A Letter To Parents
Technically, this is not my post because it is taken from another blog however, the post below which is written in black are my own comments. This is a letter to parents explaining the changed times and why as a result grades are affected.
Dear parents,
With regards to academic success.
The days when we could get 99/100 are far over, we hope you realised that. The last time we got that we were in Primary 2. If you haven't noticed, we're in secondary school now, you know? Everything we do gets harder and harder. If you've ever looked at the average mark, you can see that it's dropped to 40%, not 98% like last time. We know that in your time you could just slack off and get full marks, but hello, this is the twenty-first century. What do you expect them to do, set easy papers and give us the marks? Well, obviously not. And for your information, this has been going for two years already, you know. We hope the facts have managed to penetrate your thick skull already, though we know they probably haven't.
Get a life, man. Stop complaining. We do have feelings, you know. We aren't just punchbags to throw your frustrations at us. You always compare with the top and everything. You do realise that we can't be good in everything. If we excel in that subject, we excel in it. If we suck at it, we suck at it. There is no point trying to force us to get highest marks for every single subject (full marks for all is utterly impossible, will you remember that?), because it's just not going to happen. The best we can ever do is to top the class, and again, we cannot do that for all subjects.
You frequently like comparing us with other students. May we remind you, our dear parents, that we are in GEP? Not to mention, we are in an elite school after all. It has been like that since Primary 4, them giving us harder papers than those of the mainstream. Added to the fact that the mainstream in our school now is pretty good, what do you think the standards are like? All human beings have limits, you know. You may want us to be the all-rounded child, best in everything, but we're sorry. This is the real world, and everyone knows that the person up there distributes stuff pretty fairly. And don't start comparing us with those Mensa people either. IQ is based on genetics. Blame yourself for not having the good genes to give us that IQ that you want us to so badly to have.
Yes, yes we know. You're going to start all your "work hard and you'll get results" lecturing. Hard work can only get you so far, you know. We've really tried our best already, however much you don't believe it. Maybe sometimes we slack off. But we work hard too. When we do slack off, we know that it's because we slack off, and so we just get irritated but don't say anything. But if you accuse us of being slack when we were in fact studying so hard that our heads nearly popped out, it doesn't stand. You've got to realise that your kids have limits. That's right, your kids have limits. Your kids have limits. Your kids have limits. Please, we don't want to keep repeating this until you are all zombified. It's all whether you can accept this reality or not. If you don't, you'll be constantly living in your dream world where your child is eternally perfect and so able to achieve unachievable goals. Well, we don't care what world you're living in. Live on in your dream world for all we care. But the fact is that your ridiculous dreaming is hurting us. It's hurting us even more deeply than you can imagine. Continue this, and mark our words, one day you're going to regret it. You may think your parental authority covers all things, but it doesn't. In fact it hardly covers anything at all.
So in conclusion, we would just like to make one request of you. Step into the real world! Realise that it is impossible for everyone to be perfect. When someone has tried their best, praise them. If someone could have done better, admonish them. But before you admonish the person, we would just like you to reconsider. Could the person really have done better? Is it just one of your dream schemes about your child being perfect? How many times have you admonished her already? Are you overdoing it? Sure, stress may bring out the best in us, but too much, and it will break us instead. Now think about this. How many times have you praised your child for doing her best? If you can't even name ten, we suggest that you rethink your expectations of us. We're not saying lower the expectations until they are really low. We just want you to think whether or not we really have the ability to be the dream children that you want us to be.
Love, your children.
This was written by Vanessa on her blog. I find it quite amusing. Yet, there is something I'd like to say. While some of our parents may expect too much from us, it is not true that they only seek grades from us. They want to see us rise up in life and so they just want the best out of you. Anyway, if it is meant as a joke, not bad.
Dear parents,
With regards to academic success.
The days when we could get 99/100 are far over, we hope you realised that. The last time we got that we were in Primary 2. If you haven't noticed, we're in secondary school now, you know? Everything we do gets harder and harder. If you've ever looked at the average mark, you can see that it's dropped to 40%, not 98% like last time. We know that in your time you could just slack off and get full marks, but hello, this is the twenty-first century. What do you expect them to do, set easy papers and give us the marks? Well, obviously not. And for your information, this has been going for two years already, you know. We hope the facts have managed to penetrate your thick skull already, though we know they probably haven't.
Get a life, man. Stop complaining. We do have feelings, you know. We aren't just punchbags to throw your frustrations at us. You always compare with the top and everything. You do realise that we can't be good in everything. If we excel in that subject, we excel in it. If we suck at it, we suck at it. There is no point trying to force us to get highest marks for every single subject (full marks for all is utterly impossible, will you remember that?), because it's just not going to happen. The best we can ever do is to top the class, and again, we cannot do that for all subjects.
You frequently like comparing us with other students. May we remind you, our dear parents, that we are in GEP? Not to mention, we are in an elite school after all. It has been like that since Primary 4, them giving us harder papers than those of the mainstream. Added to the fact that the mainstream in our school now is pretty good, what do you think the standards are like? All human beings have limits, you know. You may want us to be the all-rounded child, best in everything, but we're sorry. This is the real world, and everyone knows that the person up there distributes stuff pretty fairly. And don't start comparing us with those Mensa people either. IQ is based on genetics. Blame yourself for not having the good genes to give us that IQ that you want us to so badly to have.
Yes, yes we know. You're going to start all your "work hard and you'll get results" lecturing. Hard work can only get you so far, you know. We've really tried our best already, however much you don't believe it. Maybe sometimes we slack off. But we work hard too. When we do slack off, we know that it's because we slack off, and so we just get irritated but don't say anything. But if you accuse us of being slack when we were in fact studying so hard that our heads nearly popped out, it doesn't stand. You've got to realise that your kids have limits. That's right, your kids have limits. Your kids have limits. Your kids have limits. Please, we don't want to keep repeating this until you are all zombified. It's all whether you can accept this reality or not. If you don't, you'll be constantly living in your dream world where your child is eternally perfect and so able to achieve unachievable goals. Well, we don't care what world you're living in. Live on in your dream world for all we care. But the fact is that your ridiculous dreaming is hurting us. It's hurting us even more deeply than you can imagine. Continue this, and mark our words, one day you're going to regret it. You may think your parental authority covers all things, but it doesn't. In fact it hardly covers anything at all.
So in conclusion, we would just like to make one request of you. Step into the real world! Realise that it is impossible for everyone to be perfect. When someone has tried their best, praise them. If someone could have done better, admonish them. But before you admonish the person, we would just like you to reconsider. Could the person really have done better? Is it just one of your dream schemes about your child being perfect? How many times have you admonished her already? Are you overdoing it? Sure, stress may bring out the best in us, but too much, and it will break us instead. Now think about this. How many times have you praised your child for doing her best? If you can't even name ten, we suggest that you rethink your expectations of us. We're not saying lower the expectations until they are really low. We just want you to think whether or not we really have the ability to be the dream children that you want us to be.
Love, your children.
This was written by Vanessa on her blog. I find it quite amusing. Yet, there is something I'd like to say. While some of our parents may expect too much from us, it is not true that they only seek grades from us. They want to see us rise up in life and so they just want the best out of you. Anyway, if it is meant as a joke, not bad.
posted by Srinath Reddy at 5:16 PM
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