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The hidden cost of not pushing your child academically

Summary Keywords

academics, kids, australia, higher, increasing, parents, future, selective schools, sydney, talk, child, life, academically, happening, increasingly, push, atar, difficult, varsity blues, unsw

Speaker

Steve Xu

Transcript

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Steve Xu 00:01

Hey guys, so I hope everyone’s having a great night, and I’m quite fired up. So let’s talk about the hidden cost of not pushing your child academically. Now, look, I think I’m very much an educator, right. I’ve always been an educator, I’ve always been in the education space. And I think, you know, through, you know, the last few weeks, I’ve been increasingly seeing a trend of really long paragraph, you know, either questions, or really long paragraph kind of comments, where parents kind of commenting on, you know, my message and this saying that, hey, Steven, this, you know, and I really just wanted to talk about, you know, what, the reason why I’m talking about this, and also, you know, you know, what, what, what my message is all about? Okay, so let me kind of clarify, the title of this video is about the hidden cost of what was the title again, the hidden cost of not pushing your child academically? Yes. 

So a lot of parents seem to believe that life is basically just going to work itself out, right? It’s all gonna be okay. Right? I think in the Western world, we all believe that you know, what, tomorrow the world is going to be okay, right? The day after the world is going to be all okay, we’re gonna have a roof over our heads, and life is going to be great. Now, the unfortunate thing that I think we have in Australia is a very kind of relaxed mindset on the way that we go about everything, right, unlike some of the, you know, other countries, right, which are developed in Asia, such as, you know, Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, I think people in Australia are relatively relaxed. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because I believe that Australia is basically what these other countries are going to become, in 10 years time. Right? So Australia is always about 10 years behind America, Australia is always about 10 years behind what’s happened in China. And what’s happened in Hong Kong right. Now, we have seen in all of these nations, that academics is becoming an increasingly revered, and increasingly important metric of success in life, we see that academics has become basically the most important metric in determining job income. And basically, your ability to provide for yourself in the future. 

Now, what a lot of parents don’t seem to realize in Australia is that academics is not something that you can basically develop overnight. Go there’s very, there’s very interesting documentary called Varsity Blues, right? That was released in on Netflix that you guys can all watch. And it basically talks about how all of these really, really powerful CEOs. Basically, there’s their raises kids who were not academically minded, and obviously, they didn’t spend the time to raise the kids academically. And so what ended up happening is that all of these kids, because they weren’t academically minded, because they didn’t do what very well, academically, you know, their parents would pay millions of dollars to try to get them in Ivy League schools. But it goes to show two things. Number one, academics can’t be developed overnight. And number two, that academics is highly revered. Now, how does this have anything to do with you and your child right now? Well, like I said, academics is not something that can be developed overnight. And from what we know, you know, selective schools is, you know, kids who come out of selective schools tend to get much high eight hours than their public school equivalents. 

selective-schools-parents-teaching-their-child-for-selective-test-and-oc-test

Obviously, there are outliers are exceptions. But again, I speak in generalities, right, generally, people will go to selective school score much higher a tars than kids who go to public schools. Now, why is this important for the future? It’s crucially important for the future because I think a lot of parents aren’t really considering what the future and Sydney is going to look like, in 1020 years time. Because the future and Sydney is going to replicate that of Hong Kong, that of China, that of Korea, that of many of these kinds of predominantly Asian countries, right, and that house property price is gonna go higher and higher, academics is going to become even more competitive. The victims of all of this are the kids of our future. Right? And nothing’s going to change. I know this personally, that the median ATAR for medicine has only increased right? dramatically in the last few years. And the median ate off a UNSW medicine in the last year was 99.8. So you can imagine that right? So 50% of kids in medicine at UNSW got an ATAR above above 99.8. Right? And then we obviously know that the majority of kids that got into medicine at UNSW got an A ATAR of 99.

Steve Xu 05:02

So you can see how all of these eight R’s are dramatically increasing, like even something as simple as commerce doing a Bachelors of commerce at University of Sydney now requires a 95 ATAR. Right, which is not a lot. But again, it’s much more compared to what it was 1015 20 years ago, right, when, you know, you know, the requirements weren’t as high. Now, what’s also happening is more and more people are going to university. Right, and more and more and more people, you know, getting involved in these degrees, right. I think statistic was like, you know, 50% of people probably even higher than that go to university nowadays. And so what’s going on is three things, I’ll talk about them each one by one, number one, wages aren’t really increasing, right, the average wage in Australia hasn’t really increased in the last 20 years. 

Academic Requirements are increasing, right, they’re getting higher and higher. But the value of these academic qualifications is getting lower, because more and more people are getting degrees, right. So the only degree is worth getting all the ones at the very, very top right, if you’re just getting an ordinary grade, it’s not worth it anymore, because everyone’s gotten a degree. Right, everyone basically, you know, I’d say by, you know, in the next 20 years, basically, everybody would be able to go get a bachelor’s degree at some kind of institution. And so it really decreases the value of the qualification, and yet, getting the qualification or getting into the qualification is higher. Now, the other thing that’s happening, and this is probably the most important thing is that house prices are increasing. So I’ll give you guys an example 20 years ago, or even 30 years ago, in a suburb like Chatswood, you could probably buy a two story house for about 300 $400,000. Alright, might have been probably more than that probably like 30 years ago, you could probably buy a house and chefs for about 300 $400,000. If you go and try to buy a house in Chatswood, now, it’s probably going to be 10 times that amount. Now, I’m not saying that that kind of increase is going to continue happening, but we know that house price is definitely going to continue to increase.

See also: Is preparing your child for OC Classes and Selective Schools the greatest investment?

I also know that most Australians at some point, just like in countries like Hong Kong and Korea, right, and most young people will not be able to buy property. Now, that’s not going to be too big of an issue. But it’s only going to be more and more and more and more difficult for especially people who have recently migrated, or first people in their first generation to survive, right? Because like I said, job, you know, job salaries aren’t really increasing, right? You know, jobs are becoming, you know, more difficult to get, right, there are way more people, there are higher requirements to get jobs. And so, if you have a child currently who’s you know, four or 567 years old, you really need to think about this kind of future, right? And you really need to think about the kind of world that they’re going to be going into in the future. Now that in Sydney, if you plan on living in Sydney, at least, you know, the, the job market, and the people are basically smartest in the world. And, you know, there’s so much competition. Yeah. And so I think a lot of parents don’t really realize that a lot of parents kind of just basic teaching of the kids or the, you know, the upbringing of the kids, upon you know, how they live their life.

Steve Xu 08:32

You know, what I mean? How, you know, Australia might have been 10,20,30 years ago, when really the, the rate at which we’re changing is so far beyond your imagination. It’s not even funny, right? Back in the day, like I said, 30 years ago, you know, When my parents first came buying a property, it was only 200,000. Everybody could buy a property in Australia, everybody could buy a house in Australia, right? Where, you know, like, let’s say, for instance, you want your salary that paid you $50,000 A year and you saved all that money up, you’d be able to buy a property within four years. But now you can’t do that. And so that’s why life is a lot tougher for young people nowadays than it’s ever been before. You know what I mean? And I think it’s kind of my duty to kind of tell parents about this reality. Because look, I’m of the age where I see the kids around me, and I know how difficult life is for them. Right? I know how difficult it is to go through that kind of situation, and come out the other end and go through the academics and come out and be like, well, academics wasn’t even the end all be all. 

It's your duty to think about the FUTURE

What I’m saying is, if you can imagine this, even for the kids who went through the academics, and they finding life difficult, imagine what it’s going to be like for kids who didn’t go to selective schools, right. For kids who don’t have the academics portion, you know, sort of life is gonna be just ridiculous. You’re not a man. And so I think as parents, it’s your duty to really think about the future and if it means sacrificing a little bit of playtime. to kind of, you know, push out a line a little bit more, or sacrificing even a little bit of your time to push your child to learn more, then I think it’s well worth it. Because we need to make sure that our kids are going to be strong enough and competent enough. So that when they go out into the workforce, or when they go out into their own lives, they’re able to take care of themselves, right? Because, you know, that’s just important for them to be able to do if they can’t do that. And if they don’t have the academics to back them, you know, in an increasingly academic world, it’s going to be quite difficult to human survival. You know, and flourish. So I think the main message behind this video is, look, if you have a child right now, who’s younger, trying to push them, you know, I see kids, you know, the kids four or five years ago versus kids now big, big difference, kids are only getting smarter and smarter and smarter. Right. And, and the little kids that I teach now who are on, you know, year four or year five, you know, the ability that they have, I’d say a lot of the the year, four year five kids that I teach are smarter than the teachers, you know what I mean? And that’s just the reality. 

So, you know, if you have a child who’s trying to compete at that kind of level, then you really need to do everything that you can, and don’t give up on their academics just yet. Right? Keep on pushing them, keep on encouraging them. Because, look, again, it’s going to be a very, very important role. It’s going to play a very, very important role in the future. Hope you guys understand that. If you do have any questions, or if you do have any kind of comments, please let me know. You know, I’m just trying to do my best to kind of spread the word and just keep you guys informed. But look, if you if you don’t agree, please let me know as well. I’d love to kind of hear your viewpoints on what your perspective is. If you do agree, that’s great. But that’s it for me tonight. Thanks, guys. And I’ll see you guys very soon. Bye.

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