On The Train, Nov 15, 2007

Does it matter if your children got 5As or 5Cs? If you asked any parents the obvious answer would of course be ‘yes of course’. I used to think that way. In this competitive world, it could be worse in the future to some, that we are in now it is no brainer for our children to be top A students. The arguments have been they should be a straight A students to get a better chance to go to tops colleges and universities to be doctors, engineers or architects. Well, nothing wrong with that. But to me not at the expense of my children not knowing how to survive the supposedly competitive world. I want them to be thinkers rather then memorisers, be entrepreneurs creating job and wealth rather than searching for jobs and hoping wealth will come. I also would want them to enjoy their growing up without having to deal with peer pressure very early in their life. Parents sometimes would make the situation worse for their children as unknowingly will add to the stress level when hey started to compare their children with others. Statistically, there are several incidences of death at the early age of 30’s and 40’s. Apart from eating habit and other things one contributing factor is stress being introduced early in their life. I do not know whether there has been a scientific study on this but I believe so.