When teachers are unintelligent and policy makers confusing the purpose of education

An exam paper of a primary school girl has been circulating around exposing the unintelligence of teachers, maybe one teacher setting the question and one marking, or one teacher doing both, and how a poor child that was so confused by the questions because of her exceptional intelligence ended being marked wrong for her exceptionally clear answers.

One question showed 3 pairs of ducks facing each other and the question asking how many ducks were there. What was confusing was that at the answer column, after a space for the answer was a picture of a duck facing one side. Without this picture, the answer was obvious, 6 ducks. But with the picture of a duck added, and facing one side, a child could read the question as asking how many ducks were facing the same direction as the picture next to the answer. The child put down 3 and was marked wrong.

Another question was a picture of 9 dogs in various positions and the question asked how many dogs were there. Same problem, answer should be 9. But at the answer column, after the space to put the answer was a picture of a dog lying in a particular position. And only one of the 9 dogs was lying in that position. The child's answer was 1 and was marked wrong.

Who was right and who was wrong? An average child would have given the answers that an average teacher wanted, 6 ducks and 9 dogs. An above average child would give the wrong answers as the child above, to an average thinking teacher. Whose fault is this? The painful thing is that the child would have gone bonkers trying to figure out why her answers were wrong, all because of unintelligent teachers and unintelligent questions.

Is this the reason why our education system is producing duds that cannot think outside the exam questions and could only produce unintelligent answers and thus found wanting when applying for jobs or for top positions in an organisation? We pay millions and millions for good teachers and good education system but the above situation is appalling. Something is very seriously wrong in this robotic fashion of teaching.

And I read in the papers that the school system is going to teach the child mental health and in the same breath acknowledging that teachers that have proper training on mental health would not be qualified to offer professional support to troubled children. If teachers after being properly trained may be found wanting, how much would the children learn from such classes? There are so many things that our children are expected to learn from their school curriculum that wanted to turn them into superman and superwoman but ended turning out duds and people knowing a bit of nothing in everything.

If this is the way the schools are being made to do, I would suggest a few more important topics to prepare the children other than mental illness, disappointments and accepting failures as part of their life after going through our very expensive and confusing education system. Let them know that they are not supposed to be the best in their studies as that would hurt the feelings of less academically inclined children. Let them know that being good academically is nothing to be proud off. If they are good academically they must hide in the closets and not to talk about it. Academically smart children are frown upon by society as they made others looked bad.

And prepare them to accept low paying jobs, to be underemployed, to willingly take on part time jobs, and not to feel bad that they cannot get a job and not to be angry with foreigners that went through half baked education system that did not teach them all the good things in our education system but taking all the good jobs.

The schools must tell the children that despite being taught so many things and paying so much for it, even travelling overseas to understand other people, they would not get the good jobs and may end up jobless. The good jobs would go to foreigners that paid a pittance for their makeshift education, did not go on exchange programme, but just teaching them the 3 Rs and what a basic school education is meant to teach.

Yes, the school can teach everything, from brushing the teeth, how to take a shower, how to go dating, how to use condoms etc etc. The question is what are schools meant for in the first place. With every change of minister for education, the roles of the schools have changing and deviating from its original mission. Let's get back to first principles and let the schools do what they should be doing and not all the nonsense that are good to have, that are desired by a few parents or policy makers, things that parents should be teaching them.

What do you think? Is it the problem of our education system or confused policy makers trying to do things beyond their field of expertise, not trained in education and telling the teachers what to do? Oh, the above teacher or teachers setting and marking those questions are exceptions to the rule despite being paid top dollars as the best teachers money can buy. We have many good teachers, just let them teach what the schools should be teaching. Non teaching professionals should meddle less with the teaching professions.