27 Jan 12
Had breakfast with elder daughter at NTUC Foodcourt at Simei. She just got her O Level results and applied to study at Meridian JC - could not enter the supposedly 'better' Temasek JC because their minimum entry requirement was 7 points (she got 9).
I then asked my daughter why she thought Temasek was 'better'. She said 'because the teachers are better?'. I said I didn't think so. If the teachers there are so good they would not have those 'minimum requirements' because good teachers should be able to develop any child regardless of how 'good' the child is and not insist that they be given only 'good' students! That system is just a self-fulfilling rule. The school insists on getting good students so that those students would make them look good, not the other way round!
If a child has the desire to learn and improve herself, no one can stop her. Teachers can help children along the way by raising their awareness or guide them in the right direction but everything still depends on the children's desire to learn or improve. Having other good students around you helps by promoting some level of healthy competition but that is not a must if a child has the will. In the old days where there were no libraries, TV, radio or internet, children rely on teachers, school books and others to tell them new things but today they can get access to new knowledge and information without the help of teachers or school books.
In fact, very few of life's most important things are taught by teachers or school books nowadays! While I learnt the 'elephant and blindmen' fable in primary school in Malaysia, almost all of the Singaporeans old and young I spoke to have not even heard of it! (that is one reason I think the country will run into trouble in 2 to 3 decades)
So took opportunity to recap the 2 important things she need to remember when growing up and dealing with people (like determining the real intentions behind people's actions or words) - what I wrote down on the 2 pieces of paper I passed to her cousin Le a year ago.
http://cckplanetblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/2-pieces-of-paper-for-life.html
At same time, shared with her about another key principle of life I read from a book where a man said that 'human survival and progress are all about humans getting better and better at understanding and managing the risks they face'.
If one think about it, the environment (like weather, pollution), natural events (like earthquake, flood etc) and human undertakings (e.g. dealing with other people like conmen) all have or pose some form of 'risk' to the people involved.
Everyone is fearful when faced with risks but it is how they choose to deal with them that differentiate the more successful ones from the others. Some people are so fearful of dealing with risks that they freeze ('gabra') when faced with them or, worse, they avoid doing anything that may require them to deal with those risks!
That is why some people in authority (like governments) intentionally create fear in the people under them. That's because people living in fear (real or imaginary) are easier to control or manipulate.
As example, during economic crises of the last decade all governments try to distract their people (many who were losing jobs) by spreading news about 'global terrorism' (and SARS, bird flu etc.). The hope is that people would end up fearing about the imaginary threat of terrorism and pay less attention to the real problem which is the economic crises, people losing jobs and government printing money (which is stealing wealth from the common people).
People are fearful usually because they either do not understand the risks enough (see elephant and blindmen) or they do not know how to manage or mitigate those risks (or too lazy to find ways to manage those risks). That is why people operating at Level 1 are especially fearful of things.
As example, when children try to climb onto things some adults/guardians stop them from doing it because it is 'dangerous'. As a result, the kids end up not learning how to climb safely. Those adults, on the other hand, say that those kids that do not climb around are 'good kids'. To them, kids who sit and do nothing are 'good kids' not because they know how to climb safely but because that way there is no need for the adults involved to watch the kids or to spend time teaching them how to manage the risks involved in climbing!
Some people do not just freeze when faced with risk or stop doing things for fear of risks. Instead, they prepare for the potential risks before doing something. Such people are the ones that will progress or lead others to make progress. They are even willing to try new things not because they are brave or simply 'willing to take risks' but because they are well prepared.
Such people have the ability to identify potential risks before hand, understand those risks reasonably well (nothing is 100% or perfect) and have prepared action plans on how to manage those risks. They are Level 2 and 3 people.
That is what differentiate humans from other animals and successful people from others - the ability to imagine and think things through in their minds, and plan ahead. It is known as forward thinking or fore thought. Animals like humans when young and even many adults are incapable of fore thought but live by the day and do whatever they fancy that moment.
The people that make safe airplanes can do that because they understand the risks involved in flying airplanes (like engine failure) and have built into them the things required to manage those risks (like having 2 engines so that plane can still fly when one fails).
Another example. When I was a kid I often heard reports of children being knocked down by cars but not so nowadays even though there are a lot more cars on the roads today than 40 years ago. Asked daughter her thoughts on why so - she said 'because drivers then were more reckless?' But there will always be reckless drivers. In fact there should be more now since there are more people driving. So that's not the answer.
The reason is because there were so few cars 40 years ago that parents then thought that the risk of their children being run over by cars were so low that they did not bother to teach their young how to manage that risk (i.e. lack of awareness and too lazy). Unaware of that risk and not knowing how to manage it, kids then just run across roads without thinking/looking!
In addition, governments later came up with ways to help manage that risk by setting up zebra crossings, traffic lights etc. and the young are taught by schools on road safety. Those are all risk management steps/tools!
In the middle of discussing the life examples like above, I asked my daughter for her views along the way in the hope that she would look at those examples using the basic tenets of the key principles above. Instead of doing that, she talked in specifics based on the specific examples we were discussing.
So told her not to make things complicated - basic principles in life are not complicated because people (good and bad, smart and not so smart, friends/family/colleagues etc.) are all driven by similar things and behave very similarly. If they are similar, then the principles to follow in understanding and dealing with different people under different situations cannot be very different.
There are always variation in situations, type of issues and words/terms used etc. involved in human dealings. So if one talks in terms of the specifics involved/used, it may look like they are very different. But if I can cut through those specifics and boil them down to basic fundamentals then one will see those basic principles at work.
Quote: Make things as simple as possible but not simpler - Einstein
When I asked her to re-cap the discussion at the end of breakfast, I was glad she managed to successfully summarise the 3 key principles above.
However, after dropping her off to meet her friend I remembered that we had been calculating how much dividend her shares with me were for 2011 but I did not pass her the money. So sent her a message saying 'you forgot to claim something from me'. Was disappointed that she could not recall what it was.
Need to discuss that...
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