Against School?

AGAINST SCHOOL

How public education cripples

our kids, and why

By John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the

Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American

Education. He was a participant in the Harper's Magazine forum "School on a Hill,"

which appeared in the September 2003 issue.

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.

Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?

We all are. My grandfather taught me that. One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted. That episode cured me of boredom forever, and here and there over the years I was able to pass on the lesson to some remarkable student. For the most part, however, I found it futile to challenge the official notion that boredom and childishness were the natural state of affairs in the classroom. Often I had to defy custom, and even bend the law, to help kids break out of this trap.

The empire struck back, of course; childish adults regularly conflate opposition with disloyalty. I once returned from a medical leave to discover t~at all evidence of my having been granted the leave had been purposely destroyed, that my job had been terminated, and that I no longer possessed even a teaching license. After nine months of tormented effort I was able to retrieve the license when a school secretary testified to witnessing the plot unfold. In the meantime my family suffered more than I care to remember. By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness. Yet I honestly could not see why they had to be that way. My own experience had revealed to me what many other teachers must learn along the way, too, yet keep to themselves for fear of reprisal: if we wanted to we could easily and inexpensively jettison the old, stupid structures and help kids take an education rather than merely receive a schooling. We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness-curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insightsimply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then.

But we don't do that. And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?

Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest. Even if they hadn't, a considerable number of well-known Americans never went through the twelve-year wringer our kids currently go through, and they turned out all right. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln? Someone taught them, to be sure, but they were not products of a school system, and not one of them was ever "graduated" from a secondary school. Throughout most of American history, kids generally didn't go to high school, yet the unschooled rose to be admirals, like Farragut; inventors, like Edison; captains of industry like Carnegie and Rockefeller; writers, like Melville and Twain and Conrad; and even scholars, like Margaret Mead. In fact, until pretty recently people who reached the age of thirteen weren't looked upon as children at all. Ariel Durant, who co-wrote an enormous, and very good, multivolume history of the world with her husband, Will, was happily married at fifteen, and who could reasonably claim that Ariel Durant was an uneducated person? Unschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated.

We have been taught (that is, schooled) in this country to think of "success" as synonymous with, or at least dependent upon, "schooling," but historically that isn't true in either an intellectual or a financial sense. And plenty of people throughout the world today find a way to educate themselves without resorting to a system of compulsory secondary schools that all too often resemble prisons. Why, then, do Americans confuse education with just such a system? What exactly is the purpose of our public schools?

Mass schooling of a compulsory nature really got its teeth into the United States between 1905 and 1915, though it was conceived of much earlier and pushed for throughout most of the nineteenth century. The reason given for this enormous upheaval of family life and cultural traditions was, roughly speaking, threefold:

1) To make good people. 2) To make good citizens. 3) To make each person his or her personal best. These goals are still trotted out today on a regular basis, and most of us accept them in one form or another as a decent definition of public education's mission, however short schools actually fall in achieving them. But we are dead wrong. Compounding our error is the fact that the national literature holds numerous and surprisingly consistent statements of compulsory schooling's true purpose. We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not

to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.

Because of Mencken's reputation as a satirist, we might be tempted to dismiss this passage as a bit of hyperbolic sarcasm. His article, however, goes on to trace the template for our own educational system back to the now vanished, though never to be forgotten, military state of Prussia. And although he was certainly aware of the irony that we had recently been at war with Germany, the heir to Prussian thought and culture, Mencken was being perfectly serious here. Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern.

The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's "Seventh Annual Report" to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German-speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens 11 in order to render the populace "manageable."

It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."

Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Tre you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, lib, erty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.

There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.

Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."

It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.

Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm

Yr 2009 - We are thankful

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Another year that wouldnt have gone without a trace of of God's gentle embrace.

The birth of Elias just three days short of yr2009 was a joy, for us and also for our eldest son, Theo. He immediately assumed the role of a big brother. It is joy for us to see his servanthood spirit. Looking on at the way they snuggle up each other is joy so immense no words can describe.

It is also a year of 'the last lap'. Despite our newborn, David had to persevere and fight through work pressure, ministry role and numerous obligatory business trips to wrap up his ministerial studies. He aced it through with grace. He was ever selfless in serving our family, from spending time with the boys, to cooking up a feast. I thank God for his unwavering spirit.

Each child are special thus making each challenge unique. From refusal to nurse to refusal of bottle. We don't have all the answers in the countless situations, but we have a God who love. Through harrowing are some of the events, but God was the one who held the fort for us, fought our battles and gave us courage to go on. He is the one who lightened our footsteps and gave us songs to sing.

God chose to test our family in a rare holiday trip. We realised that it is in true repentance and submission that he will grant rest. He took and he gave and we were so grateful.

There are many others whom we do not have space to show photos of, especially of family members we often take for granted for.

For my mum who often took time out to babysit our children so we can go for a date, or attend to ministry. For her selfless care in our children's nutritional needs and lending her car so the children can have a comfortable ride home, even if it was only 5mins away!
For my brother, who equally took time to babysit and be an musical inspiration to Theo.

For my friend & mentor, Melodi - God orchestrated this friendship and I am so grateful of her time and wisdom. God answered my desire to be a better helpmeet, a wise mother and a godly homemaker.
For David's mentor, Pastor S - He is an answer to his cry to be used as a man of God & bring him glory.

For our dear Sis Kian - You ignited a love for history in me never found before. I want to travel with you to Jerusalem or the Red Sea, just name the date!

For Fey, Grace, Lynette & many more - You were the faithful hands that held mine.

For our superb confinement lady - so good, it was peace through the 1-month confinement.

Healing

This story has got to be one of the greatest in history. Mark 5: 25-34

Sickness is something we have come to be accustomed with since we live in a fallen world. We know that when our child becomes ill, parents suffer sleepless nights. This also usually becomes a time of challenge but also a time of test for the family.

We know young children are prone to falling ill, and we have two of them. At 20months apart, we find outselves having to separate them once one of our boys fall ill, to no avail! It is also quite usual when all family members fall ill, one after another.

Last month, my checkup led to doctor's diagnosis that I have asthma. My husband has childhood asthma. My elder son has constipation and does not like to poo. It has been almost 2years now that he has this issue. My younger son had bronchitis when he was only 9months old. I am praying for healing for my family. I am praying according to the woman's faith in this story.

25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. ²⁶She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. ²⁷When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." ²⁹Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

³⁰At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"

³¹"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' "

³²But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. ³³Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. ³⁴He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

Bonding day!

Today is bonding day! We dedicate 2 such full days in a week and then scatter them generously throughout the week. Bonding creates security in a child and allows child to obey us easily.

Bonding day is a day where mummy spends time and follows child's leading most of the time. Activities are spontaneous. There is no unit studies and we follow no curriculum. We do anything and play anything within boundary. Character training is as always, first.

We started worship on Piano. Mummy plays "God is good" and child plays drums. We went on to "jingle bells" and Theo picks the guitar to play. After that Theo asked to play the piano and suggested for mummy to play the guitar. We played that for awhile. Little Elias was having his breakfast.

We moved along to a music & movement and pretended to move like various animals. Then we played 'freeze', both to songs on a CD, by Greg & Steve. Little Elias was given a shaker as he sat on his highchair looking on. (He is put on highchair with a toy in hand for awhile after meal as he is too full to move about. Doing so will risk him throwing up)

Breakfast time
Theo started his breakfast on his own. Mummy took little Elias to play in playpen.
Mummy sat down with Theo for breakfast.

Playtime
Mummy took Elias to the bedroom and read a book. Put him to bed and went out to spend time with Theo.

Mummy sat on the floor and asked child what he likes to play.
Child picks Lego but mummy suggest BBQ. (background: Lego is often a family game and in a bid to break away from old habit of always playing Leogo, mummy was thinking playing something we left off for some time.)

Child was happy, he took out the BBQ pit, mummy took out some toy food and plates and Theo took the food to roast on the BBQ pit. Mummy noticed the BBQ pit was dusty. I asked Theo to get a pink clothe to clean the BBQ pit. Theo helped mummy cleaned it up.

I took the opporunity to toss out my $1 coin and $2 notes puts it in a wallet (a transparent box) and pass it to him. He is now a customer who will patronise my BBQ shop. he helped me set up my stall by putting everything on grill! I sold a piece of drumstick for $1 and he bought it while I throw in a free drink. I sold an Eclair for $2. When he is done eating, I kept all the food in the basket. Customer was so smart, he retrieved all his money from me before leaving home on a bus. He remembers his wallet and taps it against the validator with a "beep".

Then its time for snack. I took out a bowl of papapa and fed him on the sofa (this is a treat, since he usually feed himself!). We pretended that the sofa is a boat and we had to put our feet up. I threw two big cushions on the floor and pretended that they are huge boulders. We took out the fish and Theo went fishing.

Papaya's finished and so is the fishing game. Mummy took out a worksheet for pasting and colouring. Theo tells me ahead of pasting where each each animals should go. Then he did the pasting and waited for glue to dry.

We read some books and did "spot the items" on a page filled with so many pictures. Theo picked out the items one by one.

We returned to to do pencil rubbings on the $1 coin. We observed the picture on both coin and notes. Theo spotted the 'flower' on the coin. After that we practise colouring with both hands. Theo drew circles of all sizes concurently with both hands, using different coloured crayons each time, creating a riot of colourful circles. Theo clips them on the window grille for daddy to see when he comes home tonite.

Weather was good and cool and we went downstairs to play "hide-and-seek" and kicked a ball. Theo put the ball in the bathroom and await bath time to wash the ball himself.

We returned and Theo went on to colour his boat & sea animals. I surfed the web. Theo continues game of hawker. Now he is hawker, I am his customer. I order 4 items and Theo got it all right first time.

End of school.

Skills learnt: Imaginative play (hawker, boating, bus), fine motor skills (Handling glue, pasting, colouring), Observation skills (picture on currency, items on page), Math (buy & sell, counting), Large motor & co-odination (kicking ball) Creativity of left, right brain (random drawing with both hands), Art (pencil rubbing), memory (order of food items), music exposure.

Character traits: Following instructions, First time obedience, responsibility.

Teaching our kids

This is an important post that I should have done it ages ago. So here it is. When I read this verse, my heart skipped abit. I didnt know where to begin but I felt a stirring in my spirit and then a burden in my soul.

Deut 11: 18-21 - Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ¹⁹ Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ²⁰ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

For a few weeks my burden grew. What exactly did God want me to do? How can I do it? I knew, that God had sent a child / children to me for a special purpose. My job is to steward them well.

I bumped into a friend recently and I tell her I never knew I could teach. Teaching wasn't even my gifting much less a vocation. Teaching was just something other 'knowledgeable' people do, those who can remember 101 facts and answer every questions with precision. Boy! Was I wrong. Two years on today. I am learning as my toddler is learning. I found out that 'Toucan' is a bird with colourful beak and there are more drains in our country compared to lakes, oceans or rivers! I learnt that boys love to press buttons, turn knobs, fix things, take them apart, then fix them again. I learnt that my boy prefers noodles and western food over asian dishes. I also learnt that he is motivated by praise and usually performs up to my expectation of him. I learnt that my younger boy is a very determined boy and moves swiftly towards his goal.

Gone are the preconcieved idea of what a teacher should be. I was taking daily walks with my child, discovering nature as I talked about God's creation. I can't believed he saw mushrooms the other day in this concrete jungle we lived it! It was a 'high' for him. kids gets motivated when they make the discovery and not us. I know because he remembered it in his prayer at bedtime.
we picked up different flowers that had fallen to the ground and talked about their size and colours.

We discovered the drain and he wanted to throw a leaf inside to watch it float by. I know he gets excited when it rains because he will run to the window and look at the flooded drain. We talk about how quickly the water flows and look how dangerous it is to go near the drain full of water. At the kitchen sink we sometimes lift him up to wash his hands, he tells my helper "don't drop me inside the water!"

Staying home as a mother gives me the time and pleasure to discover and learn with him. I have gradually become a teacher I never thought I would. As surely as God had laid that burden in my heart to steward my child, he had transform me into who he has purposed me to be when he sent a child into my life. Now I have two boys. I am looking forward to discover more with them in this lifelong journey!

Homeschool sure thrills with young ones.

Read the full passage here: Deuteronomy 11

Homeschooling Benefits

Children less preoccupied with peer acceptance

William R. Mattox Jr.

Friday, March 19, 1999

MOST FOLKS who have never met a homeschooling family imagine that the kids are about as socially isolated (and as socially awkward) as Bobby Boucher, the Cajun ``Momma's boy'' Adam Sandler portrays in the recent hit film, ``The Waterboy.''
But some new research by Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute suggests otherwise. Indeed, Ray's research helps to explain why the number of homeschoolers in America continues to grow and now totals more than 1.4 million children. Ray reports the typical homeschooled child is involved in 5.2 social activities outside the home each week. These activities include afternoon and weekend programs with conventionally schooled kids, such as ballet classes, Little League teams, Scout troops, church groups and neighborhood play. They include midday field trips and cooperative learning programs organized by groups of homeschooling families. For example, some Washington, D.C., families run a homeschool drama troupe that performs at a local dinner theater.
So, what most distinguishes a homeschooler's social life from that of a conventionally schooled child? Ray says homeschooled children tend to interact more with people of different ages.
This is actually more akin to the ``real world'' -- what businessperson's social interaction is largely restricted to those born in the same year? It reduces the degree to which children find themselves constantly being compared to, and comparing themselves with, other kids their age. Interestingly, this reduced consciousness about age tends to help homeschooled ``late bloomers'' avoid being stigmatized as ``slow learners'' -- which is one of the many reasons homeschoolers, on average, score 30 to 37 percentile points higher than conventionally schooled students on the most commonly administered K-8 standardized tests.
Moreover, homeschooled children tend to draw their primary social identity from their membership in a particular family rather than from their membership in ``a tribe apart.'' That's the phrase author Patricia Hersch uses to describe the conventionally schooled kids she followed through adolescence. According to Hersch, many school kids today feel isolated from the grown-up world and alienated from parents who fail to take an interest in their lives and to set boundaries for their behavior.
Now, Hersch's intention isn't to make a case for homeschooling. (She doesn't significantly address the issue.) But the angst- ridden teens she describes in her book closely resemble the peer-obsessed students Seattle public high school teacher David Guterson talks about in his compelling book, ``Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense,'' (Harcourt-Brace Jovanovich, 1992). Guterson reports that the kids in his conventional school often have difficulty navigating the turbulent social scene at school, with ``its cliques, rumors and relentless gossip, its shifting alliances and expedient betrayals.'' Guterson says that their preoccupation with peer acceptance often encourages young people to become ``acutely attuned to a pre-adult commercial culture that usurps their attention (M-TV, Nintendo, fashion magazines, teen cinema)'' and frequently fosters a sense of alien ation from people of other ages.
Interestingly, educational researcher Susannah Sheffer of Cambridge, Mass., says facilitating peer-dependency is part of ``how schools shortchange girls'' (to borrow the title of a highly publicized report issued several years ago by the American Association of University Women). In a recent study of self-esteem among adolescent girls, Sheffer found that unlike their conventionally schooled counterparts, homeschooled girls did not typically lose confidence in themselves when their ideas and opinions weren't embraced by their friends.
Now, none of this means that every homeschooler is socially well-adjusted. Or that homeschooling is the only way for parents to raise children successfully. Or that good things never happen in conventional schools. But these studies do suggest that homeschooling offers more than just educational benefits. No wonder a growing number of families are now giving home education a try.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/03/19/ED71809.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 23 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Book Review: Einstein Never Used Flash Cards

Einstein Never Used Flash Cards - Roberta Michnick Golinkoff Ph.D. (Author), Kathy Hirsh-Pasek Ph.D. (Author), Diane Eyer Ph.D. (Author)

Publishers Weekly
"Play is to early childhood as gas is to a car," say Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, explaining that reciting and memorizing will produce "trained seals" rather than creative thinkers. Creativity and independent thinking, they argue, are true 21st-century skills; IQ and other test scores provide a narrow view of intelligence. The authors walk parents through much of the recent research on the way children learn, debunking such myths as the Mozart effect, and pointing out that much learning unravels naturally, programmed through centuries of evolution.
The current frenzy of sending kids into schools as early as one or two year old, gearing them up to be ahead academically calls for a re-look at how children really learn best. It talks about how society buys into "Faster, better, more" syndrome.

Myth 1: The First 3 years and the "critical period" theory.
Author describes 'critical period" as one that comes from biology. It is a window of time in which some important aspect of development occurs and it has a beginning and end.
*There appear to be more and less receptive periods for learning certain behaviours, like language & visual learning.
*There does not appear to be a "critical period" that is suddenly over at a certain point in time for learning these behaviours. The window for language learning doesnt snap shut after first 3 years of life.
*Responsive periods do not seem to exist at all for behaviours like chess and gymnastics.

Key predictors of healthy intellectual and emotional developments are 'responsive, nurturing relationships with parents and caregivers." - National Research Council of Institute Medicine.

Myth 2: "If the neurons are used, they become integrated with the circuitry of the brain by connecting to other neurons; if they are not used, they may die" theory.
*Media have us thinking that synapses are developing fast and furious in infancy, we want to keep as many of them as possible. More is better? Bigger is better? No. If children have more synapes then adults, they will have trillions of excess connections. These connections will shed the way a snake shed its skin in order to accomodate a bigger body. Brain downsize for the same reason many 'organizations' do. With streamlined networks, they can function more efficiently.

*Throughout developmental process, the brain is ALWAYS growing and changing, producing new synapses, strengthening exisiting ones that are used often and eliminating onces that arent used often enough,

*Scientists found that more stimulation were actually contributing problems of attention deficit and hyperactivity.

*Very ambitious early enrichment and teaching programs may lead to crowding effects and to an early decrease in the size and number of brain regions that are largely unspecified but necessary for creativity in adolescent and adult.

What is play and Why?*Play needs to stern from Child's desire. We can provide some boundaries and let them choose from these options.
*Play is spontaneous and voluntary.
*Play must be pleasurable and enjoyable.
*Plan contains a certain element of make-believe.
Yale Professor and noted researcher Dorothy Singer says " Through mae-believe games, children can be anyone they wish and go anywhere they want. When they engage in sociodramatic play, they learn how to cope with feelings, how to bring the large, confusing world into a small manageble size and how to become socially adept as they share, take turns and cooperate with each other. When children play, they are learning new words, how to problem solve and how to be flexible. Most of all, they are just plain having fun."

Balance is the key
*Buy less, spend more time with children.
*Ask ourselves " Am I buying this so that I can teach my child the ways of adult world or Am I interested in what will intrigue and challenge my child within his reach? Emphasize process, not product.

Parenting
When you're always rushed and tied and not enjoying parenting, things are out of balance. The hurried parent who is often, though not always, misdirected.

Preschool that emphasize play often has
*kids' projects that are done by kids and not teachers who make them look like its the kids
*Books that are within reach
*Play corner (dramatic corner), gym area
*Child level art area, sands, water play
*Outdoor Play area ; playground, cars etc
*Field trips
*Children are excited and interacts with teacher
*Slot where children can make free choices, free to make mistakes
*Toys that are within reach

Disbelief

Today was a day of disbelief.

Dr Yeo of C T Yeo Respiratory and Medical Centre tells me I have asthma. He tells me that I need to be on long term medication to help open up my airways. I was put through a test where they measure output of air (by method of inhale/exhale). My score was a pathetic 60 percent. An average normal person is at least 85 percent. The entire procedure was painless, but when the bill came, I felt the pain.

After hearing the entire discourse of how asthma could have developed in me, I was just in the low.

Having Asthma in both parents meant that our kids have a 75% and more chance of having them. I have a choice to listen to the statistics or listen to God.

Having Asthma explains why my stamina has been dropping and I feel fatigue at the slightest walk in the park.

Having Asthma means I have to be paying all the medication for as long as I have this condition.

Well, having Asthma is not the end of the world, so why am I feeling like it it?

Being so low, I guess the only direction I could look is upwards.

That little bit of haven

There is a sign I wrote to be pasted on the wall of our living room. It says "It will soon pass". It was meant to be an encouragement to all in our family. It all started with Theo catching an ordinary cough. Then he passed it to my baby. Before long, baby passed it to David, and he passed it to me. I had what seemed like an ordinary cough plus a strain of flu and before long, I had unknowingly passed it to my baby. What resulted was baby having bronchitis. We were administering nebulizer for baby for 5 days.

Being the primary care-giver, I suffered sleepless nights and fatigue, soon I became the prime candidate for virus invasion. On the day Elias recovered, I was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and pneumonia. A chest Xray revealed the need for me to be admitted right away.

As if things were to fall apart from the series of events happening in my family, I experienced a most surreal moment - a moment of solitude and rest in the hospital like never before. I call it 'that little bit of haven'. Amidst all the chaos, the timing was perfect. Perfect to be sick? Well, not really. No time is a good time to be ill. But the moment I was declared "out of service", my mum and David had to change all their plans to help babysit our children. I think my mum enjoyed those time with her grandchildren and David became the better at parenting.

In addition, it happened over just one week-end and over one public holiday so that timing was good. I figured, God must have thought I just needed to get away and REST.

"I couldnt really breathe very well" I told my doctor, a respiratory specialist. I never knew that I couldnt really breathe until I was examined that day. Our spiritual life is like that sometimes, our relationship with God can take a nosedive even amidst daily devotions. The run-of-the-mill religious 'rituals' just doesnt guarantee his presence. I guess I was too busy with the children to notice anything really wrong with me. I know, I am really due for a REST both physically and emotionally.

Waiting at the hospital lobby for my number to be called, I imagined myself to be on holiday, perhaps a resort or something. "I'm sorry, single room not available, either two-bedder or four-bedder or deluxe room." I ran a quick check with different sources and decided to go for single deluxe room. Acknowledging my need for rest, I asked for a quiet room, but not too far from the reception area in case I needed help. I was given a very nice room on the tenth floor, just right next to the reception and not too noisy too.

This is what my first day look like:
5.30am - Woke up and set up to pump milk
6.30am - Shower
7.30am - Ready to conquer the world
8.00am - Waited for my chest physio to come. He didnt turn up
9.00am - Took my breakfast.
10.00am - Physio time.
11.00am- Morning nap
12noon - administered nebulizer, fixed up the drip of antibiotic, got my blood pressure checked, temperature checked, as well as oxygen saturation checked.
1.30pm - Lunch
2.00pm - Physio again
2.30pm - pumping milk
3.30pm - Neb
4pm - Tea break, menu selection for the next day.
4.30pm - Quiet afternoon nap

The rest of 5-days stay was surreal. I would be up at around 6.30am everyday to draw the curtains and watch a sunrise creep to interrupt the tranquility of the neighbourhood. At dawn, I am usually surprised at the stillness of the neighbourhood. In the evening posh condominiums around me continued in hush silence, I let my mind wander, curious why occupants never seem to be at home. Perhaps they were too busy making money. I always thought people with loads of money don't have time, and those who have time don't have money. Its a strange thought but because of this, I thought I would like have enough of money and loads of time. Meanwhile, this has yet to become a reality for me.

I actually don't feel too bad in the hospital. The nurses were a friendly lot, although in my opinion, they were pretty frantic with what they need to do with me. I guess, they were just doing their job really, making sure I had the right medications and physiotherapy on time. I managed to surf the channels. I think I watched the "balloon boy" so many times that I became so sick at how a simple news can ballooned into a tabloid over two days!

I ate mostly western meals throughout my stay. Pan fried salmon fillet with coriander cream sauce, green beans, and capellini pasta, grilled sirlion beef with black pepper sauce, roasted roots vegetables and potato and the likes. I am fed 6 meals a day (3 mains and 3 tea breaks), it felt so divine to be in the comfort of aircon 24-hrs a day and eating right out of the bed. I know, very spoilt!

At 7.30am sharp, a very cheerful lady will bring in the paper of the day. She is the lady who cleans the room everyday and changes the sheet. She reminds me of always putting a smile while serving others. I am also reminded how city dwellers people lived such multi-faceted lives. We really mustn't be so consumed with what we do that we ignore the world and its needs, even if people looked OK on the outside.


At home, I was told that the frozen milk packs were going at the speed of lightning. One such drawer full of milk was wiped out in 5-days. Nevertheless, I thank God for the extra supply, especially in time of as such.

day 4 - David brought Theo for a surprise visit. He had a whale of a time discovering all the buttons that made the bed go up or down. That's hospital for him, although he also knows ambulances go to the hospital.

Day 5 - I was due to go home. Yipee! I felt ready to conquer the world once more. I guess that's what everyone would identify as HOPE. Bidding the nurses good-bye, I felt surreal once more.

Once home, we realised that we left a packet of frozen milk in the hospital. The head nurse suggested that once they locate the packet, she will deliver it to my home! That sure is going the extra mile. While many would choose to busk away in exotic isles or sail away on an Alaska cruise, I choose this moment to thank God for the little bit of haven that happened to me.

goal setting for our family

I'm into a phase of goal-setting recently. Its one of the making-our-home-a-better-place for our family things that moms do all the time. It all started when I am missing the dates that my husband used to take me out to! Yikes! Big deal? Yes of course! Take out courtship after marriage and we can be sure that the foundations of family life becomes rocky.

Why do I set goals when the list look like a bunch of common sense items. Well, if we do not have a line to start us off, it will not be long before we criss-cross all the lines, trying to do everything that everyone else is doing. Before long, we will realise that it does not fit into our family value. simply put, by following the crowd, we are allowing OTHERS to dictate where we are going.

There is no right and wrong most of the time. But what we discover is that what we place as priority is different from another family.

Hence, this distinctly identifies our family make-up. Or if you like, how God has gifted each household.

One family I know is outdoorsy, while the other is into table games. While some loves shopping the others simply love the natural environment. Some families have more of this and less of the other and that is fine. We have 2 unique kids, one is gentle, perceptive & musical, while the other is an fast & agile. I have artistic veins running through my blood while my better half loves cramming facts & info. That is my family.

Goals may change overtime depending on the stage of family life we're at. I am blessed to be a staying home mom, not because we are living luxuriously, but because I could sit and contemplate about my family and how best I can serve them.

I sat penning my thoughts. There are about a list of do-ables. Goals should be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.

In the dating section, I penned a date out at least once a month.

In the family atmosphere, I penned Joy, encouragement and praise. Celebration to keep our spirits high, I penned to have spontaneous celebrations over and above birthdays. Need not be pompous, could be a simple treat of ice-cream.

In family unity, I penned family outings every weekend, preferring natural parks and environment over shopping malls. What better way to admire the creation of God and for fresh air and sunlight.

In our relationship with our Lord Jesus, I penned total dependence on God through consistent prayer weaved into our daily going in's and out's, calling on God everytime FIRST time in all situation.

In health, I penned on providing natural and wholesome food for the family through natural plant supplement and other weekly home-cook soups.

In nurturing our children, I penned stewarding their giftings and rooting their foundation in our Lord Jesus. (Actual details are too long to be included in this post.)

Setting Goals for the family is a gradual process of discovering and adpating to the needs and fit that works best for the family. Alike a child picking seashells from the seashore, each one is unique, each one is beautiful. Family is a gift from heaven. Treasure it.

"you've got a friend" sand Art by Ilana Yahav

Make your Stick Figure Family at FreeFlashToys.com

The milkmaid - Servanthood

I have this painting by my living room. I love oil painting depicting human beings going about in their daily lives. It reveals alot in peoples' lives.

I am a mother of two sons. I have a maid. Our maid and I have something in common. We serve. I serve my family - I make sure that the roster at home serves our needs; children are asleep by 9pm. I keep watch of their poo - since they are so young, this is essential to their health. I pray with them and for them and train them to be people who would come to love and know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray that they grow to be more and more like Jesus in many ways.

I make sure our helper has a roster to keep the house clean and serve healthy meals on time. I teach her how to manage her time, so we can run our family effectively in a way that we can spend time together. She also becomes my sons playmate whenever I am occupied, so I train her in ways to play and to speak. This is to ensure that the family's speech and mannerism is always filled with grace and joy. We respect each other, we are polite and we don't shout. We learn to give thanks, learn to clean up after use, and learn to always help each other out.

My helper is a blessing to us. She never complains about the food she eats, she eats whatever we eat although she comes from a completely different culture. Servanthood is assimiliation. Servanthood is humility.

I make sure my husband spends quality time with the children and reminds him of important dates that we need to keep. I organise celebrations, outings, and try to do special things for our family. Things like taking photos together for special milestone, or special occasions.
On days my husband needs to be in Bible college, rush for assignments at home or catch up with reading, I keep watch over the children.

I volunteer myself whenever I can to any ministry in church that needs me. My time, my resources, I give my service unto the Lord. I take great pleasure of co-ordinating gifts and birthday celebrations for our Caregroup, and is always on the lookout for discipling people to serve God in greater depth. I take care of Toronto missions related events. I help to think of ideas to spur the church on creatively.

Do I falter, do I grow weary? Sure I do. In fact so many times. Since I am also breastfeeding my 2 mth-old baby, fatigue and despair from challenges in Breastfeeding wears me down. The truth is Servanthood is not my giftings. It is not even in the lowest score card on my giftings list. Yet, I serve in growing magnitude. I know that it is not myself, but only by the grace of God. I finally understood what transforming power there is in following Christ.

We are transformed not because we are gifted, but because we are willing.

The painting of "The Milkmaid" hangs in my living room. It is God's reminder that servanthood is the mark of Christ. It is God'sBIG assurance that his grace will always be sufficient.

[The Milkmaid shines in quiet beauty, but if you look hard enough you can hear the milk splash as she pours it from her pitcher. Through his dazzling use of light, Vermeer elevates this simple moment of hearty provision into a heavenly vision of God's providential care. Artist: Jan Vemeer .Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1632-1675]

My wish-list

Today is the DAY to love myself a little more

My wish List

1) Kindle - An electronic gadget to read ebooks!
2) An adjustable piano chair to play my keyboard
3) A stick-on Screen to block off the glare on my Compaq laptop.(My brother just got me this a a gift!Who-hoo!)

Books, Music, Writing ... you can never go wrong with gifts associated with these top favorites.

Merry Christmas 2008

Christmas Comments
Myspace Comments - Upload Photos


During this beautiful season
may our hands give
the gifts filled with sincerity
Our hearts touch others
with spirit of kindness
and our world be united
in peace and love

May the beauty
and peace of the season
stay in your heart
all through the year

May the Lord bless you abundantly

Why do the whole world celebrate the birth of 1 baby?

There is a certain rule of the game which cannot be broken by mankind. And if broken, men simply sink further and further into soft mud. Though he fights with all his will and might, he sinks further.

The picture I see then is a hand that reaches down from someone standing on solid ground. The hand reaches all the way to where the man is. The man stretches his hands up and where the two hands connect, the man is pulled up, away from the mud slide.

You know, funny this scene reminds me of what mankind really really sucks at? I think most of the time, we think we're not that super, not that great, and really not that perfect. But the ego inside of us always gets the better of us. We think just because we have earned a certain position in an institution, at the workplace, in the family, in the church - we could jolly well be the 'expert'. We think that just because we have reached a certain 'age of maturity' or should I say 'a cetain semblence of wisdom' (aka saggin skin, white hair, wrinkles, aches, pot belly etc), we have arrived.

Fact is none of can save ourselves from the soft mudslide of this thing call SIN. This is an unsaid game of life that everyone, rich, poor, old, young, cute or naughty, sweet or sexy are thrown into.
In short, SIN causes all mankind to be LESS THAN PERFECT of what heaven states as perfect.
Envy, jealousy, murder, lust, revenge, unforgiveness...

Human beings are dusty beings. We pick up all sorts of 'dirt' on the way. Some are splashed on us as we walk in this journey of life; we are NOT the inititor, it just 'happens' to us. The other 'dirt' we pick it up along the way; we happily TOOK it and stuff it into our hearts & minds.

one of such is the SIN of unforgiveness.

From something as trivial as the fight for one's rights in daily conversations, power struggles at home, among colleagues; petty strifes with silblings, friends; broken relationships, homes, marriages and the list goes on. Funny how easily it is to take offence at someone at the slightess displeasure, but ignore how quick we are to casue hurt to others with our words. The starting point is almost always " I am more right than he is". When we cast such a sentence on others in our heart, we have unconsciously pick up the dirt.

Over the course of life, i have realised that "Time will heal" is nothing but a myth. Time may
cause some things to be forgotten, but never forgiven. It is like pasting a skin-colour plaster on over a deep wound, but the wound inside may be untreated and left to fester.

For an unforgiven heart, bitterness is all that is left. Time just makes it worse. I had my fair share of dirt when i picked up an awful lot of it some years back. There was nothing worse that waking up in the morning and having my head filled with nothing but questions after questions, justifications after justifications, pain and more pain. It took a long while for me to finally turn to Jesus and open my hands as I feebly attempted to give it all to him.

A year or two has passed. I realised that although situations look normal enough. I never forgot anything in that incident. I never fully forgave. The fact is I could not.

This year's Christmas. I was sharply reminded of the King that is to be born. The merriment of songs and dances, presents and food does not tell us the reason why we are celebrating.

I realised that we are celebrating a man who came to do one thing. A real life story was told of this certain man in cambodia. 13 of Reaksa Himm's immediate family including his family were brutally executed by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. Severely wounded, Reaksa was hidden by the bodies of his family. He struggles free, and ultimately made his way to canada. He found faith in Christ but for years wrestle with bitterness, hatred and a desire for vengence. At the turn of events he discovered what it truly means to forgive. He tracked down his killers one by one, embraced them, gave them a friendship scarf, and presented each of them with a Bble...
Taken from: "After the heavy rain" - SOKREAKSA S HIMM - Author of Tears of my soul.

The essence of why we are celebrating is that that only JESUS can FORGIVE.
Only a PERFECT being like him has the POWER and AUTHORITY to FORGIVE. Hence it is only through JESUS that we can EXPERIENCE his GRACE of FORGIVENESS.

Let us celebrate this jolly season not just with a list of names we can give gifts to but also who we can forgive. FORGIVESNESS begins with Jesus.

Christmas - A simple spread

These few months are non-inspirational months. Many serious topics are being raised.

Baby bonus, U.S Election, Financial crunch, Euthanasia. We are just talking about all these in our home. How has it impact the people? What can or are we doing about it?

With Christmas and our baby no.2 arriving next wk (25 Dec maybe?), David & I had our share of workload to clear.

Busy as we may sound, we don't want to lose the spirit of celebration. We celebrate the grace that God gave his son - Jesus. In the name of Christmas, we celebrate his gift. We celebrate that family can get together and remember his love. We celebrate the fact that becuase of this new born babe - Jesus, we can have eternal life.

It is important that we celebrate. We are not ignorant of the fact that there are many out there who may be victims of the financial meltdown, those who are hungry, those who are homeless, those who are living amongst us - urbanites who may be going through tough times, financially or emotionally- we continue to comfort them, help them.

It is important to celebrate the gift that which was given freely and not hold it to ourselves. It is important that we do our part in charity so that those who do not have, can have this gift so that they too can celebrate. It is important that we celebrate, but we celebrate simply. We live simply so others can simply live.

This year Christmas came slightly early for us. Its a simple home-cooked meal, chockful of love. Because our baby is arriving next week, we want to be able to bless others early. Our baby will be born in the season of LOVE. We will always be reminded that Christmas is a time of sharing and giving.

ST Forum: Euthanasia 3 major considerations - 13 Dec 2008 - by David Siauw

Euthanasia: Three major considerations (As published in ST Forum 13 Dec 2008)

DISCUSSIONS on euthanasia have been carried by the media in recent weeks. I believe there is a strong need to help readers understand the factors involved in the procedure.
There are three major considerations in the act of euthanasia: namely, the presence of voluntary decisions, active agents and external assistance.

Voluntary decisions refer to whether the patient chooses euthanasia of his own free will. In the case of active agents, the question is whether the act occurs via active means like lethal injection, or passive means like the removal of life-support systems. External assistance refers to whether the patient ends his life on his own or is assisted by someone. Cases that occur involuntarily, without the patient's consent, involve obvious legal and ethical issues.

Consequently, there are five possible options, namely:
- Voluntary, passive
- Voluntary, active, non-assisted
- Voluntary, active, assisted
- Non-voluntary, passive
- Non-voluntary, active, assisted.

Non-voluntary euthanasia can occur when the patient does not have the capacity to make a conscious decision.

The second scenario - voluntary, active, non-assisted - is equivalent to suicide. Proponents of euthanasia often assume this will happen if euthanasia is not legalised. However, it is not necessarily a well-founded assumption.
Palliative care specialist Rosalie Shaw has expressed the contrary view - based on her abundant experience - that most people cling to life, rather than wanting to end it ('Helping with the dying', Nov 5).

More often than not, the wish to die occurs when the sufferer loses hope in life. If he continues to receive affirmation, acceptance and aid, it is very unlikely that he will choose the lonely path of death. It must also be noted that, with medical advances, management of pain has improved.
Hence, proponents of euthanasia basically propose to legalise the voluntary-active-assisted act of dying, which is allowed in the Netherlands, where a substance is introduced into the patient to hasten his death.

Many believe this procedure can be controlled by outlining all available options before the patient makes a decision. Again, this is debateable. Most psychologists agree that a person with constrained options cannot make an autonomous decision. Hence, it is questionable whether a patient who believes he is in a hopeless state can make a rational decision. More often, it is the perception of being a burden to others that triggers the desire to end one's life.

In fact, legalising euthanasia may lead to negative social implications. Society may consider the procedure as an immediate and achievable solution for the 'suffering' family member. In the name of 'ending the patient's pain', society may become more self-centric. This would be especially true of a society with a growing number of elderly members and where resources are considered scarce.

Euthanasia is much more than an issue of individual choice. Singapore, as a nation and a community that speaks highly of the sacredness of life, family values and selfless grace, should never legalise euthanasia.

David Siauw

Latest comments

Why do we assume that everyone "clings to life"? I feel that those who are opposed to legalising euthanasia do so purely out of blind compliance to their particular religious beliefs. Of course, they try to cover this up with all sorts of flimsy reasoning on why euthanasia should not be legalised. Hey, there are some people who believe in reincarnation, so shouldn't this be considered too? Euthanasia does not matter so much if you're going to be reincarnated :-)
Posted by: Fox_KiloGRAM at Sun Dec 14 22:33:55 SGT 2008

Thks Gigamole for your clarification. Yes, agree with you the worst that can happen is S'pore being a "euthanasia hub". There is always this small group of people who are faced with no other choice but euthanasia due to intense suffering and pain, but then as luciferixangel put it..."Life is precious and if possible why does the individual not have the will to fight this pain? Why succumb to it using such means?" I think that was very well said..I for one hope that the government would never legalise euthanasia. I fear that the patient's family members may not be able to live with the guilt that they may have given up hope too easily, even if the patient had given his consent. Maybe more effort should be spent on improving palliative care facillities, instead of arguing what consitutes the right time to die.I believe when the time is up, we will all naturally leave this world. The pain of knowing that your loved one is alive but suffering will be just as great as knowing that you had taken the easy way out to let him die prematurely, and not done your best to help relieve it. There are no short cuts in life.
Posted by: MichiganOne at Sun Dec 14 22:01:44 SGT 2008

Euthanasia and the rationale behind it is actually multi-faceted. Consider this. Euthanasia is only even considered due to the reason that it eases suffering by inducing a form of painless death to an individual. However, I always believe in the logic of the human life cycle and accept that everyone must die sooner or later, and based on this, is it even remotely acceptable that an individual chooses such an option? There is a fine line between Euthanasia and suicide. Life is precious and if possible why does the individual not have the will to fight this pain? Why succumb to it using such means?Using Euthanasia as a poor excuse to ease one's suffering. However, on the other hand, one might argue that every person has to be given a fair choice, and they obviously have the right to choose Euthanasia, but like whar Mr Gigimole has mentioned, only as a last resort. On a personal level, Euthanasia is definitely an option, but it should not be in anyway a starting point for it to be sold commercially as a full-proof method. There are many legality and moral issues that comes tied in with the bargain. Euthanasia can be made use of, especially so when the individual himself is unconscious or is involuntary. From a Singaporean context, we have to be wary of Euthanasia as it marks a shift from the conventional medical hub concept. We are moving from saving lives to ending lives in order to ease pain. Such a concept is fresh but dangerous, coming with a high moral price tag. It is cruel, even if the individual is voluntary. It might be personal, but I do not condone people "perpetuating" their own deaths and resorting to Euthanasia as a way to run away from troubles in life or because it is an easier option to tak in the circumstances. Without doubt, people will shirk away from such an option, but there might be a way out. There must be strict laws in place to allow Euthanasia to be carried out efficiently and in the correct way on a case to case basis. If at anytime morality is compromised, it should be banned straight away. However, in the end, the debate is: If the individuals and their loved ones condone Euthanasia, does morality still hold, especially since our model of society cannot possibly accept premature death as an option, due to the need to uphold the importance of human lives and the global medical hub concept. It is once again a battle between morality of the personal ring surrounding the individual, and the community value of the society. With better ways to combat pain and technology, should Euthanasia actually be commercialized?
Posted by: luciferixangel at Sun Dec 14 20:02:55 SGT 2008

Reading between the lines, I suspect that the government is testing the ground, to see whether , euthanasia is acceptable to the population of Singapore to solve problems associated with patients suffering from terminal cancer or other end of life diseases, which in time to come will include those patients not economically active and lingering away in nursing homes, demented and straining the economy. Tell me I am wrong.
Posted by: kiam123straitstimes at Sun Dec 14 19:43:28 SGT 2008

Euthanasibe an option of first choice in any society. It is always an option of last resort. I am not a champion of euthanasia, but grudgingly recognize that it may represent a final solution to a small group of patients for which palliation has failed.If euthanasia is to be legalized and offered as a solution, society will have to pay a high ethical/moral price. Euthanasia, thus should only be an option only for the members of that society. It should not be part of a commercialized set of activities. I could never condone euthanasia, if offered in the context of a globalized medical hub concept. I could never ever support Singapore becoming an euthanasia capital of the world, which it will da cannot efinitely be should we offer euthanasia services to non-citizens.http://gigomole.blogspot.com/search/label/lifeanddeath.
Posted by: gigamole3 at Sun Dec 14 09:14:57 SGT 2008

One Thing (song that make you fall in love with God more and more...)

One Thing (Hillsong United)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEuULgUI3ng


One thing I desire
One thing I seek
To gaze upon Your beauty
Your majesty

Lord of my salvation
Lifter of my head
Teach me how to live O Lord
Your righteousness

In the day of trouble
You cover me
In the secret place of refuge
Lord I will sing

*So I pray to You
So I pray to You

Lord Your Name is higher than the heavens
Lord Your Name is higher than all created things
Higher than hope
Higher than dreams
The Name of the Lord

All I want is You
All I want is You Jesus
I will seek your face
Call upon your name
All I want is you Jesus

(Musicians, if interested Contact me for chords)

how many hours does yr husband work per day on avg?

My husband works in the day and at night he has conference calls up to 1am at least 3X per wk.

If he is not working, he will be home reading or working on his assignment.

He helps with hosework once a wk, does the dishes on some days and help & plays with our son frequently.

is this normal?