PM Lawrence Wong's NDR - Education Portions
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Yup too early to tell.
And the objective is to reduce , not eradicate. Impossible to eradicate. Last time say 30% of parents die die must groom child for gifted. Now maybe reduce to 15%. Some would see it as improvement. Some would not. I hope whatever perceptions these group of parent holding on to, is benefiting them and their child in the grand scale of things.
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I can understand how you feel.
A friend used to receive regular calls from school that his son had an attitude problem, he would put his head on the table to feign sleep every time this particular teacher walked into the classroom. The friend was so so relieved when his son got into GEP and such anti-social behavior stopped. That’s why i think a standard paper and pen test would be better to identify these neurodivergent kids rather than to depend on teacher’s observations.
I do not think my DD2 would fare well in the newly revamped system.
Firstly, would she get selected? I am not very sure. She wasn’t even top 3 in her P3 class. While not a troublemaker, she definitely wasn’t on any teacher’s radar screen as she was extremely quiet in class.
Secondly, DD2 would still be bored Mon-Fri if she had to remain in her mainstream school. Under the newly revamped HA program, identified kids remain in their mainstream schools and will only travel to another nearby centre that provides the 2-3hrs “HA program”, once a week.
If the whole system works like E2K, I would say it is just right for the HA kids. For the 1% neurodivergent kids, they will still suffer as they lack the social company of kids similar to themselves, so the time spent in mainstream would still be extremely torturous for them.
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@lee_yl I wonder how the revamped HA will look like. It would possibly be more than 10% of the cohort. Is the 10% by subject? Then perhaps 20-30% of the cohort may be in some HA programme of sorts.
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Chua Mui Hoong has written a good opinion piece in yesterday’s Straits Times (Friday 13 Sept):
In broadening the definition of merit, let’s continue to celebrate success
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/in-broadening-the-definition-of-merit-let-s-continue-to-celebrate-success -
Hear directly from ex GEP students/teachers. This was more than a decade ago. Some fundamentals I believe still relevant now
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@bbbay thanks for sharing! I received some really good insights from their frank sharings.
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Oh, I remember I watched this video clip more than a decade ago!
One interviewee caught my attention back then because of the way he spoke and his super long hair !! Went to google about what/how is he doing now and saw his LinkedIn profile which is very impressive.Is gep education still relevant today?
If it is no longer relevant in today’s context, it would have died off naturally but it is still highly sought after. 40yrs ago there is a group of gifted+neurodivergent kids in our midst, today and tomorrow there will still be a small handful like that. But now, it is too late and meaningless to discuss because gep has to go. Just hope that MOE really has a mechanism to identify these folks and find some way to effectively help them. -
Allow me to share another aspect of Giftedness.
Giftedness can manifest in creativity too. Creating something no one has taught before. When presented with the same info, see patterns no one else see. And some gifted individuals are known to have visions out of no where. The mathematician Ramanujan is one such individual.
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I realised, after talking to parents and kids, that there are two groups of kids who are most bored and poentially disruptive in say maths class - the kids who totally do not understand what is being taught, and the kids who spend 3 - 5 min reading the worked example and totally get it (then there are the 3rd group whose tutor has alread taught them the topic, but that’s for another discussion).
Juxtaposed like this, then answer would be for the latter to teach the former. So kids who already understand the concepts can be challenged to teach the kids who do not get it , to explain he concepts in a way that his/her classmates can also “see” what they “see”. To come up with activities/ games that can help this process,
For example, I play a game with my kid and now young grand nephews and nieces while waiting for food to served. I grab the peanuts, we count the total number of penuts, then use an inverted bowl to cover some of the penuts and asks the kid to “guess” the number of peanuts under the bowl, after counting how many peanuts are not covered. This, of course, is the concept behind modeling. Its great fun, especially when the victor gets to eat what’s under the bowl.
The kids who teaches gains a lot of skills. Just teaching the topic deepens the undestanding of the topic. And social skill broaden, and boredom is delt with.
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GEP高才教育改革 有人欢喜有人愁? Students Speak about the Gifted Education Program in Singapore
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