Based on your observations, experiences and using relevant examples, documents, and statistics (where appropriate) to substantiate your proposition, describe how you think Singapore families today are changing.

University Degree Education and Teaching

Topic 4: Stakeholders in Singapore Education

(Individual Written Response)

Issue:

What implications do you think the changing family may have for you as professional educators? For example, what do you think “ review(ing) our role in this area” means?

Singapore has certainly come a long way from its days as a nondescript fishing village in the Malay Archipelago to the advanced and wealthy nation that it is today. In fact, Singapore’s progress is so remarkable that our standard of living can rival that of countries like Switzerland, Japan etc.

In Singapore, the number of dual-income households has been on the rise due to the high costs of living and the desire of many families to maintain a comfortable standard of living. This means that women choose to remain in the workforce even after marriage and child-bearing. In addition, there is an increasing trend of mothers who have previously quitted their jobs to look after their children, returning to work when their children become older. As a result, there is a decline in stay-home mothers who are able to spend quality and quantity time with their children. To make matters worse, the rise of the global economy often results in parents being sent on overseas working trips for an extended period of time. Consequently, parental supervision is often found lacking in dual-income families as both parents can ill-afford to spend much time with their children due to their hectic work schedules. More often than not, parents are too tired at the end of the day to spend time interacting with their children, let alone supervising their schoolwork. Although one can argue that private tutors can act as surrogates when guiding a child in his/her studies, the ultimate responsibility of infusing the correct social and moral values still falls on the parents themselves. Therefore, if parents are not able to spend time interacting with their children and disciplining them when necessary, behavioral problems among our youths will arise in the long run. In fact, the current situation of increased juvenile delinquency, school disciplinary problems and deviant behaviours among our youths is probably a reflection of insufficient parental supervision and guidance at home.

The decline in the number of 3-generational or extended household in recent years has also resulted in the extinction of inter-generational value transmission within the family. This is because, without elders living under the same roof, they cannot help lessen the parents’ burden by helping to supervise, care for and discipline the children. Furthermore, with grandparents not being part of the nucleated family structure, the children are deprived of the opportunity to mingle and learn from their elders who have plentiful life experiences. Hence, the rise of nucleus families in recent times, coupled with the demanding work schedules of modern ...

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In recent years, parental supervision has also taken on a new challenge as the youths of today have easy access to the Internet. Young people are exposed to a wide array of information that can be both beneficial and damaging. With the youths of today more techno-savvy than their parents, parents will certainly have their hands full in trying to filter out potentially undesirable information that can be accessed by their children.

As a trainee teacher, I foresee that my future students will have a host of problems, ranging from family-related to personal ones. Every student will have their own unique set of problems contributed partly by the degree of parental support that they can rely on at home. Therefore, it would be a challenge on my part to relate effectively to a diverse group of students.

In response to the above problem, I believe there is a need to establish a closer and more frequent contact with the parents of my future charges. This is important as both teachers and parents have important roles to play in the child’s overall development. In fact, the values and knowledge taught to a child in school can only be reinforced if parents take an active interest in supervising and communicating with their children. In addition, by working in tandem with the parents, both the parents and teachers will then have a clearer picture of the problems and anxieties that are faced by the child in his/her everyday life. Teachers would then be able to provide timely and adequate intervention to resolve potential problems. However, we have to be realistic that there is a limit of how much schools can do for children. This is because, the major obstacle to establish closer rapport with the parents is the punishing work schedules of both parents and teachers.

Schools could also consider initiating some form of after-school care programmes or activities for their student population. Such initiatives have the dual benefits of keeping students occupied and preventing them from loitering aimlessly outside after school hours since their parents are usually too busy at work to check if they have reached home after school. Teachers can consider volunteering themselves to such causes by staying back in schools to provide coaching in studies to those who need it or just simply, to provide a listening ear to our disenchanted youths. However, in reality, time constraints on the teachers’ part may hinder the take-off and success of such initiatives.

To summarize, I feel that teachers nowadays need to be budding psychologists, counselors, motivators etc in addition to the role of an imparter of knowledge. Therefore, teachers have to constantly upgrade themselves in all areas in order to address the myriad of problems that seem to be plaguing our youths today and I hope this will answer the question of: “what do you think “ review(ing) our role in this area” means?” as stated in the issue above.

Done by: Ho Kai Shyuan, S7922253D

TR 19