Simply put, I feel the education system places too much emphasis
on grades. The general perception, contributed by society at large,
parents and the whole education system, is that if you don't score
straight As and I do, that makes me a better person than you.
Period. Nothing else matters.
Education is not simply about grades, its also moulding the mind,
the character of the young. The system imparts kids with knowledge
for exams, teaches them how to spot questions for exams, and then
promptly forgets about it after stepping out of the exam hall, so
they can cram their brains with more material for the next exam.
The system teaches us not to be thinkers, just followers. There
must be more emphasis on teaching us to think, to solve problems,
not to just do something because "the book says so".
For example, in one of my subjects in my Aerospace Engineering
course in Aust, we had just 3-4 lessons for it in the entire 15
week semester. 1st week, we were given an outline to a problem, to
design an aircraft using a set of specifications on a single piece
of A4 paper, plus a second A4 sheet detailing what aspects of the
design to focus on and what to ignore. We're put into groups of
9-10, chosen by the lecturer instead of letting us choose our own
groups with ppl we know because, in industry, we don't get to
choose who to work with. The remaining 3 lessons we were not taught
anything, instead it was used to do presentations on our progess(2
presentations) and the final presnentation. Lecturers from the
entire department and selected industry figures were on hand to
listen to us present our design and the floor was open to questions
from anyone when a group finished its presentations. We had to
design every aspect of the plane, from wings, landing gear, tail,
cockpit, engine selection and draw out the design on CAD/CAM.
Nothing was taught to us, we were told to use whatever we've learnt
in our previous years to design. Lecturers were available for
questions, otherwise we're on our own. Grading is done by a
combination of your teammates evaluation of you and the lecturers
reading of your final report. Can anyone see subjects taught like
this in Singapore schools? I can't. Neither can the Singaporeans
friends I've told this to.
Finally, the education system I feel has to teach kids not only to
become knowledgable, but also on how to be a good person. Grades
aren't everything. Everytime I come back to Singapore for holidays,
I see students from the so-called top schools, behaving like louts
without consideration for those around them. And this, I'm afraid,
is where the Singaporean education system has failed. All too
often, we produce good students, but lousy people.
