get a gadget running in no time, whereas adults takes forever. Now how do we switch this on again? Buying the latest technology and making it available for children to use creates a culture of always knowing what is the latest. Having the latest technology always creates winners, and don’t take my word for it, most wars are won by countries that have the latest technology of their times.
DIY. Do-It Yourself. How many times have you let your child do something and you not interfere? For example, get an order at McDonalds for the family? Sometimes, parent’s have a tendency to over-protect their children. You have all the right to, but draw a line to where that should stop. One day, your child will be a father/mother. How do we teach them to become one? By letting them do things on their own. And insist that they finish the job. But start them off slow and only on the right attitude. Don’t make them do things they don’t like. Dishes, laundry, taking the rubbish out. Or things that are dangerous. Boiling water, drilling, sharpening the knife are a definite no-no. That’s just counter-productive. Let them do things that make them feel like they are adults. Children loves to be mini-us, and takes pride when we approve of it and respects them as one. Let them order what they like, give them tasks that makes them excited. They might not do it well right off the bat, but hey, its their first time so give them some slack. They’ll get it right soon enough. And yes, they’ll turn out to be excellent parents because you showed them how to be one.
Disclaimer: The above can be applied to any child doing PSLE in Singapore. When I am talking about intelligence, I am not talking about gifted children whom are naturally intelligent. There are such kids but I have often been asked why some gifted kids don’t do well in the PSLE, and some do pretty well. I shall explain this later but the intelligence I am talking about are more generalized.
Meaning, any child who are capable of solving mathematical sums, understand scientific fundamentals and are capable of holding a conversation with their peers in a common language. This generally means almost 95% of PSLE participants will have the intelligence to pass the PSLE well. However, in the last 15 years being a tutor, I have seen these 95% and there are a wide varience in the ability to perform well due to external factors that are beyond their scope of intelligence. These variance can be due to parent’s educational background, the way they are brought up, their peers and simply, the schools that the child attend and the culture of their schools plus teachers and principals.
Gumption
Initiative and resourcefulness. These are the qualities that will create intelligence in a child. Students that show gumption generally do much better in their PSLE. Simply because they seem to find out more than their peers, as well as makes the best use of their time. Initiative creates students who study by themselves, find the relevant information by themselves and start their own studying when the need arises. Autonomy to operate before you tell them to do it. Resourcefulness on the other hand is to find what they need by themselves. Or make things happen with whatever resources they have. A real life MacGyver.
So how do we cultivate gumption in students?
We create a reason for them to start being serious with their studies. Prompt them of what they need to do. Give them a timeline of when they should start. I got a new Primary 5 student a year back. She had a bad mentality towards studies. When I asked her how come most of the question she did was wrong, she replied, “You mean I must get them all correct?” She did not care if she did well in her studies and had no idea what PSLE entailed. As far as she was concerned, computer games was her be-all-and-end-all. Then slowly, I slid in reasons why students should do well in PSLE during her classes. How a failure could mean a disastrous career in Singapore. And most importantly, what Primary 6 students do to get good grades in PSLE (meaning, 6-10 hrs of studies a day is a normal occurance) and when will they start preparing to do so much work. That was one year back. So its January now and she is still a student of mine. Guess what? She put her hand up the other day, and asked, “Can you print out more questions for me to do and I do it with my friend? And can I come over to ask questions if I don’t know how to do the sums?” And guess what? She did come back for extra lessons with me this week. Very encouraging indeed.
So what transpired? She woke up somewhere down the line last year and said to herself that she needed to do something about it. I am pretty sure she put a time she started to work harder. All I did, was to seed that thought that she needed to do something and a timeline of how it should be done. Very Inception indeed. But it worked. I don’t think there is a point in telling off children if they don’t study. They respond much better if they saw the need to do it themselves. The fire within will always burn hotter than the fire without.
Stamina
Stamina refers to the ability to put in the miles. Psst, the secret to awesome PSLE scores? 6-10 hours of pure studying. No complaints. No discomforts. Full focussing. So how does a child sit there relentlessly for the whole Primary 6 and knock in 10 hours of studying time? By starting them off young. The analogy to a marathon makes this easy. No one can run a full marathon without training and gaining stamina. This accumulation of stamina comes about by running 1km, increasing it to 2km, and then 3km, gaining higher endurance along the way, over months and years, and keep on moving the ante up till you hit the full monty. There’s is no other way of saying this but, for any child to do well in PSLE, they need to put the miles in. And the magical number is 10. 10 hours of studies every day. So start with 1-2 hrs during their Primary 5 holidays, then move it up to 3-4 hrs and keep on increasing this till it hits 10. Here’s a warning, don’t expect this to happen every day. Have some rest days and keep their mind fresh by doing something fun. They are afterall kids. They do much better if you start this regime earlier, during Primary 2-3. As with more practice and consistency, they tend to get better at keeping their energy high when they reach Primary 6 and need to clock in the hours.
Determination
All the above comes to naught without determination. The belief that it is possible to score high in PSLE is more important than everything that I have said so far. I have taught students that are very determined and some that aren’t. The first group tends to score higher, with all other factors being equal. Children tend to do well in things that they can believe in. They see a reason to aim higher. Nevermind if they don’t hit the mark, but aiming high at least gets them a better grade than one that aims low or worse, don’t have ant aim to begin with. So we have to be careful of the things that we say to them. Positive reassurances are a must. Its not good enough that we say it, we have to actually believe in it too. Optimism always trumps pessimism when it comes to studies.
So how do we instill determination in a child?
2 important skill sets has to be introduced to the child. A challenge. And the need to complete the challenge. Again, the methodology is much like the same as the stamina methodology. Start off with small challenges. But make sure the child does not give up. When they succeed, acknowledge them. If they fail, analyze the reason with them too. The important thing is not to give up till they suceed. Move up the ranks to harder challenges and soon enough, they will be determined enough to make sure they complete their own challenges.
In summary, the PSLE awards those who deserves it. With proper preparation and planning, it can be triumphed. I do believe all candidates can achieve a good PSLE grade. The reason for any divergence can only come from a lack of those qualities mentioned above. Of course, there are some factors beyond control, but I have seen students who started off wrong but finishing strong for the PSLE. Proper guidance and advice where it is needed is important to correct what is wrong.
What else?
We can help by making the environment conducive for the child to study in. A well lit, quiet and ventilated room. A properly organized study with all materials in easy reach. When every second counts in Primary 6, efficiency is everything. Keep a healthy diet and before you know it, the PSLE’s over.
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Machu Picchu is an ancient Inca site that was abandoned and discovered in 1911 by the Americans.
Here’s an extract from wikipedia.com:
Machu Picchu (in hispanicized spelling, Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmatʃu ˈpiktʃu]) or Machu Pikchu (Quechua machu old, old person, pikchupyramid; mountain or prominence with a broad base which ends in sharp peaks,”old peak”, pronunciation [ˈmɑtʃu ˈpixtʃu]) is a 15th-century Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District inPeru. It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Sacred Valley which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cusco and through which theUrubamba River flows. Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often referred to as the “Lost City of the Incas”, it is perhaps the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.
The Incas built the estate around 1450, but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction. Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of what the structures originally looked like. By 1976, thirty percent of Machu Picchu had been restored. The restoration work continues to this day.
Since the site was not known to the Spanish during their conquest, it is highly significant as a relatively intact cultural site. Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll.
Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls. Its three primary structures are the Intihuatana (Hitching post of the Sun), the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows. These are located in what is known by archaeologists as the Sacred District of Machu Picchu.
The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was an Albanian-born, Indian Roman Catholic Religious Sister.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; children’s and family counseling programmes; orphanages; and schools. Members of the order must adhere to the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and the fourth vow, to give “Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor”.
Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2003, she was beatified, the third step toward possible sainthood, giving her the title “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta”. A second miracle credited to her intercession is required before she can be recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church.
Admired and respected by many, she has also been accused of failing to provide medical care or painkillers, misusing charitable money, and maintaining positive relationships with dictators.”
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