Thursday, January 07, 2010 @ 7:41 PM: Singapore's Education System
I was reading the article on how one kid ended up in a Malaysian University at the age of 10 with the family hitting dead ends to try suitable education system for him. And somehow an article that makes us ponder about our education system. Was it too rigid? Catered more to the majority and less to the minority (those who are too smart in this case)? Too many red tapes in the ministry?
It has been known that Singapore has a very good education system (or at least according to Singapore press) which produces top results at mathematical competitions or examinations. Even some US schools are using Singapore maths textbook as curriculum material and it isn't hard to see why with all the drilling and foundation well established. For those who aren't academically smart, they could be further nurtured in the likes of ITEs; while for those who are supposedly the cream of the crop (top 1%), there is the Gifted Education System.
However, an education system could never be perfect.
With such generalised tests to determine how good a student performs, it might be easy to bury the talents of a potential literary great or a promising scientist to come. Especially when you consider the GEP tests to be a test of linguistic and logical thinking (which I failed quite badly at reading those long paragraphs in English at a tender age when I do not normally speak English at home), a literary great might not do that well at logical thinking, and vice versa for a potential mathematician or scientist who does not need much linguistic skills to excel. PSLEs and O Levels take into account of a broad spectrum of subjects where all-rounders (or rather Jack of all trades) would perform much better than those who might be really good in some subs and bad at some others (esp Chinese, no lack of examples of that). As such, programmes like Integrated Programmes and schools specialising in some subs (like NUS High) have been fantastic in removing some of these barriers, but one of course has to do sufficiently well in primary school and survive the "boredom" years as stated in this case in order to get to the choices that would best fit them. Also, not allowing students to jump years might be better in terms of administration and making sure they have learnt everything before they proceed, but ultimately it might starve off the enthusiasm from the start.
Comparatively an US system is more individualised and caters more to the individual talents of each kid, and of course this has its own demerits as well. However, perhaps it is time for Singapore to relook at the primary school structure to see whether they could allow individual talents not to be overlooked and special cases be catered for. And as one friend says a policy change is good if it could improve at least 10% of the cohort, no policies would be for everyone...
Then again, what I found really interesting are the comments posted after the article: http://comment.straitstimes.com/showthread.php?t=28801... I found this particular comment really laughable: "Just excelling in one subject, science, does not make a boy gifted child. Probably his brain cells have favourable elements for science. What about maths, language, history? it is improper for the parent to seek special priviliges." Perhaps he is saying pple like Albert Einstein isn't smart enough....
thank you for bringing me memories...
