‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.’
– William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), recipient of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature.
One complaint I hear from every parent who needs to send their kid to primary school:
“Aiyo, some take so long to drop their kid off. Must get out of car lah, put bag on their back lah, kiss goodbye lah… Meanwhile, we’re all just waiting in line!”
Welcome to the world of Asian parents who love their children so much that they are willing to hold up a line of cars.
In the West, some might call this “indulgent parenting”.
Parents who make children the centre of their world.
Pack their bag and lunch in the morning, get their exercise clothes ready, and make sure they’ve not forgotten their homework.
Take, for example, a recent message in our residents’ association WhatsApp group – a father noticed that his son had forgotten his school project.
Dad thought that if he allowed the boy to realise it only when they reached school, then perhaps the son would learn from his mistake.
“That bitterness as he walked to his classroom was horrible for me to watch, but necessary for him to grow up,” said the father.
I noticed that many neighbours who commented on this were not sympathetic.
“If you parent like this and deliberately screw over your kid, you shouldn’t have kids in the first place,” wrote a mother.
“Teach your kid a lesson without having to embarrass them in front of peers.”
“Just taught his child to be selfish and never help other people in need.”
There are a few things about the criticisms that stand out to me.
One is the concern that something like this will cause long-term damage to the relationship between parent and child.
The other is that this father was cruel to humiliate and embarrass the child in front of others at school.
I strongly disagree.
In principle, one should never be embarrassed to make mistakes because it’s a natural part of learning.
An interview with mathematician James Maynard, who won the coveted Fields Medal in 2022, revealed how a genius like him does his day-to-day work:
“It’s at least 99% frustration. I’ll be like a toddler trying to walk for the first time, I’ll keep falling flat on my face,” he explained.
“The hope is that once you’ve gone through the 99 per cent frustration, you get one of those eureka moments.”
(Quick explainer: The Fields Medal is often called the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. Given every four years by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), it honours outstanding mathematicians under 40, typically in areas like number theory, geometry, or mathematical physics.)
That eureka (Greek for “I have found it!”) moment is a result of struggling to navigate the mistakes made along the way.
But if you haven’t learned to not just give up on the first mistake, or think that each mistake is an embarrassing failure, then it makes it a difficult and stressful journey.
So if you’re trying to teach a child something, but in the process, you’re humiliating them, then you’re probably doing it wrong.
A friend once explored two common ways parents try to get their children to “behave”.
One is “parental behavioural control”, which refers to parenting through supervision, setting boundaries and rules, and exercising punishment if those rules are broken.
For example, you might tell a child, “If you keep biting your brother, I will have to put you on the other side of the room and you will have to play by yourself”.
You set rules about acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour; you supervise, and when you see the limit has been overstepped you implement consequences.
And you communicate why the rules are there (“It hurts your brother when you bite him”).
One huge benefit of clearly and consistently enforcing fair rules for children is that they understand better what “good” behaviour is, which means eliciting such behaviour is more likely to succeed (because they know what needs to be done).
Studies show that it reduces anxiety while building self-esteem (because kids are confident that what they’re doing is okay).
In contrast, a second method of exerting control is “parental psychological control”.
This is when a parent tries to control a child’s behaviour by influencing their thoughts and feelings.
Often this takes the form of guilt (“That’s wrong, you’re a bad boy”) or love withdrawal (“I hug your brother but not you because he’s a good boy but you’re not”).
For me, this also includes embarrassing a child by pointing out their shortcomings in front of others.
Studies show that this can lead to emotional and behavioural problems, including anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
For me it’s quite simple: how do you expect a child to learn from their mistakes if they don’t understand why it’s a mistake in the first place?
And perhaps more importantly, what can they do to fix it?
If that father I mentioned earlier had loudly scolded his son and made him feel bad for failing, it wouldn’t have been as helpful as guiding him toward solutions.
Instead, he could help his son focus on what he can do now – like asking the teacher for an extension – and what he can do in the future to avoid the same mistake, such as preparing his things the night before.
The problem, though, is that I think that Malaysia as a culture tends to not go for the “behavioural” method to manage its citizens, and tends towards the “psychological” method.
Parents take their time dropping off the kids?
Nothing happens to them really if they do that, we just try to shame them in the parents’ chat group.
What if you run a red light or speed on the highway?
Yes, we’re meant to pay fines if we break laws, but very, very many people take their time paying them (and then the police offer “discounts”, further negating the consequences).
Even with larger issues like corruption, it feels like the line is blurry when deciding who to prosecute and who to leave alone, or who is found guilty and who isn’t (or even who has to stay in jail or gets to stay at home).
How can we expect people to be good citizens when we don’t make clear what that means as a nation, and what the consequences are if we aren’t good citizens?
Ultimately, if it takes a village (or a country) to raise a child, what kind of children are growing up in Malaysia?
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
