for all its ills, the educaton in spore needed some reforms. no
system is entirely perfect and free of flaws.
for a start, education need to emphasis on the need to not only
to write well, but to speak well as well. we are brought up in a
system whereby due to respect for teachers, we do not speak up or
ask the teachers questions during classes. this needed to be
change. students should be encouraged to speak up and ask
questions. there should be some emphasis that assignments and
presentations be allocated marks for it. exams should be allocated
at 50-60 %. in that case, students would take assignments, projects
and presentations seriously.
we should incorporate phonetics and grammar in school, from pri
to jc level. how many a time have a uni graduate here wrote rotten
english, not to mention atrocious pronunciation. perhaps MOE and
British council can work together on this to achieve this aim.
Haha that's right!
But i like to think Singaporeans naturally a timid and
socialized people. Class rooms i have taught in involve NO
QUESTIONS at all. Same thing with politicians, no question are
asked of them at all, and their weird answers are still accepted. I
think it's just somethin in Singaporeans. It is very easy to be a
teacher or an MP here, you can get away with stuff you could never
get away with elsewhere (im not talking abt sex scandals)
Even the professional-types do not speak that well either in
communicating their ideas. Simple things like yes can be
interpreted as no, or details are left out in a planning process,
only to be found out much later on, and this is 2009. Singaporeans
have a long way to go.
There are compulsory participation marks in university, so
students try to speak up, but their quality is lacking.
I think British Council might be too relaxed for MOE or
Singaporean tastes, but the good thing is having native teachers
actually teach english.
This is a true story and i see it all the time, and i am doing
research on this; we take the same english essays from JC and
secondary school, they are graded by local teachers in school and
they all get borderline fail grades; we take these essays and send
them to the British Council or to Oxford and they get A/B grades..
the same essay. I kid you not. =) So something is a little
bit weird.
