No drugs required.
Did I mention that H and I visited the ISF Academy on Friday morning? Why did we do it? Well, we're pretty happy with their current school. We have a few gripes, the level of Maths is one of them, but the kids are really happy at school. They go there without a fuss each day, and come home brimming with what they've done and learnt. BUT after our parent teacher consultations it really began to dawn on me that I had at least one child who was perfectly capable (and willing) to be fluent in Chinese, but that there was no ways at all that was going to happen, even on HKA's 45 minutes a day - which is about 4 times as much as most other English medium schools offer. Thinking ahead, we're not interested in Cantonese. In the future, a next posting would most likely be either in Singapore or China (or, heaven forbid back to Europe). So we made an appointment and off we went.
What were our impressions?
We were pretty impressed by what we saw.
My impressions (from the outside, looking in) of ISF based on the visit was (randomly, not divided into pros and cons):
* lovely purpose built campus with airy classrooms and lots of space
* Lots of concrete No grass or trees
* Fabulous library - spacious and very well stocked with English and chinese books - author's visit in progress when we visited (separate senior school library)
* Very friendly and polite children and staff
* A sea of Chinese (Asian) faces with one or two non-Asian faces bobbing up in the lower year groups. Similar to the teacher body. (apparently the ratio has to be 70% local to 30% expat. Local also means HK permanent residents)
* Bursaries available (29 which is a large number) for financially needy families
* Wonderful art, music, dance facilities
* Smallish playground with one climbing structure
* Desk work. At my kids current school the lower classes spend a lot of time sprawled on the floor, here a lot seems to happen at tables / desks.
* Copious amounts of work in work books, forms and worksheets filled out.
* An impressive, very very impressive level of Putonghua (70% of class time in lower primary), and very impressive worksheets / books of character writing.
* Playground talk has to be English or Putonghua
* An impressive amount of maths tuition (in both languages)
* One teacher in the class room at a time (current school has 2 at all times)
* Quite a long school day (8am to 3.30 pm. for 5 days a week. Currently my kids have a 1/2 day on a Wednesday)
* School canteen - catered by Sodexho
* Assembly every morning
* small class sizes - I think maximum is 18, lower classes have 15 per class.
* School fees on par with other international schools
* appear to have spaces in most classes subject to children passing an admissions exam
* I have heard of one family leaving the school due to concerns on English level of their child
* admissions officer candid about the fact that it would be a tough 2-3 initial months and that "there had been tears" from other children when first coming into the school (I prefer honesty in this - we've been through this at Spanish local school so know that tears are not forever).
* not only Chinese language but culture and value systems emphasized.
When we left we requested the admissions officer to let us contact other foreign families with children at the school where neither parent was Chinese speaking. Within an hour I had a contact person, who replied to my email question immediately. The feed back was very good.
All fine. All well. What is my problem? I am acutely aware that I am possibly going to make her partake in a MIND ALTERING EXPERIENCE. I am fully aware that she will not just learn to speak Chinese, but that a part of her will BECOME Chinese. I'll have the experience in reverse of what her Chinese friend's mother is complaining about.
So now we have a couple of choices - do we do it or not. If we do, just for her, or for her brother as well? There is another huge question as well - what is childhood for. I"m going to blog separately on that one.
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