Petition to Review the Singapore Education System

[vlim]

Chenonceau:

meinteel:

As school teachers, we cannot reject a students request for help. That is of course to be conducted before or after school.

My son's English teacher marks compos with a few ticks. She says she has no time to comment, nor give a mark. If we do extra compos and ask for feedback from her, she takes THREE weeks to revert. They don't reject... but man, they can sure hold you up.

wow...chenonceau..u do have very high expectations on teachers.... :lol: ....if every kids give her extra compo to mark, I think she will be pretty stress up... :lol:

[Chenonceau]

Busymom:

sall:

[quote=\"ksi\"]

Just wondering if they are doing this with normal efforts or sacrificing a lot to achieve this? I know many kids are able to pull out stellar results but at what price? If the price is nothing, then I would say there is no issue at all, case closed.

Students put in a lot of time and effort, but they learned a lot during this process, and as long as they enjoy it, it is worth the sacrifice. IP schools also prepare them for the working world.

At the secondary school level, I would expect more of them to be matured and independent enough to put in the amount of efforts that they want to and are able to. I think we are nowhere near China, Japan or South Korea's level in terms of pressure to do well. Recently spoke to some of my colleagues who are French, their 2-year prep school is a lot worse too.[/quote]My DD went through IP. It was demanding, very very tough, and high pressure but she loved it. Secondary and primary - different. Different stages of a child's life. Teach Less Learn More worked great for DD in secondary school because she was old enough to be very independent.

[Chenonceau]

vlim:

Chenonceau:

[quote=\"meinteel\"]As school teachers, we cannot reject a students request for help. That is of course to be conducted before or after school.

My son's English teacher marks compos with a few ticks. She says she has no time to comment, nor give a mark. If we do extra compos and ask for feedback from her, she takes THREE weeks to revert. They don't reject... but man, they can sure hold you up.

wow...chenonceau..u do have very high expectations on teachers.... :lol: ....if every kids give her extra compo to mark, I think she will be pretty stress up... :lol:[/quote]She gives 2 compos in 3 months leh... ONLY. Both compos have NO marks, some ticks and circles...We wanted to hint that kids need more practice, and I was trying to get her comments so that I could work with my son privately. With class size at 40, I understand she is short on time, but even a small request to share her marking scheme turned up nothing. No comments for improvement. No marks. Lucky I can teach Creative Writing and so I kasak an approach - it kinda works but no thanks to her. No guidance to me even, let alone my son.

My son passed up a Journal 4 weeks ago, still not back yet.

KSP parents email ME essays to mark for their kids.

[Faun]

meinteel:

Suz855:

\"I think it is necessary for teachers to teach, whether the students have tuition or not.\"


I totally agree.... it seem now it is a norm that most students have tuition & they go to school knowing most of the stuff & they are not shy to tell the teacher that they already know but what about the small minority that do not go for tuition (my gal is an example) & are keen & attend school to learn ............The teacher or at least, my gal teacher or puting it correctly in our case, a trainee teacher choose to listen to the mass and do minimum teaching or teaching at 'light speed' ... like covering (not even teaching) 3 Maths topics in 3 wks... she came home more confused than enlightened :frustrated: so what to do .... have to take up the teaching job ourselves ....

Well, I am crossing my fingers :xedfingers: that now we have a new
Education Minister & with the petition, some change will be underway and she can still benefit in our world class education system.

Hihi! I suggest that your gal or yourself bring it up with the teacher. It is the teacher's responsibility to everything within the syllabus. However, we tend to skip or just summarise the the topics when the class claim that they have learnt and understand the topic. The reasoning is that we don't want to bore the students and allow them to lose interest.

However, should a few or even one student bring it up then we will still teach the topic as planned. Usually before doing so, we would have asked the class repeatedly.

I don't believe the teacher will go thru the topic if everyone in the class except 1 student has gone thru the topic with their tutors. My friend's daughter from NYGH is one miserable case. The teacher use the extra time in class to joke and 'kawan' with the girls. Told her daughter to see her after school for lesson on topic but when the girl see her she was impatient and irritated with her. Now her girl so stressed up and unhappy there.

The issue is, is this the parents or the teachers fault? chicken or egg first? There's no way for the school to stop the parents from sending their kids for tuition.

I would love to send my kid to a school where say 90% of the kid have no tuition. Where to find? The closest I can think of are the 4 specialized independent schools. Each of them is a pretty closed community and sheltered from all the hulaballoo of the moe system.

[jtoh]

ksi:

jtoh:

[quote=\"sall\"]Well said! Jtoh.

But only a very small minority has this problem. The rest will adjust to the new way of learning and thrive in it.

I agree. The majority are able to adjust and thrive. In fact, I would say that most of the kids have no problems adjusting to the system and some of the top scorers continue to pull out top scores from their hats, scoring GPAs of 3.8-4.0.

Just wondering if they are doing this with normal efforts or sacrificing a lot to achieve this? I know many kids are able to pull out stellar results but at what price? If the price is nothing, then I would say there is no issue at all, case closed. [/quote]Don't think we can generalise on whether the top students are doing it with normal efforts or sacrificing a lot. There are different kids. Some are able to turn out sterling results on top of strong CCA plus leadership positions. Some are muggers who opt for the slackest CCA so they can focus on their studies. For me, a balanced and happy child is more important than grades.

[jtoh]

meinteel:

hi jtoh, I believe that many educators will agree with me when I say that all learning programs especially IP program and those genius programs at primary level are largely dependent on if your child is willing to enter as well as the learning style of the child.


If he/she has been resistant to study and spend most of his time \"mugging\" for those grades, then as parents you must seriously consider opting out for the child. These programs tend to expect the students to be self-motivated independent learners who find joy doing research and engaging in lengthly in depth discussions.

True.

[sall]

Hi Chenonceau, I’m not saying this psle system is perfect, neither am I advocating we should worship it. If you have taught in schools, there is a large number of students who are more interested to cause trouble than to learn. If we don’t pick out the best, then in the end, nobody learns anything.

If they are not separated according to academic results after P6, then when?

[Chenonceau]

sall:

Hi Chenonceau, I'm not saying this psle system is perfect, neither am I advocating we should worship it. If you have taught in schools, there is a large number of students who are more interested to cause trouble than to learn. If we don't pick out the best, then in the end, nobody learns anything.

If they are not separated according to academic results after P6, then when?

Hey... I guess we agree on some level then... I am also not saying the PSLE is all bad. Neither of us are absolutist, I don't think. I am just exploring the issue from a different angle. Truth is, we are both right because I am looking at the elephant from the side (it is flat like a wall), and you are seeing from the front (it is long like a rope). But both angles are truth and flesh out the issue better. I am really happy you gave your perspective, and I am not saying that to be nice. I mean it. You made some very very good points.

As to the question that some students just wanna play, and not study... Might it be because they were demoralized by this constant comparison that is inherent in every part of our system? When my son was in P1 and P2, (and was ranked somewhere at the bottom) he too was demoralized and was constantly trying to escape into the pleasant world of play. If there ever was a demotivated goof-around kid. My son was one.

If you're top of the heap, you feel good, and everyone praises you. Newspapers take pictures of you. You wanna try harder and keep on experiencing those good feelings. If you're not top of the heap... then...

These days, I try to ensure my son stays in the top 10 in class. I try to push him just enough for that, and if he wants to do better, he pushes himself a bit more. Why do I do that? Because as long as he is in Top 10, his self-efficacy and sense of self-worth stays high. He maintains a positive view of his studies. Let someone else's daughter or son be in the 11 to 40 places and feel bad. I dun want my kids to feel bad. So selfish right? But whatta do? The system is like that.

Our family copes, but we do see children falling off the boat into the sea. Worse thing is that since everyone is competing for places at the top, both children and parents learn to jubilate when others fare worse in exams. So mean right? Whatta do? System is like that.

In a class of 40, the top 10 feel good, the middle 20 feels a bit off... and the bottom 10 feels positively lousy. Roughly, the bottom 20 feels not great at all. They see their placement. They decide that they're lousy at studying... and of course, they dun like to study.

Put all these together in a class and they will all agree to goof around. Put all these in a school and they will goof around even more. So, what are the returns on investment? Out of 40 kids, we have 10 at the top who stay engaged and 30 at the bottom who are disengaged. 75% of emotional rejects... academically defective goods... Seems like quite a lotta wastage.

You dun need parents to compare ranking. Kids will. I told my son that no matter how badly he ranks, I would still love him. But hey... he was still not very motivated to study until he found that he had somehow topped the class in something in P3.

But in every paper, there is only ONE at the top. He/She is the ONE out of 40 to feel really good.

[vlim]

actually being the 'top' is a stressful thing too..as u might not be the top for the next exam or next next exam and u would feel even more stress if u need to upkeep to be the 'top'...Actually it depends on the kids..some kids would strive to achieve their best ...some kids don't bother (happy go lucky)... some kids feel stress when they see their parents' face expression after knowing their unsatisfactory results..

So as a parent, I think first of all, we need to know our kids character..from there we know how to motivate them and encourage them. I have 2 kids with pretty different character...till now I am still 'learning' how to motivate them accordingly though most of the time can be a bit naggy but bopian...So sometime, I got to be relax and they will also feel relax....
hope I am not off topic

[Chenonceau]

vlim:

actually being the 'top' is a stressful thing too..as u might not be the top for the next exam or next next exam and u would feel even more stress if u need to upkeep to be the 'top'...Actually it depends on the kids..some kids would strive to achieve their best ...some kids don't bother (happy go lucky)... some kids feel stress when they see their parents' face expression after knowing their unsatisfactory results..

So as a parent, I think first of all, we need to know our kids character..from there we know how to motivate them and encourage them. I have 2 kids with pretty different character...till now I am still 'learning' how to motivate them accordingly though most of the time can be a bit naggy but bopian...So sometime, I got to be relax and they will also feel relax....

My PhD was in Human Motivation. It was quite easy to turn a goof-around kid into a very driven one.