Petition to Review the Singapore Education System
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Peony:
Sorry I'm so late... but I support this petition.
Hello Mdm My Inspiration, have you signed up here?
http://www.petitiononline.com/SgEd2011/petition.html -
Chenonceau:
Hi Chenonceau, your power is built since young lah, asking me to try to read those stuff you read is beyond me now .... my brain can only absorb chick-lit now... most of my brain cells were fried after I co-took PSLE with son last yr!. :lol:Waaaaaaah! So many people wanna learn English. Maybe I set up Chenonceau's Language Centre where people can learn to ace English and fail Chinese.
:evil: :evil: :rubhands:
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QuiteKSMum:
Aiyo! You dun say! My brain also frying. The English is just about ok only for PSLE. The Math and the Science is way beyond me. Has anyone asked teachers the question...
Hi Chenonceau, your power is built since young lah, asking me to try to read those stuff you read is beyond me now .... my brain can only absorb chick-lit now... most of my brain cells were fried after I co-took PSLE with son last yr!. :lol:Chenonceau:
Waaaaaaah! So many people wanna learn English. Maybe I set up Chenonceau's Language Centre where people can learn to ace English and fail Chinese.
:evil: :evil: :rubhands:
If you take the four subjects in PSLE, can you score above 90 for every subject?
I asked 5 teachers, and all said \"No\". Teachers also can't do anything. :rant: :rant:
We can also ask MOE top brass the same question. -
Chenonceau:
Aiyo! You dun say! My brain also frying. The English is just about ok only for PSLE. The Math and the Science is way beyond me. Has anyone asked teachers the question...
Hi Chenonceau, your power is built since young lah, asking me to try to read those stuff you read is beyond me now .... my brain can only absorb chick-lit now... most of my brain cells were fried after I co-took PSLE with son last yr!. :lol:QuiteKSMum:
[quote=\"Chenonceau\"]Waaaaaaah! So many people wanna learn English. Maybe I set up Chenonceau's Language Centre where people can learn to ace English and fail Chinese.
:evil: :evil: :rubhands:
If you take the four subjects in PSLE, can you score above 90 for every subject?
I asked 5 teachers, and all said \"No\". Teachers also can't do anything. :rant: :rant:
We can also ask MOE top brass the same question.[/quote]Current P6 Maths is like Greek to me - but then I'm always poor in Maths ( even those of yester years STD). Sci after diligently studying for 3 mths, I finally see some :imanangel:
Definitely son's T last yr Sci also cannot make it type - his solution was to just spend the min time necc... :slapshead: But I could see overall he's trying his best with the 3 subjs, so what to do .... KS mum to the rescue... :frustrated: -
This article appears in Time Magazine and can be found here - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062419-1,00.html. It's author is Joshua Levine. It details an alternative educational system that DOES NOT test children to death.
Spring may be just around the corner in this poor part of Helsinki known as the Deep East, but the ground is still mostly snow-covered and the air has a dry, cold bite. In a clearing outside the Kallahti Comprehensive School, a handful of 9-year-olds are sitting back to back, arranging sticks, pinecones, stones and berries into shapes on the frozen ground. The arrangers will then have to describe these shapes using geometric terms so the kids who can't see them can say what they are.
Finland has a number of smart ideas about how to teach kids while letting them be kids. For instance, one teacher ideally stays with a class from first grade through sixth grade. That way the teacher has years to learn the quirks of a particular group and tailor the teaching approach accordingly.
But Finland's sweeping success is largely due to one big, not-so-secret weapon: its teachers. \"It's the quality of the teaching that is driving Finland's results,\" says the OECD's Schleicher. \"The U.S. has an industrial model where teachers are the means for conveying a prefabricated product. In Finland, the teachers are the standard.\"
That's one reason so many Finns want to become teachers, which provides a rich talent pool that Finland filters very selectively. In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, 1,258 undergrads applied for training to become elementary-school teachers. Only 123, or 9.8%, were accepted into the five-year teaching program. That's typical. There's another thing: in Finland, every teacher is required to have a master's degree. (The Finns call this a master's in kasvatus, which is the same word they use for a mother bringing up her child.) Annual salaries range from about $40,000 to $60,000, and teachers work 190 days a year.
\"It's very expensive to educate all of our teachers in five-year programs, but it helps make our teachers highly respected and appreciated,\" says Jari Lavonen, head of the department of teacher education at the University of Helsinki. Outsiders spot this quickly. \"Their teachers are much better prepared to teach physics than we are, and then the Finns get out of the way. You don't buy a dog and bark for it,\" says Dan MacIsaac, a specialist in physics-teacher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo who visited Finland for two months. \"In the U.S., they treat teachers like pizza delivery boys and then do efficiency studies on how well they deliver the pizza.\"
The Finns haven't always had everything figured out. In the 1960s, Finland had two parallel education systems after primary school; brighter kids went one way, laggards went the other. Reforms began in 1968, scrapping two-tier education in favor of one national system. Things still weren't right. \"In the beginning, we weren't happy at all,\" says Reijo Laukkanen, a counselor at the Finnish National Board of Education.
In the '80s, Finland stopped \"streaming\" pupils to different math and language tracks based on ability. \"People in Finland cannot be divided by how smart they are,\" says Laukkanen. \"It has been very beneficial.\" Next to go, in the '90s, were inspectors who oversaw annual school plans. Schools were so hostile that the inspectors became afraid to make on-site tours.
\"Finland is a society based on equity,\" says Laukkanen. \"Japan and Korea are highly competitive societies — if you're not better than your neighbor, your parents pay to send you to night school. In Finland, outperforming your neighbor isn't very important. Everybody is average, but you want that average to be very high.\"
This principle has gone far toward making Finland an educational overachiever. In the 2006 PISA science results, Finland's worst students did 80% better than the OECD average for the worst group; its brightest did only 50% better than the average for bright students. \"Raising the average for the bottom rungs has had a profound effect on the overall result,\" says MacIsaac.
Some of Finland's educational policies could probably be exported, but it's questionable whether the all-for-one-and-one-for-all-ness that underlies them would travel easily. Thailand, for instance, is trying to adapt the Finnish model to its own school system. But as soon as a kid falls behind, parents send for a private tutor — something that would be unthinkable in Finland. Is Thailand's Finnish experiment working? \"Not really,\" says Lavonen. Would that it could, in Thailand and elsewhere.
\"It's a different way of conceptualizing math when you do it this way instead of using pen and paper, and it goes straight to the brain,\" says Veli-Matti Harjula, who teaches the same group of children straight through from third to sixth grade. Educators in Sweden, not Finland, came up with the concept of \"outside math,\" but Harjula didn't have to get anybody's approval to borrow it. He can pretty much do whatever he wants, provided that his students meet the very general objectives of the core curriculum set by Finland's National Board of Education. For math, the latest national core curriculum runs just under 10 pages (up from 3½ pages for the previous core curriculum).
The Finns are as surprised as much as anyone else that they have recently emerged as the new rock stars of global education. It surprises them because they do as little measuring and testing as they can get away with. They just don't believe it does much good. They did, however, decide to participate in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And to put it in a way that would make the noncompetitive Finns cringe, they kicked major butt. The Finns have participated in the global survey four times and have usually placed among the top three finishers in reading, math and science.
In the latest PISA survey, in 2009, Finland placed second in science literacy, third in mathematics and second in reading. The U.S. came in 15th in reading, close to the OECD average, which is where most of the U.S.'s results fell.
Finland's only real rivals are the Asian education powerhouses South Korea and Singapore, whose drill-heavy teaching methods often recall those of the old Soviet-bloc Olympic-medal programs. Indeed, a recent manifesto by Chinese-American mother Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, chides American parents for shrinking from the pitiless discipline she argues is necessary to turn out great students. Her book has led many to wonder whether the cure is worse than the disease.
Which is why delegations from the U.S. and the rest of the world are trooping to Helsinki, where world-class results are achieved to the strains of a reindeer lullaby. \"In Asia, it's about long hours — long hours in school, long hours after school. In Finland, the school day is shorter than it is in the U.S. It's a more appealing model,\" says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the PISA program at the OECD.
There's less homework too. \"An hour a day is good enough to be a successful student,\" says Katja Tuori, who is in charge of student counseling at Kallahti Comprehensive, which educates kids up to age 16. \"These kids have a life.\"
There are rules, of course. No iPods or portable phones in class. No hats indoors. (They also tried a no-coat rule, but it was just too cold.) But not much else. Tuori spots a kid texting in class and shoots him a reproachful glance. He quickly puts the phone away. \"You have to do something really bad, like hit somebody, to actually get punished,\" says Tuori. -
Thanks, Chenonceau, for sharing this article. Rem I read abt the Finns edn system in the ST abt 1 - 2 yrs back, really envy the children, teachers & parents in Finland. Wonder whether the birth rate of the Finns are high?
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Chenonceau:
Alamak, like that sure drive business away :siam:Waaaaaaah! So many people wanna learn English. Maybe I set up Chenonceau's Language Centre where people can learn to ace English and fail Chinese.
:evil: :evil: :rubhands: -
I agree that the bell curve is wrong and that we should just allow the students to obtain the marks they obtain based on how they did for the paper. This I can support.
I would agree that classes are too large. Personally, I think it should be reduced by half. However, despite the Ministry’s efforts this is not possible. There just isn’t enough teachers in the first place. I noticed that many schools have a lack of manpower even as of now. Just so often I hear from my relatives of how young teachers would resign upon finishing their contract - many even break their bonds with MOE. Most complain about the stress (demanding parents to not enough family time).
As for the last point, I strongly disagree. Arranging students according to their grades is beneficial to many. I used to come from a school that did not do that. Ended up the teacher could not teach at all. For subjects like mathematics and history, the class has people scoring as low as 2% and others scoring as high as 98%. Basically, the teacher just ignore all the students who scored more than 70% and focused on the "slower learners". As such, my friends and I were not given the attention we deserved and could not improve at all. This is highly unfair since we paid the same amount of school fees and we had to depend on ourselves for our grades throughout secondary 3 and 4. -
Meinteel, I can feel the passion in your words, and thank you for writing your sincere thoughts even if it is to state a disagreement. Here are my thoughts on streaming developed further in an earlier post.
Chenonceau:
This said, I almost never think of anything in absolute terms. So I would not say I am completely against streaming. I wouldn't put a 15% math student with a 98%.Here's my view. I think that streaming is a sham...
(1) because every child is different, and even if 2 kids score 280, they will have different strengths and weaknesses in different subjects. Streaming lulls parents and educators into thinking that they can pitch one lesson to a whole class when in reality that one lesson is inappropriate in some way or other to everyone in that class.
My son is in 2nd best class. He is taught as if he were 80+ in all four subjects. This is inappropriate for him because he is very good in 3 subjects and very poor in one. His friend is excellent in Chinese and Math but very poor in English and Science. Another is good at English and Math bbut poor in the other 2. In my son's words \"Everyone is good at different subjects and poor at different subjects, Mommy\". Even with streaming, you are still working with mixed ability students, except that teachers and schools FOOL themselves into thinking there is homogeneity. There isn't. There never is. The only homogeneity I see is that every child in the top 2 classes have very supportive mothers/fathers/tutors.
(2) because standards are so high now that individual strengths and weaknesses are even more salient. When you are teaching at low standards of mastery, you can pop similarly high/low IQ kids together, teach them together and being of same IQ, they'll follow. But when subjects become very specialized and skills levels are demanding, a child's innate strengths and weaknesses profile comes to the fore and needs to be addressed individually. When standards are high and skills specialized, the need for individualized coaching becomes heavier. That's why Olympic sportsmen have individualized coaching. That's why, traditionally, universities had tutorials - for individualized coaching in thinking skills.
Hence, I prefer a smaller 1:15 class ratio paired with mixed ability classes. This ensures that Teachers don't have the EXCUSE to think that they can make one lesson plan and be able to teach everyone well. They'll need to accept that each student needs attention. It also holds the following advantages
(a) better emotional follow through
(b) prevents elitism
(c) prevents parents from trying to help kids get into top schools because there ARE no academically top schools in a mixed ability teaching system.
(d) teaches social skills (because when the kids grow up, they will be working in mixed ability teams)
Streaming is a feel-good thing. It numbs teachers to the necessity for individualized coaching in a system where standards are super high (and thus individualized coaching is necessary). Streaming also introduces artificial social strata into the society over the long term. Streaming breeds elitism. Those who go to top classes/schools feel pride. Those who don't, have low self-esteem and a lot of bitterness. 20 years on, this bitterness will explode into social problems because too many will realize that they didn't make it only because their parents didn't have time to coach them.
It's a good thing that neither of my kids' schools streamed in P1 and P2. Both my kids were bottom of the heap then. If there was streaming then, they would gone into a class where they would have been taught below their ability... and being taught less, they will learn less, and today, my daughter wouldn't be where she is today. My son also wouldn't be in the 2nd best class.
The other thing about streaming-cum-bellcurve system is the competitive spirit it engenders. Everyone is in it for themseves. Do you wonder why the PAP MPs seem to be so self-interested and elitist? They are products of our education - the top of the top of the top from our educational system. I can already see it in my son. He used to be such a kind boy in preschool. Nobody wanted to play with a child who had just shitted in his pants. My boy spent the whole day by that child's side because he pitied his friend.
But guess what... yesterday my son jubilated when recounting to me his classmates' pain and discomfiture at not knowing how to solve 2 or 3 of the problem sums in the exam. You know, I didn't know what to say except that he should not be so mean. What he WILL learn however, is to be hypocritical. Be happy about others' failure, but not show it. What kind of values is the system teaching my son?
Nope... I can't agree with streaming. But it doesn't mean I am right. It's a viewpoint. Is all. I meant to add another perspective to the discussion. Dun mean to offend, especially when both of you have taken time to detail your perspective.
However, if we stream by putting students with average 90s together and students with average 80s together, it is too fine a distinction. An average 70s student could well have 90s potential except that in that year of streaming, his mother passed away. This happened to a boy I knew. Broadening the stream bands will still give us the benefits of mixed ability teaching without making it horribly difficult for the teacher ESPECIALLY if classes are capped at 15 students.
A robust system can work without streaming. Here is an example - http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062419,00.html
This said, we can well agree to disagree. It still makes your perspective a precious and valuable one in the present discussion, as long as you have denigrated no one and put down no other parent. Which you haven't at all done. -
I agree with broad-based streaming rather than do away with streaming all together. I would also like to share what my aunt always tell the parents who would go to Meet the Teacher sessions. She has two young daughters (P1 & P3) and is a school teacher.
Those parents always compliment her for having smart and well-behaved children (Her elder daughter was the top 3 for her level in all subjects in P1 & P2). They are well-known in school for self-regulating their own play time and study time, would automatically stop eating ice-cream and fried food when falling sick. Sounds like great kids isn’t it?
She says that as parents you must provide them with environment to learn and you must spend time to sit down and explain to them about different things. You must also sacrifice many things and go down to their level as well as set time aside during the weekends to learn and play with them.
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