Learning Beyond English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue

Most pri­ma­ry school stu­dents go through the dai­ly grind of these four sub­jects: Eng­lish, Math­e­mat­ics, Sci­ence and Moth­er Tongue. These sub­jects pro­vide them with knowl­edge about the world and sharp­en their ana­lyt­i­cal and cre­ative think­ing skills. How­ev­er, is what chil­dren learn in schools today enough to help them nav­i­gate their lives as young adults? What if we, as adults now, had learnt oth­er skills that would have bet­ter equipped us for the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges of our age?

The world of the next gen­er­a­tion is ever evolv­ing, fuelled by fast-paced tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments and a volatile cul­ture both online and offline. Hence, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that these four sub­jects are not suf­fi­cient to pre­pare stu­dents for the mod­ern and glob­alised world of today. In recent years, the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion has empha­sised the need for stu­dents to devel­op a suite of 21st cen­tu­ry com­pe­ten­cies, like civic lit­er­a­cy, col­lab­o­ra­tion and infor­ma­tion skills, high­light­ing that these must under­pin the edu­ca­tion they receive in schools.

Here are four impor­tant skills we think stu­dents must learn, whether inside or out­side the class­room, to help them thrive in this com­plex world:

1.   Financial Literacy

Finan­cial choic­es faced by young peo­ple are like­ly to be more chal­leng­ing than before. The finan­cial land­scape of today is ever-chang­ing, with cryp­to-cur­ren­cy and non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs) being the lat­est to rock the finan­cial boat. Hav­ing said that, before one can begin to take advan­tage of these finan­cial options, it is nec­es­sary to learn how to man­age your per­son­al finances. How many of us have strug­gled with under­stand­ing con­cepts like loans, cred­it and invest­ments as a young adult? To bet­ter posi­tion our chil­dren for the future, teach­ing them finan­cial lit­er­a­cy must begin at a young age.

Accord­ing to the Rowe Price’s 11th Annu­al Par­ents, Kids and Mon­ey Sur­vey, near­ly half of the par­ents who par­tic­i­pat­ed said that they miss oppor­tu­ni­ties to talk to their chil­dren about finances. On the oth­er hand, the Chil­dren and Young People’s Finan­cial Capa­bil­i­ty 2019 sur­vey found that 90% of chil­dren and young peo­ple who had learnt about man­ag­ing mon­ey in school found it was use­ful. Teach­ing finan­cial lit­er­a­cy to chil­dren in pri­ma­ry school can feel daunt­ing, but schools and par­ents can start from some­thing as sim­ple as sav­ing. Give them a pig­gy bank and encour­age them to save a por­tion of their allowance towards a short-term goal like their favourite toy or can­dy. Then, set up var­i­ous goals with them and teach them to bud­get wise­ly for each. Demon­strate how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate needs from wants and spend with­in one’s own means. After strength­en­ing their under­stand­ing of these basic con­cepts, they can move on to inter­me­di­ate con­cepts like the Cen­tral Prov­i­dent Fund, invest­ments and more as they mature.

Build­ing a healthy rela­tion­ship with mon­ey from a young age will have pos­i­tive effects on all areas of life. It teach­es goal-set­ting, dis­ci­pline, self-con­trol and inde­pen­dence. Our chil­dren will then grow into adults who are able to deal wise­ly with risk, work well with their future part­ners to man­age their joint finances, and make savvy finan­cial choic­es.

Schools must play their part as well. Finan­cial edu­ca­tion with­in the school cur­ricu­lum is recog­nised as an effi­cient way to reach young peo­ple on a large scale. MOE cur­rent­ly works with Mon­ey­Sense to deliv­er finan­cial lit­er­a­cy edu­ca­tion dur­ing Char­ac­ter and Cit­i­zen­ship Edu­ca­tion lessons in pri­ma­ry schools. How­ev­er, more can be done to devel­op a struc­tured cur­ricu­lum that will effec­tive­ly instill healthy mon­ey habits in stu­dents. Impor­tant finan­cial val­ues should be incul­cat­ed at home as well. In this way, our chil­dren will be poised not only to sur­vive, but to thrive.

2. Thinking about media critically

We live in an era where media, espe­cial­ly social media, plays the role of par­ent, teacher and friend to our chil­dren. Chil­dren grow up exposed to ideas, news, and cul­ture from the dig­i­tal space. A 2017 report by Com­mon Sense Media dis­cov­ered that 39% of chil­dren sur­veyed, who were aged between 10 and 18, obtain news from online sources like YouTube. Anoth­er sur­vey con­duct­ed by UNICEF found that 57% of chil­dren sur­veyed said they imi­tate their media heroes. It is clear that what chil­dren see and hear through the media shapes their thoughts, atti­tudes, and world views and ulti­mate­ly, their per­son­al val­ues. There­fore, in a world rid­dled with mis­in­for­ma­tion and over­stim­u­la­tion, schools and par­ents must guide chil­dren to think crit­i­cal­ly about what they absorb through social media.

The key lies in teach­ing them to be an active par­tic­i­pant in their media con­sump­tion. First, start a dia­logue about what they have been con­sum­ing from the media late­ly. Ques­tion if they can dif­fer­en­ti­ate reli­able news sources from the unre­li­able, teach­ing them to look for trust­ed news out­lets that can cor­rob­o­rate the infor­ma­tion. Help them under­stand that the media often exploits emo­tions with sen­sa­tion­al­ist head­lines and click­bait, and that it is best not to take every­thing at face-val­ue. Schools and par­ents must also encour­age chil­dren to take a crit­i­cal look at their favourite shows and celebri­ties. What kind of mes­sages are they putting out? Are what they are idol­is­ing healthy for them to emu­late? What lies beyond the shiny veneer of social media feeds?

Teach­ing chil­dren how to think about media crit­i­cal­ly must start at a young age, so that they may grow into adults who are wise enough to use the media for what it actu­al­ly is – not to imi­tate idols butas a prac­ti­cal tool.

3. Emotional Intelligence: Self-Regulation

A key part in prepar­ing our chil­dren for the future is to devel­op their under­stand­ing of them­selves and their emo­tions. Many adults find them­selves unable to emo­tion­al­ly self-reg­u­late or respond to hard­ships and trig­gers in a healthy man­ner. Chil­dren there­fore need to be armed with the emo­tion­al intel­li­gence to mon­i­tor, under­stand, and man­age their emo­tions effec­tive­ly at a young age. Stud­ies show that chil­dren with high­er emo­tion­al intel­li­gence pay bet­ter atten­tion, are more engaged in school, and have more pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships. As adults, emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion helps them to cope with stress and burnout.

So, what is self-reg­u­la­tion and how does one teach it to a child? Self-reg­u­la­tion is the abil­i­ty to man­age your emo­tions in accor­dance to the demands of a sit­u­a­tion. It includes being able to resist high­ly emo­tion­al reac­tions to upset­ting stim­uli, adjust to changes in expec­ta­tions and to han­dle frus­tra­tion. Par­ents and teach­ers need to pro­vide a sup­port­ive frame­work for chil­dren to work through their emo­tions and han­dle these chal­lenges on their own.

For exam­ple, when a child is frus­trat­ed with a math­e­mat­ics prob­lem and starts to throw a tantrum, instead of hov­er­ing over him and nag­ging at him to keep try­ing, teach­ers and par­ents should encour­age the child to take a minute to acknowl­edge his emo­tions and the rea­sons for them, then self-reflect and think of bet­ter ways to respond to the sit­u­a­tion. For instance, you can sug­gest that the child take a short break, stretch and get a snack before try­ing again, or attempt anoth­er piece of work before going back to the prob­lem­at­ic ques­tion. This allows the child to slow down, process their emo­tions objec­tive­ly and find health­i­er ways to deal with the sit­u­a­tion.

Par­ents can mod­el emo­tion­al self-aware­ness and self-reg­u­la­tion for their chil­dren at home, while teach­ers can teach stu­dents how to apply these skills to their stud­ies. Lessons on emo­tion­al skills and atti­tudes can also be inte­grat­ed into the cur­ricu­lum for Eng­lish, Math­e­mat­ics, Sci­ence and Moth­er Tongue. If devel­op­ing emo­tion­al intel­li­gence becomes a pri­or­i­ty in the way we nur­ture the next gen­er­a­tion, our chil­dren will mature into cool-head­ed adults who are able to direct their behav­iour towards a goal even in unpre­dictable sit­u­a­tions and build a life that is sta­ble and free.

4. Building healthy relationships

Rela­tion­ships with oth­er indi­vid­u­als are formed wher­ev­er we go, be it in one’s fam­i­ly, school or work­place. As one matures from a child to a teen then to an adult, rela­tion­ships can become more com­plex and more dif­fi­cult to han­dle. There­fore, it is cru­cial that our chil­dren under­stand how to build healthy rela­tion­ships as this will impact the qual­i­ty of the rela­tion­ships they build in the rest of their lives. Chil­dren must learn to iden­ti­fy unhealthy rela­tion­ships, define and imple­ment bound­aries, and com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with oth­ers.

Many chil­dren have already expe­ri­enced abu­sive rela­tion­ships but are unable to recog­nise that they were unhealthy. A study showed that 75% of girls and 50% of boys aged between 13 and 17 had expe­ri­enced some sort of emo­tion­al abuse, and 25% of girls and 18% of boys had suf­fered phys­i­cal abuse. A research project ‘Boys to Men’ found that 49% of boys and 33% of girls aged between 13 and 14 thought that hit­ting a part­ner would be ‘okay’ in cer­tain sce­nar­ios. Chil­dren and teenagers find it dif­fi­cult to judge if behav­iours are con­sid­ered abu­sive, and this will inevitably be car­ried over to their rela­tion­ships as adults. There­fore, teach­ing chil­dren about healthy rela­tion­ships ear­ly on can ensure they avoid unhealthy rela­tion­ships in the future. Incor­po­rat­ing healthy rela­tion­ships into the school cur­ricu­lum has also been shown to be an effec­tive pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure against future rela­tion­ship abuse.

The next step is to coach them to define and assert their bound­aries. Have a con­ver­sa­tion with your chil­dren about what kind of rela­tion­ships they wish to have and dis­cuss what bound­aries to imple­ment to achieve that. For exam­ple, teach them that it is okay to say ‘no’ to hugs, even if they come from a fam­i­ly mem­ber, or to speak up when a friend or an adult has dis­re­gard­ed their feel­ings. This will help them bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate and assert their bound­aries in order to pro­tect them­selves in future rela­tion­ships.

Last­ly, learn­ing to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly is essen­tial to build­ing a healthy rela­tion­ship. The key is to resolve con­flict by putting them­selves in the shoes of oth­ers. Chil­dren must learn to express their thoughts and feel­ings in a respect­ful man­ner, lis­ten to other’s points of view, and com­pro­mise. Par­ents and teach­ers should mod­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills like mak­ing word choic­es that val­i­date the emo­tions of oth­ers and make them less defen­sive, instead of adding fuel to the fire. Skills such as this will form the bedrock upon which their rela­tion­ships will stand and pre­pare them to han­dle rela­tion­ships in all facets of life wise­ly. Incor­po­rat­ing these lessons inside and out­side of the class­room will ensure that our chil­dren can enjoy their rela­tion­ships to the fullest.

The lessons chil­dren learn now will stay with them for life. So, what kind of adults do we want them to become? On top of mas­ter­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, chil­dren require a holis­tic edu­ca­tion that can pre­pare them for the chal­lenges ahead. Skills like finan­cial lit­er­a­cy, think­ing about media crit­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al intel­li­gence and build­ing healthy rela­tion­ships are crit­i­cal in mould­ing them into well-round­ed and healthy adults. As par­ents and teach­ers, let’s do our part to shape the next gen­er­a­tion for good!