TUTORING CHILDREN THOUGHTS....

[bijou3]

Is IQ genetic or environmental?

With so many parents opting to Tutor their children for entrance into Grammar or selective independent schools one has to wonder if Grammar schools are selecting the boroughs brightest or are they selecting the boroughs best trained?

Do parents worry about the consequences of tutoring their children for highly selective schools and the possible repercussions that may develop over time if a child is unable to keep up?

How can we as parents gauge how good a school is if most of the parents are tutoring their children?

Hang on, pushy dad- you are saying that from year 5 your children did 2 hours a day extra work? So they get home from school at 4. 4.30- 6.30 extra work. 7.00 dinner. 7.30 bath and so on. 8.30 bed. So no spare time at all?

When people talk about tutoring do they mean they broaden their childrens horizons, allowing them to focus on their interests and foster a love of learning and curiosity or do they mean drilling to the narrow confines of the test.

The latter makes me want to weep for those children, how narrow and insular. No wonder so many children are switched off from learning. And all to enter a scholl which was not designed for them. Why not just let them be and allow the grammer schools to be populated by the naturally curious and fast learners as they were intended. It is hardly surprising we have such a problem with our youth, pushing children towards that which does not suit them while so much rich natural talent is wasted, elbowed aside by the sharp elbowed middle classes.

Pushy dad, surely if a child needs kumon, which is essentiaslly drilling and repetitious, then they are unsuited for an academic, selective environment.

Kumon is a sure fire way to kill any love of maths that a child may have. Far better to stretch sideways with problem solving games and puzzles. Let kids be.

Does anybody actually acknowledge that success in life has much to do with personality and strength of character? Tutoring children to excess will surely deprive them of other skills?

pushydad - sounds a lot. All this tutoring for 11+ sounds ok if its for a short while to get them into a grammar school, if tutoring is the done thing. However, will you stop it when they are in and will they be able to keep up without it - that would be the deciding question for me.

What is that Kumon maths? I have heard of it in that programme 'Tiger Mums' where it appeared to me that children arrive at a centre, collect a worksheet, do it and then hand it back to be marked - that can't be it?

seeker - "Because of course state schools don't do homework......"

Not at the state schools that my neighbours' kids go to.

Forgot to mention the slight name change to something more gender neutral.

seeker - taking a typical school day ..

3:30 to 4 :15pm - After school club like netball or football.

4:30 to 5pm - Free time while tea is cooked (PC games or TV or playing in the garden .. or ...or )

5pm - Tea with free time to 6pm.

6pm to 8pm - 11+ prep

8pm to 8:30pm bath time/reading on alternate days

8:30pm to 9pm - What we called Cuddle Time i.e. chat to DCs while they are in bed followed by bedtime.

So half an hour's free time a day at 10. Ridiculous!

Evil clown / gabid

Kumon is as gabid said. You turn up, drop off last week's worksheets for marking and you collect your next set of worksheets. A tutor is on site to help.

Kumon was not our ideal choice but our state primary didn't believe in pushing the children. The at the time new headmaster suggested introducing 10 minutes a week homework and he got shouted down by the parents who thought it was too much [rolls eyes]

Being working parents we didn't have the time to set homework for DCs so Kumon was a compromise. My DS ended up being 2 years ahead of the national standard in maths so I'm not complaining :)

As for whether they will be able to keep up once they are in secondary, well my DCs are in highly ranked indies (Sunday Times table) and while they aren't top of their classes (yet :) ) they are not struggling either.

If a kid is borderline then tutoring them heavily, just so that they can pass the 11+ is IMO a bad idea (there are one or two kids in DCs classes that are struggling at the mo) but if a child is reasonably bright then why not?

"So half an hour's free time a day at 10. Ridiculous!"

3:30 to 4 :15pm - After school club like netball or football. FREE TIME

4:30 to 5pm - Free time while tea is cooked (PC games or TV or playing in the garden .. or ...or )

5pm - Tea with free time to 6pm.

6pm to 8pm - 11+ prep

8pm to 8:30pm bath time/reading on alternate days

8:30pm to 9pm - What we called Cuddle Time FREE TIME i.e. chat to DCs while they are in bed followed by bedtime.

Seeker - you obviously want to see what you want to see

Organized sport is not free time.

Cuddle time is not free time- it's lovely but it's not free time.

The tea and free time hour presumably includes table setting, and clearing and washing up as well as eating and chatting. That certainly takes around an hour in our household. Once again, nice but not free time.

So 4.30 to 5.00 is the only free time in your schedule.

My DS ended up being 2 years ahead of the national standard in maths so I'm not complaining

Two years ahead is not much really. My ds is a maths whizz, I found him some websites to play maths games, because he begged me to and beacause, frankly I was not able to help him as he is so far ahead. Being 2 years ahead does not mean the child grasps any advanced concepts and understands how numbers work. It just means they have been drilled relentlessly to rote learn. It makes me want to weep.

My ds has been put up multiple in maths and was doing extension work with the more able group. As this is a selective school, lots of the "more able" were not more able at all. They had just been drilled. When it comes to understanding maths and how it relates to everyday life, they didn't have a clue. If I was able to extend ds in maths I would stretch him sideways. Not drill in the facts.

Other countries do not have an issue with making children work. Countries without a welfare state know that if their children do not learn to read, write and add up then life will be very grim.

Children who believe that they can shape their destiny by hard work are often more moviated and do better than those who believe that ablity is innate.

In my experience children who work hard also play hard. Children who experience sucess as a result of hard work are more confident and believe in themselves.

My children have never done Kumon. However I don't think that a bit of repeatitious learning is a bad thing. It is useful to for a child to know their number bonds and multiplication tables. My son prefers timez attack as a way of drilling tables.

seeker, it isn't fair to just tell someone that what they are telling you isn't true re free time...

that does indeed make it seem you are seeing what you want to see.

seeker

Whatever.

"Two years ahead is not much really. My ds is a maths whizz"

But mine isn't so two years is still pretty good by my standards :)

hullygully- how do you know it was me seeing what I want to see? These things go both ways.

Can't bear the idea of tiger parenting. I see too much of it and it always backfires.

eh?

I don't, but he said there was x free time and you told him it didn't count.

No. I said that, for example, time spent doing organised sport and the time spent eating your dinner is not free time. Which it isn't. It's just time not spent doing school work. The children concerned only have 30 minutes unscheduled time in their day.

The tea and free time hour presumably includes table setting, and clearing and washing up as well as eating and chatting. That certainly takes around an hour in our household. Once again, nice but not free time.

In our house they eat their tea in four minutes flat and have 56 free minutes of this hour. For example. You "presumed" it included table laying etc and said it didn't count.

"Can't bear the idea of tiger parenting. I see too much of it and it always backfires."

Always? Please feel free to offer a personal experience as opposed to something you've watched on TV or heard x's BIL talk to his BF's sister's cousin about.

Between me, DP and our respective siblings we have several first degrees, two Mscs and one MBA. And we have jobs to go with the qualifications. You have a hard time convincing us that our lives have been ff-ed up by pushy parenting :)

Seeker could you please post a definition of 'free time' just so we know we're doing it right? My DS (10) is just about to go out to football training for an hour, which he absolutely loves. Should I stop him from going because it eats into his free time? He will also, at some point in the evening, pick up his book because he's really enjoying it. Should I hide it because that may constitute doing some work in what should be 'free time'?

Where do you get off, telling people what is and isn't free time?

"Free time" is time when a child can, if he or she wants, sit and stare vacantly into space. Where he or she can choose what they want to do. My ds is currently playing his guitar. he isn't practising for his exams or playing what his teacher has asked him to practise ( which he has also done this evening) - he is writing a song (god help me). He has enjoyed both activities, but one wasn't free time, and one is.

I suspect that is a pretty universal definition.

I have never paid a tutor to teach my children. My DD loves to learn she is a self motivated child with a full social life and participates in lots of extracurricular activities. She is a naturally bright child who is on schedule for A* in all her GCSEs. I put her in a non selective independent school because I believe that bright children will do well anywhere if they want to learn. Bright children do not need tutoring.