i read an interesting article today by an American columnist who observed the following:
This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.
Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured........Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.
No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America.
~David Brooks, NYT, 30 May 2011
The article made many more interesting (and debatable) points but the point of "supervised" generation certainly applies to us here. When i look around at the "enrichment" activities my friends send their kids to, i wonder if it does more harm than good. A friend whose only child is only 6 but already has taken golfing, piano and ballet lessons for YEARS. Another friend whose boy tops the standard for consecutive years BEGGED her to stop sending him for math enrichment class cos he is simply too tired. Another friend's kids had to eat dinner in the car for an entire year because they only had half an hour from school dismissal to the start of the sports training which is held outside school. And then there are friends who packed assessment papers on family vacations. The list goes on.....
The common refrain from these friends is they are doing what they think is best for their kids. It's a competitive world out there and they are giving their kids a head start. Are we really? i guess we wouldn't really know the effects of (over)scheduling/structuring/planning until our kids are grown and are navigating the challenges in the adult life and workforce on their own. But gut feel tells me if kids are not allowed to be master of their own time or at least be guided in this direction, they will exercise their freedom of choice once available - either overtly (as in rebelling) or covertly (deliberately not doing well in their assigned tasks). (As an aside, how many kids go to church because they want to or because their parents say they have to?)
Back to Ewan. he joined Wushu at the start of P2. At the end of the year, he wasn't one of those who were selected for school team. At P3, Ewan continued with weekly Wushu training but still was not chosen despite good comments from his teachers and the fact that he is always in the best group during training. Ewan by nature is a happy-go-lucky boy, not someone who displays unusual determination. How would you handle the situation when it comes to choosing CCA at the start of P4? Let him decide on his own? Continue wushu cos it is a good exercise and continuing it will train him not to give up so easily and that making it to school team should not be the goal? Or choose another area of interest altogether?
We did discuss it together but i must say while i didn't force him to continue, i do feel strongly that he should at least be engaged in some sports or outdoor kind of life. i'm glad he continued cos he made it this time round entirely on his own merit and he is very proud of it. i don't know how it will go from here, but as long as the motivation is from himself, i just need to be supportive and encouraging. Sad will be the day if i have to remind him of training, nag at him to train, remember his schedule, etc. i hope my children do not contribute to the statistics of kids who grow up with extreme supervision and drift from job to job in their adulthood :)
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