About me
For as long as I can remember, I've loved teaching and looking after children. I think all parents and teachers can attest to the joy of seeing children learn something for the first time, and it's wonderful to follow a child's progress as he improves and overcomes hurdles.
I've been fortunate to have had a wide variety of experiences in life, from my early childhood living on an RAF airbase in Singapore to farm life in Malaysia to having to synthesise new chemical compounds as part of my research in the UK. These experiences have had a large influence on the way I try to bring up children.
Early inspiration
As a child growing up in Asia, I spent a lot of time learning and benefiting from the accumulated wisdom of my older relatives. This was rarely bookish knowledge, but rather practical skills like learning how to make traditional kuih-muih, catch chickens, or even remove leeches!
I greatly appreciated learning from my elders — not just because of the skills I acquired, but because I liked spending time with them and the whole process of learning from their collective experiences.
Perhaps as a result of this, I felt obliged to share and pass on the things I myself had learnt. Even when I was little, I tried to teach my younger brothers and sisters — I wasn't very good at it, but I did learn a few lessons myself!
For example, although I had little understanding of the mechanics of teaching, I saw that one of the most valuable things a teacher can do is to inspire his or her students.
Of course, education is just one part of a child's upbringing. The emotional, physical, and social aspects are just as important, if not more so. But a good education follows naturally from a good upbringing, as well as complementing other aspects of the child's overall development.
Thus I always try to look at education from a holistic viewpoint. Indeed, it is often the case that a "problem" with a child's learning has nothing to do with his actual ability, but is instead a result of some other issue in his environment or a behavioural problem that needs to be addressed first.
Views on teaching
Because of my formal education in Singapore, Malaysia, and the UK, I could see that each educational system had its own strengths and weaknesses. I wanted to find a balance between these approaches by extracting their strong points while avoiding the weaknesses.
For instance, this might involve combining the rigour and structure that typifies "Eastern" teaching with the greater freedom offered by Western approaches to learning. In this case, I believe that children need exposure to both styles to have a really well-rounded education.
My background is in chemistry (I stopped my PhD to raise my children!), so I favour an empirical approach to teaching. As explained in the book, I avoid dogmatically sticking to just one style of teaching; it just doesn't make sense to teach all children and all subjects in exactly the same way, and I'm quite happy to adjust my approach according to the subject and the child's personality.
Teaching is a mutual, two-way learning process — in a typical teaching situation, I usually find that I learn as much about the child and his learning habits as he does about whatever he is trying to learn!
While education is obviously important, I don't believe it is healthy to obsess over children's results. Like all adults, I have my own interests; and I don't spend all day thinking about my kids! Thus a core aspect of the way I teach involves trying to instil a high degree of independence in the child.
Kids also need to learn how to deal with failure — even the most accomplished people fail occasionally, so it's important to know how to cope with these setbacks by learning from one's mistakes.
I don't have many expectations of children when teaching, other than wanting them to put in a good effort — which is quite natural when the child enjoys what he is doing. Children often perform better when you don't have high expectations of them. Instead, it is usually better to just focus on the process of learning itself by trying to make things simple and interesting for the child.
Similarly, focusing on instilling a good attitude to learning in the child will usually bear more fruit in the long run than worrying too much about his test results and grades. (None of my kids took a single formal test until at least age 8.) Doing this will also make the whole experience of learning more pleasant for both you and your child.
Finally, I think it's important to have a sense of humour when teaching. This can help the child feel less pressure and encourage him to open up more, as he will then look at you as more of a teammate than a teacher. Of course, every child is different, and some will actually prefer to be serious and formal!
Halimahton Yusof
About my children
While I've taught kids across a whole range of different ages and abilities, I feel that the primary caregiver (e.g. a parent or grandparent) is usually the most important teacher a child will have, even if all they do is supplement what is being done at school. This is largely because children spend more time in the company of their main caregiver than with anyone else.
As an example of what is possible, these are some of the results achieved when I taught my own kids:
- Zuleikha received a grade A in A-level maths at age 9 — the joint youngest of all time to achieve this feat. (In Britain, A-levels are pre-university exams similar to the AP tests, normally completed at age 18.) Now 14, Zuleikha has straight A's in A-level maths, further maths, and physics; she has also completed courses from the Open University in biology and astronomy.
- At the age of 15, Iskander graduated with a First Class Honours from the University of Warwick's prestigious MMath degree programme after having started his degree at 12. Shortly afterwards, he completed an MSc in Computer Science at Imperial College London, one of the top universities in the UK.
- Sufi entered Oxford University to read maths at age 13.
- Aisha entered university at the same time as Iskander, except that she was 15 to Iskander's 12. She is now finishing her PhD in Mathematics Education.
- Four of my kids — Abraham, Aisha, Sufi, and Iskander — were ranked among the top 5-10 players in the country for their age group in junior tennis.
What's nice is that any child (including your own!) can achieve results just as good by using the right approach to teaching.
In fact, I fully expect that many children in the future will do even better, as I brought up my children in very difficult circumstances — I was in a foreign country with little in the way of support or resources, practically a single mother, and far from wealthy. But that's another story!