School series #3: Why we decided to switch schools

Why we made the decision to switch from a kebangsaan Chinese school to an international school

Thank you for waiting everyone! I didn’t realize it’s been nearly a month since my last article so here is the continuation to the story: why we made the choice to switch schools.

If you haven’t read my previous post - a review of Chinese schools, our experience in one anyway - it’s here.

I’ve written about what Chinese school is like - the good, bad and the ugly. So for this post, I’m going to delve into what finally tipped the balance for our family and finally pushed us to decide to pull the plug, uprooting Fighter into a whole new environment and educational setting.

For the record, Fighter is making the switch first. Penny decided to stay on for another year. Because friends wtf.

School’s inability to deal with neurodivergence

I mentioned this in my previous blog post but most government schools are not equipped for students who may be neurodivergent. Don’t say severe cases, but mild ones also are a challenge to government schools. There is just no training, awareness or even provisions in place for kids who may be different. :(

When I took Fighter to the child psychiatrist and then to Oasis Place (our psychologist and therapy center), we did a complete evaluation. These reports can be very beneficial because schools use them as official diagnoses and the recommendations included can be used as guidelines to adapt school environments and processes for kids who may be different.

I sent Fighter’s report to his class teacher and the vice principal who was also his math teacher, since both of them knew I was sending him for assessment. They were both wonderful about it, open and accepting, and did try to work with the recommended accomodations - allowing for more toilet breaks to move around, allowing small fidget toys to calm himself, speaking more calmly to curb his anxiety, etc.

They disseminated his reports to his other teachers but honestly, the effect never extended beyond his math and class teachers. I don’t know if the reports were never forwarded to the next year, or if they were but the new teachers disregarded them. His other teachers continued to behave as they had, allowed no concessions and showed no signs that they knew. So my conclusion is that there just isn’t enough awareness, capacity or willingness to adapt the learning environment to different learning children.

Syllabus was too rushed

A large part of this was probably due to the pandemic and the lockdowns, but for the past two years, it feels as if the school was just rushing to complete the syllabus before school broke up for the year.

Most of the time, it felt to me as if the teachers were only rushing to reach the last page of the textbook so they could check it off a list - which I honestly suspect is what the teachers themselves are evaluated on. As a result, for the first two years at least, Fighter really struggled to learn and retain information. This was especially obvious in areas like math where he’s a bit weaker: it got to the point where he was just trying to memorize formulas without understanding what they actually do.

Which brings me to the next point…

Learning goes at only one pace

There is no room for different learning paces besides the one the teachers set. If a kid learns something quicker than the pace of the lesson, they’ll just have to wait for everyone else and maybe get bored/disruptive on the side. If a kid takes longer to master a concept, they often get left behind. This was the case for Fighter who does take longer to pick up certain ideas and concepts. Because of a bunch of reasons (I assume) - too many students in a class, teacher has a tight timeline to stick to, traditional teaching style leaves no room for change, etc - the education system is just not set up for personalized learning.

If your Chinese is weak, you’ll get left behind

I think this one is pretty obvious, and it got even more so the more Fighter advanced. The pandemic really did us dirty lol, cos for the better part of his first two years in school, classes were online. There was none of that language immersion that I was hoping for when we first enrolled him. As a result, I believe that his command of the language now could have been stronger and his foundation more stable.

Fighter is currently finishing up Standard 3, and the level of difficulty of Chinese has been increasing steadily. Keep in mind that every subject is taught in Chinese except Bahasa Malaysia and English. Because his Chinese is mediocre to weak, it affects all other subjects; his depth of understanding for every subject will always be limited by his command of Chinese. And in this way, it will be very hard for Fighter to excel; I felt it would be quite unlikely for us to discover his full potential and interests because he would be hindered by the language and by not fully enjoying his classes. He would survive, I had no doubt, but he would always be mediocre, never excelling.

Fear based techniques

Fighter suffers from some anxiety time to time and the fear based environment in school definitely exarcebated it. T_T.

Not all teachers are like that, many of his teachers are caring, joyful people, but a select few (who tend to be older) can be very scary. T_T These teachers yell and scold and penalize (sometimes quite unnecessarily). Even if Fighter isn’t on the receiving end of the scolding, he becomes anxious and fearful, and starts making even more mistakes, creating even more fear and penalty. I don’t know but would you be able to learn well if you were constantly stressed or afraid? :/

It’s the right way or the highway

Chinese school is all about rote learning, which is perfectly normal for government schools in Malaysia, not just the Chinese ones. Heck, I myself grew up being spoon fed information and memorizing facts.

When education runs like this, there’s usually only “one right way” of learning and of getting to the right answer. This was especially obvious in math when the teachers insist on the students solving problems in one specific way. (I totally struggled with this cos already reading the question in Mandarin, then have to decipher a different way of solving than how I do it D:)

Today I am a perfectly well adjusted, knowledgeable adult, so what’s wrong with rote learning? Nothing much, except that I want better for my kids. Just because I grew up fine doesn’t mean we can’t strive to do better. I was extremely challenged when I went to uni: we were expected to produce alternative opinions and think critically, and I really floundered in comparison to my American classmates. I think in today’s world, critical thinking and producing sound judgments are even more crucial and I realized I didn’t want my children growing up not learning how to think for themselves.

Fighter himself made the decision

A few months ago, Fighter himself came up to me and said, “Mommy, can I talk to you?”

He took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think I can do it anymore. The Chinese is too hard.”

For all the times when he (and Penny) have complained about school and homework and math and Chinese, he’s never said he couldn’t do it anymore. I knew I had to take it seriously.

“What about your friends? Wouldn’t you miss them?” He has a good circle of friends since they were all 7 and I really liked them.

“It’s okay we can still have play dates. And I can make new ones.”

For him to give up his friends was a huge decision and one that he had already thought through before talking to me.

During the last report card day, I already felt his teacher was hinting something to me: “Next year, there will be a big jump between the level of Chinese for Standard 4. They will be expected to write essays and if your family doesn’t speak Chinese at home and your child doesn’t regularly read Chinese literature and novels, it will be challenging.”

She wasn’t telling me this to scare me, but she was sharing her own experience - even though she was a Chinese teacher herself, her kids spoke English at home and also struggled fhl hahaha.

TL;DR:

The TL;DR of it is, to be honest everything I wrote right above is not new information to me. I knew it was going to be fear based. I knew it was going to be rote learning. I knew that learning Chinese with an English speaking family would be challenging.

I wanted to try anyway for the sake of learning Mandarin. It was always a balancing act: the benefits of learning Mandarin vs all the disadvantages of rote learning and fear. Finally the balance tipped in favor of an education that aligns more with our beliefs and we decided to make the move.

I have many mixed feelings now that we’ve made this decision. :’) I’m glad he can speak Chinese now (although his reading and writing is questionable wtf); if he maintains this skill, well, it’s always handy knowing an extra language. But I do feel guilty that we’ve also created this anxiety and dislike around going to school. Giving learning a bad name wtf. I’m hoping it’s not too late to reverse the damage.

And I’m also sentimental that he’s leaving his friends, some of whom have come up from kindergarten with him. T3T But that’s just me la he’s perfectly okay with that hahaha.

Our new adventure actually begins today! Fighter started at his new school this morning and he was very excited!