Parents, not enrichment centres, are key to result
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KSP:
what type of corporations? SMRT? :evil:
It is Nurturing future leaders. It could be corporate leaders too.
http://www.thelearninglab.com.sg/ -
limlim:
:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:
what type of corporations? SMRT? :evil:KSP:
It is Nurturing future leaders. It could be corporate leaders too.
http://www.thelearninglab.com.sg/ -
limlim:
keppel corp..
what type of corporations? SMRT? :evil:KSP:
It is Nurturing future leaders. It could be corporate leaders too.
http://www.thelearninglab.com.sg/
dun pray pray, i'm the shareholder ok....
mediacorp, sembcorp..... -
Chenon, the question of practice is a no-brainer. Whatever is learnt needs practice, even the world musicians and mathematicians will tell you that 99% diligence and 1% intelligence. Practice reinforces concepts and develops methodology to solve problems. I do not believe in learning all methodologies, too many to learn and I believe in innovation, if one can solve a problem better why use the so-called heuristics and do it in more steps? A personal experience. Recently I saw an example written by an enrichment teacher to solve a Math question. It was in 9 steps. I did it in 3 steps.
I have 2 points to make here:
1. Don't always think there is a better heuristics out there to learn. Create your own after cementing the concepts if your idea is to be the top of the top.
2. To give the enrichment teacher the benefit of doubt, the method used may be to detail the steps to reinforce concepts. Once become a veteran in Math, then the 3-step method can kick in and this would be something that a child can discover on his/her own.
So concepts are important to grasp, heuristics can develop on your own if the concept is strong.
Heuristics is currently a big money-spinner for tutors because parents believed strongly in it. A friend whose kids are taught by a GEP Math teacher proudly toot about heuristics learnt but after 2-3 years, the Math results are still so-so. Why?
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Strparent:
Strparent, I am glad we share the same philosophy. :celebrate:
:salute: :salute: :celebrate:ksi:
I read marks as competency in a subject, not a direct measurement of smartness, at least that is how I look at my child.
If I say this, some parents who know me better here may take my head and do this: :stupid:
but I have to share with you that my child may appear to have competency in the subjects in school but she has not attained my definition of smartness yet which is more holistic...... I am sure you understand what I mean.
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ksi:
It is too much to expect to develop heuristics on your own when the skills component of the syllabus is so heavy. If you're looking at the standards of performance of the past, yes... not now.
So concepts are important to grasp, heuristics can develop on your own if the concept is strong.
In the same way, if you're just looking to cook well enough to get by daily then it's fine to potter around by just figuring out from recipes, and not really knowing which part of technique you're getting wrong unless you grope around some more. The moment you up the standards really high (and the stakes are high) AND you're looking at world class standards of performance very early, then it is important that your cook book teach you also the essential basic techniques of roasting, steaming etc... so you need not re-invent the wheel. It's the difference between James Peterson and Shermay Lee. You learn to cook faster and with better results with James Peterson's book.
The PSLE Math paper is packed so full of heuristics (that aren't taught) that our kids have no time to grope and re-invent each one. That is the problem with the system today. It is STILL assuming that the children will develop the How (the heuristics) naturally. The truth is, the enrichment centres make good money teaching the How, and those students who pay to learn the How, learn faster... do better and have more time to play. My son too gained in play time once he had completed skimming Onsponge in one week. Onsponge 5... one week. Onsponge 6... one week. Grades buoyed up to 90+. See how much time you save by not re-inventing the wheel?
It's working efficiently by having the right resources.
Schools still maintain that they are doing enough by teaching only the What. This is an MOE cop out, and a refusal to acknowledge that their textbooks are written by novices who had no clue how to document heuristics... whether in Science nor in Math. This gap has been left to the enrichment centres to fill.
Times have changed. The PSLE demands have changed. I have no intention to waste my son's time by getting him to figure out his own heuristics when I know that resources exist that will make his learning very much more efficient in very short a time. Added to that, all his friends are getting these heuristics TAUGHT to them by enrichment centres. Why should I shortchange my son? It's bad enough that I insist that he pick it up without a tutor's help.
When I started my PhD, one still had to run around libraries photocopying material. Today, electronic research databases provide all manner of access to high quality material at the click of a button. Not surprisingly, standards of research have gone up greatly. Expectations of research quality too have gone up vastly. Time to publication is much shorter. Research is faster and better now. If Singaporean universities today still believed that researchers can just naturally pick up knowledge without the productivity e-tools of the e-databases, then the research standards in Singapore will simply fall further and further behind.
The MOE expects a lot from our kids. I cannot refute the argument (though I would like to) that standards must not be diluted. We SHOULD expect a lot from our kids because our economic survival depends on it (or so the argument goes). Yet, the MOE expects very little of itself. It contents itself with teaching concepts only and expects the children to bridge the gap of heuristics on their own. Times have changed. It is time to up the standards of teaching to cover heuristics, not just concepts.
The only reason that enrichment has now become a necessity is that the schools test heuristics but don't teach them, and thus, they leave a humongous gap for enrichment centres to fill. These enrichment centres fill the gap with much gusto and make a lot of money too because there is NO WAY to do well in school if you don't pay for enrichment.... or source for materials that bridge the gap.
The bright kid with no access to enrichment stands no chance at all because the school teaches less than half of what he needs to know (only the What), and tests more than twice what it teaches (the heuristics too). -
Once the basic foundation of heuristics has been mastered, my DS tends to evolve his own methods. He has strange ways of approaching problems that none of us can fathom… a sort of hodge podge of the various tools he has been exposed to.
It truly shortcuts the learning by a lot, and stimulates creativity.
Same with cooking. Once you master the basic technique, your creativity is much enhanced if you have the bent for it. But the technique is still important to teach and to learn if high standards of performance are what is required. -
The thing is \"Concepts are taught by teaching techniques!\". Tell me how to teach concepts without teaching techniques and you can be a Nobel Prize winner.
There are new things I can learn daily, pray share.
Maybe not all the possible techniques are taught in school but certainly techniques are required. I believe MOE in the past have been accused of 'spoon-feeding' education as well. -
ksi:
Concepts are...The thing is \"Concepts are taught by teaching techniques!\". Tell me how to teach concepts without teaching techniques and you can be a Nobel Prize winner.
There are new things I can learn daily, pray share.
Maybe not all the possible techniques are taught in school but certainly techniques are required. I believe MOE in the past have been accused of 'spoon-feeding' education as well.
(1) Ratio
(2) Percentage
(3) Fractions
Heuristics (techniques are )...
(1) Repeated identity
(2) External unchanged
(3) Unchanged total
(4) Constant difference
The first lot are taught. The 2nd lot are not. The 2nd lot are heuristics that apply to problems of ratio, percentage and fractions. These categories are the work of an expert like Ammiel Wan. The 1st lot are traditional math concepts that are in every Math textbook, the work of novice writers unable to see past the obvious topics to the underlying problem-solving principles.
In Science...
Topics are
(1) Cycles
(2) Systems
(3) Interations
The heuristics are...
(1) Linking
(2) Specificity
(3) Comparison/Contrast
The 1st lot is taught explicitly in school. The 2nd lot is not, but forms a large part of the Science PSLE exam performance. Indeed, I was only able to find good documentation on scientific thinking skills from resources imported from USA. Principles such as Occam's Razor are useful when thinking about the questions in the SCIENCE PSLE paper, but you can't find it in any assessment book. So too is evidence-based concluding not explicitly taught nor documented... but tested.
The line between spoon feeding and NOT teaching was crossed sometime in the past 7 years. Why do we expect our under-12s to bridge gaps that took adults centuries to formulate without explicitly teaching them? Maybe it is true that my DS isn't bright and needs to be taught things other children are born knowing. Then again, there are a lot of children who aren't bright taking the PSLE exam too... and doing well because someone taught them. And then they had the requisite practice.
It is a mainstream exam after all. Should it be that those who do well GET taught because they have parents like me... or parents with money? Schools should teach everyone these basic heuristics and then may the best child win. -
Actually I sometimes fight the other battle, ironic it may seem.
Schools teach model diagram but there are some questions that can be solved without using model diagram and some schools penalise the children. Model diagram is a technique. My peeve is children are forced to use techniques prescribed, and not allowed to present a solution logically from their thought process. To me, that is even more wrong than not teaching some sophisticatedly-named heuristics. They are forced to conform to prescribed methodologies which I am so glad PSLE does not do that.
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