Daily Lesson from Life 14 August 2008

"Education system must evolve

End goal should not be grades, but for students to be confident of their self-worth and be productive citizens. -Thu, Aug 14, 2008 The Straits Times, AsiaOne

SINGAPORE'S education system has been very successful at the nuts and bolts - it churns out top students and is ranked highly worldwide, for example - but it is now time for it to evolve.

As parents become more educated, and children grow more questioning and learn in different ways, expectations will rise, and these will need to be tackled.

In a speech at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy on Thurs, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen spelt out new challenges for the system. Dr Ng said the most pressing need was to increase the number of teachers so as to better mould students.

More teachers with higher qualifications were also needed to fulfil the above purpose. Such teachers will mean schools can be given more autonomy, which is critical to allow school leaders to develop individual students under their care, continued the report.

The end goal of education should not be grades, but rather, students should leave the system "with a sense of wholeness and preparedness, and a desire to contribute to preserve, maintain and improve themselves and the lives of those around them," added Dr Ng."

The ultimate goals of education are, in my mind, all along, to provide the students with useful knowledge that he or she can apply in the real world mostly, and some specific knowledge that are real research type instead of the application type for those who want to dwell into great depth. e.g. commercial knowledge vs. pure science, music as a hobby vs. music as a Phd subject, etc. AND how to be a better human being that can contribute the betterment of his or her own life and those less fortunate and less educated than them! For the greater good if you like.

This CANNOT be done in isolation. Just like a child's behaviors are molded not just in school but also at home and the society at large. What is the norm? What are considered acceptable behaviors?

The lessons for me are:

1. fundamental education is unglamourous and rather simple. Share knowledge and impart good values. Not too much variation as the fundamental cannot be flavour of the day, the week, the month or the year. It has to be consistently emphasized and reinforced;

2. the society has a big influence on if good behaviors and values developed in school can survive the 'corrosive' efforts. If the kids see that the political leaders talked about 'we only need a small minority of elites to do the thinking and the rest of you just follow instructions as you don't know what is best for you' and 'by the way, since we are the elite we need to be paid 100x your earning', then it is very hard to sustain the need to 'do good for the less fortunate people without 1st paying yourself well';

3. educationists need to realize that it is not what is the most sexiest and revolutionary the ideas that get all the attention but the hard plodding away of fundamental values that count. If we have BETTER qualified teachers, it does not mean it will translate into better students who are productive and contributing citizens to the 'great good of the nation'. If the teachers are NOT motivated or, worst, motivated by money along, it will be difficult to impart values that the Minister talked about.

As leaders we need to anchor our vision on ethical ground. Let's make sure that is the fundamental we will always safeguard no matter how creative we want to be with the delivery mechanism.