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What are your views? Read the article and give your responses to the following prompts:
1. To what extent do you agree with the issues that the student has raised here? Point out some issues of agreement and possible contention
I agree to a great extent with the issues that the student has raised. FIrstly, she stated that there is a serious emphasis the education system has placed on factual memorisation. Indeed, I agree with this issue as seen in schools that most of the top scorers usually memorised all their notes, where a few have their personal contextual knowledge. Teachers in high schools tend to provide overwhelming numbers of notes for students, expecting us to memorise them by heart and take the test. However, I believe this is not good enough, many students are still kept in suspense on what the topic is going on but is unable to get his answer. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with being inquisitive, instead it is not at all annoying which what most teachers think. Also, I agree on the point that some things are not taught properly. For the student's experience, she was not able to sufficiently comprehend behind some science facts. I believe that most students also faces these problems, it really isn't the students fault as we have repeatedly questioned the teachers on the logic behind it, but due to some teachers' inefficiency, we are remained as the old self, with no gain of extra knowledge.
2. Examine her tone and attitude in this letter. Do you think it’s a well-crafted letter with the appropriate tone?
I feel that it is not exactly a very appropriate tone. She sounds rather demanding on changing the system. This could possibly be due to the anger and stress she has inside of her. But an appropriate tone should be met even if the trouble you're facing is bigger than anything. However, I do agree that it's a well-crafted letter. All her views and points were met with an example and was rather reasonable in her statement.
3. If you should write a letter to Minister of Education, what are some issues you would raise? Remember- your intention is to make the system better for society’s betterment via CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.
Some issues I would raise is that, teachers tend to focus more on us getting A1 than providing us with more knowledge. I do not feel that this should be the case, as schools are meant to give us a clearer understanding of learning and to fill us with more knowledge rather than memorising notes. I believe that what's more important is that we listen to the "more experienced" one in the topic, hence teachers should teach us and let us have a full understanding of the topic.
Regarding your first question, indeed, teachers may not have the time to be able to full explain the theory to us. However, as students of Hwa Chong, we are supposed to be proactive and either approach the teacher after school, or search the internet and books as part of self-initiated learning. Thus, I see no reason for us to actually be stifled by the Singapore education.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, though, it seems that we do not even have the time to research on the topic in question. Most of the imte would have been allocated to CCA, homework and ACE. It seems that even with good time management, we can't seem to squeeze time out to get the job done. With the pressure of getting the A1 grade on us, we would have no choice but to memorise the fact by heart. This is one aspect the Singapore education system needs to look into.
To address your 2nd question, personally, I feel that her tone is not really demanding. Rather, it is more to persuasively influence the minister in his future decisions that affect the entire Singapore education system.
Finally, answering your 3rd question. It is not that teachers focus more on us getting A1. It is because of the lack of time to even cover content that is outside of the syllabus. We must note that being a teacher is a job and a career. Forgive me if I am wrong, but like any other job, I believe that you must have the ability to produce results to justify the position teacher. Thus, we cannot falsely accuse the teachers of the fact that they tend to focus more on helping us to get the A1. :)
Gregory Tan 2O3 25
Hi jiehan, this is Darrel. I personally feel that the Singapore's education system does not really evolves over memorising facts from notes as questions from lets say LA, seldom requires you to memorise but instead apply what you hav read and also test your inference skills. Therefore, I feel that the education system is not just about memorising and that the education ministers have done a good job, not forgetting the fact that some parts of a particular subject need memorising, or should I say understanding the text, for example Intergrated Humanities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that things here are learnt without logic. You would not be able to get what something is actually driving at or the reason behind it. Logic is the essence of everything. As a result, we would not be able to "modify" it to adapt into our real-life situation or context, rendering it not feasible for daily use or problem-solving. What is the point of spending a quarter of our life in school when we cannot use it in the other three-quarter of our adult life?
ReplyDelete