Wei Kiat's Blog

IT WAS a proud day for me in 2001, when my wife handed me a letter from the Ministry of Education indicating that my eldest daughter had qualified for the GEP.
(take note, the first use of the word, proud)

She had gone through two qualifying rounds of tests and made it to the top 5 per cent of her cohort.
(being proud again, there is no actual need to emphasize the criteria for being in GEP. The test isn’t even fair in the first place. If the test is good, then yr daughters shouldn’t have problem coping. The purpose of GEP is to allow those who are much more intellectually capable to stretch their abilities. Failure to cope suggest the absence of any such capabilities.)

As parents, we were invited for a talk where we were given the VIP treatment and introduced to the GEP programme.
(See, vague suggestion of being “proud parents” again)

It is a world of small class sizes, specially trained teachers, exclusive facilities, enrichment programmes and an almost guaranteed pathway to the best secondary schools in Singapore.
(That’s the advertising sideline la..)

We were warned about the heavy schedule, but we felt our child could handle it — and anyway, how could we deprive our daughter of the chance to be in such an exclusive programme?
(Proud, overestimating their daughter)

Thus began our nightmare — a non-standard schedule that necessitated that my wife and I provide transportation to and from school, as she could no longer take the school bus.
(Oh.. so she’s GEP and she couldn’t figure how to use an ez-link card to take bus to school?)

While this was an inconvenience for us, what was more alarming was the fact that my daughter became the busiest person in the family.
(Your daughter is clearly exhibiting inability to cope, either time management, or workload.)

With long school hours, homework and project work forcing her to sleep at midnight almost daily and leaving her with little or no time for our family.
(Once again, inability to cope. Also, sleeping at midnight or having no time with family is a common between JC students. You better save a copy of your complain, next time your daughters go JC can also use, provided they didn’t break down before doing so.)

For a girl of her age, my daughter is very knowledgeable, computer savvy and has been exposed to many more non-academic subjects than students in the express stream.
(I only know that children now know how to use MS word, powerpoint, frontpage when they are in their primary school. This is so common. I don’t believe your daughter can be IT savvy like me. I’ve been learning computer since 4years old, even before windows 3.1 came out! I never hear my parents brag about me. Never.)

However, in trying to cope with the huge volume of work and the demands on her time, she has become impatient, demanding, argumentative, competitive and lacking in social skills.
(Inability to cope.)

We expressed our concerns to the teachers but were told that GEP students are like that.
(lousy teachers, or maybe too many students are wrongly enrolled into GEP so much that teachers are used to such symptons.)

We asked for a reduction in the volume of work, but the answer was that this programme was 20 years old and the approach had been proven effective.
(I feel that GEP is abit outdated. All kinds of syllabus keep changing, but i think GEP course nv change. What was effective then may not be so now.)

Advice from other GEP parents was to withdraw our daughter from the programme, but this was not an option, given the potential psychological impact on our daughter and on us as proud parents.
(Once again, telling us that you are proud your daughter's GEP status, and do not wish her to drop it, at the expense of her mental and physically well-being, so that you can brag and whine about the GEP program.)

She could cope — but at a price. And we could not imagine life as parents of a GEP dropout.
(See, once again you are concerned with your face, your ego, more than your child's welfare.)

In 2003, it was my youngest daughter's turn to take the GEP qualifying tests. We tried to dissuade her by pointing to her sister's miserable life.
(Why don't get her sister out of her miserable life? I know! One child in GEP is enuff to brag liao.)

It did not work; she also qualified and is now in the second year of the GEP.
(Hao lian la..)

Like her sister, she struggles to cope with the demands of the programme. Fortunately, as parents, we were better able to cope the second time round.
(Hao lian again! Got 2 GEP child! My sperm and her egg is top rated!!)

Now, when I meet parents who tell me that their child is in the GEP, I can't help but say to them: "A gifted student? Sorry to hear that."
(I'm sorry to hear that MOE has to take GEPers with ego parents like you.)