Having Faith in Our MOE Kindergartens

Lately, an article on parents fighting for faith-based kindergartens has been making its rounds on social media. Many of the interviewees paint privately-owned kindergartens as “fighting to stay in existence” against being “taken over” by an aggressive MOE that is “accused of being rigid and producing Singaporeans like a factory production line”. Many of the opinions did not sit well with me, especially since none of them were from MOE or from the staff of MOE kindergartens.

Hence, I felt compelled to give my perspective on this situation and argue that the issue is less about private kindergartens being pushed out, and more about them struggling to stay relevant.

An Uphill Struggle

When I started teaching, I was shocked to see that there were some children who came in at Primary 1 not knowing their ABCs or being able to count. At that point, there were no MOE kindergartens. There was also differing standards of curriculum. Some kindergartens taught too little, not building sufficient foundation, and some taught too much, trying to give their students a head start.

Hence, MOE started establishing kindergartens, to set a base standard of basic education that smoothened the transition from preschool to primary school. The primary school where I taught was one of the first to have a trial run with the first string of MOE kindergartens. Both schools shared the same premises and our primary students interacted with the little kinder kids. You can see which schools currently run them here.

MOE was simply responding to an urgent need, but in the process, a whole industry was disrupted. MOE kindergartens could charge much lower fees and operate at a fraction of the cost of private ones, and their students also had priority admissions to their host schools. These two factors alone, I believe, have sounded the death knell for private kindergartens, who are vying for an ever-shrinking pool of potential enrolees.

Fighting this trend is like fighting to keep the neighbourhood VCD/DVD store alive in the time of video streaming services because the store auntie knows your name and your video preferences. In the face of such industry disruptions, businesses, particularly small ones, need to adapt or risk closing. Remember Nokia and Kodak?

Nothing Special

Some parents posit that private-run kindergartens have “teachers and principals who work for the children” and who “have so much love for the children you don’t see anywhere else” and they “know every child by name”. I don’t see why these kindergartens would have the monopoly on such educators. I would strongly argue that this is common in schools. When I was teaching, I knew every single student, of any level I was teaching, by name. I seriously doubt I was a special case.

Educators who love and care for their wards are evident in both private-run and government-run schools. To think otherwise is a great disservice to the thousands of MOE-trained educators who give up incalculable amounts of time, money, and emotional and mental energy to the students whom they care deeply about.

Another sentiment from the parents interviewed is that private-run kindergartens, particularly faith-based ones, impart good values through their teachers who exemplify them. They apparently also have “a strong emphasis on the child’s character and emotional development”. Again, this is baseless overgeneralisation. I can’t recall how many times I, and my fellow teachers, have spent recess and after-school hours counselling our students on being understanding, accepting of others, conflict resolution skills, etc. These teachable moments happen almost every day, and I personally don’t know any teachers who are too busy with grades and curriculum to stop everything and deal with a child’s heart.

Concurring with the conclusion of the article, I believe that private-run kindergartens can only survive by differentiating themselves. They can continue to offer distinctly faith-based curriculum or focus on alternate pedagogy, like the Montessori schools.

In one of the scenes from the 1998 hit comedy “You’ve Got Mail”, Meg Ryan’s character, Kathleen, enters Fox Books, the big book store that had caused her own quaint little bookstore to close down. As she walks through the aisles of books and into the children’s section, she realises that Fox Books has its own community; and in its own way, was doing what she was doing, but on a bigger and cheaper scale. In the same scene, Tom Hank’s character, who was secretly watching her assist a clueless Fox Books employee, realises how well Kathleen knew children’s books.

I think this movie is a perfect analogy of the situation now. Educators who face retrenchment in closing private-run kindergartens should think about signing up with the growing number of MOE kindergartens that need their expertise. They might find that there’s very little difference in terms of culture. And there is always a place for passionate educators in our classrooms.

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