I know you hate smileys but I would put a smiley now because believe me it really is not the case! They don’t have exams until they are nine ( which they are not) anyway and I find the school pretty relaxed about studying . And I don’t think that is a bad thing because the children seem to get there anyway in the end. I only said I keep a watchful eye over their homework although I must say I would appreciate some more diligence on their part . You don’t need to upload this . It is about me and my children and not really what the discussion was about. We seem to have gone off at a tangent. I apologize it may have been my fault.

I don’t stand over the plumber at home, giving him a hand and instructing him in how to do it. Nor does the plumber expect me to take over and do my bit when he leaves for the day.

If your children were at boarding school, you would have absolutely no involvement in their schooling. The fact that they are at day school shouldn’t be any different.

Another reason I didn’t get involved is because I am a greater believer in the fact that children need loads of space if they are to develop normally and to their proper potential, and have confidence in their ability to do pretty much anything they put their mind to. Children have less and less space – if they are not being policed at school, they are being policed by their irritating parents. They are never alone, they never go out alone (“because it’s dangerous”), they don’t take the bus, they don’t walk to friends’ homes, and they have no independence at all. The advent of the helicopter has been utterly disastrous in terms of child neurosis which, before long, is going to become an explosion of neurotic adults.

How did I expect my children to pass their O-levels with flying colours by working only in the run-up to exams? Simple – because that’s exactly what I did myself and I sat for around 12 in the space of a couple of weeks. If you can write well, have an extensive vocabulary, and above all, if you can think and reason, you have a massive advantage. Those are the skills you needed to develop in your child.

If my sons weren’t exceptionally bright (a fact I always took for granted, incidentally, and never made anything of which is exactly as it should be), I might have had a different approach, but then again, I don’t think so. I feel so sorry for those dull-witted children whose parents are always driving them and driving them. I think to myself how I would like to take a horsewhip to the parents because I can’t stand to see children bullied in that way. They can’t fight back and you can see that are they like prisoners.

Piling on the work and policing them and burning the midnight oil doesn’t help children who aren’t bright AT ALL. It just makes them really resentful and does nothing to help their chances in life. If they become resentful enough, they might end up taking our their violent feelings on others, without your knowledge. I have known a couple of cases like that, one in which a minutely-policed child whose mother insisted on his getting grades in the 90s (like it made a difference) ended up in a drop-out gang and arrested for beating somebody with an iron bar.

You have entirely the wrong approach – completely wrong to the point of disaster. Rigid studying closes the mind. You need to open a child’s mind and help make him curious and enquiring, and the most important chapter for that is – surprisingly – when they are toddlers. If you miss that, you’ve missed a crucial stage.

You also have to accept that getting into trouble is part of growing up and that children actually need to get into trouble because it’s part of the risk that aids growth. You just have to keep an eye on what kind of trouble and not let things get out of hand. The most badly behaved people my age are those who were overly controlled as children and teenagers.

Curiosity – that’s the main thing. If your child is curious, he will learn through curiosity, about many things that are in and out of the school curriculum. If he is not curious, he is fated to burn the midnight oil for the rest of his education, devoid of that bright spark that sets some individuals apart from the rest even if they get exactly the same ‘marks’.

I do know what I am talking about. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and the results speak for themselves.

I agree. And I like that reference to the thousands of tiny pieces that form the picture. It’s true. It’s even the reason we ended up in this mess politically.

It’s not even IQ levels that we’re talking about here.

I have friends and acquaintances whose IQ levels would probably be around the 120/130 level, but their parental and emotional skills are just hopeless.

It’s more a question of “emotional intelligence”, the ability to rationalise subjective matters, to empathise and also to see the big picture instead of the thousands of tiny pieces that form that picture.

It might be possible to increase one’s IQ level but it’s extremely difficult to modify emotional intelligence and related behaviours.
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The most important (and best) education takes place outside the school and it’s called brightening the mind.

Some parents do it instinctively; others learn from others.

But parents can’t give what they don’t have themselves, and Maltese parents raised in a rigid mental environment and given inflexible schooling, who never read and have no general knowledge, whose own thoughts are narrow, are going to pass on all that way of being to their children.

It’s a vicious cycle. The school is supposed to break it, but it can’t, because nowadays parents interfere too much.

Exactly. It’s parents’ insecurity across the whole social spectrum, afraid that if their own child is one notch below his/her peers now, they’ll fall back even further as they get older and consequently lose their chance in life.

This has nothing to do with church, private or government schools. It’s just the way the Maltese psyche is developing, little realising that there is a limit to which a child can take and many could end up getting burnt out even before they sit for their O levels.

This is where you’ve lost me: competitive how, for what, and in what way?

Who are these children competing against and what are they competing for?

They’re already in school. They don’t have to compete for a place in it. They don’t have to compete for a place in the next year’s grade, either, because they’re guaranteed one.

So I don’t know what you’re on about with all this competition.

To me it looks like a bunch of neurotic parents transmitting their neuroses to their children.

Agreed. However things have changed across the spectrum of society and it’s not just within school A or school B or school C, or even within a specific socio-economic class of society.

This is what students in 2015 face, and it will be even more competitive in 2020, and worse in 2025 etc.

This is why I mentioned the drastic increase in LSA’s in all schools, where most of them are not really needed, it’s just a matter of insecure parents hoping to gain a net advantage for their children.

The same thing is happening in sports/extra curricular activities. It’s now not enough to go to group coaching, Parents believe their child will one-up if they supplement this with one to one coaching too.

The increase in competition is directly linked to the competitive nature of the parents and the fact that they’re having their children when they’re older, which makes them projects rather than children.

Also, ‘self-made’ types tend to be super-competitive where their children are concerned, in much the same way as they are competitive about their houses, clothes, cars and holidays, and to have huge insecurities about anything they see as failure or not keeping up.

The escalation in the ‘competitive’ environment is 100% the result of pushy parents. Nothing else has changed in the world we live in.

There were a few pushy parents about when my children were there, but thankfully they were outnumbered. I used to think they were insane making a fuss about yearly exams. Couldn’t they keep their eyes on the ball? Only O-levels are important, not mid-years and end of years and projects and all that rubbish, so all children really have to do is get their act together in the fourth form or even the fifth and they’re sorted. Before that, they can just have a good time and not do their homework.