What happens when you get on the wrong train?

Almost every parent who considers themself 'responsible' is sending their children to additional classes money can buy; Piano, Ballet, Art Classes, ...you name it. Sending them to learn another language - English - is also in the list.

I'm not sure whether parents who send their children for 'tuition', piano, Math, ballet, etc desire for their children to excel in those fields as a future profession - to grow up to be a 'tuition teacher', 'piano teacher', 'Mathematician', 'prima-ballerina', 'artist'. Or maybe it's just to spend some money to give their children more 'space' to explore their interests outside of school.

I can understand it when home-schooling parents pay for up to 4-5 different types of activities per week - they are, after all, exclusively pursuing a path where their children effectively and directly apply opportunities to learn and grow in their mental or physical dexterity. But I have a harder time understanding when parents pay for lessons which are the school's sole responsibility to cover - you know, with that thing they pay called 'tax dollars'? On top of doing school two times and three times over, some parents 'opt' for piano/ballet/Math/English, etc....'just in case' their child does badly in school.

So I don't know exactly what most parents want when they send their children for "English enrichment classes". Is it just for recreation? Or do they have real needs to prepare their children for the future? You can't have it both. You're either indulging your child to enjoy their present childhood with all the trappings of enrichment classes - or you're getting them prepared for the future. Ultimately, the enrichment classes, those without fixed curriculums and structures, are the most beneficial for the child's future. By giving a child their childhood, they will unfold their nature to become intelligent, adaptable, confident adults.

On the contrary, the ones which 'prepare for the future' are essentially preparing for the past - a past that would be 50-100 years overdue by the time these children grow up. Those programmes claim to "intellectualize" your child, "improve their IQ" and make them "be more ambitious about getting a better job in the future." What future, exactly? As it is, those who are in their 20s and 30s are already finding that schooling did not prepare them, to skill them, after years of de-skilling in schools, for the world they are to function and prosper in.

I have a problem with entities that aim to 'intellectualize' children. There are two important factors to consider before even buying into that message. Firstly, Intelligence is largely hereditary. Another 50% is made up of the home-schooling environment the child is in. Secondly, what do parents hope can be achieved by 2-3 hours, once or twice a week, at those centres? Based on the fundamental factors that Intelligence is largely genetic, 2-3 hours would not mitigate much. Secondly, whatever can be done in those 2-3 hours, will be undone back home or in schools if the home and schooling environment does not reinforce the same style of learning. Thirdly, the benefits of 2-3 hours a week is based on the assumption that the children have highly intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced and dynamic adults to MODEL THINKING AND BEHAVIOR AFTER.

Realistically, which intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced and dynamic adult would want to work for $800 to $2000 a month? A highly dysfunctional, underachieving one? It's different if the Principal happened to hire a dysfunctional/underachiever as a one-off incident, an incident that would soon be rectified after a few months (by firing the person). But it would be a completely different story if 'learning centres' depend almost exclusively on a pool of UNEMPLOYABLE/UNDRIVEN people for these children to look up to.

I'm not knocking every single person who considers working as a teaching assistant as a long-term solution to their career plans; I'm sure among the many are highly-driven, highly-altruistic people who genuinely care about allowing children the need to develop into themselves. Oh wait, I've just contradicted myself - highly-drive and altruistic people would never settle for being 'a worker' as a long-term solution to their career plan! Maybe you're one of those people currently working but are highly-driven.

Needless to say, franchised-brands and principals are unable to retain the best talents. Like how one Boss told me, "I can't hire really good people and treat them well - if they are that good, why would they want to work for you? They would eventually set out on their own after gaining experience here." - I know this seems ironic, but those were her words exactly. (Three months after opening her own centre, she closed down.)

That was not the first time an owner/principal has said something like that to me. At a dinner party a few years ago, the owner of a well-known franchise specialising in Math and now branching into English and Chinese, told me that only people who do badly in school will end up teachers. She said that right in front of me, obviously wanting to tell me that she thinks I must be a complete loser. This was in the presence of a piano teacher, a surgeon from Taiwan, an architect, engineer and several other small business owners.

Personal insult aside, I thought it was very ironic that she said that because she depends EXCLUSIVELY on the people she insults to take up positions in her centre to teach children of high disposable-income families in Pulau Tikus and its surrounding areas. Was she trying to say that she hires people who did badly in school to TEACH these children under her franchise brand?

FYI, her English, by my standards, is truly atrocious and it scares me that she teaches English. I honestly believed that this centre is the exception; that other people who teach must be altruistic socialists at heart, driven with a passion to affect change in the future of the children they teach. Over the years, I've come across many grouses from students and parents alike that tuition centres are hiring people who sometimes don't even have the basic SPM qualification. I've even personally seen people who would otherwise get fired from their jobs, get hired to be public school teachers.

I have nothing against people who lack some form of basic qualification to teach. The most important factor in teaching is simply a genuine concern for the welfare of others, intellectual curiousity and an unsatiable appetite for learning and deepening one's insights into the art of teaching. But to have those qualities, it is absolutely necessary that the person isn't driven solely by a paycheck or a lack of employment opportunities elsewhere!

It would be easy to say that I'm also unemployable elsewhere because technically, I am unemployed. Since I cannot judge myself, I leave it to the people who personally know the level of my work, who have seen my performance within a company - to say that.