Paper chase weakening family bonds (Forum letter)

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It saddens me to see well-meaning parents getting sucked into the vortex of preparing their children to cope with schoolwork and exams, especially in primary school.

We want the best for our children as we cannot bear to see them struggle academically and straggle behind their peers.

We also want to help them do well enough to eventually qualify for a secondary school of their choice.

Tuition is thus a necessary evil that has become a rite of passage for most schoolgoing children in Singapore.

However, packing our children's schedules with tuition classes, on top of their already heavy workload in school and co-curricular activity commitments, exacts a distinct toll on family life.

The bitter reality is that schoolwork can take precedence over family time, with families truncating or even forgoing their commitments, functions and holidays just so junior can complete his assignments.

It is far worse in the weeks leading up to the exams, when time spent as a family engaging in leisure pursuits practically grinds to a halt.

This begs the question: How strong are our family bonds when the family hardly spends quality time together, or when conversation revolves round prosaic topics such as whether the child has completed his homework and what his test scores are?

Will our children have meaningful childhood memories that they can cherish in the years to come?

Marietta Koh (Mrs)