Yesterday, my intentions were clear to me: Catch up with all the pending delayed work. Pending is a good choice of words here. Thinking of the infamous Sword of Damocles that now and then we all have over our heads and its inseparable friend "Procrastination". Always hand on hand, annoying everybody, but mostly me.
Chinese, coding, paper reviews, paper reading, my own research...even vacuum cleaning the house. All waiting there till I decided which one would be first.
Then, out of nowhere, my little 6 years old daughter did appear with her sweet smile. Just looking at me. Smiling. She is about to start primary school next Monday here in Taiwan. That is not going to be a problem neither on the academic side nor the social part. She has been attending the kindergarten for almost 4 years and seems to enjoy going to school. Is the whole system what bothers me. The way knowledge is passed to the new generations. Looks as if everything must be painful and boring. No trace of the joy of new knowledge whatsoever.
What to do then? So far we have tried to be ahead of what she is "supposed" to know. Something that all parents try to do here, flooding their busy children with more and more extra classes but always for the wrong reason. In my days, if you failed some subject or get sick for too long, you might opt for some extra help outside school to let you reach the level of the rest. The key thing here was that this is just a temporal solution. Nowadays, has become the normal thing rather than an exception and the goal is to beat the others, to be the top student. Translation, stress for the children, the parents and the teachers.
We, on the other hand, have a different motivation: just to keep the joy of learning. Keep her at the limit of her comfortable zone, crossing the line from time to time, challenging her abilities. I know her, she trust me and I can see her eyes when I teach her some new concept and decide how deep, how slow I must proceed on my explanation. I sense if it is too soon for her to understand and reassure her if she does it wrong the first time. If you are not there this might sound as a tiger parent approach but that is the exact horrifying concept we are trying to avoid. The point is to have her coming back for more, like a good customer hooked on the product you are marketing. That product is knowledge in this case but the main goal is not to fill her little brain with stuff. What school and parents must pursuit together is the desire of knowing in the kid´s heart. Whether that means the names of all rivers in Taiwan or the names of all countries in the world is irrelevant. That is what everybody is missing here.
So, what did I do with that little girl hiding behind the smile? I taught her some mathematics.
Why in the world would you do that? Don´t you like your daughter´s smile? Precisely. Of all subjects, mathematics is by far the most commonly hated one. I myself have a love-hate relationship with her too. But deep inside I know it is just a language, nothing more. Some way to express concepts like English, Spanish or music. I know the language and I have the patience and time required to pass it to Ariadna. Because that is what is going to make the difference. The way you learn something is going to make you love it or run from anything that requires its use or understanding. My duty here is to make her like mathematics by slowly introducing them to her and do it before others. You can see this like trying to avoid spoilers before you go watch a movie so you can enjoy the whole experience. The bright side is that she is smart enough to understand "advanced" concepts and I guess we can stay ahead of school for the time being.
I must note here how I have quoted "advanced" on purpose. I am not saying: - Look how intelligent she is! I am saying that the system is designed to educate a country, not my daughter or your son. There must be some common grounds that most children can and should achieve "if we teach them in a class with 30 other children with just one busy teacher". So, having the time and will to do it means your kids can go beyond what the systems demands from them whether they are geniuses or not. In my particular case, to me, Ariadna is just smart and I have no intention of finding out how smart compared with others as long as I can keep on providing the tools she needs to show the best she has to offer and that does not interfere with her happiness.
The day ended and now she can tell you about how to measure the area of a square or the volume of a cube. What square centimeters are, the concept of cubic centimeters and how to go from one to the other. Told her she is the only one of her friends that knows about it (yes, yes, I know, but a little pride in her heart is not as bad as it sounds).
She left with a smile, enter the other room, took a book from the shelf and minded her own business again. Me on the other hand...well, procrastination, you know.
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