From 'study book' or du shu to learning with joy for life

This is an edited excerpt of a speech by Education Minister Heng Swee Keat in Parliament yesterday.

IN 1965, education meant du shu or "study book". Our pioneers had a sense of where they wanted to be in the future, where they were, and worked hard to bridge that gap. The big gap then was basic literacy and numeracy skills - so "study book" made sense as they learnt the three "Rs" - or reading, writing, arithmetic.

Many became literate and numerate. We then built on this education system. At critical points, we made important choices to adapt and change. Educators, parents, students responded with spirit, and each wave allowed us to make further progress with purpose. But there were also inadvertent negatives. In our mind, "study book" became increasingly about exams, grades and qualifications.

A strength - in focusing on academic grades - can be overdone and become a weakness, as we leave little time to develop other attributes that are necessary for success and fulfilment.

Students tell me of the stress they faced because of the high expectations placed on them. The chase for better grades fuelled a tuition industry. It created a vertical stacking of qualifications, as well as the tiering of schools in the minds of parents based mainly on academic results - a hierarchy of grades.

We are not unique in this. The same "study book" culture that enabled the three East Asian dragons - South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan - to make great strides is also generating the same, if not even greater, pressure in their societies.

Like our pioneers before us, we have to ask anew: Where do we want to be in the future, where are we today, and how do we make the leap?

The future will be more uncertain, volatile as the global economy and political order change in unpredictable ways. An ageing population will create challenges that we cannot totally foresee. A younger generation that is digitally connected can either be more united or more divided.

The nature of jobs will also change. Many existing jobs will disappear. Smart machines and lower- cost workers elsewhere will take these jobs. We have to change jobs, maybe several times over our lifetime. But jobs that need uniquely human qualities cannot be displaced by machines, and will become more valuable.

Traits like creativity, inventiveness, adaptability, socio-emotional skills, and cultural and global awareness will give Singaporeans an edge. Some of us will create jobs for others as entrepreneurs. And if our economy grows well, more jobs will be created. All these present new and multiple pathways for success.

At a crossroads

WE ARE at a crossroads. We have two options.

We could continue with the "study book" path, with a narrow focus on grades and exams, and descend into a spiralling paper chase and expanding tuition industry, as many of you have warned. Employers choose not to invest in employees, relying wholly on academic qualifications to determine who gets the job. Educators drill and test, and see their duty as helping students obtain the best exam grades possible. Parents obsess over grades and spend ever-increasing amounts of resources to give their child an edge over other children. And students chase the next point, and spend most of their time going for more tuition and enrichment in very narrow areas.

Stress levels in society climb, and the system churns out students who excel in exams, but are ill-equipped to take on jobs of the future, nor find fulfilment in what they do. And unemployment or under-employment becomes pervasive.

Or we can have another outcome.

We can act with boldness and resolve to embark on a major transformation. We will need collective will and action by employers, teachers, parents and students and society at large.

Where employers look beyond academic qualifications in hiring and promoting the best person for the job, where bosses support employees in skills upgrading, where educators focus on holistic education, building a strong foundation of values and the capacity to learn, where our institutions of higher learning play a leading role strengthening the nexus between learning and work, learning and life, where parents recognise every child's unique strengths, and do their part to build their children's character, where students flourish through a range of academic and co-curricular activities, take different pathways to success and grow up to be well-rounded.

The economy stays resilient and flexible, with high levels of employment, and many opportunities. High skills, high productivity, high wages. And our society and our people continue to be caring, harmonious, gracious, cohesive. And we do not see education as a race among our children.

Charting this new territory will require us to once again be pioneers.

We developed new ways of learning in our schools, made every school a good school, expanded applied pathways in tertiary education and, in this Budget, outlined a series of SkillsFuture initiatives that built on Aspire's (Applied Study in Polytechnics and ITE Review) recommendations. All these changes have laid the groundwork for a transformation that creates a better future for Singapore, anchored in deep skills and strong values. But this future will belong to us only if we, as a people, shift our mindsets about education.

This is not about "study book" or du shu.

It is about learning in every domain, any time, anywhere for a purposeful, fulfilling life. In other words, we need to live the pioneering spirit, beyond learning for grades, to learning for mastery, beyond learning in school, to learning throughout life, beyond learning for work, to learning for life.

Learning for mastery

THE first major shift is to go beyond learning for grades, to learning for mastery.

When I was in the Police Academy 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago actually, one of my pioneer instructors was Mr John Chang. He did not have high academic qualifications, but he was, in my mind, one of the best instructors - he knew the law, he knew how to deal with tense situations, he knew how to teach.

He explained to me that after handling each case, he would reflect on how he could have done better. He would imagine in his mind scenarios - how should he have reacted if the criminals that he was dealing with had been more violent, if they were armed with a firearm, or if the victims were less cooperative, and so on and so forth.

He studied on his own, he attended classes, he asked his peers, he asked his seniors. Everybody he could get, he would ask. John was one of the few police officers who started as a constable, got many promotions and went all the way and retired as an assistant superintendent of police. Quite a feat in those days.

I learnt a lot from John as a very young officer about what it means to be an effective learner, and how one achieves mastery.

He was self-directed: No one told him how to learn, but he did so on his own. He was reflective: He thought through his own experiences and learnt from both mistakes and successes. He learnt in bite-sized modules, picking up what he needed, when he needed. He kept an open mind and learnt from everyone, everywhere, at any time. He was disciplined: Learning was not left to chance, but built into his everyday routine. And he was passionate: He cared deeply about what he does.

We should aim to be a nation where Singaporeans develop mastery in every field, Singaporeans who are resourceful, inventive and break new ground. This will take a collective effort across our schools, institutes of higher learning (IHLs) and industry.

Learning with interest and joy: An important aspect of learning for mastery is to match our students' strengths and interests to opportunities in our schools and IHLs, in careers and enterprises. A recent innovation in our schools is the Applied Learning Programmes or ALPs, in fact in almost all our secondary schools, and this is part of our Every School A Good School movement.

In fun and creative ways, our students apply various domains of knowledge to solve complex, real- life problems in their field of interest. Hillgrove Secondary has an ALP on flight and aerospace. Students learn fundamental aerospace theories, and apply maths, science, design and technology by building and flying their own model planes. Students go on to take advanced elective modules in aerospace, where they fly in flight simulators and learn how planes defy gravity.

Rayner Lee really enjoyed learning at Hillgrove and in fact he's now doing aerospace technology at Nanyang Polytechnic and he says: "I chose Hillgrove because of the Youth Flying Club CCA. I wanted to be a pilot. My parents and school teachers encouraged me to take up the Private Pilot Licence (PPL). Now that I have my licence, I hope to join the RSAF (Republic of Singapore Air Force) as a pilot."  Well, I hope Rayner flies high.

Mastery in whichever field: Different ALPs open up different possibilities for students to put knowledge into action and bring learning to life. Learning becomes relevant and engaging for every student, in every school.

We are not channelling students to specialise early. In fact, deep skills acquired in one field can be transferred to another.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic uses the technical know-how in building unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs to build unmanned underwater vehicles or UUVs to clean ship hulls - so transferring the skills from air to sea.

A team in ITE working with the Singapore Zoo applied medical technology to design an incubator, and succeeded in increasing the hatching rate of reptile eggs from 25 per cent to 75 per cent.

With more choices, we need good education and career guidance or ECG. There are many domains and fields that students could explore and develop deep skills in - whether it's in design, business, arts, music or sports. By exposing students to possibilities, we empower them to make better choices and choose suitable pathways. ECG curriculum in schools, ITE and polytechnics will be enhanced and, by 2017, we'll have a professional core of ECG counsellors and an online ECG portal that shows many exciting opportunities - enriched by our SkillsFuture initiatives.

Learning throughout life

THE second major shift that we need to make together deeper is to go beyond learning in school, to learning throughout life.

Fifty years ago, Seletar was better known for the smell of pig farms. And 50 years on, I visited Seletar to witness the delivery of our first Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 jet engine - made-in-Singapore for a Singaporean company, Scoot. A world of difference.

Ravinder is a team leader with 24 years of aerospace experience. You would have thought that he knows everything, but he told me: "To me, every day is a learning process." And this gentleman was serious when he said that.

It turned out that his son was also interested in aerospace engineering. So Ravinder decided that he, too, should return to school to pick up new skills and more skills, so that he can mentor his son, and pass on his skills to the next generation. He enrolled in Temasek Polytechnic's Diploma in Aerospace Engineering and is now six months into his course. Now, all that, while working hard at Rolls-Royce mentoring his young colleagues, like Cheria and Siti.

Now, Cheria is technically Ravinder's "schoolmate" in TP, as she is also pursuing a Diploma in Aerospace Engineering. But she is one-third his age - about. As an intern, she is learning at the workplace, even as Ravinder is learning at TP.

Siti, an ITE student in aerospace technology, was also part of the team. While working at a bookshop at Changi Airport, she saw the aeroplanes taking off and it piqued her interest. She started to wonder how do planes fly. So, today, she is a Rolls-Royce ITE scholar, thrilled to be building an impressive and complex engine with some 30,000 parts and learning all that as an intern. So you see it's not just about learning technical skills.

Ravinder, Cheria and Siti are at different stages of life but all actively learning to be better, to succeed both at work, and in life.

Self-directed learning

AS WE resolve to learn for mastery and learn throughout life, we need to rethink a few issues about learning and the significance of the changes.

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) did a recent survey of adult skills. Workers in Japan ranked highly in their skills, but ranked badly in terms of how well these skills are utilised on the job. At the opposite end, workers in the US ranked poorly in skills, but ranked among the top in using skills on the job - so whatever skills they have, they use to the fullest.

Besides the multiple pathways in our institutions of higher learning, you can now create your own learning pathways - build a portfolio of skills, just in time, tailored to your own needs, at your own pace. You can stack modules towards a qualification, or just choose relevant modules. It empowers each of us to take charge, direct our own learning, and build our own unique skills map.

This self-directed, independent learning must start young. Our teachers must not spoon-feed our students and give them model answers.

In life, there are no model answers. I once had a parent who wrote to me to argue for an extra mark for her child's term test in school. Rather than seek an extra mark in tests, let us nurture our children to make their mark in society.

We have to encourage our children to be independent, self-directed learners, skilful at figuring out their own way.

Professor Tan Tai Yong made an important point that we must not over-protect our children, so that they can develop adaptive resilience and learn to deal with uncertainties in life. But if we intervene when a child did not get the extra mark, how does he or she develop that resilience?

So let us start early in our schools and make our children self-directed, independent learners. Let us all take a collective pause and see whether the way that we are bringing up our children in school, at home, is helping them to develop that independence, that self-directed learning, that resourcefulness and initiative, or whether we are spoon-feeding them, that they are going to lose that; that when the crutch is taken away, they cannot go out and create and invent and build new things.

The Straits Times

www.straitstimes.comPublished on Mar 07, 2015

A global education for a global age

By Fareed Zakaria

WHEN I arrived at Yale from India in the fall of 1982, I felt distinctly unprepared. I had gone to a first rate, rigorous high school in Mumbai but, like many entering freshmen, I found that Yale operated at a different level.

In one sense, though, I had an advantage. I had studied, in depth, a whole different civilisation, and that background in Indian history, politics and culture gave me a broader context in which to place my Yale education. If Yale's collaboration with the National University of Singapore (NUS) succeeds, it will create on a much grander and more sophisticated scale a global education, a unique blend of East and West, which would be a vital asset in an increasingly connected world.

Criticisms of the Yale-NUS venture have centred on Singapore's politics. This has obscured the fact that Yale-NUS is, above all, a pioneering educational experiment. Yale and NUS hope to create a new model for liberal arts education in Asia - with lessons for all of us all over the world.

Imagine a curriculum in which students read Aristotle but also Confucius, who was his contemporary, and ask whether culture or politics explains each thinker's concerns. Imagine studying the rule of Charles V, the Hapsburg emperor, but then comparing him to Akbar, who ruled more people in India contemporaneously. Imagine an introduction to science that focused on solving problems rather than memorising a body of material. The goal of the project is to create a liberal arts curriculum that spans Western, Asian and other traditions, that trains rigorously in science and social science and that will, as a result, provide inspiration for Asia's burgeoning universities and societies.

A few years ago, the previous minister of education of Singapore, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who played a key role in the proposal to bring the liberal arts to his country, compared the Singaporean and American systems: 'We both have meritocracies. Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people's talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well - like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority.'

This is the impressive and appropriate source of the Singapore Government's interest in liberal arts education. And Yale, more than any other institution I know, has 'a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom'. That is the kind of culture that Yale hopes to see develop on the Singapore campus.

Many top Singaporean and other Asian students already come to the United States to get this kind of education, but ultimately, for critical pedagogy of this type to spread throughout Asia, there need to be functioning models of high-quality, engaged and creative teaching in Asia itself. That is what Yale-NUS College will provide - a model for conducting residential liberal arts education in Asia.

In talking with the faculty and administrators who have been involved in planning, I have been impressed with three facets of the college: the commitment to critical and creative thinking, the efforts to link residential life ambitiously to the educational missions of the college and the effort to reinvigorate traditional liberal arts curricula for the needs of contemporary students in Asia. By testing our ideas in a very different context, however, we will surely learn things that will be helpful in enhancing the educational experience at Yale.

Singapore is not a liberal democracy, though it is not so different from many Western democracies at earlier stages of development. It is not the caricature one sometimes reads about. Singapore is open to the world, embraces free markets and is routinely ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

It has also become more open over the last 10 years. In fact, it is to enhance and enrich this process that Singapore has invited Yale to help create a liberal arts college. There will be differences in perspectives among students and faculty, foreigners and locals, but that makes it an ideal place to engage with issues of democracy and liberalism.

I can imagine a fascinating seminar on democracy that would be much feistier in Singapore than at Yale precisely because there will be those who take positions quite critical of what is received wisdom in the West.

Singapore has a great deal to learn from America, and NUS has a great deal to learn from Yale. That's why they have engaged in this collaboration. But it is a form of parochialism bordering on chauvinism - on the part of supposedly liberal and open-minded intellectuals - not to see that we too, in America and at Yale, can learn something from Singapore.

In fact, together, Yale and the National University of Singapore can teach the world a new way to think about education in a globalised world.

The writer is the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, editor-at-large of Time magazine and a successor trustee of the Yale Corporation.

This article first appeared at www.yaledailynews.com

The Straits Times, Published on Apr 7, 2012

Malala Yousafzai: Battling for an education in Pakistan

By Orla Guerin BBC News  

When a Taliban gunman shot Malala Yousafzai last October, the bullet travelled beyond her native Swat Valley in northern Pakistan. It echoed around the globe, and ricocheted through another conservative community in the north - with surprising results.

Aid workers, and teachers, began to fight back. They lobbied parents about the need to educate their daughters. They began holding meetings and putting pamphlets through doors. And the Malala effect kicked in - parents refused to be cowed, and sent their daughters back to school. "There was a positive change, especially in the mothers," says Qurratul Ain. "They allow their daughters to go to school and work like Malala, and raise their voices for their rights, especially child rights."

And there was a bonus - enrolment went up, with an extra 30 girls coming to school, swelling the numbers to almost 300. 

'Follow her example'

A slight 10-year-old called Tasleem is one of the new arrivals. She's polite, and chatty, and wants to be a policewoman. Tasleem says her mother was angered by the sight of Malala being rushed away after the attack, fighting for her life. "Before Malala was shot we didn't think we should go to school," she told me. "My Mum saw what happened on TV. That made her think. After this she decided her girls should also be in school and should get a good education. "

Tasleem lowers her eyes when she recalls how the campaigning teenager was shown no mercy. "She was attacked so brutally," she says, "and she had done nothing wrong. The men who shot her probably didn't like that she was helping girls to be educated. We should all follow her example," she says firmly.

Sitting alongside her is Nadia, a studious 10-year old who dreams of being a doctor. Like Tasleem, she is the first girl in her family to go to school. "I used to tell my father I want to go to school," she says. "He always said no. But when my parents heard about Malala's story they said you should go to school. When I started I didn't know anything. Then my teacher explained things to me. I learnt how to read and write, and a lot of other things."

Malala has changed the equation for these girls, in this mountain hamlet. But many children in Pakistan never see the inside of a classroom.

Lost generation

The country has the second highest number of children out of school in the world, and the figures are getting worse. Around 5.4 million children of primary school age don't get an education, according to the latest statistics from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). There are an additional seven million adolescents out of school. And spending on education has been decreasing in recent years. 

Pakistan invests seven times more in the military than in primary schooling. What these numbers add up to is a lost generation.

Many children in Pakistan only learn lessons in hardship. The country has an army of child labourers born into poverty, and often into debt. A leading Children's rights group here, SPARC, estimates they could number as many as 12 million. At a kiln outside the city of Hyderabad, in the southern province of Sindh, the BBC filmed some of them at work. Children as young as four and five squat for hours, shaping mud into mounds to be baked into bricks. They are caked in dust, and scorched by the sun. Everyone has to pull their weight - even scrawny boys pushed wheelbarrows around the site.

Ten-year-old Jeeni toils here with the rest of her family - nine siblings, mother and father. Like many at the kilns, they are members of Pakistan's Hindu minority. They earn just 300 Pakistani rupees ( £2; $3) a day, which isn't enough for one decent meal. And to get that, they have to produce 1,000 bricks, which takes up to 15 hours.

Under her faded pink headscarf, Jeeni has a troubled and weary look. Her young shoulders are carrying an adult burden and these days it's heavier than ever. "If we earn, we eat," she says, "otherwise we go hungry. My big brother was hurt. He can't help our father making bricks. He can't make any money. So now it's only us - younger ones - who are working." As she speaks, her voice breaks and she begins to cry. Jeeni's father, Genu, who is hollow-cheeked, knows his children are being robbed of their future, but says he is too poor to stop it. "I understand the importance of education," he says, sitting in the dirt. "I had some schooling myself. If I die what will happen to them? They are illiterate. Anybody will be able to trick them. But I can't manage to send them to school."

Jeeni went to school once - for a day - but transport was costly. She longs to return, but that dream may be buried, brick by brick.

Why Education system must Evolve

 RELOOKING the determined pursuit of excellent grades is not a precursor to a "de-grading" of systems of assessment and an inevitable descent into mediocrity. Rather, it challenges the assumption that grades matter above all else in the real world of commerce, social interaction and governance.

Performance-focused employers need people who can deliver results - execute tasks, demonstrate innovation, cut deals, size up opportunities, weigh risks, manage projects, raise revenues, solve problems, communicate issues, negotiate agreements and interact with diverse groups. Having scored top grades in science, literature or maths is no guarantee that a candidate can easily acquire such competencies that increasingly count more in a fast-changing world.

This lies at the heart of the debate on the future of Singapore's education system, as expounded by Education Minister Heng Swee Keat when he noted that schools would have to move beyond equipping students for examinations and prepare them for life. Towards that end, secondary schools will offer by 2017 a programme intended to help students understand the relevance and value of what they are learning. Another programme will encourage them to better understand both themselves and their relationship with others. These schemes will institutionalise cognitive values necessary if the education system is to help Singapore meet the qualitatively new demands of the globalising economy.

That the country can focus now on these higher-order skills attests to its success in first ensuring a strong educational foundation for its young. However, unlike times when students had to be made employable in an industrial economy, today's information economy demands that they are equipped for workplace demands that cannot even be foreseen when a child enters school. Hence, the need, as Mr Heng made clear at his ministry's annual workplan seminar recently, for all-round students who can collaborate with people from different backgrounds in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Parents and educators can make a real difference by laying aside their own assumptions and experiences. They need to help children learn to live in the complex world in new ways. This is largely uncharted territory with no study guides, assessment workbooks and private tutors readily available. It is at home, around the dinner table, in particular, that children get to imbibe a sense of what they must do to thrive in a challenging world. And it is in school that they will be transformed, beyond the changed curricula, by the cultural change of making them more than the sum of their grades.

The Straits Times  Oct 03, 2013

 EDITORIAL       

Changes in Education in Singapore

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat recently announced changes to the education system. But is there a need to change? Aren't we doing fine? By many accounts, Singapore has one of the best education systems in the world. Singapore students are top performers in international tests. Its curriculum-based textbooks have been adopted by 39 countries.

A common gripe, however, is that our students are only exam-smart and that our education system is very competitive and highly stressful. Such concerns suggest that there is always room for improvement. Addressing these concerns at the Ministry of Education's Work Plan Seminar, Mr Heng unveiled plans for a "Student-Centric, Values-Driven Education" with four key attributes. At first glance, we may wonder whether these are achievable or a far-fetched vision. Is it possible to engage every student? Can every school be a good school? Will every teacher be a caring educator? Will every parent be a supportive partner?

These, in my view, are not statements of outcomes but statements of strategy. The idea is that actions guided by these principles would lead to a better education system through which our learners can receive a well-rounded education, with positive learning experiences. They also reiterate that the responsibility of educating a child rests not just with the school but also with the student, parents and the larger community, reminding us of the African saying, "It takes the whole village to raise a child".

MEASURING ACHIEVEMENT, TO WHAT END?

In line with this vision, the minister announced the removal of the achievement-oriented school banding, saying that academic results alone cannot be a good yardstick of a good school. While this has been welcomed by some, there is also disappointment expressed that removing competition poses a danger to standards of education. 

This makes one wonder about the purpose of the banding. While the practice has its merits and has served the purpose of identifying schools that have achieved academically, be it in terms of progress or sustained achievement, and spurring innovative programmes to enhance learning, it fails to provide insights on how the school, educators, students and parents have brought out these achievements. So, yes, the banding measures achievement, but the question is, to what end?

Should we simply measure achievement for the sake of measuring, or should we measure achievement to learn and improve? In other words, is measurement going to be of achievement - or for achievement?

COLLABORATE, NOT COMPETE

Interestingly, many of the news articles on this issue have covered only the abolition of the banding but have not elaborated on the alternative that takes its place. This is to recognise key attributes that contribute to a good school, such as best practices in teaching and learning, character and citizenship education, student all-round development, staff development and well-being, and partnership (with parents).

Though banding of schools based on academic results and recognition of good schools based on best practices have the same goal - to improve quality of education - they operate differently. The awards are suitable as administrative measures of the performance of schools, and therefore push schools to come up with various innovative programmes so as to be the best.

On the other hand, the measures of best practices allow schools to learn from one another and build the overall quality of education in Singapore, while recognising the effort that has gone into this.

So which would be a suitable approach for nurturing our students: Competition (banding) or collaboration (sharing of best practices)? The answer is obvious.

ASSESS STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

What else is needed to make these changes successful?

I hope that there are also changes in ways of assessment. If school assessments continue to be mainly exam-focused and academics-oriented, it is highly likely that this is what schools, educators, students and parents will continue to work on. It stands to logic that what will be delivered is what is going to be measured or counted. To ensure that the various stakeholders do not go back to the old heavily exam-oriented practices, the way forward would be to assess student engagement as an additional measure.  This would require new tools or tests: We should consider alternative assessments and include more formative tests that support assessment for learning, in addition to the typical summative assessment of learning (such as the final-year exams).

However, as grades in standardised national exams (such as the PSLE, GCE "O" levels, "A" levels) or traditional end-of-year/ module exams have been conventionally used as the "currency of education" to gain admission to higher education or jobs, it is not easy to do away with such exams.  I can hear the murmurs that additional assessment would mean extra work and stress. But this additional assessment will help students learn.

REVIVING 'TEACH LESS'

Another aspect not mentioned in the minister's address was the impact of changes on curriculum. Student-centric learning activities would require more time, as it involves active engagement and not just passive transmission of information and knowledge to the students. So the question is, are teachers going to be expected to cover the same curriculum or content to the same extent?  If we expect our teachers to do so, carry on with other teaching-related administrative, co-curricular activities, counselling and mentoring duties and, on top of this, come up with ways to engage students, our teachers are going to be overwhelmed.

Therefore, we may also need to rejuvenate the concept of "Teach Less, Learn More". With a re-scoped, student-centric curriculum, the focus would be on not content coverage but deeper, meaningful and valuable learning for life.

As an educator, I look forward to the changes, for there are numerous advantages to student-centric education. This is evident from the teaching and learning literature. Based on this, I am also confident that our students would enjoy it and am hopeful that they would adapt well.

As a parent, I look forward to connecting with my kids' schools and hope this is not limited to information sharing but purposeful interaction. Perhaps, as a first step, schools can consider creating opportunities for parents to experience the student-centric education. Our experience of school was so different that we may need to go back to school today.

(Dr Nachamma Sockalingam holds a PhD in Educational Psychology and is a lecturer at SIM University's Teaching and Learning Centre  20 September 2012   )

              

Copyright © 2012 MediaCorp Pte Ltd

Studying humanities will make the world a better place

The Straits Times 30/09/2012

Wong Kim Hoh, Senior Writer

MR LEACH, on the importance of the humanities

"Studying the humanities helps to breed civility. Civility may encompass manners but is different from manners. Civility is to respect someone else, and part of that is to understand their background and their world. A world without civility is a world guaranteed to be filled with tension."

Jim Leach has a personal conviction which has been the refrain of many a sage: To understand the present and the future, we have to look to the past. The chairman of the United States National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) also believes that nothing bridges the past, present and future more than the study of the humanities.

"Of all the disciplines, the humanities do the most to tap into and expand the imagination. Literature, art, history, religion and philosophy give meaning to concepts of justice and goodness, and shape our sense of beauty," said Mr Leach in a keynote address delivered in Singapore recently. "They allow us to put on the shoes of others in past ages and different contemporary circumstances. They invite us to ask questions and seek answers."

He spoke at the latest Singapore International Foundation Better World Forum, a series to promote the exchange of insights, perspectives and experiences between global thought leaders and the Singapore community. Titled Cultural Outreach And Citizen Diplomacy, the forum was attended by members of the artistic and diplomatic communities, social entrepreneurs as well as university students.

In a pragmatic world ruled by science and technology, the humanities are often given short shrift. But that, he believes, is a grave mistake.  "Every time there is an advance in science and technology, humanistic questions come into play," he tells The Sunday Times in an interview. It is impossible to talk about cloning and nuclear technology, for example, without discussing attendant ethical and humanistic issues.

A former Republican Congressman appointed by the Obama administration to head the NEH in 2009, Mr Leach views the humanities, in one sense, as having "everything to do with relations, man to man.  The most meaningful discovery in humanities studies is that everything is related to everything else, although we may not know it at the time. The challenge is to discover and then correlate discoveries, the most important of which relate to perspective – values, methods of thinking and doing – rather than fact." 

History and storytelling help many people connect the dots and bind the human experience. History, he says, can be more controversial than current events.  "There can be clarity about certain historical facts like names and dates, but the whys and wherefores of events can be elusive. But despite that, one thing is clear: The deeper our understanding of the past, the greater our capacity to understand and cope with the present and mould the future," he says.

The same can be said of literature.  He mounted a stout defence of literature in his speech by quoting the works of great poets and writers. American poet Walt Whitman's greatest dream, he said, was "an internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy". Russian novelist and essayist Fyodor Dostoevsky said "beauty will save the world" while the Chinese sage Confucius wrote: "When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war."

Mr Leach believes that a person who understands his country's history, political theory, jurisprudence, art and literature is more likely to understand his country, his place and his national values. Similarly, a person who has a sense of the world is more likely to understand the thinking of others and apply logic to challenges of the moment.

"How can we contain prejudice and counter forces of hatred if we don't come to know more about each other?" he asks.

These are not casual concerns, but highly important issues in a world filled with tension and strife. It is relevant in the US, embroiled in several wars against terrorism, and it is just as relevant in Singapore where many are grappling with resentment over issues including immigration and foreign talent. "Singapore is not alone," he says, when asked how Singaporeans can learn to cope with the issue. "America has an analogous tension, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany and France too."

It is part of a bigger change sweeping the world.  "The bigger change is not someone from another country coming here. The bigger change is occurring in the world. Change is accelerating and when change accelerates, there is a natural discombobulation.  "That would occur whether there is a single immigrant or a thousand. It implies more and more are living in a greater world and it requires effort." 

Learning how to accommodate change is yet another reason why he believes the humanities are important.

Mr Leach – who was teaching public and international affairs at Princeton before his NEH appointment – says the humanities are critical to citizenship, national security, job creation and managing and expanding the store of human knowledge.

Literature, philosophy and history expand the imagination, which he thinks is even more important than knowledge.  Einstein, he says, was not a first-rate mathematician but he became a great physicist because he had such a fantastic imagination. "Einstein once said knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world."

In a highly competitive world, it also makes sense to embrace history, literature, languages and philosophy – subjects which lend perspective and stimulate creative thinking. "How can individuals compete in their own markets if they don't write, think and communicate well and understand their own culture and its variety of subcultures, or abroad if they don't understand foreign languages, histories and traditions?"

In fact, he believes society would be short-changing itself if it short-changed the humanities.

Asked if the Internet has muddied the waters of the humanities, he replies: "The race is on." On the one hand, the Internet has the greatest capacity for people to educate themselves in the world. "On the other, you have two types of people – those who will use the Internet to seek the views of people just like themselves, and those who want to see a wider horizon. The more open-minded you are when you look at the Internet, the better." When he was teaching, he used to tell students who were conservative to find a good liberal blog to read, and vice versa. What is important, he says, is for people to see the big picture. "The big picture is the right thing to have."

But Mr Leach is not done yet. The humanities, he says, emphasise the fourth R – Reality – after the three basics of Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic.

Reality encompasses concern for the human condition. And that includes trying to understand other people and their concerns as empathetically and as comprehensively as possible. When people try to understand each other, conflict will be reduced. "I'm not saying it won't happen, but it will be reduced."

Accepting broader definitions of success

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat yesterday called on Singaporeans to rethink what constitutes success in life so that the education system can have meaningful reforms. Here are excerpts of his speech.

MANY parents and students feel that our education system is too focused on examinations and grades. This excessive focus has several consequences:

·        It may come at the expense of the development of well-rounded individuals, including the character and values of the student, which ultimately matters most.

·        It may come at the expense of learning as students "study to the test" and teachers respond by "teaching to the test" rather than to stimulate curiosity and a love of learning.

·        Students may choose subjects, and indeed, schools may offer subjects, based on how easy it is to score good grades rather than on their intrinsic value. The recent debate over literature, which Ms Janice Koh brought up, is a case in point.

·        Other forms of talent - in the arts, sports, music, leadership ability, applied skills using both hands and head, etc, are not sufficiently recognised. We should not just have an exam-based meritocracy. Rather, we should have a talent-centric meritocracy that recognises talent in a wide range of areas.

A major consequence of a single-minded focus on examinations is stress, in particular, stress related to competition and high-stake examinations such as the PSLE, which Ms Denise Phua and several others have spoken about. Mr Lim Biow Chuan also opened this debate by talking about stress. Some mothers take leave for an entire year or more to help their children prepare.

Many see entry into top schools as critical to their children's future and prepare their children very early, some as early as kindergarten, and even send them to two kindergartens. Many compete to get a place in popular primary schools or spend significantly on tuition, as Mr Low Thia Khiang mentioned.

Others worry about their children being streamed into normal streams, and suffer from the labelling and stigma associated with it. Some teachers who are committed to helping their students succeed may give a lot of homework or set tests that are difficult to stretch their students, but often with good intentions. I appreciate the stress that parents, students and educators feel. This is an important issue.

Is stress a necessary evil?

SOME are concerned about the effects of competition. Successful students may develop a narrow, competitive mindset. They may come to believe that: "I have succeeded because I have worked hard, so I deserve nothing but the best for myself."

While there are concerns about high-stake exams, I have also heard other views, and there are others who see merit in the current system. Many feel that the current system sets clear standards. Many students have told me exams challenge them to learn better. Teachers use exams to determine students' mastery of the different subjects and tailor their teaching strategies accordingly.

In a public education system, exams provide us with a standardised measure of progression and achievement, and ensure accountability across the system to uphold rigorous standards. In fact, this is one of the reasons why public examinations started. It also provides an objective way of determining entry into the next level of education. In Singapore, exams have helped assure a very high average among our students. That is why our students, even those who score average here, perform so well when they go overseas.

Some countries, such as the UK, Japan and Korea, and some states in the US that abolished exams or made these easier are now reversing course. Their experience has been that while removing exams was popular and brought short-term relief, over time, insidiously, standards fall. They are now concerned that their youth are not equipped to compete in the global marketplace. I should note that the people who suffer the most when educational standards drop in these countries are not the best students but the average students. That is why in some countries, while they say they have "high peaks", they also have "deep valleys".

As for the stress that comes with high-stake exams, many have observed that some amount of stress is almost unavoidable. While excessive and prolonged stress is bad, the right amount of stress can bring out the best in each of us. But what is optimal depends on each individual. Some parents have also said that some amount of competition is necessary - it is a reality of working life, and equipping our students to learn this early in life strengthens them for the future.

Singapore is not alone

INDEED, this issue of stress and competition is not unique to Singapore. Some of you may have read that in New York, parents queue to admit their children into high- end kindergartens, while a recent report noted that in the UK, rich parents pay up to £80,000 a year (S$150,000) to hire "well-qualified private tutors".

The common position is that we all want our children to get ahead in life. And the higher the aspiration, the greater the drive. The question we have to ask is, what exactly will ensure that our children can get ahead and be successful in the face of global competition and not just relative to other Singaporeans?

Social mobility

THE second area is that of opportunities, social mobility and inclusion. Some parents are concerned that without tuition, their children cannot cope or cannot do well enough to excel. Others, and Ms Mary Liew spoke about this earlier, whose children are doing well want them to do even better, and procure all sorts of tuition and enrichment classes to help them advance. Some are concerned that in some schools, students tend to come from similar social-economic backgrounds and have similar academic abilities.

Without the opportunity to interact with students from different backgrounds and academic abilities, our students may not develop empathy and our society may lose its cohesiveness. But some have also cautioned that if we mix up our students too much, it will be harder to cater to the learning needs of different groups. We will lose our peaks of excellence and also fail to support those who may fall behind without different approaches.

Policy options

IN THE next phase of Our Singapore Conversation, we can discuss the various policy options. For example, the PSLE serves as an objective benchmark for secondary school posting today. So important questions that we need to discuss include:

·        How do we maintain our rigorous standards and accountability and whether we can allocate all secondary school places without an objective benchmark like the PSLE?

·        Are there alternative posting systems that are still objective but can minimise the current over-emphasis on academic results, and enhance social inclusion?

·        To what extent should choice or proximity to school be a consideration in secondary school posting, as some have suggested?

Mr Gan Thiam Poh's suggestion about PSLE cut-off points is something that we can consider further. Ms Denise Phua spoke about a through-train model from pre-school to secondary school. Mr Yee Jenn Jong had other suggestions. As another example, streaming at the secondary level allows us to tailor instruction to the abilities and learning styles of our students. But some have questioned if we should re-think whether streaming is absolutely necessary.

So important questions to discuss in the next phase of Our Singapore Conversation include:

·        Can we ensure that every child can learn at his or her own pace if there is no streaming?

·        Will our schools be even less diverse if we did not have students from the various academic streams?

·        Can we replicate what we have done at the primary level, such as subject-based banding, at the secondary level? And that was the specific suggestion by Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar.

Whatever we do, we must be deliberate and thoughtful about what we need to change, how fast we can change and how far we can sustain these changes. We must have the resources to sustain any change. I have been watching the debates on resourcing education in various countries. Countries that have started with a big bang now have to make painful changes to cut back.

A long way ahead

EDUCATION is a long-term endeavour and always a work in progress. We should not rush into anything as the results, whether good or bad, are evident only many years down the road. And even as we seek to address current issues, we must be as thoughtful as we can.

It is also critical for us not to see our education system in isolation. Education alone cannot enable Singaporeans to realise our aspirations. If our society fails, the able will emigrate and the rest of us will be stuck here in failure. But if we stay and move together, we can succeed together. Education alone cannot give us a good life, and we need to be clear what a good life is. If a good life is simply about getting ahead of others and achieving the 5Cs (cash, condominium, cars, credit card, and country club), the competitive pressure in the workplace will define how we, as parents and teachers, view education. Then no amount of changes in the education system can alter the reality of each of us chasing after material and positional goods.

We cannot have broader definitions of success in education without our society accepting broader definitions of success in life. In many respects, the education system reflects societal norms and expectations.

Why Spore's education system must evolve

RELOOKING the determined pursuit of excellent grades is not a precursor to a "de-grading" of systems of assessment and an inevitable descent into mediocrity. Rather, it challenges the assumption that grades matter above all else in the real world of commerce, social interaction and governance.

Performance-focused employers need people who can deliver results - execute tasks, demonstrate innovation, cut deals, size up opportunities, weigh risks, manage projects, raise revenues, solve problems, communicate issues, negotiate agreements and interact with diverse groups. Having scored top grades in science, literature or maths is no guarantee that a candidate can easily acquire such competencies that increasingly count more in a fast-changing world.

This lies at the heart of the debate on the future of Singapore's education system, as expounded by Education Minister Heng Swee Keat when he noted that schools would have to move beyond equipping students for examinations and prepare them for life. Towards that end, secondary schools will offer by 2017 a programme intended to help students understand the relevance and value of what they are learning. Another programme will encourage them to better understand both themselves and their relationship with others. These schemes will institutionalise cognitive values necessary if the education system is to help Singapore meet the qualitatively new demands of the globalising economy.

That the country can focus now on these higher-order skills attests to its success in first ensuring a strong educational foundation for its young. However, unlike times when students had to be made employable in an industrial economy, today's information economy demands that they are equipped for workplace demands that cannot even be foreseen when a child enters school. Hence, the need, as Mr Heng made clear at his ministry's annual workplan seminar recently, for all-round students who can collaborate with people from different backgrounds in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Parents and educators can make a real difference by laying aside their own assumptions and experiences. They need to help children learn to live in the complex world in new ways. This is largely uncharted territory with no study guides, assessment workbooks and private tutors readily available. It is at home, around the dinner table, in particular, that children get to imbibe a sense of what they must do to thrive in a challenging world. And it is in school that they will be transformed, beyond the changed curricula, by the cultural change of making them more than the sum of their grades.

The Straits Times  Oct 03, 2013

 EDITORIAL

What to learn: 'core knowledge' or '21st-century skills'?

If someone told you that students need to think critically and creatively, be technologically savvy and work well with others, you would nod in agreement, right?

But a small group of outspoken education scholars is challenging that assumption, saying the push for 21st-century skills is taking a dangerous bite out of precious classroom time that could be better spent learning deep, essential content.

Go to the following link for more details. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-04-core-knowledge_N.htm

Which way of learning do you think is best for Singaporean children?

Education Today - What do you want?

Watch this video.  Now think of the implications it has on education today.  What do you suggest schools in Singapore should  teach / do to better prepare Singaporeans for the future?