Cass’ Progress In A Chinese Primary School

My baby girl made me proud again. She did pretty well in her recent final exam. With this, she is going to the elite class next year. Starting from next year, there will only be 1 elite class for each standard in the school. The rest of the students will be placed randomly in the remaining five classes.

Am I happy?

Yes and no.

Yes that she made it despite being totally hopeless in her Chinese when she first learned the language. The hubs and I can’t help her at all, being hopeless yellow bananas.

But she persevered through lots of temper tantrums and buckets of tears during her Mandarin enrichment classes at home. I had to bear the brunt of her meltdowns with countless number of bribes and threats lashed out on her.

It’s not an easy journey in the Chinese school, especially for us yellow bananas. Our girls speak English at home but they learn everything in Chinese, except for English and BM language subjects.

With a medical condition of her urinary tract which requires voiding every hourly, I have many times wanted to pull her out from this ‘military style’ high-achievement status (SBT) Chinese school that she is attending now.ย  Chinese schools are notorious for not allowing kids to make regular toilet breaks. Our 2 older girls have had their fair share of horror stories to tell when they were forbidden from going to the toilet during lessons. How horrid!! I shall leave the details of their stories untold for now. Those from a Chinese school will know what I mean. Well, the option is still open. I pray that God will guide me on the right direction.

Being in the elite class would mean working 1000x harder than she is currently doing now. As it is now, she is already protesting and sometimes would end up in tears when our Mandarin tutor gives her homework, on days when she wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Yes I believe in this! This girl is very moody and today is one such day when I felt like strangling her when she just refused to cooperate with her Mandarin tutor and chose to take a nap instead when the tutor came!!ย  Mandarin is just not her forte and the Chinese language is certainly not easy to master if both parents have no Chinese education background.

I am not going to put pressure on Cass to excel so that she remains ย in the elite class in the years to come. We will just continue doing what we are doing now and hopefully she gets the flow and hang of studying in a ‘military style’ Chinese school with draconian rules.

Who knows, by God’s grace, we will be able to afford sending our girls to a private school in our neighborhood. SO much time will be saved each day if our girls were to study in this private school. Our lives will be much more enriched and less stressful, I can bet on that. The only stress is to work extra hard to bring in the dough. That will be my dream and I hope that I can make my dream become a reality soon ๐Ÿ™‚

 

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Author: Shireen

I am a WFHM of 3 lovely girls - Alycia, Sherilyn and Cassandra. I am a health, fitness and clean freak. I am a freelance content writer and occasionally help out my other half in his food catering business. I also do product reviews and accept sponsored posts on my blogs. I hope you'll enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy sharing my day-to-day adventures and mostly boring ranting :P Welcome to my blog! :)

6 thoughts on “Cass’ Progress In A Chinese Primary School”

  1. Hi,
    Just wanted to share my experience of being educated in both Chinese school and international schools. I went to a High Achieving Chinese school up to year 6. At that time, I was going to bed at 10.30pm. I had really good results and was in the elite class as well, but I didnโ€™t take my studies very seriously.
    After UPSR, I started out Year 8 in a British international school (skipped year 7) and was going to bed at 12am. It was here that I became aware of my perfectionism when completing every piece of simple task and assignment, possibly inherited and developed from the education style of Chinese School.
    I currently attend a top international school in Australia and I go to bed at 2am everyday! School days are much longer here, even in primary school. There are also a lot more graded assignments, summative tests every few weeks in every subject in addition to daily homework. So it’s quite stressful in reality and I really believe that my 6 years of education in Chinese school has no matter how shaped me into the very hardworking person I am now. (in a good and bad way) Thus I personally think that itโ€™s better to expose a person to a desired environment in the early stage. Or else, things learned from a previous upbringing will carry over/continue to develop in the same old way even in a different environment. (at least thatโ€™s my case)
    I am not trying to put you off anything, but Iโ€™m merely sharing my experiences! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Hi Catherine
      Thanks for such invaluable insights from your experience in an SBT Chinese school and international school. Are you in uni now? I think you’re really lucky that your parents can afford to send you to an international school in Msia and to a top international school in Australia. I wish I could do the same for my girls. You’re so blessed! How did you land on my blog? ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Ian’s previous school before we moved to where we are now, is a high performance sjkc and they also start having elite classes from std 2. He was in the top 20 (counting from the back) lol in the elite class until we moved. He topped his class in this new school all the way till std 3 as this sjkc only have one elite class from std 4. He was in the elite class from std 4 till now and again, his positions in class was like playing yoyo depending on how good he fared in his Chinese papers. Top 20 (both from the front and back), top 10 (from the back) he had it all. We are still proud of him though, the father especially who is a complete banana. Lol…

  3. I was trying to tell you not to fret when her positions drop over losing few marks here and there. I used to get all worked up when it happened. Don’t be. ๐Ÿ™‚ All the best to Alycia too.

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