Screwing Up Parenting

er·go·nom·ics ~ noun

• The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort. Also called biotechnology, human engineering, human factors engineering.

I was looking thru my daughter's mid-term test papers yesterday evening. She's done pretty well this term - marked improvement in all papers except for the Chinese Language and Art, where the latter came as a surprise - she's gifted in that area. But well, seeing how she chose to do a collage instead of a drawing, a B is good enough for mum.

Anyways, as I was saying - I was going thru her test papers and imagine my surprise when I note one section of the Computing paper. She had to fill in the blanked out spaces of 8 sentences with words from a box. And one of the words listed was Ergonomics.

I sat, bolted upright from a reclining position on the couch cos she's like 7, in Primary 1 and I was blown away that she was taught such a big word (4 syllables mind you!). So I asked her how did she learn this word and if she could tell me what it meant. She said that she didn't know. But here's the catch - she used it in the right sentence!

I had to get to the bottom of it - did innie-minnie-mini-mo work? Or did she know the meaning of it but was too shy to let on?! Persistence is a trait that every parent must have - it comes when you fill your name in the space on the birth cert. And so I did not let it go.

Long story short - apparently, she really didn't know what ergonomics meant and no, she didn't resort to IMMM guesswork. Rather, she noted that the blank space was at the start of the sentence, and ergonomics was the only word in the list that started with a capital letter. Putting two-and-two together - she reckon she couldn't go wrong.

Now, while I am amazed at her rationale and logical line of thought, it does concern me. I mean - unless you're in the field of ID or reads a lot, you'd probably won't know what ergonomics mean. I only learnt it myself some years back when I was involved in the office re-dec exercise and had to select proper chairs. And Primary 1 students are expected to know this?

Looking ahead, if her vocabulary grows at this pace, talking to her about the birds and the bees a couple of years from now is gonna be hell! If only the Education Board realises that as well!