In an interview with Fareed Zakaria
of Newsweek, is the Singapore Education Minister speaking on a
personal basis when commenting on the comparison of the Singapore
Education System with that of the American System ?
Is he sincere with his views, or are his views qualified for
certain audiences ?
Can Singapore Education System ever mould our Young Singaporean to
excel in the World Economy and join the list of world famous
achievers ?
If the Minister recognises the fact that Singaporean Young
must learn to question CONVENTIONAL WISDOM and AUTHORITY,
will he recommend change in the manner that the Singapore
Government rule Singapore, and change the manner in which politics
is played ?
We All Have a
Lot to Learn
Singapore's students do brilliantly in math and science tests.
American kids test much worse but do better in the real world.
Why?
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
Jan. 9, 2006 issue -
Last week India was hit by a terror attack that unsettled the
country. A gunman entered the main conference hall of the Indian
Institute of Science in Bangalore, tossed four grenades into the
audience and, when the explosives failed, fired his AK-47 at the
crowd. One man, a retired professor of mathematics from one of the
Indian Institutes of Technology, was killed.
What has worried some about this attack is not its scope or
planning or effectall unimpressivebut the target. The terrorists
went after what is increasingly seen as India's core strategic
asset for the 21st century: its scientific and technological brain
trust. If that becomes insecure, what will become of India's
future?
This small event says a lot about global competition. Traveling
around Asia for most of the past month, I have been struck by the
relentless focus on education. It makes sense. Many of these
countries have no natural resources, other than their people;
making them smarter is the only path for development.
China, as always, appears to be moving fastest. When officials
there talk about their plans for future growth, they point out that
they have increased spending on colleges and universities almost
tenfold in the past 10 years. Yale's president, Richard Levin,
notes that Peking University's two state-of-the-art
semiconductor fabrication lineseach employing a different
technologyoutshine anything in the United States.
East Asian countries top virtually every global ranking of students
in science and mathematics.
But one thing puzzles me about these oft-made comparisons.
I talked to Tharman Shanmugaratnam to understand it
better. He's the minister of Education of Singapore, the
country that is No. 1 in the global science and math rankings for
schoolchildren. I asked the minister how to explain the
fact that even though Singapore's students do so brilliantly on
these tests, when you look at these same
students 10 or 20 years later, few of them are worldbeaters
anymore. Singapore has few truly top-ranked scientists,
entrepreneurs, inventors, business executives or
academics.
American kids, by contrast, test much worse in the fourth
and eighth grades but seem to do better later in life and in the
real world. Why?
"We both have meritocracies," Shanmugaratnam said.
"Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam
meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not
able to test welllike 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. These are the areas where
Singapore must learn from America."
Shanmugaratnam also pointed out that American universities are
unrivaled globallyand are getting better. "You have created a
public-private partnership in tertiary education that is amazingly
successful. The government provides massive funding, and private
and public colleges compete, raising everyone's standards."
Shanmugaratnam highlighted in particular the role that American
foundations play. "Someone in society has to be focused on the long
term, on maintaining excellence, on raising quality. You have this
array of foundationsin fact, a whole tradition of civic-minded
volunteerismthat fulfills this role. For example, you could not
imagine American advances in biomedical sciences without the Howard
Hughes Foundation."
Singapore is now emphasizing factors other than raw testing skills
when selecting its top students. But cultures are hard to change. A
Singaporean friend recently brought his children back from America
and put them in his country's much-heralded schools. He described
the difference. "In the American school, when my son would speak
up, he was applauded and encouraged. In Singapore, he's seen as
pushy and weird. The culture of making learning something
to love and engage in with gusto is totally absent. Here
it is a chore. Work hard, memorize and test well." He took his
child out of the Singapore state school and put him into a private,
Western-style one.
Despite all the praise Shanmugaratnam showered on the States, he
said that the U.S. educational system "as a whole has
failed." "Unless you are comfortably middle class or richer," he
explained, "you get an education that is truly second-rate by any
standards.
Apart from issues of fairness, what this means is that you never
really access the talent of poor, bright kids. They don't go to
good schools and, because of teaching methods that focus on
bringing everyone along, the bright ones are never pushed. In
Singapore we get the poor kid who is very bright and very hungry,
and that's crucial to our success.
"From where I sit, it's not a flat world," Shanmugaratnam
concluded. "It's one of peaks and valleys. The good news for
America is that the peaks are getting higher. But the valleys are
getting deeper, and many of them are also in the United
States."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10663340/site/newsweek/
