Forum Letter – Spending time with family builds character
The Straits Times Forum 26 Mar 2012
MY FATHER, who has since passed on, worked long hours to support my large and extended family. Yet his core character values were very clear: love, honesty, humility, hard work, integrity and respect (‘Strict criteria for character award’; last Tuesday).
None of these values was taught formally or preached to us. My siblings and I internalised them as part of routine life: cleaning the house, running errands, going on family outings.
Values were learnt through the hum of our daily activities – doing housework, at play and during holidays.
For us, weekends were almost exclusively family time.
My father would recount to us the hardships during the Japanese Occupation, even as he treated us to movies and McDonald’s meals.
The key to character building is time: Time to consistently teach and live the values we want our children to have.
Character is not built on demand, within a semester or a term break. It begins after a child is born and continues into adulthood.
Parents sow the seeds of character while schools nourish their growth.
Children need to spend time with their parents. So it alarms me when school activities hog my teenage children’s weekends. They are at the beck and call of their sports masters and project leaders, even during school holidays.
To excel, my children must attend track competitions on weekends. Training sessions and committee meetings eat into their school holidays.
While I accept that students face intense pressure at school, it has become virtually impossible to plan any extended family activity without the looming anxiety over missed training sessions or meetings during school holidays.
The Education Ministry should impose these two golden rules:
- No school activities to be held on weekends, apart from Saturday mornings; and
- Impose a blackout on school activities for at least two to three weeks during the long school holidays.
See Thor Wai Fung (Ms)
