The minister for education Ong Ye Kung said that society can afford to loose up more with regard to the education system.
I have heard this comment for the past two decades. When Lee HL became prime minister, he said that we should "study less, learn more".
Slogans are good. But do they achieve the results?
We must understand the root cause of the problem - why are students studying so hard? Why are parents spending hundreds of dollars each month, which they can hardly afford to, to provide private tuition for their children?
The answer is - the competition in the school, to get to the top schools and win the scholarship that will ensure a bright future for the children.
If we want to remove the stress, we have to remove this unhealthy competition. Let the children enjoy education and their childhood.
How? Remove the competition for top grades. Remove the competition to win the scholarships.
The aim of the education system should be to educate the young in how to cope with life, how to learn, how to deal with other people. Of course, we still want them to be literate and numerate.
The examination should be just pass or fail. We can set the examination so that with a fair amount of effort and without private tuition, 90% will pass. Forget about award scholarships to the top students.
Let us identify our future leaders in the workplace and not in school.
Tan Kin Lian
I have heard this comment for the past two decades. When Lee HL became prime minister, he said that we should "study less, learn more".
Slogans are good. But do they achieve the results?
We must understand the root cause of the problem - why are students studying so hard? Why are parents spending hundreds of dollars each month, which they can hardly afford to, to provide private tuition for their children?
The answer is - the competition in the school, to get to the top schools and win the scholarship that will ensure a bright future for the children.
If we want to remove the stress, we have to remove this unhealthy competition. Let the children enjoy education and their childhood.
How? Remove the competition for top grades. Remove the competition to win the scholarships.
The aim of the education system should be to educate the young in how to cope with life, how to learn, how to deal with other people. Of course, we still want them to be literate and numerate.
The examination should be just pass or fail. We can set the examination so that with a fair amount of effort and without private tuition, 90% will pass. Forget about award scholarships to the top students.
Let us identify our future leaders in the workplace and not in school.
Tan Kin Lian
2 comments:
Totally agree. From the performance of many scholars, one must conclude that govt scholarships is a big waste of money.
Moreover >50% of scholarships go to higher income families that don't really need scholarships in the 1st place. They are simply making use of these scholarships to get onto the govt/PAP fast track.
Your ideas are brilliant. But if the ideas are not originated from them, innovations and new thinking will be killed. It is human nature for them to react with hostility to new ideas as it represent a threat to the status quo. Everything falls in their call. This valuable idea will need extra work and performance expected on them. It has become a fad that they their policies are never up to date and are always hitting the wrong target.
The internal networks are just answering emails or just getting feedback from some parties? And the person or party giving feedback might be giving it in his or her on version, therefore the picture from one party moves away from being accurate. It has been known for a long period of time that they are not aware of what is happening on the ground till some fatalities or became news than they might come out and show some commitments to make things right.
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