When I picked up 宝贝from school after her PSLE Maths paper, I asked her how it was. She replied that it was not very easy, but ok lah. She said she wasn’t sure of 1 or 2 of the questions and she assured me that she “checked” through her paper thoroughly (which was usually just flipping through… roll eyes).

“Mommy! Check with you! Is 1kg 1000g or 100g?”

“1000g lah!! KILO leh!”

“Oh no!! I put 1000g initially then when I checked through, I decided to change it to 100g!” she moaned.

“How many points?”

“2 points.”

“Ok lah… won’t die.”

So she was happy again.

Little did I know that, the Maths paper was the subject of such a huge uproar on the internet.

Mid afternoon, my phone sprang to life with a deluge of messages! I thought, “Waaa! Stock market crashed or what?! Or covid hit 10,000???” There were messages popping up in many chat groups and some personal messages asking me about the difficulty of the paper. I was like, “She said ok leh.” And I was bombarded by dozens of copies of screenshots of parents who had taken to social media lamenting about their kids breaking down, vomiting, fainting, or dunno what. And there were open letters being shot to every single MP in Singapore (I am not surprised if PM Lee received quite a few of those.) Even ex-journalists with or without children weighed in on that.

I was truly shocked at all these. Even if PSLE is a major exam, but does it even warrant such a furore? Over the years, I have heard from friends that their children thrashed their textbooks and notes, some even burning them right after PSLE. I am a person who respects books as they contain knowledge and we must always respect knowledge. I can’t imagine what kind of hatred they have for PSLE to justify for such behaviour.

Our children take their cues from us. If we, as parents put an over emphasis on PSLE, then it is highly likely that they would treat it like it is a matter of life and death? Seriously, PSLE is not the end of the road. Many of my friends even told me that they were more stressed up about the exam than their kids…

Many blame the MOE, the society, the school and well, everyone else except themselves for the “stress” on PSLE. Maybe, we should look within ourselves. Are we the ones who are truly stressing our kids out? No doubt it is an important exam and should be taken seriously, but there is life after that.

Coming back to the difficult Maths paper, according to 宝贝, it was not easy but doable. After all, there will always be a few difficult questions to filter out the top students from the average. How many people out there can get full marks for an exam paper? No full marks won’t die wan lah. After all, what’s done is done. There is no point in comparing answers, berating the child or making a huge fuss out of it. I just want to give my 宝贝 a good hug and tell her that no matter what the results are, she has already done her best. Let us move on and look forward to an exciting Secondary school journey! She is already doing market research on which trendy bag to buy for Secondary school…

Meanwhile, she has been playing Roblox every day after the first PSLE paper. Macham like holiday has already started… and ya, we play Roblox together with her too. Haha! PSLE is over for me! Yay!