The topic of mental health is inextricable from the subject of the schooling system – this will sound familiar to you if you’ve followed us for any length of time. A recent article in The Straits Times recounts a parent’s struggle with their child’s ‘school refusal’...
You don’t create resilience in children by throwing them in the deep end at school and forcing them to cope. That’s how you create resentment. That’s like sending the average person into the gym to lift 100 kg and saying that if they just do enough...
Recently, I received a referral from the ‘Head of Inclusion’ of a large international school about taking in a child that the school cannot include. Needless to say, right away, this seemed rather contradictory to the principle of inclusion. After this, I...
We often look to the West—with an almost wistful fatalism—for many symbols of progressiveness in societal structures. Schooling is no exception. In Canada, for example, all school-aged children are entitled to a full educational programme regardless of any...
Most parents tend to associate the word “education” with “books,” “school,” and “lessons”—there’s little wonder that this is the case, given the way mainstream schooling permeates the very fabric of education as we know it. Even those just dipping their toes into...
We get to age 18 and we’re expected to decide on a career path or a University degree and we have no idea what we want to do. Some people take a gap year to ‘find themselves’ – and I wonder when they lost themselves. Is this not itself an indictment of the pressures...
