Singapore Students Stressed

 Watch here

9th August 2024

Read here : 

It's not easy being a kid these days in Singapore.  To be perfectly honest, I  sometimes feel sorry for them. They've got so much on their plate. Ambitious parents who want them to go to Great universities.  

Meet Jennifer Mills, an Australian who has been teaching and running schools all over the globe for 41 years and is now the head teacher of an international school* in Singapore. 

( *Knightsbridge House International School ). Jennifer explained how to fit into Singaporean culture as a foreigner. The main misconceptions about white people in Asia and the most important skill children need to learn at school. I'm Max Chernov. Let's go kiddos .

Singapore uniqueness

That's an interesting aspect to life only in Singapore. It has been founded on  respect of all the mutual different   societies that we live here and each   community group or religious group. We all have two public holidays a year so that we can all celebrate on our own special days, which is very unique to Singapore and it doesn't actually exist in other countries around the world. For example, I would just talk about , for example, England and Australia, they're both Christian-based countries. So, there's no reference to Eid or Ramadan, or Hari Raya, ( Malay term for Celebration Day for Singaporean Muslims ), anything like that. And so those people who's, like all people, they want to be respected. They don't get those special days off work for them, it's another day for me. For example, when I worked in the Middle East, I had to or um Hari Raya ( Malay term for CelebrationDay for Singaporean Muslims ), anything like that, and so those people who's, like all people, they want to be respected. They don't get those special days off work. For them it's another day. For me, for example, when I worked in the Middle East, I had to teach on Good Friday. That was very, very strange for me to be, you know as a Christian, having to work on one of the most sacred holidays of the Christian calendar. However, I understood that I had to respect the culture of the country that I was living in. I couldn't impose my preconceived ideas of what day I should have as a holiday and not, I had to fit in with the country and the culture. However, here in Singapore, it's completely different. We are all respected, and I think that does make sort a very unique community because every culture has its days that we respect and and here at school, we always make sure that we have assemblies that talk about the special significance of the celebration that we're about to celebrate.

Inside the Knightsbridge House International School

 We have our assemblies here and we also have our enrichment activities. We have a lot of events throughout the year which are all celebrated here. Concerts, assemblies class, assemblies. This is a really important part of any school. And obviously it's important for us at KBH to have this space here. When we need get the whole school together, we hire a hall. We can't fit everybody in here. We can fit the children in here but not their parents as well. So there's a hall, literally a very lovely Auditorium that we use frequently down at the end of the road yeah that we can fit everybody in. 

The reality of being a foreigner

It was the understanding of the local community and the culture that changed the way I thought about things. I became aware  that I was always going to be wrong. I was always going to be making a cultural faux pas at some point in time and that I had to be more mindful about being culturally (respectful). Respectful of the culture that I was in because if you don't have that mindset about being mindful that the way I would do things is not necessarily the right way in the country I'm in. Then you will make mistakes and upset people. And of course, when you're in a leadership role, that's the exact opposite of what you want to do.  You want to be working with the local community. You want to be seen as a very kind, caring, empathetic leader. And taking on these different roles helped me understand more about different cultures in the places that I was working on. It also helped me understand a little bit about myself, to be honest.

[Max asks:  Can you give an example, like from the Middle East or from China, something that happened to you? It was like, "Oh, you're not supposed to do it, you're not supposed to say it." ]

Funnily enough, the first night that I was in China and some of the my colleagues said, "We're going to go ten pins bowling, you know, would you like to come?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." So we went along and we went Ten Pin bowling. It was a really fun night. And then when we finished, we were trying to get a taxi home, and no taxis would stop. And we were a fairly large group. We were trying to get two or three taxis. And one of these taxis drove by, and I could hear the word lǎowài (老外, foreigner) being yelled out through the taxi driver window, and I said, "What's happening here, why won't any taxi stop?" Because they've all got their green, you know light on. And all the teachers were kind of giggling, and they said, "Oh, cause we're lǎowài ." And I went, "What's that?" And they said, "It's, we're foreigners." And taxi drivers won't pick up foreigners in China because we're always lost. We never know where we're going. We never know where we need to be. And because they don't speak English. They're very afraid to pick us up because it's always going to be a disaster. And there were many disasters in the four years in China with me and a taxi. And I understand exactly why they don't want to pick up lǎowài. Because it's always a disaster. Yeah, it seems like in every country they have this name for foreigners, like here is ang mo (Caucasian), in Thailand is farang.

  And they don't generally like dealing with you. And the funny thing was, I had a misconceived idea that white people are actually quite respected globally. Very wrong. Very much disrespected globally. And you know the interesting thing for me is that you know, I have been a victim of racism. And you know, growing up in Australia as a white Australian, it was something that I had never had to deal with. Yeah. So, you know, moving to a foreign country where I was discriminated against, because of the color of my skin was a very, you know, rude shock for me. That wow, really? You don't respect me? No. 

So it's actually, I wouldn't say it was a good experience but it helped me understand how other people feel. And it gives you the opportunities then to really, you know, sympathize when, you know, children come to me and they say, you know, another child said something about the color of my skin or the color of, you know, my hair or my, you know, whatever. And I'm like, " Hmm, really let's see about that", and it has made me as a leader of a school be very, very mindful about making sure our schools are very accepting.

Local vs International school 

Max asks,"Do you know how different is curriculum, like, local Singaporean schools curriculum versus let's say your system?

 I don't know specifically, how different it is. I certainly know from speaking to children who've been to Singaporean schools, their discipline is extremely strict, in some ways maybe a little bit behind the times. Here at Knightsbridge International School and most of the international schools that I work in, we don't expect children to sit down and be quiet. We expect children to be collaborators, innovators. We expect children to be expressing their opinion. We expect children to be confident enough to question the teacher, to question their learning, to question what's happening. And I think in the local Singaporean systems, those skills that we value here in international schools particularly invoke, I think that the children more.  Rote learning, learning by memorization, whereas, we don't value those skills here. I mean, obviously there's a place for them, but we want our children to be creative, innovative, collaborators, critical thinkers, all the things that we're preparing our children for when they go out to work in industry. 

Max says , I think I understand why the system, like a local school, why the strictness comes from. Partially from the past, I guess that's the kind of the system from the past, when the country was built. And also because how the system works.  You have this PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination) and then you need to score well, and then it leads the children's way to the university, and then also like Singapore local system is known by having the, like, the top ranking students, like, globally. Do you think maybe that's the right approach and, like more creative approach is, kind of, outdated? 

Yeah, look, in any school, you're going to find a group of children who are like hot housed and tutioned, and lots of academics and afterschool clubs and things like that.

 Yeah.

 Cream will always rise to the top. And the interesting thing about, certainly in my experience of, you know, more than 40 years in education, that the best students will always go to the Ivy League universities. And it doesn't matter whether you've been in, you know, a local system that's really, you know, channeled you into, you know, a particular way to achieve or whether you've been in an international school which has had a little bit more creative flare, if you're a good student, you are a good student. And it doesn't matter really, as long as you've got a stable learning environment and a school that's going to have an expectation that you will excel, you will go to those, you know, top universities. Regardless of whether you came from, you know, through the Singaporean system. And yes, the Singaporean system is very well respected, as is the Finnish education system, but Finnish children don't go to school till they're seven (years old). And nor do the Singaporean children, but they're all in tuition centers after school. And they're all in academics after school.  And the problems that do create when children don't have enough creative outlet, I see it all the time. And I often advise parents to get their children into sports clubs, get them into a team, get them doing something active rather than doing, you know, another hour of math or, you know, something like that in a tuition center after school.

Max adds, "Yeah, I guess that's the question of like the options that you can give to your children." I mean ...

Parents are very, very ambitious for their children and we want our children to do very, very well because it's a reflection on us. Unfortunately, that is the reality of it. So when we, you know, we always hustle to get our kids into the best school, into the best tuition center and equally so into the best university, but the reality is, many children don't need to go to a top university. You know, my son for example,  wanted to do Renewable Energy Engineering, Oxford University and Cambridge University didn't offer it. So, the university that he needed to go, the best one in the UK was Exeter ( University of Exeter). And so that was what we, you know, focused our energies on. Finding out what he needed, to get him into that. So that, it doesn't necessarily mean that just because you're an A student or an A* star student, that you're going to go to Cambridge. You need to go to the university that suits the course that you want to do. And that's what good schools will do. They will prepare you to find the university that gives you the career that you want to  take.

Is memorization a good thing?

Max asks, " You mentioned that you not focusing on memorizing things for kids, like in my, uh, school years that was the main thing that we did here. You think it's not the right way to teach?

 I think that there is always going to be a place for memorizing facts. Year, dates, things that happen, you know, that, you know, if you're a history student, you need to know those dates. Because the implications of knowing those dates has a knock on effect to what happened in history. So, there is always going to be a place for memorizing mathematical formulas,  chemical formulas, dates for history. But what you do with it is more important than knowing it. If you've got  the smarts to critically think about what you know and apply it in a situation where you need to solve problems, or you need to write an exam paper, that's the difference. Because memorizing a fact won't give you the opportunity to analyze what this.question is asking and how the skill set that I have can answer it. So that's why, we need a little bit of both, but there is a definite swing in the international community away from rote memorization* of [ *A memorizing process using routine or repetition, often without full attention or comprehension.   "learn by rote."]  huge swathes, you know pages and pages and pages. And I know, Max, exactly what you're talking about. When, you know, you can't go to the next grade unless you've memorized chapter after chapter after chapter. And I'm sure you remember  all those chapters now... 

Max teplies, "Probably or maybe not,   (laughter)"

Yes, well how did it help you in your life?

Max says, "They didn't help me."

 Exactly.  But having the capacity to think critically about a problem that you need to solve in a math test or a chemical equation, that's got a mistake in it. You need to be able to critically think and that's what certainly international schools and definitely KBH teach. That's what we're teaching our students to do. To have the critical thinking skills to answer questions in assessments.

The best thing about KBH School

Max asks ,"What do you do at school?"

 A man replies, "I'm the head of IT at school, so I'm responsible for all of our computing subjects. I'm originally from Tasmania, Australia, but I also spent about 18 years in Japan.

 Q: One thing that you like about this school?

 I love the  friendliness. I mean, the kids are all amazing. I love the the kind of like a sense of community where um all the  children will interact with each other regardless of the ages and it's just really fun and lovely school. 

Why do schools shut down?

Max : Seems like it's very different. There are two different worlds. Like local school system and international school system.  Are there cases where schools were shut down? Yeah?

 Yes, many. I mean, funnily, well, not funnily, but interesting I interviewed a chap several months back and he was telling me that the last  three schools he had worked at here in Singapore had all closed down.  Because I said, I was looking at his resume and I said, " Oh, well, I don't recognize these schools" Closed,

Max: Oh wow.

closed and closed. It is actually hard to open a  new school, in, not just in Singapore, but anywhere.

Max: Yeah the license.

The license, number one. The zoning of any building that you come into must be zoned for educational purposes. You must also make sure that you've got a program that the parents want their children to learn. And KBH has got a lot of things right. The school is only three years old and we've grown from five children,  three years ago to 200 children now, and we know that we're going to tip well into 300s next year. We've already expanded this school space twice, we took on new space at the end of this time last year and we have from the 1st of August, we're taking on more new space as well, you know. We have a very competitively priced fee structure and we have an amazing team of teachers and we have the Cambridge curriculum which is world renowned, so it's the trifactor. We've got all three in one.

Why the KBH school is so affordable

 Max asks, " A lot of schools are priced like three times more than your school. Yours is like how much a year?

 We're $13,000  (9,700 USD) a year.

 Max: $13,000 

And it has been that price since the school opened.

Max: It's crazy, I mean ...

But crazy good.

Max: It's crazy good, but how come, how you can keep the price so affordable?

 To be honest, nearly every parent that I meet when I you know come to when I introduce them through the school, they they're very curious as well, but we don't have some facilities that you would find in some of the other big international schools. For example, we don't have a grassy running track. We don't have a science lab. We don't have a swimming pool. Inside the school, our classrooms are very nice. Our teachers are all well trained and all internationally experienced. But the difference is that because we don't have a swimming pool, we don't have to maintain it. We don't have that expense. Because we don't have a running track, an Olympic sized running track, we don't need a gardener. We don't need a maintenance. We don't need people to, you know, manage those things. We don't have a science lab, so we use external science labs. We take our students in a bus and we bus them to external science labs. And we use their facilities so that their curriculum is still being delivered very, very effectively. But we're doing it in a very cost effective way. There may come a day when we do  decide to build our own science lab. Our secondary school is growing very, very quickly. And with that comes the responsibility to analyze if having our own science lab would be something that would be easier for us to manage in  terms of the transportation of the children to the science lab as it cuts into their learning time. We are always evaluating what we're doing. We didn't come into it three years ago and said, "Okay, this is what we've got, this is what we'll keep, this is what's going to stay like this forever". We are continually evaluating. We evaluate the textbooks we use, the curriculum we use, the teachers we use, the spaces that we use, the site that we've got.  Everything is always being analyzed and critically evaluated. So whilst the school fees remain at a very competitive price, we also are very mindful that at some point in time, if we do need to put in new facilities, there may need to be a minimal price rise. But as business owners, the school owners, compliant with our governing body, we must be a school that makes money. End of story. We're doing that.  At S$13,000 a child. 

(TOURING) Inside the KBH School

We used this one (classroom) for high school maths. We use this one (classroom) for year one. We set this one up as a music room, but we didn't have a music teacher, but we do have a music teacher coming in August. So from August, this will be our proper music room.

Max: All right, cool. I think for primary school kids, they don't really care about the facilities. I mean, maybe the secondary school kids, yeah, and they start to compare maybe they have friends and they're like, "Yeah, I have swimming pool". But for 7-8-year-old kids, they're like, " Well, whatever ..."  I run like here or there, it doesn't matter .

That's probably pretty much true. Primary School students, as long as they're happy in their school, they're getting a good education.  They've got space to run and play, you know. We have a fully qualified PE (Physical Education) teacher. We have PE equipments, the children go outside and do their PE lessons. It's not like we're stinting or the children are missing out on anything. If you, you know, say to a child, "This is your school", "Okay, great". And if they're happy there, then what more do you need? Because as a parent and I know you're going to agree, all you want is your children to be happy. That's it. So we have a very happy school. Our children are very happy. The high school children are very happy as well. But interestingly enough, they don't they definitely don't want a swimming pool. They definitely don't want running tracks. They want a library. They want interesting books to read. They want a nice space where they can chill out and hang out with their friends. Well, this is our library.

Max: Yeah, that's the library.

 This is the library. The children have a library lesson once a week. And, quite often at lunch time you'll find our secondary students chilling out in here chatting, reading books, playing games, Snap (card games), and things like that. They have different needs and we meet  them as we need to, and provide those things that we can, here in the campus for those children. And in fact, that's why we've taken a new space from 1st August because we know that we need to continue to provide facilities for our children at the school.

Max:  "If they mentioned they come from Max Chernov YouTube channel, can they have any, like you know, special treatment or like discount or something like that?" (laughter)

 Well, I'm sure we could do  something for them. But the school fees are quite competitive, as they are. But yes, I think that's probably something that we could do.

Most important skill children  need to learn at school. 

 Max: "What do you think the most important skill children need to learn at school is the most important skill that children have to learn like in primary school?

 Being good friends, yeah. Being good collaborators. Because it's not easy being a kid these days. To be perfectly honest, you know, I sometimes feel sorry for  them they've got so much on their plate. Ambitious parents who want them to go to great universities, you know, the whole cyber world that's out there that they have to navigate, the addiction to screen that they will most often find, and the parents who will lead them in either supporting them or not supporting them. I think that, if you've got very good structures, whether it's the school and the family, your child will be fine. But yeah, children, they've got a tough gig at the moment. We don't have any, no allowed for our children or our staff. We don't want them to develop, even in their downtime. Talk to one another, be collaborators, be good friends, get to know one another. And I think that's the best thing that I could give, a piece of advice for children in this stage. Put your phone down.

Max: Yeah I agree.

 Collaborate. Be a friend. And I know we're on social media which is kind of an oxymoron, but there's a purpose to this.

Max: No, no,  I agree 100%. I'm super against this. Is like, short form content that you can keep swiping the screen, is so addictive. 

It is, sorry to say.

Max: I mean, we also make it, but I think  it makes the world, not the best place, honestly. 

I agree, yeah .

Max: It's like drugs, like before. 

And it's an addiction and it has to be treated as any addiction is.

The happiest memory from teaching years

Max: Yeah.  What's your happiest memory from your teaching years or from your directing years, like linked to the  kids or to your students?

 I have so many, something like, I guess, you know, for me, Max, you know, I've been in education for 41 years. And I wouldn't still be here if I didn't love every single day. But I think, you know, the personal relationships that we build with the children, I mean, when you're a teacher, it's very easy to have those personal relations because you see them every day, you teach them every day. As a head teacher, you don't get into the classroom, you can't see them every day. But you can still build positive relationships with every child. And I think for me, my happiest times, whether I was in the classroom or as a head,  is  when I do build relationships with the children. You know, my door is always open in my office and I love it when the  children just pop in. And they, you know, they come back from lunch and they tell me something about lunchtime or a game  they played or that they feel confident enough to come and, you know, tell the head of school something that happened to them. And it might be something that, you know, made them sad.  When I get a little love letter from the child or, you know, and when I get a note from a parent to say, "Great job, Miss Jen, keep it up." Because sometimes it's a little bit Lonely at the top. It's, I guess the other thing for me is to have a supportive team of teachers. Max: Yeah.

  It goes without saying that you can't  run a great school if you don't have a great team of teachlers who believe what you're doing. And I've got a great team of teachers here at KBH and they're um very supportive. So I think they're probably the two things. Having a great supportive team that I know I can trust. And the other thing is building the relationships with the children and having special moments with them when they want to come and tell me something funny or something that happened.

Life principle 

Max: Yeah. What's your main, the most or one of the most important principles in life that you learn like through the years?

 Look, it's probably, treat others as you would want to be treated. And I know that, that's, you know, well, we've all heard it before, but it's so true. You know, if I don't want to be spoken badly about, don't speak bad about other people. Be a role model to others, be a guiding light to others. Always think the best of other people and don't think bad because it will filter through into the way you react with people. So as a head teacher, it's very important to be a good example, not just to the teachers, but to the children and to the community as well. Say sorry and mean it when you've made a mistake, own it. Unfortunately, often I do.

( Both laughed  )

And, I mean, the problem is, you know, when you're a leader, you don't want to make mistakes, but the reality is you   sometimes do, and being honest about it does help the community understand that you're a genuine person who is trying to do something special in this school.

The meaning of life

 Max asks, "What's the meaning of life for you? 

The meaning of life? To retire happily on a Greek island. The meaning of life is to respect everybody, to be a kind person, and to do things that make you happy, like working at KBH. Literally.  

Max : Thanks so much, Jennifer. 

Thank you, Max. It's been a pleasure. 

 

[Knightsbridge House International School, Block 167 Jalan Bukit Merah, Singapore 150167.

Phone +65 8399 6449 ]