No, it’s not that game show, ‘Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader’. It’s something more serious. Chance upon an article on the local newspaper yesterday. An article about the words that our 10 – 11 years old kids are learning in school. I felt ashamed of myself after looking at the words.

Then again, why would a 10 years old has to learn these words when we, adults don’t use them in our daily life? In fact, we may not use some of these words in our entire life.

What’s the point of learning words that are not applicable to our daily living?

Or another question that haunted me during my school days. What’s the point of studying when I won’t be applying most of what I learned during adulthood? I didn’t understand why did I have to learn algebra or why I had to speak like Shakespeare.

One of the big reason how come some kids don’t do well in school is the lack of reasons. Kids don’t know why they must go to school or to learn certain subjects. Human beings are motivated by reason, in another words the big WHY.

Here are the list of humongous words taken from the newspaper article.
Anemometer          Bedlam
Beguile                    Buccaneer
Diurnal                   Domicile
Eminence               Implicit
Indict                      Manslaughter
Navvy                     Osseous
Philately                Piteous
Plaudits                 Podgy
Pursuant               Scabbard
Suffuse                  Supervening
Temperance        Tenable
Umbrage              Unequivocal

How many words do you know from the list above? Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

I’m not sure if we are trying to show the world our 1st class Singapore education system by having our 10 years old learning such gigantic vocabulary?

What are the chances of backfiring?

Joy of learning will suffer. Results will suffer.

As an adult, will you produce good results in work consistently if you don’t enjoy your work? To produce great results consistently, love what you do. This statement is said by many successful men and women in the world. If this applies to adults, this applies to children.

When a child doesn’t loves what he/she is learning, how will he/she produces good result?

What do you think? Will this be better or worse off? What will be the implication?

I’m just wondering, by the time my kids are 10 years old, what kind of astronomical words are they going to learn?