Friday, January 7, 2011 @ 12:54 AM
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Singapore’s education system is without a doubt, top notch. In fact, it has been ranked as the world second best education system by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).This doesn’t come as a surprise to me seeing how children undergo strenuous coursework from an early age.
Also, from a young age, students are under pressure to perform well in their studies to go into better ‘streams’ as well as schools. Children who are at the Primary 4 level are obliged to go through streaming at the end of the year. Two years later, they have to sit for the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) which will determine the child’s placement in a secondary school as well as the stream he/she is in. They then sit for the GCE “O” or “N” levels and proceeds into a tertiary education.
Having gone through the system myself, I wish to highlight the following points which I find to be true.
Learning only occurs for tests and exams
Even today, in my polytechnic, when someone expresses his or her desire to learn outside scope of the current subject, teachers have always responded negatively, telling students to focus on the ‘important’ parts of the subject (topics or questions which regularly come out for tests or exams).
Learning occurs only for grades
Students are taught to score well , but they hardly care about the application of concepts taught. Projects given usually have a very low passing standard , encouraging students to simply regurgitate concepts taught into reports.
Learning requires excessive memorization
Very often, the student is required to memorize facts to pass exams. Teachers usually does not condone the usage of paraphrasing but instead, insist on memorizing textbook answers and regurgitating them during exams. Even today, in my polytechnic course, certain modules require me to memorise definitions for certain terms.
Few teachers care about motivating students to learn
Most teachers only want students to pass exams to advance into the next grade. Very few, truly care about cultivating sense of self-motivation in students to actually learn beyond what is taught. Students, in turn love to pester teachers for ‘tips’ to score better for their exams.
What I think
I feel that we must learn to depend on ourselves for our own education, instead of depending on schools or the government to dictate what we should or should not learn. In fact, during my time in Nanyang Polytechnic, I usually study myself as I find the pace of the coursework given simply too slow.
Link to : Education System Ranking