Private School Timetable For Std 1

After yesterday's posting about the 11  class periods of Agama / Arab in our sekolah kebangsaan one reader sent me the Standard 1 Timetable from the private school attended by her son. 

Here it is :

The school already uses the English medium.  On top of that they have NINE class periods of English (6 hours) including FOUR 30 minute periods of what they call Guided Reading.

Here is an example of their Guided Reading for the Std 1 kids (SIX year olds) :




The mom said about her Std 1 son's classes :

".. his favourite story is Anansi the Spider and how the moon was placed in the sky - as a reward for Anansi‘s sons saving him (??) An African story.  

He came home and started telling me about Poseidon, Zeus, etc.   

He also knows about refugees. They made him donate stuff. The refugees actually came to his class - interacted with the students and thanked them. He felt sad their homes and factories got burnt down."

The Ashanti are a tribe in West Africa who apparently have folk tales about Anansi the Spider who is the spirit of knowledge.  So the Std 1 child would have learnt about West Africa, about the Ashanti tribe as well as their folk tales. He would also have learnt that Anansi is just a fictional story. Not real. Just an imaginary pet flying unicorn. Nothing to get too worked up about.

They also have THREE hours of compulsory Mandarin class.
Five class periods (also FIVE hours) of Mathematics.
Four class periods (four hours too) of IPC (see below).
There is an hour a week for music / drama class and another hour of Library / PSHE (see below). 

PSHE stands for Personal, Social, Health Education.  I guess they teach the kids how to mingle with the human race, regardless of the Three Rs and also to wash their hands after using the toilet and stuff like that.

Here is some promo material from the school which also explains IPC which is taught for FOUR hours each week. 

It is sad that people have to spend so much money (our private schools are the eighth most expensive in the world) to send their children to private schools to learn things that I used to read in library books in the 1960s and 1970s.

We also had art, music and drama in our missionary school. Government schools also taught the same. Plus we had World History (Europe, India, China, Japan etc), Geography etc.

In fact we had all these things taught in our government schools in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s. No big deal.  Now only the rich peoples' kids get to learn all this - beginning from Std 1 - in private school.  (In contrast the sekolah kebangsaan teach 11 class periods of Agama / Arab (Imaginary pet flying unicorns become real !! Jeng Jeng Jeng !!)

And do note that this is a Std 1 syllabus in a private school. 

It would be interesting to see what type of Guided Reading they teach the kids by the time they reach Std 6. 

The private schools (whose majority are non Malays)  are indeed a caste apart from the sekolah kebangsaan.  The children from the private schools will most likely grow up to become the movers and shakers. 

The sekolah kebangsaan kids (who are majority Malays) will likely become the fetchers and getters.

This is a caste system that has come into existence because of an incompetent government that does not know what is  right and really good for the people.  Instead the government is making policy that will be popular with the low achievers, who sadly make up the bulk of people in the country.

Akhir kalam dia macam ini sajalah Tuan-tuan. 

Tuan-tuan boleh lihat sendiri anak siapa yang akan jadi boss dan anak siapa yang akan jadi kuli. Jadi lebih baik Tuan-tuan ambil maklum dan kemudian buatlah tuntutan dan desakan yang kena sasaran so that pemimpin kerajaan pun akan melaksanakan dasar-dasar yang lebih baik dan berguna bagi masa depan anak-anak Tuan-tuan.