The background to this post is here. So anyway, today I finally got around to taking my little girl for the IQ test.
I didn't tell her that she would be going for a test. I just told her that I was taking her somewhere to play some games. When she asked me what kind of games, I just told her, "Oh, puzzles. Many different kinds of puzzles. They're really fun!".
At the clinic, the psychologist had a brief discussion with me and my wife, and then asked us to leave our daughter behind and come back in 90 minutes. We went off to do some shopping. When we came back, my daughter had completed her IQ test and happily announced to us that the puzzles were really fun and she had enjoyed herself.
We asked the psychologist how my daughter had done. The psychologist said that she couldn't give a definitive answer yet - she had to do some analysis and compute the scores first. However, the rough estimate was that my daughter was well above average on an overall basis, and probably in the gifted range for verbal reasoning, but perhaps not in the gifted range for other areas.
I know the technical term for this. It's "asynchronous development". Human intelligence isn't a single attribute - instead there are about eight different types of human intelligences. For example, a person may be gifted in logic; but average in interpersonal intelligence; and poor in his linguistic intelligence.
Asynchronous development is the term to describe people who are unevenly gifted. The psychologist's comments indicate that my daughter is linguistically gifted - her natural ability to communicate, analyse, reason and express herself by using language is very high - but that she isn't gifted in all other areas.
I guess she takes after her daddy. I know that as a child, I learned to speak, read and write well at an unusually early age (those were my first steps towards becoming, at different times in my life, a top law student; a published poet; a nationally prominent blogger; a litigation lawyer and a writer for the SAF). But at the same time, I also know that I was never smart in the way that my big brother is EQ-smart with people; nor in the way that my other brother is smart with visual images and artistic ideas.
Anyway, it will take some time for the full report on my daughter's IQ to be produced (because the clinic is temporarily closing down for the Christmas and New Year holidays).
I like to think that everyone has a special talent in something, and that the only big difference is that some of us have discovered our gifts, and the rest of us have not. Of course, as a parent, I am particularly interested in helping my own children fulfill their potential.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Tampilkan postingan dengan label education. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label education. Tampilkan semua postingan
Seems Like Everybody Needs Some Kind of Training Nowadays
A few days ago, the Straits Times published this letter: Jan 9, 2009An "intensive parenting course" organised and taught by the Ministry of Education? Heheh. To each his own, but this one is not for me.
FIRST TIME IN SCHOOL
Help parents too
LAST Friday, my daughter entered primary school for the first time. Like any eager parent, I oversaw her first few days in school, including orientation, and attended a curriculum talk by the school.
During this talk, the school emphasised the role of parents and its importance in the child's development. While some parents listened attentively and even took notes, some actually dozed off.
It then dawned on me that, after spending hundreds of dollars on books for my child, I did not buy a single book about parenthood for myself or invest any time or money to be a better parent as my child goes on to the next stage of learning. I felt slightly better when I could not find any book for parents on the booklist given, but I still felt something is wrong.
Primary school is a big step for a child, so I searched the Ministry of Education (MOE) website for anything to help clueless parents like me. I hoped to sign up for an intensive parenting course or at least find a recommended reading list on parenting, but I found only information on the education system.
Parenting is a learning journey for both parent and child. When parents are highly involved with the teacher, the school and the child, the result is a more successful student and learning journey.
I hope MOE views education as a tri-party effort involving teachers, children and parents. A strong parent programme will ensure a stronger casting of character and upgrade the current academic system. While you may not need to win a prize for best parent, seeing your child grow up to be a successful and capable individual is the ultimate prize.
Syu Ying Kwok
And anyway, the principles of good parenting are very simple. You don't need a course to teach you those principles - some common sense would take you a long way. The real challenge is to consistently apply those principles in daily life.
And no MOE course is going to help you with that.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Interpreting Statistics for our Education System
There is plenty of publicly available information about our education system. Interpreting that information, however, is not always easy. Furthermore our media frequently gets it wrong. Here's an example from TODAY:Stumped by math, science at PSLE But Malays did better at‘A’ levels, statistics showHere, the media is providing a snapshot of how the Malays are performing in the education system. The report says that Malay students continue to do worse and worse in maths and science at the PSLE level, but have shown very good improvement at the A-levels. So the reader's overall impression may be that the Malays aren't doing that well, but they aren't doing that badly either (because they managed to do a lot of "catch-up", by the A-level stage).
Tuesday • December 23, 2008
MALAY pupils continued to see a slight dip in performance at the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) — especially in science and math — but showed a marked improvement at the GCE “A” levels as the revised curriculum took effect.
According to the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) annual report card, PSLE science has been a problem subject for Malay pupils, with pass rates going down from a high of 82 per cent in 2000 to 73.6 per cent last year.
It was the same for math, with just 56.8 per cent of Malay pupils passing the PSLE paper last year, compared with 64.6 per cent in 2000.
Chinese pupils had 89.8 per cent passes last year, down from 91.6 per cent in 1999, while Indians saw 74 per cent passes, a marginal fall from 74.7 per cent two years ago.
But Malay pupils made up for the slack at the lower level by registering their best performance in the “A” levels last year — 76.4 per cent getting at least 3A (advanced level) or H2 passes, as well as a pass in General Paper or the new subject, Knowledge and Inquiry — an 11.7 per cent improvement over 2000.
This conclusion is flawed. The simple reason is that the report says nothing about the percentage of Malay students who managed to qualify to take the A-levels at all.
If at the PSLE stage, the Malay students are already so far behind the other races, we know that the Malays must form a disproportionately large number of Singaporeans who drop out of school after the PSLE.
At the O-level stage, the gap widens even further. The latest 2007 statistics (available from the MOE) show that while 85.4% of the Chinese students achieved 5 or more O-level passes, only 59.4% of the Malays students managed to do the same.
In other words, once again a disproportionately large number of Malays will not even qualify for the A-levels (or for the polytechnics - see the cut-off points here as a rough guide). Instead many of these Malay students will have to drop out of school, or go to the Institutes of Technical Education.
As for the Malays who do enter junior college and take the A-levels, it is true that they do close the gap somewhat, relative to the other races. However, the majority of Malay students in each primary school cohort don't even get that far.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Life As A Competition
From the Straits Times of 25 August 2008, an article by 22-year-old Christine Chong.
The interesting answer - it's the result of a collective herd mentality instilled by the education system. Back in the school days, the mentality could be expressed like this: "Your studies should be first priority; don't waste time on other activities." This got imprinted into the minds of the entire generation.
Fast forward to adulthood, and the same imprint is still there. It's just that it has adapted into a new form for those who have finished school: "Your career should be first priority - don't waste time on having children."
In the psychological landscape of Singaporeans, parenthood has become the equivalent of "CCAs". It's the thing you might really, really love to do. But your kiasu instincts are telling you that you can't take the risk; you might not have the time; you might not have the money; and it's much safer to just concentrate on yourhomework job. (Yup, the same job that you don't love, but chose for practical reasons).
Christine Chong posed a good question - "Why must life be a competition?". The problem with competitions is that they have rules, and the rules were made by someone else, not you.
It's okay to compete for a while, and it might even be fun. But you should pick and choose your races. You should also bear in mind that it's all just mind games and you always have the right to refuse to play.
If you don't see that, and you simply live your life as one big, endless competition, then in all likelihood, you'll simply end up living your life, according to someone else's rules. Not your own.
A reader, Kelvin Ng, emailed me last week. He was trying to locate one of my old posts - where I had written something about "life audits". A "life audit" is a time I set aside to reflect, feel and think about how & what I've been doing; and what I want to do next; and why.
It's not about how my peers are living their lives. Or how my boss thinks I should be living mine. Or how my mother would like me to do (which includes buying landed property). Or what society in general might be expecting me to do.
It's about how I want to live my own life.
Here, Kelvin - the link. Try it out. Because in the long run, life just isn't very fun, if you have to keep playing by someone else's rules.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Why must life be a competition?Coincidentally, I was having lunch with a friend yesterday and this topic came up - why are Singaporeans choosing not to have babies?
I ONCE met a trumpet player from the United States and asked him which competitions his school band had taken part in. Stunned, he replied: 'Not everything in life is a competition.'
It was inconceivable to me that students would participate in school bands and other CCAs out of pure interest, and not for points.
It is a tragedy that many Singaporeans believe exams, rankings and stress are necessary evils on the long and winding road to success.
The mantra that 'Your studies should be first priority' is never far from our parents' lips. 'Don't waste too much time on other activities' and 'This is a very important academic year' are close seconds ....
The interesting answer - it's the result of a collective herd mentality instilled by the education system. Back in the school days, the mentality could be expressed like this: "Your studies should be first priority; don't waste time on other activities." This got imprinted into the minds of the entire generation.
Fast forward to adulthood, and the same imprint is still there. It's just that it has adapted into a new form for those who have finished school: "Your career should be first priority - don't waste time on having children."
In the psychological landscape of Singaporeans, parenthood has become the equivalent of "CCAs". It's the thing you might really, really love to do. But your kiasu instincts are telling you that you can't take the risk; you might not have the time; you might not have the money; and it's much safer to just concentrate on your
Christine Chong posed a good question - "Why must life be a competition?". The problem with competitions is that they have rules, and the rules were made by someone else, not you.
It's okay to compete for a while, and it might even be fun. But you should pick and choose your races. You should also bear in mind that it's all just mind games and you always have the right to refuse to play.If you don't see that, and you simply live your life as one big, endless competition, then in all likelihood, you'll simply end up living your life, according to someone else's rules. Not your own.
A reader, Kelvin Ng, emailed me last week. He was trying to locate one of my old posts - where I had written something about "life audits". A "life audit" is a time I set aside to reflect, feel and think about how & what I've been doing; and what I want to do next; and why.
It's not about how my peers are living their lives. Or how my boss thinks I should be living mine. Or how my mother would like me to do (which includes buying landed property). Or what society in general might be expecting me to do.
It's about how I want to live my own life.
Here, Kelvin - the link. Try it out. Because in the long run, life just isn't very fun, if you have to keep playing by someone else's rules.
Gadis Bispak Imut
School, Memory and Real Life
My memory is tremendous. For example, suppose I go to a party, where I know no one except the host, and the host then spends a few minutes quickly introducing the other 20 guests to me. Immediately after that, I can remember every name mentioned, and link it to the right face.
Next example. Suppose you recite to me a list of 20 completely random words - "love, Toyota, radio, blog, snake, Mexico, hurricane, hairstylist ..." and so on. Immediately after that, I can recite back to you all those words, without missing a single one. Furthermore I can recite them back to you ... in the exact order that you had told them to me.
In my previous post, I had said that rote learning plays an inordinately large role in our education system. You might be thinking now that since my memory is so good, I must have found school very easy. Unfortunately, my memory wasn't so good when I was a student.
My memory became so good only much later, when I had already finished school. It all started when I chanced upon a few books on memory techniques, the back cover of which typically made rather outrageous-sounding claims.
For example, the book might claim that you would be able to remember up to 100 items in perfect order, and it will take you no more than 20 minutes to do this. And the items could be names; addresses; telephone numbers; important historical dates; key points from your science textbook etc.
In fact the claims are not outrageous. They are genuine. You don't have to be a genius either. You just have to put in the effort to understand a few key principles and practise the special memory techniques - one famous one is the Roman Room method.
And hey presto, with a bit of practice, indeed you will have a memory that's simply phenomenal, compared to the average person.
You can see these memory techniques taken to their extreme, at events like the World Memory Championships (the mind equivalent of the Olympics). Here's one of their events - Random Words. Each contestant has to memorise 400 random words, organised in 20 columns of 20 words each. And how much time do they have to memorise? Just 15 minutes.
One might believe that a highly powerful memory is extremely useful in life. I don't really agree. It's good not to be absent-minded, but it's very easy to over-estimate the practical value of a highly powerful memory. I would say that a powerful memory is extremely useful, if you are a Singapore student. However, today I honestly have very little use for my memory techniques, powerful though they may be. Let me explain.
If I want to go shopping for groceries, I still make a written shopping list. Why? Well, the very process of writing out the list helps me to work out what I need to buy. And once I've written out the list, why should I bother to memorise it? I can just put the list in my pocket and take it with me to the supermarket. That takes no effort at all.
Suppose someone gives me his handphone number. I could memorise the number, or I could just store it in my own handphone. I choose the latter approach. Why? Because both approaches take the same amount of time - a few seconds - and if I store the number in my handphone, later I can speed-dial the number straightaway (no need to manually key in all 8 numbers).
At work, there is a set of standard legal documents which I constantly need to refer to. They relate to standard terms used by the international financial markets for trading in foreign exchange, commodities, credit risk etc. And each document consists of many pages of technical definitions and legal jargon, basically a lot of small print.
If I really wanted to, I could use my memory techniques to memorise the clauses. But why even bother? I can just put the documents at the side of my desk, within easy reach (and in fact, that's where they are). Whenever I need to, I can just reach out, take the right document, flip to the relevant page and check whatever I want to check.
I mean, I'm working. This is real life, not an exam. I don't score any extra marks for memorising documents that are already sitting on my table.
By now, you will see that in real life, a highly powerful memory is not that important. It's very valuable only in school, and that's because many things in school (especially Singapore schools) are accomplished by rote learning.
In real life though, rote learning is largely irrelevant. Because in real life, you don't waste time memorising information that's easily retrievable from your handphone, hard disk, emails or hard-copy files. You could also just open a textbook - and read it. Photocopy a page, if you need to. No need to memorise at all.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Next example. Suppose you recite to me a list of 20 completely random words - "love, Toyota, radio, blog, snake, Mexico, hurricane, hairstylist ..." and so on. Immediately after that, I can recite back to you all those words, without missing a single one. Furthermore I can recite them back to you ... in the exact order that you had told them to me.
In my previous post, I had said that rote learning plays an inordinately large role in our education system. You might be thinking now that since my memory is so good, I must have found school very easy. Unfortunately, my memory wasn't so good when I was a student.
My memory became so good only much later, when I had already finished school. It all started when I chanced upon a few books on memory techniques, the back cover of which typically made rather outrageous-sounding claims.For example, the book might claim that you would be able to remember up to 100 items in perfect order, and it will take you no more than 20 minutes to do this. And the items could be names; addresses; telephone numbers; important historical dates; key points from your science textbook etc.
In fact the claims are not outrageous. They are genuine. You don't have to be a genius either. You just have to put in the effort to understand a few key principles and practise the special memory techniques - one famous one is the Roman Room method.
And hey presto, with a bit of practice, indeed you will have a memory that's simply phenomenal, compared to the average person.
You can see these memory techniques taken to their extreme, at events like the World Memory Championships (the mind equivalent of the Olympics). Here's one of their events - Random Words. Each contestant has to memorise 400 random words, organised in 20 columns of 20 words each. And how much time do they have to memorise? Just 15 minutes.
One might believe that a highly powerful memory is extremely useful in life. I don't really agree. It's good not to be absent-minded, but it's very easy to over-estimate the practical value of a highly powerful memory. I would say that a powerful memory is extremely useful, if you are a Singapore student. However, today I honestly have very little use for my memory techniques, powerful though they may be. Let me explain.
If I want to go shopping for groceries, I still make a written shopping list. Why? Well, the very process of writing out the list helps me to work out what I need to buy. And once I've written out the list, why should I bother to memorise it? I can just put the list in my pocket and take it with me to the supermarket. That takes no effort at all.
Suppose someone gives me his handphone number. I could memorise the number, or I could just store it in my own handphone. I choose the latter approach. Why? Because both approaches take the same amount of time - a few seconds - and if I store the number in my handphone, later I can speed-dial the number straightaway (no need to manually key in all 8 numbers).
At work, there is a set of standard legal documents which I constantly need to refer to. They relate to standard terms used by the international financial markets for trading in foreign exchange, commodities, credit risk etc. And each document consists of many pages of technical definitions and legal jargon, basically a lot of small print.
If I really wanted to, I could use my memory techniques to memorise the clauses. But why even bother? I can just put the documents at the side of my desk, within easy reach (and in fact, that's where they are). Whenever I need to, I can just reach out, take the right document, flip to the relevant page and check whatever I want to check.
I mean, I'm working. This is real life, not an exam. I don't score any extra marks for memorising documents that are already sitting on my table.
By now, you will see that in real life, a highly powerful memory is not that important. It's very valuable only in school, and that's because many things in school (especially Singapore schools) are accomplished by rote learning.
In real life though, rote learning is largely irrelevant. Because in real life, you don't waste time memorising information that's easily retrievable from your handphone, hard disk, emails or hard-copy files. You could also just open a textbook - and read it. Photocopy a page, if you need to. No need to memorise at all.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Education and The Great Pain of Rather Useless Things
An article about PM Lee's National Day Rally speech:
Gadis Bispak Imut
ST Aug 18, 2008
Let Kids Learn At Own Pace
PARENTS who complain that the education system here is stressful for their children should look at other Asian countries where it can be worse.
In South Korea, there is a school where students can snatch only a few hours of rest each day, are not allowed to make friends or keep items like magazines in their bags.
It is like a prison, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally speech on Sunday night.
'We are not like that. We have some stress but we should manage it, we should take it in our stride,' he said.
He referred to the South Korean school when highlighting to parents that some stress in school was inevitable.
But he reminded parents that they should also let their children grow and learn at their own pace.
He noted that parents push their children further by sending them for extra enrichment lessons.
And during examination, they would ply their children with chicken essence.
Singapore's competitive school system has been named as a culprit by couples who choose to have no or few children.
But, Mr Lee said: 'I think some pressure is inevitable. It is part of Singapore's competitive spirit.
'Other East Asian societies are even more ruthlessly competitive.'
I like the general theme of PM Lee’s speech, but I think he still missed the point. Frankly I do not care whether our schools are more or less stressful than those in Korea, or Japan, or anywhere else.
Here’s the more important question. After all that stress, what do our students actually get out of it?
In my own school days, I spent many hours memorizing the structure and details of the Periodic Table in chemistry. From Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I memorized large chunks of verse, word for word, line by line, because that was the way to score an A1 for Literature. In mathematics, I learned to do complex calculations involving an imaginary number called “i”.
None of the above knowledge is relevant to my life now. After junior college, I’ve never had any reason to look at the Periodic Table again. Macbeth was enjoyable, but it would have been much more enjoyable if I didn’t have to spend dozens of hours committing it to memory. And as a matter of fact, the last time I used an imaginary number was during the very last maths exam of my life – nowhere else, since then.
Most of the substantive formal content we learn in school ultimately has no relevance to the rest of our lives. This isn’t such a bad thing, if in school we just had to walk through the substantive content, gain some understanding, grasp the key principles and move on. We never really know what we might need to know, later in life (I might have become a chemist, an actor or an imaginary mathematician), but if we do understand the key principles, we'll be able to figure our way through.
Unfortunately, I think that our education system still heavily emphasises regurgitation over real understanding. Our schools still require tremendous volumes of rote learning. This is where most of the stress arises. In the typical Singapore school, we do not merely miss the wood for the trees. Instead, for the sake of our exams, we desperately memorise the bark, the twigs, the useless fallen dead leaves - and we will be punished for failing to do so.
Our students suffer great, continual stress, as they strive to master things that will have absolutely no relevance to the rest of their lives.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Education - The Government Still Doesn't Get It
In April 2008, Ng Eng Hen became our new Education Minister. Yesterday he gave a speech.
That does sound like a sensible idea. However, it is also an utterly obvious idea. Considering the size of Ng's salary (about two million dollars a year), surely one might have expected him to offer a more compelling, powerful or innovative blueprint for Singapore's education system.
It really doesn't take a genius to come up with a plan like "hire more people" and "hire better people". My grandmother could have thought of that.
I browsed several media reports on this event. My impression was that in fact, the most insightful observations did not come from Ng Eng Hen, but from members of the audience. For example, this is what one Mrs Angeline Soo had to say:
To be fair, Ng Eng Hen did discuss the importance of values. However, he did it in an oh-so-typically-Singaporean wrong sort of way. This is what he said:
And when Ng says "structure", he means that we must develop some kind of teaching plan, such as a syllabus or an MOE-approved textbook, so that a teacher has the necessary materials to stand up in a classroom and systematically teach "values" to 30 kids. And maybe give them some homework questions to do.
This would be the right way to teach maths. This would be the right way to teach science. This would be the right way to teach any subject of an academic nature. However, in my opinion, this would be a wrong way to teach values.
Values can be learned, but they cannot really be "taught". They are absorbed, naturally, as if by osmosis, through personal experience and observation.
For example, at home, you could "teach" love to your little children, by giving them lectures from a book and making them memorise their lecture notes. But if in fact you treat them unkindly and also quarrel with your spouse every week, then love is simply not going to be a value that your children understand.
On the other hand, if your family is a close, loving one, then the children do not need to be taught the value of "love". They wouldn't need a classroom lesson in it. Simply by watching how Mum and Dad treat each other, the kids learn about love everyday. It would be a value that naturally instils in them.
Currently, our students do acquire values, as a result of being in school. In fact, this is an inevitable process. But the values that they truly acquire are not the ones that the teachers deliberately teach, as part of a formal plan like National Education.
Instead the values that the students truly acquire are simply the result of their personal experiences in school. It is an automatic, ongoing and largely unconscious process.
For example, suppose I am a science teacher. Every day, I may encourage students to ask questions freely. Or I may ridicule those who waste my time by asking "stupid" questions.
I may encourage curiosity and exploration. Or I may insist on a rigid adherence to the exam syllabus, to maximise the students' chances of scoring well.
If a student does badly, I might scold him and say, "I think you'd better drop this subject. I don't want you to drag down the school's overall scores!". Or I might tell him that it's important to keep trying and not give up.
I may choose to lavish praise on the students who score the highest marks. Or I may choose to lavish praise on students who try hard and show improvement (even if they still aren't scoring A's).
I may tell students, "If your dream is to be a doctor and help sick people, you should definitely choose to study Biology." Or instead I may say, "If you want to be rich, you'd better study Biology and become a doctor one day."
Those are just a few examples. In each case, I create a different kind of experience for my students, and they absorb a different kind of value. The effect goes well beyond Science. The students' attitudes in life are being formed and shaped.
In other words, they're learning values - even though I was only teaching Science.
Now, here we should stop to ask ourselves - what kind of experiences are our students having in school? How are these experiences shaping their values? What values did YOU learn in school?
Gadis Bispak Imut
ST Aug 15, 2008I found the speech quite lacking in vision. It seems that Ng Eng Hen's only concrete plan was to "raise the number of teachers" and get "more with higher qualifications".
Next step for schools
It's time now to go beyond grades: Education Minister
By Amelia Tan
SINGAPORE'S education system has been very successful at the nuts and bolts - it churns out top students, and is ranked highly worldwide - but it is now time for it to evolve.
Parents these days are more educated and demanding, while children are more questioning and learn in different ways, and the system needs to keep up with rising expectations.
It needs to do more than simply churn out students with good grades, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said yesterday in a speech at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
At the end of the day, he said, education in Singapore needs to 'nurture each child to believe in himself and be self-sufficient, to care for his fellow man, and to be able to contribute to the larger society around him'.
To turn out such students, several things are needed, Dr Ng said.
At the top of the list: Raising the number of teachers, and getting more with higher qualifications, so that more can be done to develop students.
That does sound like a sensible idea. However, it is also an utterly obvious idea. Considering the size of Ng's salary (about two million dollars a year), surely one might have expected him to offer a more compelling, powerful or innovative blueprint for Singapore's education system.
It really doesn't take a genius to come up with a plan like "hire more people" and "hire better people". My grandmother could have thought of that.
I browsed several media reports on this event. My impression was that in fact, the most insightful observations did not come from Ng Eng Hen, but from members of the audience. For example, this is what one Mrs Angeline Soo had to say:
EXAMS, rankings and stress.Maybe SHE should be the Education Minister, LOL. She certainly seems more in touch with the real issues.
That is what some parents think Singapore's education system is all about.
Mrs Angeline Soo, 42, a part-time Master in Public Administration student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, is one.
And at a question-and-answer session after Education Minister Ng Eng Hen delivered a speech there yesterday, she let him know it.
Mrs Soo complained that her 13-year-old daughter could not join her school's dance team as she was told she was 'not good enough'.
The school could lose its niche in dance if the team admitted less talented students, she said.
Her question: Would such intense focus on short-term 'key performance indicators' hinder the long-term development of students?
........ Speaking to The Straits Times later, Mrs Soo, who is also a manager at U21Global, an online graduate school, said she was satisfied that Dr Ng wanted the system to change.
However, she was concerned that his goals might be 'lost in translation'.
'When the top decides something and it starts filtering down and the next level interprets it...it may become another numbers game, driven towards certain goals that they think the minister wants to see,' she said.
But she added that parents also had to be more involved in the holistic development of their children.
Mrs Soo said she tries not to pressure her kids as they are stressed out by the expectations of their teachers, schools and peers.
'Parents are too driven and focused on results. There is a need to look at the child in his or her entirety.
'We need to look at character and emotional development, and I don't see that happening with a lot of parents,' she added.
To be fair, Ng Eng Hen did discuss the importance of values. However, he did it in an oh-so-typically-Singaporean wrong sort of way. This is what he said:
"We must maintain this academic rigour and continue our emphasis on maths and science ... But increasingly, we will have to create space and structure to infuse our education system to impart values and not just grades to students."Let me tell you what I think is on Ng's mind. When he says "space", he means that we must get schools to re-jig their schedules, reorganise the school calendar, and make some time available in the class timetables, for teachers to talk about "values" to the students. Fit it in, like an extra subject.
And when Ng says "structure", he means that we must develop some kind of teaching plan, such as a syllabus or an MOE-approved textbook, so that a teacher has the necessary materials to stand up in a classroom and systematically teach "values" to 30 kids. And maybe give them some homework questions to do.
This would be the right way to teach maths. This would be the right way to teach science. This would be the right way to teach any subject of an academic nature. However, in my opinion, this would be a wrong way to teach values.
Values can be learned, but they cannot really be "taught". They are absorbed, naturally, as if by osmosis, through personal experience and observation.
For example, at home, you could "teach" love to your little children, by giving them lectures from a book and making them memorise their lecture notes. But if in fact you treat them unkindly and also quarrel with your spouse every week, then love is simply not going to be a value that your children understand.
On the other hand, if your family is a close, loving one, then the children do not need to be taught the value of "love". They wouldn't need a classroom lesson in it. Simply by watching how Mum and Dad treat each other, the kids learn about love everyday. It would be a value that naturally instils in them.
Currently, our students do acquire values, as a result of being in school. In fact, this is an inevitable process. But the values that they truly acquire are not the ones that the teachers deliberately teach, as part of a formal plan like National Education.
Instead the values that the students truly acquire are simply the result of their personal experiences in school. It is an automatic, ongoing and largely unconscious process.
For example, suppose I am a science teacher. Every day, I may encourage students to ask questions freely. Or I may ridicule those who waste my time by asking "stupid" questions.
I may encourage curiosity and exploration. Or I may insist on a rigid adherence to the exam syllabus, to maximise the students' chances of scoring well.
If a student does badly, I might scold him and say, "I think you'd better drop this subject. I don't want you to drag down the school's overall scores!". Or I might tell him that it's important to keep trying and not give up.
I may choose to lavish praise on the students who score the highest marks. Or I may choose to lavish praise on students who try hard and show improvement (even if they still aren't scoring A's).
I may tell students, "If your dream is to be a doctor and help sick people, you should definitely choose to study Biology." Or instead I may say, "If you want to be rich, you'd better study Biology and become a doctor one day."
Those are just a few examples. In each case, I create a different kind of experience for my students, and they absorb a different kind of value. The effect goes well beyond Science. The students' attitudes in life are being formed and shaped.
In other words, they're learning values - even though I was only teaching Science.
Now, here we should stop to ask ourselves - what kind of experiences are our students having in school? How are these experiences shaping their values? What values did YOU learn in school?
Gadis Bispak Imut
Life And How To Survive It
Today I have an old friend as my guest contributor. Adrian Tan is a litigation lawyer at one of Singapore's leading law firms. Outside the courtroom, he is known for a variety of funny things, including The Teenage Textbook, which he wrote in the late 1980s. The book became a cult classic among students of that generation and was adapted into a film 10 years later.Adrian had read my previous post and emailed to tell me that by coincidence, he'd just given a speech along the same theme. Cherian George had invited Adrian to be the guest-of-honour at an NTU convocation ceremony last week, and this is Adrian's speech to the graduating class of 2008:
Life and How to Survive It
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan "Arbeit macht frei" was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Your Education And Other Miscellaneous Regrets
A rather charming coincidence. Just two days ago, I wrote these words:
The rest of us have to go by a process of elimination. By late adolescence, the average person is more likely to know what he's not cut out to do, rather than what he is. For instance, the person may know very clearly that he has no aptitude for numbers; and has no talent for sales; and has a strong tendency for seasickness. That tells him what jobs he should avoid. But he is much more uncertain about what he's good at or what he really enjoys.
The problem is more intense in Singapore, due to our pragmatic culture. Young Singaporeans don't generally grow up with the idea that they should explore and discover their own individual interests and strengths. Instead, they grow up being told that they should seek to excel in what the school wants them to excel in.
The education system itself - and it is a powerful one - is configured to systematically classify and categorise students, and channel them in specific directions towards fulfilling the nation's perceived economic needs. The culture perpetuates itself. Beyond the policies and the programmes, it is a mindset. To go against the system is to take a risk, and our culture has developed to be one that's highly adverse to risk-taking.
That observation was often made, back in the early 2000s, when the Singapore government tried to promote entrepreneurship through various incentives and schemes. (Notice that since then, the government has fallen silent about those efforts. Basically, they didn't work too well).
Pragmatism has bitten the government elsewhere too. Despite the government's efforts to encourage more people to have babies, our birth rates are falling. And many people decide against becoming parents, for purely pragmatic considerations. For example, a reader commented on my previous post as follows:
Just remember though. Pragmatism, if overdone, can have its drawbacks. One of them is regret - about the paths in life you might have taken, but never did. Marriage is one example of such a path; parenthood is another. Career is the third example - see the ST article above.
Gadis Bispak Imut
"In a future post, it will be interesting to explore the reasons why so few Singaporeans enjoy their careers. Personally, I think it all begins with the way the education system pushes students to choose courses which are "useful", "practical" or "in-demand" (rather than the courses for which the student has a genuine interest). But for now, let's just stick to the baby issue."Then yesterday, the Straits Times published this article:
A tiny minority of people are born lucky. They arrive on this planet with such prodigious natural gifts that there can be little doubt as to what their true calling is. Mozart, uncannily musical as early as age three, is one example. Steve Irwin, in love with a 4-metre pet python at age six, is another. There is no choice - they have to do what they have to do, and since choice is actually a dilemma, there is no dilemma for them.ST July 30, 2008
More than half of workers in S'pore regret choice of study
By Clarissa Oon
A GLOBAL recruitment company has found that more than half of workers in Singapore regret what they chose to study back in school, polytechnic or university.
One in three is also uncertain about their ultimate career choice, according to an online survey by Kelly Services. It was released on Wednesday.
The findings are distilled from the answers given by more than 2,000 people who had sought Kelly Services help to land a job. They form part of it global survey of 115,000 people by its offices in 33 countries.
People of all age groups, educational levels and professions took part and in Singapore, most were in business, engineering, financial services and information technology.One person who can identify with the survey results is Ms Aileen Toh, 34, a legal officer for 10 years.
'A lot of times, I have wondered if I could have done something else, but I was never sure enough to make a complete career switch', she says.
She considered, but ultimately turned down, a marketing job in a charity several years ago because she was not sure if the work suited her and if there were long-term career prospects.
The rest of us have to go by a process of elimination. By late adolescence, the average person is more likely to know what he's not cut out to do, rather than what he is. For instance, the person may know very clearly that he has no aptitude for numbers; and has no talent for sales; and has a strong tendency for seasickness. That tells him what jobs he should avoid. But he is much more uncertain about what he's good at or what he really enjoys.
The problem is more intense in Singapore, due to our pragmatic culture. Young Singaporeans don't generally grow up with the idea that they should explore and discover their own individual interests and strengths. Instead, they grow up being told that they should seek to excel in what the school wants them to excel in.
The education system itself - and it is a powerful one - is configured to systematically classify and categorise students, and channel them in specific directions towards fulfilling the nation's perceived economic needs. The culture perpetuates itself. Beyond the policies and the programmes, it is a mindset. To go against the system is to take a risk, and our culture has developed to be one that's highly adverse to risk-taking.
That observation was often made, back in the early 2000s, when the Singapore government tried to promote entrepreneurship through various incentives and schemes. (Notice that since then, the government has fallen silent about those efforts. Basically, they didn't work too well).
Pragmatism has bitten the government elsewhere too. Despite the government's efforts to encourage more people to have babies, our birth rates are falling. And many people decide against becoming parents, for purely pragmatic considerations. For example, a reader commented on my previous post as follows:
You can't fault a person for thinking like this. Firstly, it's his own life, and secondly, the reasoning has its own logic."I'm male 40 single and not planning to marry. Even if I do, I will not want to have children. Why?
I spent the last 10 to 15 years working hard to reach my current position in a electronic manufacturing industry(not very high, comfortable enough).
Now with the high cost of living and in-flood of FT, I don't think I will change my mind on marriage.
Besides worrying about losing my job, I'm stuck with it. Hate it but can't live without it."
Just remember though. Pragmatism, if overdone, can have its drawbacks. One of them is regret - about the paths in life you might have taken, but never did. Marriage is one example of such a path; parenthood is another. Career is the third example - see the ST article above.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Thinking About Critical Thinking
A reader, AM, writes from Melbourne University to tell me that he is a final-year law student. Recently he has had to write many legal essays. AM wonders how he can learn to think more critically. Evidently he feels that his earlier education in Singapore has disadvantaged him: "Of course at this time, being a Singaporean, I would readily point the blame finger at the government and MOE for creating a flawed system where schools do not encourage critical thinking but hard memorization and accurate application (or maybe that was just my school only). So I was just wondering, how does one develop critical thinking if the system we are in doesn't necessarily encourage it?"Personally I am very interested in the mind. But less interested in critical thinking. While critical thinking is no doubt a useful tool, my personal adventures into the intuitive right brain (via meditation, self-hypnosis and certain other esoteric methods) have made me a little wary of the dangers of over-reliance on the logical left brain.
I'm sure that the above statement will surprise, perhaps even upset, some people. And it is not exactly the easiest thing to explain to a general audience via a blog post. So I shall not elaborate. Not now anyway.
Back to the left brain then. Here are six questions about critical thinking:
1. What is it?
2. Who said so?
3. Why should I be interested?
4. Where can I use it?
5. When shall I use it?
6. How can I apply it?
Guess what, I am not providing the answers. I posed those six questions just to demonstrate a certain critical thinking skill. It's called asking questions. This one, specifically, is known as 5W1H.
The five W's are what, who, why, where and when, and the one H is how. 5W1H was originally conceived as a journalistic tool. Out in the field, reporters would use 5W1H as a mental checklist to generate questions and make sure they cover all the basic facts needed for their news story. Now 5W1H shows up in all sorts of other places, such as in the Six Sigma processes.
As far as AM's law school adventures are concerned, 5W1H can be applied as follows. Suppose you are reading a legal article where the good professor is expounding certain opinions. Since he writes persuasively, you feel inclined to agree. On the other hand, if you wish to consider his article more critically, you simply generate questions to consider. Such as - what is he really saying here? Who would agree with this? Who wouldn't? Why not? What is the justification for this point? Where are the examples? What are the alternative views? When would this idea fail? And so on.
You might not have expected that such a simple thing as asking questions would be so important as to merit its own special acronym "5W1H". Well, it just goes to show you that critical thinking isn't that difficult, after all. On the other hand, many of us know from our personal experiences that Singapore's teachers often implicitly discourage questions, especially if the question strays outside the confines of the school syllabus. And over the years, many Singaporeans will forget how to ask questions. So perhaps we do need to remind ourselves about 5W1H. In fact, asking good questions is probably the most important thing that an MP can do in Parliament.
Not to flog a very dead horse, but there's a useful illustration from April this year:
Mr Low Thia Khiang: "Did MHA conduct regular audits at the Whitley Road Detention Centre (WRDC) prior to the escape of Mas Selamat?"Paragraph 1 of Wong Kan Seng's answer was irrelevant to the question. Paragraph 2 of his answer was also irrelevant. Well, no, not exactly, they did serve a purpose. They distracted people.
Mr Wong Kan Seng: "The WRDC and the Gurkha Contingent guards have their respective procedures. When the detainees are in the cell block, they are watched by a significant number of guards. The ratio of guards is more than what one can see in the prison.
When they're taken to other blocks, most of those movements are in passageways that are enclosed and they're also blindfolded, to keep them from familiarising themselves with the surroundings.
The only thing that ought to have been done better is a regular system check and audit. These will now be carried out on a regular basis."
Now, look at Low's question again. And then just focus on the only relevant part of Wong's answer:
"The only thing that ought to have been done better is a regular system check and audit. These will now be carried out on a regular basis."What would be the most natural follow-up question you would ask?
Probably something like this:
"Did MHA ever conduct any audit at WRDC at all? If so, when?"The question was not asked. So we will never know the answer. We do know what happened next. Various lowly MHA officers were punished for the Mas Selamat escape, while the Minister was completely unscathed. In fact, he was the one handing out punishments.
But what if the question had been asked? And what if the truthful answer was that not only was there no regular audit system, but there had been no audit at all, for many years. For example, what if the answer turned out to be something like this:
"WDRC has never been audited. Not even once, ever since I became Home Affairs Minister fourteen years ago, back in 1994. As a matter of fact, we've simply never bothered to audit any of our prisons and detention centres for security."Under such circumstances, I think that it would be more difficult for PM Lee to assert so blithely in Parliament that it is unthinkable for Wong Kan Seng to be punished.
But then we don't know. We probably never will. The right question wasn't asked; it was never asked; Wong didn't have to answer it; and so, the political history of Singapore took a certain turn, and went on in a certain way. As I predicted quite long ago, Wong Kan Seng managed to make the Great Escape.
Gadis Bispak Imut
The Search For Political Leaders
That was a joke, of course. Barack Obama never said such a ridiculous thing. And no sensible American would care what grades Hillary scored in high school. Hillary herself would probably have forgotten. In the quest for the best presidential candidate, there must surely be many better things to focus on.
Tragically, this joke is not a joke in Singapore. The search is on for the next Prime Minister of Singapore. And from the sound of it, A-level grades are an important criterion:
ST April 2, 2008We learn that PM Lee Hsien Loong wants to groom his potential successor over a 15-year period. Possible candidates should now be in their 30s or early 40s - let's say they are about 37 years old, on average. The actual successor would take office as PM around the year 2023.
PM still looking for his successor
It takes about three elections to groom a leader, so there's no time to lose, he says
By Lydia Lim
THE Prime Minister faces an urgent task: Find and field those who can take over from him before he turns 70.
Already 56, Mr Lee Hsien Loong is seeking political talent in their 30s and early 40s, one of whom he hopes will emerge as his successor.
He has no time to lose as past experience indicates that it takes about three general elections to groom a leader.
This means those who contest the next polls, due by 2011, might be ready to lead only two elections after that.
By then, Mr Lee will be 69 years old.
'That is very late. So there's no time to be lost,' he said in an interview with The Straits Times and Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao at the Istana yesterday.
...... Of concern to him is the outflow of top talent abroad.
He looked at recent data on the 600-odd students who score four As in their A levels each year.
About two-thirds pursue university degrees here, and one-third go overseas.
Of those who go overseas, at least 100 are not on scholarships. About half of these non-scholarship holders do not return but work abroad after they graduate.
In addition, another 100 of those who get their degrees here go overseas to work. They may come back one day but there is no guarantee.
'This flow is going to continue,' Mr Lee said.
'So it's a big challenge to find successors, particularly for politics.'
Thus we may say that whether you become the Prime Minister of Singapore at the age of 51 depends on how well you scored in your A-levels, at the age of 17.
Farsightedness is a virtue. A neurotic obsession with academic grades is not.
In 2008, it would be somewhat insane to scrutinise Hillary Clinton's or Barack Obama's high school grades, as a basis for selecting the next presidential candidate.
And in my opinion, it would be just as insane to choose to groom a Prime Minister to take office in 2023, on the basis of the A-level grades he scored as a teenager, 34 years earlier, in 1989.
Now of course, PM Lee Hsien Loong will not use A-level grades as his sole selection criterion. But the fact that he uses A-level grades as a selection criterion at all is quite shocking.
In my opinion, A-level grades are just simply quite irrelevant. Even if you were the best A-level student in the whole of Singapore, this demonstrates nothing about your ability to lead a nation. And conversely, even if you flunked your Chemistry paper, this doesn't mean that you can't lead a nation.
Also one of the greatest leaders in the history of Europe.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Lives of Dark & Quiet Desperation
ST Feb 15, 2008What kind of parents wouldn't send their children to primary school?
Refuse to send your kids to school? Govt may step in
MOE may consider taking parents of six children to court if they do not respond to counselling
By Theresa Tan
THE Education Ministry (MOE) may have to consider court action against some parents who have refused to send their children to school.
The six children involved have stopped school for some time, or only show up for classes from time to time despite extensive counselling and mediation.
If the ministry presses charges, it will be the first time it is doing so under the Compulsory Education Act, which was implemented in 2003.
The Act stipulates that anyone who fails to ensure that his child attends school shall be guilty of an offence.
If convicted, the person may be fined up to $5,000 or jailed up to a year, or both.
The authorities say they may have to consider using 'penal sanctions' because of the parents' poor response to counselling efforts by the schools involved and the Singapore Children's Society, a charity engaged by the ministry to counsel parents who do not enrol their children for Primary 1 classes.
In some cases, social workers have been trying to change the parents' minds for the last three years, but have come up empty.
When contacted by The Straits Times, the Children's Society said it was not authorised to give more details about the six cases.
But according to the ministry, there are several reasons why the children are 'not attending school regularly or stopped attending school for some time':
They come from dysfunctional families.
They have indifferent or lax parents.
They also may be influenced by older siblings who are school dropouts.
Opinion was divided on whether charging the parents would solve the problem or make matters worse.
Many kinds, actually. Let's see. Daddy could be dead, in jail, schizophrenic or completely broke. Mummy could be suicidal, alcoholic, disabled or regularly getting beaten up by her lovers. Or any permutation of the above.
So the kids have a big problem and it isn't the kind that is necessarily solved by fining or jailing one or both parents for not sending the kids to school. In fact, criminal punishment could well make things worse.
When I was a Deputy Public Prosecutor, I had sneak peeks into many lives of dark and quiet desperation. There are many people out there with huge personal problems, and some of them would end up in police files, and so I saw my fair share of them.
Today, as I type this, I recall one particular case of mine that crossed my desk many years ago. The man had been arrested for drug trafficking, following a dramatic CNB raid on his HDB flat. He, like his lover, was a drug addict.
The woman was pregnant. We had some suspicion that she too was a drug trafficker, but the evidence was too weak and so we proceeded on consumption and possession charges against her. As she was a repeat offender, she would be spending a long time in jail.
Whatever happened to that baby? Did the woman eventually give birth in prison? Who looks after babies whose mothers are still convicts? And if the baby was born at all, was it born normal? Or was its health permanently damaged by its mother's heavy drug abuse?
I don't know. I get sneak peeks, that is all, into these other lives. I read the police files, I appear in court, I prosecute my cases. Then I close the file and I move on with my own life, just as everyone else has to move on. Criminals and victims included.
That baby, if it had been born and if it had survived, should be a 7-year-old child by now. Time for primary school. Dear baby, do you even know your mother's name?
Gadis Bispak Imut
How To Teach Your Kids To Read
ST Jan 30, 2008This article makes me feel a little sad. It's not that difficult for parents to teach their little kids to read.
Revamp to Reading Scheme Ups Its Pass Rate
Instead of remedial lessons, English Learning Support Programme focuses on skills
By Ho Ai Li
AN IMPROVED version of a programme that helps pupils who are weak in English has led to higher passing rates for them, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said yesterday.
The scheme, known as the Learning Support Programme (LSP) for English, emphasises pronunciation and recognition. Under it, pupils who had barely understood two-letter words later learnt how to read long passages and passed their exams.
Around 65 per cent of the 402 Primary 2 pupils in this pilot scheme eventually made the grade compared to only 40 per cent previously, the ministry said.
The new scheme has made such a difference that it has been rolled out in all primary schools.
Around 5,600 pupils who are less proficient in reading than their peers will come under this scheme. This comprises up to 14 per cent of each Primary 1 cohort.
While the old lessons were remedial and no different from the usual English classes, the new ones focus on skills, said Ms Thoo Mei Lan, a senior reading specialist at MOE.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Masagos Zulkifli gave reporters an update yesterday, saying that the ministry had looked into improving the LSP as its pass rate had been 'hovering at 40 per cent for a long time'.
Many pupils start Primary 1 not being able to read words like 'on' or 'is', said Ms Thoo.
Now, they are taught to recognise the letters of the alphabet and to decode and spell words. After going through the programme, they should be able to read even polysyllabic words such as 'sapphire', she added.
My son knew all the letters of the alphabet even before he could talk. (If you wrote out all 26 letters of the alphabet, he would be able to correctly point out whatever letter you randomly asked him to point out). Before he could even hold a pen properly, he could already spell words like “cat”, “dog” or “house”.
My daughter is three years old and can recognize probably around 200 different words with no conscious effort. She has a good grasp of phonics and that enables her to break down more complicated words (“COM-PLI-CA-TED”) and figure out how they sound, even if she doesn’t know the meaning.
What’s the simplest way to teach a toddler his ABCs? Put him in front of a TV, and play a Sesame Street VCD. That’s it.
As the child progresses, you substitute with more advanced VCDs. I highly recommend “Between the Lions”, for kids who have learned their ABCs and moving on to learn simple words. The storylines are so wickedly humorous and entertaining and the music so good that as an adult, I enjoy watching the show too.
Many people think that TV is bad for kids, but that has not been my experience. In my opinion, it largely depends on what programmes you let them watch. These days, plenty of excellent children’s shows are available. You just have to choose intelligently.
Of course, books are also of vital importance.
The trick to teaching a little kid to read is to make it fun. There should be no coercion or pressure – it would kill the kid’s natural joy for learning.
Buy a wide variety of children’s books and leave them in your kid’s room. Always let the kid choose what he wants to read. If the kid loses interest halfway and doesn’t want to read anymore, just stop right then.
Where can you get lots of good children’s books, without burning a hole in your wallet? Look out for the book sales by Times or the National Library, at the Singapore Expo. At these events, books go at extra cheap prices. Buy in bulk. I go to these events with my suitcase, no kidding.
If you don’t want to wait for these events, go to the Children’s Book Store on the 4th floor of Bras Basah Complex. This is a place where kindergartens and playschools regularly source for children’s books. You get brand new books here at very cheap prices – most books would be between $3 and $8.
When you read to your child, be sensitive to the material. Different books can be used, and are designed to be used, in different ways.
Don’t read like a tape recorder. Keep the process interactive. Give the kid time to point and poke at the pictures. Before you turn the page, ask the kid to guess what’s going to happen next.
Read dramatically. Act out the story as you go along. Ask your child supply the sound effects (for example, if you are reading a story about the Dark, Dark Woods, ask him to howl like a lonely wolf).
As your child’s reading skills improve, take turns with him to do the reading – get him to try reading the next word, or sentence or paragraph. Invite questions – talk about the animals, or the flowers, or different countries, or good manners, or whatever the book is about.
Young kids often like to read the same book again and again. This is normal – they need the repetition to learn. Don’t be impatient or bored. Get innovative in the way you read. Entertain them, and yourself.
Reading with your child is a good way to bond. It’s also like aerobic exercise. 20 minutes a day, three or four times a week, is enough for excellent results.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Safety in the Syllabus
While we're still on the topic of education, I'll share a few thoughts on a recent interesting experience of mine.
Last week I took a day off from work, to give a talk at a secondary school. The other guest speaker was Stella Kon, one of Singapore's best-known playwrights. We spoke about creative writing, to an audience of about 60 literature students.
By the way, I don't get paid for doing things like this. However, students in Singapore do study a few of my literary works from time to time (as these works are included in the Education Ministry's official resource book for literature teachers).
So I am happy to offer my time, meet students and help to make Literature, as a subject, come alive for them. (And before anyone asks, no, my real name is not Catherine Lim).
Anyway, a few of my observations from this experience.
My session was just one of several events comprising a Literature camp for the students. Among other things, the students made field trips; took photos of various places discussed in local literature; wrote their own poems and short stories and acted them out; and came up with different ways to represent literary works (for example, through art or music).
My first impression was that such activities could be too challenging for the average Secondary 3 student. On the other hand, it really depends on how the teachers conduct the activities.
If the activities are conducted with the stern seriousness of typical Singapore education, then they would become quite stressful. On the other hand, if they are conducted with a sense of play and the freedom to go wrong, then they would be a great way for the students to experience what Literature is all about
I felt that most of the students did enjoy my session a lot. "I am your homework, " I said, "and it's not often that you get to talk to your homework, and ask questions about itself." I was promptly peppered with a wide range of questions, including "Do you have a day job?" and "How has your religion influenced your writing?".
All in all, I felt that the school deserved credit for organising a camp like this. Certainly, when I was a student and doing Literature myself, we never got to try our hand at such interesting activities. Meeting a real, live writer wasn't an option either, since we mostly studied the works of dead white men like William Shakespeare.
I also had the opportunity to chat with a few of the teachers. I learned that Literature was not a popular choice for Secondary 3 students. Most students want to do the triple sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) which leaves them room for only one Humanities subject. The preferred choice then becomes History or Geography, for the reason that Literature is perceived as being more difficult to score well in.
Well, some things don't change, do they. As you may have heard, in recent years, many schools don't even offer Literature anymore, as it tends to drag down the overall pass & distinction scores.
A final observation. I was curious as to why the school had invited me to speak at this event. Yes, I am an MOE-endorsed local writer, but in my opinion Singapore has several other writers who are more interesting and more active than myself, on the literary scene.
"Like who, for instance?" the teacher asked.
"Well, like Cyril Wong," I said. Cyril Wong, by the way, has published seven books and was the 2005 Young Artist of the Year for Literature; and the winner of the 2006 Singapore Literature Prize; and a former runner-up for the NAC-SPH Golden Point Award. In my opinion, he is perhaps the most significant and talented writer, among Singaporean writers living today.
"Ummm, Cyril. Well, we visited his blog," said the teacher, "and it had a picture of a naked man. We didn't think Cyril was very appropriate for our Literature students."
Cyril is gay, you see. The gay theme emerges in some of his writings, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. As a matter of pure literary merit, he produces some of the best works in the history of Singapore, but this achievement cannot be fully acknowledged in our schools. We are still a homophobic society.
Along the same lines, Alfian Saat is also a "dangerous" writer. He is hugely talented, and his works are very thought-provoking. But because Alfian's works are so sharply political, so sharply critical of the government, they will have no place, or only a very limited place, in the Singapore classroom. In effect, he is censored from the minds of young Singaporeans. Thanks to Lui Tuck Yew (again), Alfian isn't even allowed to do relief teaching in our schools.
Sad, but true. In the end, the students will just have to settle for staid old Mr Wang. And even then, the Ministry of Education only picks my more-conservative works.
Gadis Bispak Imut
Last week I took a day off from work, to give a talk at a secondary school. The other guest speaker was Stella Kon, one of Singapore's best-known playwrights. We spoke about creative writing, to an audience of about 60 literature students.
By the way, I don't get paid for doing things like this. However, students in Singapore do study a few of my literary works from time to time (as these works are included in the Education Ministry's official resource book for literature teachers).
So I am happy to offer my time, meet students and help to make Literature, as a subject, come alive for them. (And before anyone asks, no, my real name is not Catherine Lim).
Anyway, a few of my observations from this experience.
My session was just one of several events comprising a Literature camp for the students. Among other things, the students made field trips; took photos of various places discussed in local literature; wrote their own poems and short stories and acted them out; and came up with different ways to represent literary works (for example, through art or music).
My first impression was that such activities could be too challenging for the average Secondary 3 student. On the other hand, it really depends on how the teachers conduct the activities.
If the activities are conducted with the stern seriousness of typical Singapore education, then they would become quite stressful. On the other hand, if they are conducted with a sense of play and the freedom to go wrong, then they would be a great way for the students to experience what Literature is all about
I felt that most of the students did enjoy my session a lot. "I am your homework, " I said, "and it's not often that you get to talk to your homework, and ask questions about itself." I was promptly peppered with a wide range of questions, including "Do you have a day job?" and "How has your religion influenced your writing?".
All in all, I felt that the school deserved credit for organising a camp like this. Certainly, when I was a student and doing Literature myself, we never got to try our hand at such interesting activities. Meeting a real, live writer wasn't an option either, since we mostly studied the works of dead white men like William Shakespeare.
I also had the opportunity to chat with a few of the teachers. I learned that Literature was not a popular choice for Secondary 3 students. Most students want to do the triple sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) which leaves them room for only one Humanities subject. The preferred choice then becomes History or Geography, for the reason that Literature is perceived as being more difficult to score well in.
Well, some things don't change, do they. As you may have heard, in recent years, many schools don't even offer Literature anymore, as it tends to drag down the overall pass & distinction scores.
A final observation. I was curious as to why the school had invited me to speak at this event. Yes, I am an MOE-endorsed local writer, but in my opinion Singapore has several other writers who are more interesting and more active than myself, on the literary scene.
"Like who, for instance?" the teacher asked.
"Well, like Cyril Wong," I said. Cyril Wong, by the way, has published seven books and was the 2005 Young Artist of the Year for Literature; and the winner of the 2006 Singapore Literature Prize; and a former runner-up for the NAC-SPH Golden Point Award. In my opinion, he is perhaps the most significant and talented writer, among Singaporean writers living today.
"Ummm, Cyril. Well, we visited his blog," said the teacher, "and it had a picture of a naked man. We didn't think Cyril was very appropriate for our Literature students."
Cyril is gay, you see. The gay theme emerges in some of his writings, sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. As a matter of pure literary merit, he produces some of the best works in the history of Singapore, but this achievement cannot be fully acknowledged in our schools. We are still a homophobic society.
Along the same lines, Alfian Saat is also a "dangerous" writer. He is hugely talented, and his works are very thought-provoking. But because Alfian's works are so sharply political, so sharply critical of the government, they will have no place, or only a very limited place, in the Singapore classroom. In effect, he is censored from the minds of young Singaporeans. Thanks to Lui Tuck Yew (again), Alfian isn't even allowed to do relief teaching in our schools.
Sad, but true. In the end, the students will just have to settle for staid old Mr Wang. And even then, the Ministry of Education only picks my more-conservative works.
Gadis Bispak Imut
The Modern Risks of Information and Advice
In my earlier post, I wrote about the school principal who had strongly urged her Secondary 5 students to give up studying for their O-levels and go to the ITE instead. This incident reminded of Freakonomics, a very interesting book that I had read some time ago.
Here's the relevant point from Freakonomics. As society grows more complex, more and more specialists evolve. Doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, property agents, journalists, religious leaders and car salesmen - all of them are specialists of a different kind.
The individual cannot possibly be an expert in every field relevant to his life. So he must often rely on advice from different specialists. For example, if he is ill, he will consult a doctor. If he wants to buy a car or sell an apartment, he will talk to a car salesman or a property agent.
The Freakonomics authors warn us that very often, the specialist's self-interest is not fully aligned with the self-interest of the person seeking information or advice. In other words, it often does not serve the specialist to tell you everything that you should know.
For example, it may take too much time for the specialist to tell you everything you should know, and there is no reward for doing so - therefore he won't.
Or the specialist might deliberately withhold certain information about his product / service, because if you knew all its flaws, limitations or disadvantages, you might not want his product / service any more.
Or he may deliberately slant or angle his advice in certain ways, so that you will be inclined to make a decision that serves his own self-interest.
And there is usually no equal footing, because the specialist, by virtue of being a specialist, already knows more than you. He holds the edge.
Let's now consider our education system. Socially, we are conditioned to think of education as a noble thing, and of educators as noble people. Certainly this view has some validity - some people would say, a lot of validity.
But at the same time, we must realise that there are different actors within the school system. Different actors means different self-interests, and that means the Freakonomics info/advice problem must arise again.
What's good for the Ministry of Education is not necessarily good for the principal. What's good for the principal is not necessarily good for the teachers. What's good for the teachers is not necessarily good for the students.
And what's good for the students may not necessarily be good for the teachers, principal or the Ministry of Education.
(Minor digression - here is a brief account of how I, as a student, went against the government's then-prevailing career advice for young Singaporeans. I thereby became quite rich and successful).
It is very good for the principal, if the school achieves a high overall pass score. An ambitious principal may well aim to achieve, say, a 98% or 100% pass score. It is conceivable that such an ambition may heavily shape a principal's advice to the students or the way the principal runs the school.
For example, the principal may discourage students from exploring knowledge outside the formal school syllabus (such extra learning may be good for the students, but will not help the overall pass scores).
Or the principal may prevent the students from taking subjects which the students are interested in, but which are considered harder to pass (for example, Further Maths, or Art, or Literature).
Or the principal may seek ways to put extreme pressure on the students to work as hard as possible, such that a few of the less-resilient students will inevitably suffer severe stress.
Or the principal may advise the weak students to leave the school and pursue other options elsewhere (if these students stay, and fail their exams, then the overall pass scores would be damaged).
And the students may never realise that their education is being shaped, not by considerations of what is good for them, but of what is good for their principal.
The Freakonomics authors do not say, of course, that in every case, specialists are out to hurt the advisee's position. In many situations, the interests of the advisor and the advisee could be well-aligned - this means that the advisor has a strong incentive to be genuinely helpful.
What Freakonomics does warn us is that when we receive any specialist advice, we should pause to ask ourselves - what are all the possible reasons why the specialist is telling us what the specialist is telling us?
Final food for thought. Here's that Bertrand Russell quote again:
Gadis Bispak Imut
Here's the relevant point from Freakonomics. As society grows more complex, more and more specialists evolve. Doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, property agents, journalists, religious leaders and car salesmen - all of them are specialists of a different kind.
The individual cannot possibly be an expert in every field relevant to his life. So he must often rely on advice from different specialists. For example, if he is ill, he will consult a doctor. If he wants to buy a car or sell an apartment, he will talk to a car salesman or a property agent.
The Freakonomics authors warn us that very often, the specialist's self-interest is not fully aligned with the self-interest of the person seeking information or advice. In other words, it often does not serve the specialist to tell you everything that you should know.
For example, it may take too much time for the specialist to tell you everything you should know, and there is no reward for doing so - therefore he won't.
Or the specialist might deliberately withhold certain information about his product / service, because if you knew all its flaws, limitations or disadvantages, you might not want his product / service any more.
Or he may deliberately slant or angle his advice in certain ways, so that you will be inclined to make a decision that serves his own self-interest.
And there is usually no equal footing, because the specialist, by virtue of being a specialist, already knows more than you. He holds the edge.
Let's now consider our education system. Socially, we are conditioned to think of education as a noble thing, and of educators as noble people. Certainly this view has some validity - some people would say, a lot of validity.
But at the same time, we must realise that there are different actors within the school system. Different actors means different self-interests, and that means the Freakonomics info/advice problem must arise again.
What's good for the Ministry of Education is not necessarily good for the principal. What's good for the principal is not necessarily good for the teachers. What's good for the teachers is not necessarily good for the students.
And what's good for the students may not necessarily be good for the teachers, principal or the Ministry of Education.
(Minor digression - here is a brief account of how I, as a student, went against the government's then-prevailing career advice for young Singaporeans. I thereby became quite rich and successful).
It is very good for the principal, if the school achieves a high overall pass score. An ambitious principal may well aim to achieve, say, a 98% or 100% pass score. It is conceivable that such an ambition may heavily shape a principal's advice to the students or the way the principal runs the school.
For example, the principal may discourage students from exploring knowledge outside the formal school syllabus (such extra learning may be good for the students, but will not help the overall pass scores).
Or the principal may prevent the students from taking subjects which the students are interested in, but which are considered harder to pass (for example, Further Maths, or Art, or Literature).
Or the principal may seek ways to put extreme pressure on the students to work as hard as possible, such that a few of the less-resilient students will inevitably suffer severe stress.
Or the principal may advise the weak students to leave the school and pursue other options elsewhere (if these students stay, and fail their exams, then the overall pass scores would be damaged).
And the students may never realise that their education is being shaped, not by considerations of what is good for them, but of what is good for their principal.
The Freakonomics authors do not say, of course, that in every case, specialists are out to hurt the advisee's position. In many situations, the interests of the advisor and the advisee could be well-aligned - this means that the advisor has a strong incentive to be genuinely helpful.
What Freakonomics does warn us is that when we receive any specialist advice, we should pause to ask ourselves - what are all the possible reasons why the specialist is telling us what the specialist is telling us?
Final food for thought. Here's that Bertrand Russell quote again:
"Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position." - Bertrand Russell.So beware of the specialists in your life, whoever they may be.
Gadis Bispak Imut
27 Hapless Girls And One Unhappy Principal
First, the background:
This kind of thinking happens in better schools as well. I was previously a student at one of Singapore's top junior colleges. I remember one group session where the Head of the Maths Department badgered the "weaker" students to stop taking Further Maths (one of the A-level subjects). Why? She didn't think that they had a good chance of scoring an A or B. They were at no real risk of actually failing, but they might conceivably score a C or D. Her fine record of top grades would be ruined! What a disaster.
Into the fray jumps our PAP man, Lui Tuck Yew. I'll declare my bias upfront - I don't like him. I have not liked Lui ever since the Straits Times reported that he was heading this kind of PAP committee. Sneaky, sneaky. Anyway:
What's the worst that could happen? One year later, you find that you can't make it to the poly. You can still go to the ITE then. Where's the damage? None that I can see. (And no, the size of your principal's annual bonus is not relevant).
Yes, you would have "wasted" one extra year in secondary school, studying subjects like Maths, Science and English. But you would have a few GCE O-level passes and a N-level certificate, rather than just a N-level certificate. Surely that counts for something.
And that extra year of education - is that really such a waste? Is studying Maths, Science and English in secondary school really so useless? I don't think so. But Lui seems to think so. I do wonder why he seems to have such a poor opinion of our education system. After all, he's responsible for it. Oops, did I just answer my own question.
Gadis Bispak Imut
ST Jan 12, 2008This article does not surprise me. The principal's attitude - which I deplore - is common among educators in Singapore. The selfish motivation shows clearly here:
Sec 5 class advised: Go to ITE instead
Principal tells students that they are unlikely to do well at O levels
By Sandra Davie
CALL it a disheartening start to the new school year.
A group of 27 girls in a Secondary 5 class in a mission school - which shall remain unnamed - were advised by their principal on the first day of school last week to seek transfers to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), since they were unlikely to do well in the O levels this year.
To back her point, she even flashed the girls' detailed N-level grades on the board in class using an overhead projector; she also stressed that she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school.
The result: teens with punctured self-confidence and some fuming parents.
".... she also stressed that she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school."In other words, the principal is concerned that the weaker students will lower her school's overall pass score. She would prefer that they get out of her school as soon as possible. After all, the size of her annual bonus could be affected by the school's pass score.
This kind of thinking happens in better schools as well. I was previously a student at one of Singapore's top junior colleges. I remember one group session where the Head of the Maths Department badgered the "weaker" students to stop taking Further Maths (one of the A-level subjects). Why? She didn't think that they had a good chance of scoring an A or B. They were at no real risk of actually failing, but they might conceivably score a C or D. Her fine record of top grades would be ruined! What a disaster.
Into the fray jumps our PAP man, Lui Tuck Yew. I'll declare my bias upfront - I don't like him. I have not liked Lui ever since the Straits Times reported that he was heading this kind of PAP committee. Sneaky, sneaky. Anyway:
ST Jan 16, 2008What's my take? 40% of Secondary 5 students don't make it to polytechnic. That means 60% of them do. If the odds are in your favour, why not try?
Principal's 'wake-up call' to Sec 5 students had to be 'conveyed'
By Jane Ng
PARENTS and students may disagree with the tone a principal used when she told some Secondary 5 students to apply for the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) instead of doing the O levels, but the message was one that had to be delivered, said Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew on Wednesday.
Past data shows that 40 per cent of students will not do well enough to qualify for polytechnic, and students need to know this from the start, he said.
Speaking to reporters after a teachers' investiture at the National Institute of Education, Rear-Admiral (NS) Lui said it was important to separate the 'tone' from the 'substance' of the message.
'We can calibrate the tone, we can soften it, improve on the presentation, but there is a lot of work to be done between Secondary 4 and Secondary 5.'
'Principals need to do their job to convey this message to the students and teachers to do their part to challenge them, set high goals and to help them achieve these goals,' he said.
What's the worst that could happen? One year later, you find that you can't make it to the poly. You can still go to the ITE then. Where's the damage? None that I can see. (And no, the size of your principal's annual bonus is not relevant).
Yes, you would have "wasted" one extra year in secondary school, studying subjects like Maths, Science and English. But you would have a few GCE O-level passes and a N-level certificate, rather than just a N-level certificate. Surely that counts for something.
And that extra year of education - is that really such a waste? Is studying Maths, Science and English in secondary school really so useless? I don't think so. But Lui seems to think so. I do wonder why he seems to have such a poor opinion of our education system. After all, he's responsible for it. Oops, did I just answer my own question.
Gadis Bispak Imut
PSLE Results and the Colour of Your Skin
If you've been reading the newspapers lately, you might have noticed that this year's top PSLE student was Malay. Natasha Nabila not only topped the 2007 exams, but also set a record for the highest results ever attained in the PSLE exams.
This would have surprised many people, because historically Malays in Singapore have done badly in school (relative to the other racial groups). Initially I thought that Natasha's success might be a positive sign of a trend that the Malays are finally catching up.
However, the statistics don't bear this out. This MOE chart breaks down PSLE pass rates by race, over a 10-year period. We see that as a group, Malays still lag behind, and the gap isn't closing. So Natasha is an exception to the rule, rather than an indicator of a trend.
The blogger over here (Both Sides of the Johor Straits) notes, however, that in recent years, the minority races (Malays and Indians) seem to be statistically overrepresented among the very top PSLE performers. For example, the top PSLE student in 2005 was Malay. The top performer in 2006 was Indian. The top performer in 2007 was Malay.
This is interesting, because statistically, even if Malays, Indians and Chinese were academically equal (and they're not - as a group, the Chinese do better than the rest), the probability is that the top performer would be Chinese (as the Chinese are numerically, and by far, the biggest group).
So the blogger has a conspiracy theory. He thinks that the MOE is "cheating" to ensure that the top student is non-Chinese. MOE's rationale would be to raise the morale of the minority races and to provide a positive role model (bearing in mind that each year, the top PSLE student receives abundant publicity in the media):
Well, who knows. It's a possible theory, I suppose. However, I have a simpler alternative explanation.
In each year, all the PSLE students take exactly the same exams (English, Maths and Science) - except for the 2nd language paper. Here the Chinese take the Chinese Language paper; the Malays take the Malay Language paper; and the Indians take Tamil Language).
At the top end of the curve, the very best students are all striving to achieve marks as close to perfect as possible. For English, Maths, Science, they all take the same paper, so the same ultimate obstacles to a perfect or almost-perfect score apply to all.
However, if the Chinese Language paper is marked more rigorously than the other Language papers, then there would be a good probability that non-Chinese students would be statistically overrepresented at the very top end of the curve (where everyone is striving for perfect or almost-perfect marks).
It's not necessarily a deliberate attempt by the Education Ministry to engineer a non-Chinese top PSLE student. It may simply be that the Chinese Language exam is marked more rigorously, because that's the way the Chinese Language markers are. The glass ceiling would emerge in those sections of the paper which require the marker's subjective assessment.
For example, if there is an essay section worth 40 marks, and if in practice the Chinese marker is willing to give a maximum 35 marks for an absolutely brilliant Chinese essay, well, there's your glass ceiling.
On the other hand, If the Malay/Tamil marker has no qualms about giving 39 or 40 out of 40 marks for an absolutely brilliant Malay/Tamil essay, then simple probability tells us that there's a good chance that the overall top PSLE student could be non-Chinese.
This differential is too small to have any measurable effect of the respective PSLE performance of the racial groups, when we view them as a group. But this differential matters, when it comes to identifying the very best few students (eg the top 10) in the entire nation.
It's like Matt Biondi in the 1992 Olympics commenting that if he had grown his fingernails a little longer, he could have won the 100m men's butterfly gold medal. With short fingernails, he touched home one hundredth of a second slower than the winner, and had to settle for the silver medal.
By analogy, Singaporeans taking the PSLE Chinese paper could be swimming with short fingernails. Of course, for the vast majority of students, this is a non-issue. They don't swim fast enough for the length of their fingernails to matter.
"My fingernails are too short.
That must be why I coudn't qualify for the Olympics."
Gadis Bispak Imut
This would have surprised many people, because historically Malays in Singapore have done badly in school (relative to the other racial groups). Initially I thought that Natasha's success might be a positive sign of a trend that the Malays are finally catching up.
However, the statistics don't bear this out. This MOE chart breaks down PSLE pass rates by race, over a 10-year period. We see that as a group, Malays still lag behind, and the gap isn't closing. So Natasha is an exception to the rule, rather than an indicator of a trend.
The blogger over here (Both Sides of the Johor Straits) notes, however, that in recent years, the minority races (Malays and Indians) seem to be statistically overrepresented among the very top PSLE performers. For example, the top PSLE student in 2005 was Malay. The top performer in 2006 was Indian. The top performer in 2007 was Malay.
This is interesting, because statistically, even if Malays, Indians and Chinese were academically equal (and they're not - as a group, the Chinese do better than the rest), the probability is that the top performer would be Chinese (as the Chinese are numerically, and by far, the biggest group).
So the blogger has a conspiracy theory. He thinks that the MOE is "cheating" to ensure that the top student is non-Chinese. MOE's rationale would be to raise the morale of the minority races and to provide a positive role model (bearing in mind that each year, the top PSLE student receives abundant publicity in the media):
All credits due to our top non-Chinese PSLE students, but I think that the recent trend in top non-Chinese PSLE students may indicate some backroom number-shuffling at MOE. Even though statistics & probability year-on-year predict that non-Chinese students do not fare as well at PSLE, I’ll not be surprised that the people at MOE have ways of ensuring a feel-good factor for all ethnic groups in Singapore (keeping in mind that PSLE exams scripts are marked in secret, the papers are not returned to students, the grades are not contestable and even the full-marks for each exam-topic are not revealed).
Assuming that the top students in 2007 scored full-marks for the Maths and Science papers (which is possible), Natasha must have scored nearly full-marks for English language and Malay language (full-marks in these papers are impossible), as she stood clear above her peers in terms of total marks for all papers. Having said that, a top Malay PSLE student as announced by MOE can do much to lift the spirits of the Malay community in terms of ethnic pride and reinforcing MOE’s ‘educational meritocracy’ policy.
Well, who knows. It's a possible theory, I suppose. However, I have a simpler alternative explanation.
In each year, all the PSLE students take exactly the same exams (English, Maths and Science) - except for the 2nd language paper. Here the Chinese take the Chinese Language paper; the Malays take the Malay Language paper; and the Indians take Tamil Language).
At the top end of the curve, the very best students are all striving to achieve marks as close to perfect as possible. For English, Maths, Science, they all take the same paper, so the same ultimate obstacles to a perfect or almost-perfect score apply to all.
However, if the Chinese Language paper is marked more rigorously than the other Language papers, then there would be a good probability that non-Chinese students would be statistically overrepresented at the very top end of the curve (where everyone is striving for perfect or almost-perfect marks).
It's not necessarily a deliberate attempt by the Education Ministry to engineer a non-Chinese top PSLE student. It may simply be that the Chinese Language exam is marked more rigorously, because that's the way the Chinese Language markers are. The glass ceiling would emerge in those sections of the paper which require the marker's subjective assessment.
For example, if there is an essay section worth 40 marks, and if in practice the Chinese marker is willing to give a maximum 35 marks for an absolutely brilliant Chinese essay, well, there's your glass ceiling.
On the other hand, If the Malay/Tamil marker has no qualms about giving 39 or 40 out of 40 marks for an absolutely brilliant Malay/Tamil essay, then simple probability tells us that there's a good chance that the overall top PSLE student could be non-Chinese.
This differential is too small to have any measurable effect of the respective PSLE performance of the racial groups, when we view them as a group. But this differential matters, when it comes to identifying the very best few students (eg the top 10) in the entire nation.
It's like Matt Biondi in the 1992 Olympics commenting that if he had grown his fingernails a little longer, he could have won the 100m men's butterfly gold medal. With short fingernails, he touched home one hundredth of a second slower than the winner, and had to settle for the silver medal.
By analogy, Singaporeans taking the PSLE Chinese paper could be swimming with short fingernails. Of course, for the vast majority of students, this is a non-issue. They don't swim fast enough for the length of their fingernails to matter.
That must be why I coudn't qualify for the Olympics."
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