What kind of Childhood?

Weekend is personal and family time in Canada. In Singapore it is tuition time. It is moving from one place to another.

I wonder why academic achievements are the be all, end all of a student life in Singapore. Pressure to perform and doing well is extremely high. There is only one thing in life for a student and only one thing...i.e. get as many A1 as possible.

Family time for me on the weekend instead of soccer dad or hockey dad is tuition dad. Waiting for tuition to be over and onwards to the next location. Poor kids, poor boys. I always wonder about lost childhood here.

My boys have a different kind of childhood. I wonder what are the good time and bad time they will recall when they are think back of the growing up time. Playing computer games? Holidays and tours to different countries? Or learning and enjoying school? More like pride that they have gone through a tough and competitive childhood where learning and passing exams with high grades is the most important thing in their lives.

What is the childhood I can remember? I remember playing with marbles, home-made kites, home-made windmills, rubber-powered gliders from Guillows, building model planes, doing science experiments and reading books. The Queenstown library was open when I was in Primary 4 and I read about 3 books per week during school holidays. I bought Enid Blyton's books and kept them for a long time. I remember they cost $1.80 each. I did not go overseas until I started to work. My first overseas trip was to Malaysia via road out of Singapore. Then to India. After that in two years, I travelled around world to US, Europe and many countries in Asia. I counted the number of countries I visited and stop after 30 or 40. It does not matter anymore. After that many countries, I am just a frequent traveller and no longer a novice tracking and adding up the number of countries visited as a badge of achievement.

I hope my boys will have fond memories of growing up.