STI: Primary concerns

Mar 27, 2004

Primary concerns
by Sharon Loh

IF YOU had asked me two years ago where I intended to register my children when they hit Primary 1, I would have said: 'I hope NOT to be here by the time they hit Primary 1.'

I always had a vague if unrealistic hope that we would be gone by then. Vamoosed to a place where children could be children and tests at age 10 didn't determine their academic future.

Well, we're still here and Primary 1 registration looms in July for Alexis.

Time to face the music.

My ambivalence about education in Singapore came from a number of things: past experience and present discomfort from listening to parents whose kids are now in school.

They confirmed what I already knew. Our education system is rigid, results-oriented, and stifling.

There's no denying it has many strengths. Singaporean students excel in further studies abroad because all the basics are in place, and they are very disciplined.

Well-meaning friends also point out that we all went through it and emerged intact.

But I often wonder if I would be a different person now - a bolder, more dynamic person - if I had gone through a system which valued individualism and independent thinking instead.

I wanted my kids to know that freedom, and not have to get through exams via copious amounts of memory work and rote learning.

I didn't want them to view education as an arduous means to an end, not valued for itself.

Even the switch in emphasis to creative thinking seemed to be putting the cart before the horse.

How do you fashion creative thinkers from a populace which doesn't even want to think for itself?

And yet, it was clear that the education system, while faithfully producing skilled workers for so many years, would fail to meet the country's future manpower needs.

So, children more comfortable with conforming were now going to have to think outside the box. And still they had to produce good grades. Parents just got more stressed, as their own brains went into overdrive so they could do their children's 'creative' school projects.

Just how much parents crib for their kids was driven home to me when I was asked to help judge some student projects in a contest for promoting conservation.

Some of the work was creative all right. The problem was, you couldn't be sure how much of it had been done by the child.

Other changes over the years - the gifted programme, birth of independent schools and yearly rankings - all looked from the outside like meritocracy gone on a mad power trip.

Schools blamed parents for being kiasu, parents blamed the system for entrapping them.

Whatever. I didn't want my children in a situation where their worth would be determined by academic grades. Sure, you can overcome all that and come out stronger. But why torture yourself? Opting out looked good.

To be fair, I was - and still am - seeing only bits and pieces of the picture from the outside.

And through my murky window, I see events in recent months, perhaps gathering over the years unknown to me, which make me view Singapore schools with a little more optimism.

Yes, they are still demanding, but curricula have expanded to include really interesting, even off-beat, subjects.

My jaw dropped recently when a friend showed me a clay-mation video that her eight-year-old had made in school as part of a class project.

Entitled A Walk In The Park, it was only a minute or so long, but it had a charming narrative with a humorous twist at the end.

The pupils drew the story boards, sculpted the figurines, filmed it (with a simple iSight camera), did the soundtrack, and edited it, almost entirely on their own.

Eight-year-olds. In a neighbourhood school.

My friend is relocating to London because of work, and when she called schools to find out if her daughter could keep up with her computer classes there, they told her that what she was doing was just too advanced, and that she would have to look for private classes.

I hear that schools are doing hydroponic projects (and selling the produce), robotics and lots of other things that don't seem to have much truck with the three Rs. Clearly, we don't do things by halves.

Pedagogical methods also seem to have progressed, especially in Language and Mathematics. If I'd been taught Maths as they teach it today, maybe I wouldn't have been so half-hearted about it.

There are other heartening signs that our education system may indeed be evolving into a higher life form. A few more recent milestones come to mind.

Now that mother tongue is no longer required for university admission scores, junior colleges are taking the creative route in keeping interest in the subject alive.

Once the pressure of learning the language is off, you have the breathing space to traverse the whole terrain of 'culture', from current affairs to history, geography and literature.

I wouldn't have minded that myself. And too bad the through-train system came too late for me. I could really have gone for skipping the O levels and going straight to the As.

In fact, I would have applied to the new Arts School which is slated to open sometime.

What we need is a little more joy in learning, a little less desire to put the pedal to the metal - at least until students are mature enough to handle it.

Of course, I won't know if things really have changed until I take the plunge with Alexis.

Her father is not convinced. He thinks the system is still fundamentally results-oriented and therefore overly stressful.

He might be right. For me, though, all this talk of learning is rubbing off. Amazingly, the thought of going back to school to get some retraining myself is actually tempting.

The darnedest thing is how one doesn't appreciate education until one is no longer intimidated by it.