Penalising children
published: Thursday | April 10, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
AS A parent who is in the process of recovering from the onslaught of Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT), I would like to add my voice to that of Catherine Pearson in your Letter of the Day for April 2, 2003. I'm in absolute agreement because that was our identical experience. I'm sure there will be persons who will try to brand us as delinquent parents but before they do so I would like to point out that, in our case, we sacrificed every possible resource to accompany our child through this ordeal.
While we welcome the broadening of the syllabus, what can be gained by asking such young minds to soak up this vast amount of information only to be subjected to trick questions? As parents who literally went through many texts from cover to cover; prepared copious revision material; guided our child through numerous practice materials (in addition to extra lessons and mock exams at school) we would like to implore the authorities to stop this madness before we end up with an emotionally unbalanced generation.
Why all this unnecessary stress so early; isn't there enough pressure awaiting them in life? Could it be that the Ministry of Education is seeking to cover its inefficiencies by penalising our children?
