Term 3 Week 3 (Blogging Assignment)

Read the following letter:

http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/07/12/an-open-letter-to-the-education-minister-from-a-secondary-4-student/

(1) Comment on the Janalle Lee's view on the education system in Singapore.
(2) Is an ideal education possible? Explain.

Post your 500 word response on your blog.

LA blog assignment: Open Letter on Singapore’s education system.

(1) After reading her open letter to the Education Minister, I feel that Janelle Lee’s view on Singapore’s education system is very critical and unsupportive. She feels that the education system in Singapore is “stifling to a child’s inquisitive and curious mind”, training young children as students, not to question, against Albert Einstein’s principle of never losing curiosity and never stop questioning. She rants that the education system in Singapore is basically just forcing students to memorize facts over and over again to be able to ace the examinations easily and not learning and understanding facts that they have memorized. She uses the example of a question from her science examination paper, which states, “Why is carbon a non-metal?” saying that the correct answer would be because the scientific periodic table was divided between metals and non-metals by a staircase line, and that metals and non-metals took part in metallic bonding. However, she highlights a very crucial flaw in Singapore’s education systems with this example. Although the answer to the question was true, she was never taught and explained why carbon was actually a non-metal, but only forced to remember the above answer, not knowing the true reason. This may not seem important but it actually has a “wide-reaching” effect, as she mentions. If this is how the Singapore education is like, then its students are not actually really learning. Although education in Singapore does include accurate and true answers in subjects such as science, it often does not explain to the students its answers and emphasizes way too much on memorizing the answers.
(2) I feel that an ideal education is not possible, and will never be. So long as there is an education system, people, especially parents of students, would always find fault with it, and they are not necessarily wrong all the time. Different schools have different education programs, and there is no ‘best’ one. Even though the education system is very integrated nowadays, it is still not specific enough to suit each and every student’s own study methods. Some students who are not suited to the hectic integrated program would not be able to cope and forced to transfer schools. Too much integration in the education system in Singapore may also result in a backfire, students finding it too hard to cope with all the different subjects and requirements and becoming less and less motivated to do well. In conclusion, I feel that although the education system now in Singapore is still okay, there would never be an ideal education system. Even now, there are still people complaining about the current education system in Singapore.