Is education a journey or a race?

By Fanny Bucheli-Rotter - October 14, 2017 @ 12:53pm

UPSR, SPM, STPM, GCE — just a few of the acronyms haunting many young minds at this time of the
year. Young minds and their parents alike.

Remember the days when everything was a race? First to reach the bathroom in the morning, first to
down their Milo, first to call shotgun for the ride to school. First to sit on the swing at recess, first in
line for canteen lunch. First on the school bus to secure the best seat and first to reach the front
door and ring the bell. A happy childhood consisted mostly of healthy competition among friends
and siblings, a race to be the first in all things that, from an adult’s perspective, don’t really matter.

Most children gladly put their competitive mind to rest between recess and lunch. Pupils used to run
out of the classroom, not into it. Hardly anyone pushed and shoved to be the first at the blackboard
and try their luck at a complex math formula. Oh, happy childhood days. Not the most ambitious of
times, but happy days, nonetheless.

So, what happened? Instead of a rambunctious crowd, today’s pupils march in single file from their
parents’ cars onto the school grounds, born down by a school bag so big and heavy that the child
who carries it could easily find space to sit in it herself. If Malaysian schools run two sessions per day,
a fact that absolutely boggles the outsider’s mind, where are all the students that have the other
half of the day off?

Why are they not playing outside, in their front yard, in the neighbourhood park? Why are they not
hanging out at the local mall or mamak stall? Where and when are today’s children being children,
where are the nation’s teens being pubescent?

Youngsters have no time to be childlike, or rebellious, or sullen, or dreaming, anymore. Youngsters

are at tuition. They are at tuition centres that have popped up all over the country like “mushrooms
growing after the rain”, to borrow a local saying.

In today’s competitive world, the rat race starts early. Excellent grades in academic subjects are the
primordial benchmark that sets kids apart from their peers; the yardstick that determines a parent’s
measure of success at their job as a progenitor.

Academic excellence is a must in secondary school; it is even the norm in primary school. Parents
and guardians send their scions for after school tuition up to seven days a week. Gymnastics and
piano lessons are squeezed in somewhere in between.

The “Asian F” is a very real notion. It is the widespread understanding that an A- is not good enough.
The pressure on school children and their parents is growing to unhealthy proportions.

At the same time, many life skills are thrown overboard in a constant effort to be the best among the
best. Professors in tertiary education lament the fact that they lecture classes of exceptionally well-
instructed students who don’t understand what further education is all about. Students are bright
and diligent, but they don’t know how to think critically, how to build an argument, how to debate,
or how to work towards a solution as a team.

If parents and schoolchildren willingly submit to the burden of pushing for always better grades, it is
in an effort to be best prepared for the real rat race, the demands of modern career perspectives.
However, it seems that academic excellence is not the whole ticket. Employers undoubtedly look
favourably upon perfect scores. But, recruiters also look for attributes such as individuality, drive,
passion, curiosity. These aren’t skills learned in the classroom, nor in a tuition centre, no matter how
well intentioned the teachers and tutors might have been. These character traits are fashioned on
the playground, on a football field, in a band, even while playing video games.

At first glance, this argument might come across as irresponsible, dismissive of academic values,
rebellious even. It is not. It is simply an attempt at widening the scope of modern education.

A healthy education should be a marvelous journey, not a race. It is a plea for restoring a childhood
that leaves space for learning how to fail, in order to better succeed, a childhood that is given the
opportunity to grow at one’s individual pace.

It is an appeal, to give children the chance to spend time in a meadow, so that they know how to
stop and smell the roses when they grow up.

fannybucheli.rotter@gmail.com