3 letters on how our schools impact their students.

Boy, am I glad I don't need to fret anymore about my children's schooling, since they are both adults now (actually, I don't recall fretting at all, at least not in the kiasu sense). The two girls went to our church's kindergarten; and their primary and secondary schools were also church-affiliated.

And I don't recall the terms "brand name schools" and "neighbourhood schools" being used. True, the kiasu parent had already emerged. One mother was shocked that Angie did not supervise our girls' homework; one father, watching one of our girls reading a story book beyond her level, snatched the book away to interrogate her just to find out if she really did understand the text. He walked off with his daughter, very troubled.

So, it was refreshing to find three well-considered letters in ST today (two from parents who only wanted their children to have a normal childhood). Still, their observations of today's schooling set-up and culture -- and the expectations imposed on school-age children -- is suggestive of the dreaded possibility that "the more things change, the more they will stay the same"...