My Speech for Toastmaster Session

What Education is All About

One evening, I was sitting in my living room and writing my blog about children education, and my handphone rang. It was my friend Teo. He sounded a bit urgent, “Fei…Fei, I have an interesting case here and you might be able to help.” I asked him what it was about. According to him, he met a mother of a 7 years old boy who hates to do homework to the degree that he would purposely leave his homework at school, tell lies about his assignment and even threw his homework booklets out of the window of his school bus. Both his teachers and parents are helpless to handle his behaviors. After hearing all this, I was speechless because this young boy just started primary 1 for 6 months only. Teo corrected me and shared that this behaviour has started way back when he was in kindergarten two years ago. Good evening, Toastmaster of the Evening and fellows Toastmaster. I would like to share my viewpoints about education this evening.

what is education all about? Do we want our children to get as many As as possible in exam? Or do we want to ensure our children to get the certificate to have a secured job in the future? No! The fundamental of education goes beyond that. The fundamental of education is to inspire our children “to learn how to learn”. In other words, the role of an educator is to inspire our children to acquire the attitude of learning instead of acquiring the academic skills only. For children who have learnt how to learn, they will definitely love learning and continue to learn even after they graduated from school. Sadly to share, many children today have acquired the knowledge and skills in multi languages, mathematics and science but not the essence of learning which is the enjoyment or the attitude of learning, so they are very likely to stop learning after they step out of school.

My next question is how do we cultivate this “to learn how to learn” in our children? The answer is simple but not easy. Respect our children’s interest and start from their interest. For instance, if a child likes cats, take him to a pet shop and introduce different types of cats to him and observe how to groom a cat. Take him to bookstore to find relevant books about cats. Buy him a real cat as a pet for him to take care on daily basis. By providing a supportive environment for him to develop his interest, he will explore and eager to find out more information spontaneously without our nagging. This is the learning attitude that we want to cultivate in our children, so our children will enjoy learning for the rest of their lives.

Besides the appropriate learning attitude, there are two essential skills that are crucial for our children to have a meaningful and productive lives in the future? The two skills are imagination and creativity. This is because these are the two skills that keep our children being competitive and competent in the future fast-paced world. The future generations are absolutely different from our generation due to the advanced and sophisticated technologies. In the near future, the subjects that our children are studying in school will be outdated when they are graduated from the 3-4 year college or university study. Thus, learning all the subjects and skills are relatively irrelevant at that point in time. In contrast, those who are good at imagination and able to create new opportunities will lead a satisfying and fulfilling lifestyle regardless of the environment. Let’s look at the great inventors and entrepreneurs such as Thomas Edison, Einstein, Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong and Bill Gates. They have one thing in common is they dare to imagine and determine to create things that were not existed yet. This will hold the truth for our future generations as well.

Back to the case of the 7-year-old boy, why does he dislike to do homework? This is because we failed to inspire him the fun and correct way of learning instead we stress him out with tons of tons of homework since he was 5 years old. To educate our children effectively, here are two suggestions. First, find out your children’s interest and cultivate the love of learning from there. Once they have the right attitude for learning, they will learn on their own for the rest of their lives. Second, plan all the activities in the way to promote imagination and creativity. Children who have these two skills will have a dynamic and outstanding life. I would like to end my speech by sharing my favorite phrase. “The mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates and the great teacher inspires”.