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Begins
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For Grace Yong, it was
only after four decades
and four children that
she discovered what she
wanted to do for the rest
of her life. Discover how
this business-trained
lady is now one of the
fastest rising names in
pre-school education.
It’s not every day that your parents, lovely
as they may be, would call you mad,
perhaps even downright bonkers. That
was the exact adjective Grace’s mother
used when she found out that Grace
was about to embark on an academic
journey to complete her Master’s degree
in education, just after the birth of her
fourth child, with James Cook University.
Grace professes that her mother had
every reason to label her crazy – the
senior Yong had offered to fund her
daughter’s Master’s degree education in
business back when she just graduated
with a Bachelor’s degree but Grace
declined. “I was sick of studying already,”
explains Grace, laughing.
Instead, Grace decided that it was
time to find work. There was only one
problem though – she had no idea what
she wanted to do. More than a decade’s
worth of education had taught her
everything she needed to know about
the world but nothing about herself.
She might have been the combined
product of two of the country’s most
esteemed academic institutions at that
time – Raffles Girls’ Secondary School
and National University of Singapore –
but all that pedigree only amounted to
two paper certificates and a seemingly
dull and murky future, made even
worse by the economic downturn
happening at that time.
THE TWISTS AND TURNS
Grace Yong is the founder and current
principal of Character Montessori,
and is the first certified Singaporean
Character Education Practitioner,
accredited by The Abraham Lincoln
Centre for Character Development
(USA). Grace also holds a Master in
Education from James Cook University.
Grace ended up working as a
communications executive in the
humanitarian aid organisation World
Vision. The year was 1985, a time
before the advent of the Internet and
powerful computers and when almost
everything had to be done by hand.
Grace thrived in the environment,
absorbing everything that was
happening around her. “It was only
when I started working that I started
discovering who I really was and
where my passions lay,” says Grace.
She enjoyed learning about the
human condition; her work required
her to meet people from different
backgrounds and walks of life. And
while life would give her other career
opportunities, her enthusiasm for
learning about the motivations of
people continued to grow, even after
marriage and children.
It was only when her children started
going to pre-school that her passion
would begin to crystallise into
something resembling destiny. “My
children would go to pre-school and
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Family & Life • Christmas 2014
come back still unable to read or do
math,” shares Grace. So, she had to
take it upon herself to educate her
children and prepare them for the
rigours of primary school, not only
giving them an academic foundation
but carving their characters and moral
fibre.
Some might say that a toddler is far
too young to be able to learn about the
world around them but Grace begs
to differ. “Many adolescent problems
can be traced back to the period when
that teenager was three,” says Grace.
She further contends that the most
appropriate time to shape a person’s
worldview and teach him or her the
correct values is between birth and five.
Her passion for children and education
was what led her to pursue that Master’s
degree in education, the one that caused
her mother much consternation.
DESTINY AWAITS
At the age of 40, Grace had finally
decided what she wanted to do in life,
20 years after university and after
riding a roller-coaster of jobs across
different industries. She was going to
set up a pre-school, a place that would
give young children the character
education they need to become morally
upright forces in the world.
It was an ambitious business
undertaking, made even harder by
the fact that Grace had a family – four
children at impressionable ages
Words
Farhan Shah
Photos
Glenn Lim
(12, 10, eight and two) – to raise.
Fortunately, her tireless dedication
to build a solid foundation in her
children paid off in spades during
this period. “We created a culture of
independence at home backed by a
set of rules and in-house teachers’
training programmes. For instance,
I told them that I’m not supposed to
get complaints from teachers about
h