Another big exercise involving a lot of expertise from the education industry has just been completed. This musical chair or merry go round exercise has been going on for years and it seems that it would never be satisfactory as far as the parents are concerned. The results only helped to meet some of the needs and expectations of the parents but would never be enough as the demands would keep on changing as the moods and expectations of clever and rich parents keep changing.
By now the education ministry and ministers and experts must have known what the parents really want. If they are still guessing or not wanting to face the truth, or knowing the truth but trying to meet the parents half way or a quarter way but still wanting to maintain certain educational objectives and standards, then the cycle will go on and on and every new minister would have his hands full when new sets of parents would have new demands and new axe to grind.
What the parents really want are very simple. Less stress ie less work, less study, and good results and easy to get into branded schools. Actually all three demands are very easy to meet. Less work and less study can be QED. Just tell the teachers to go slow and teach less and just pretend that the children will then learn more. As for good results for all students, this is even easier. Grades should just be good and excellent and all students would be marked Merit or Excellent. Children will be happy, parents would be happier.
The next big demand is good schools. This is also easily done by a little restructuring and renaming of schools. Pick the best 10 schools that are most desirable by the parents and children. All the schools should be renamed under these 10 schools. As an example, there can be 50 Raffles Institutions and 50 Hwa Chong Institutions to choose from. Raffles Institution, Bishan, Raffles Institution, Radin Mas, Raffles Institution, Tanglin, Raffles Institution, Ang Mo Kio, Raffles Institution Bedok etc etc The same would apply to Hwa Chong Institution and the other top 8 branded schools.
Now, would that make all the parents and children happy? Oh, school placement would be very much easier. Can still give preference to citizens and location of homes and the top 6 choices in order of preference.
Now what is so difficult about this? It took me 5 minutes to solve all the angst of parents. There will be no more stress for parents and students. No more needs for expensive tuition and spending so much time studying. Go to school and play and enjoy. Many great countries are producing great talents by just giving their students distinctions in all subjects even if they failed. This is only a piece of paper. What is important in life is whether the student eventually can work or can bluff their way through in life.
No
need to sweat the small stuff. No need to put so much pressure on the
Education Minister and the teachers and principles. Singapore will be a
very happy place to bring up children and with good grades in good
schools without having to study and mug.
That's why MOE should be known as Ministry of Experiments instead of Ministry of Education.
ReplyDeleteEvery new-broom-sweep-clean, year-end bonus eager-beaver, and don't-want-to-lose-out, non-educationist newly appointed Education Minister is guaranteed to lay his hands and legs onto the Education No-System with his borrowed or plagiarized "new" ideas.
ReplyDeleteWhy Education No-System?
Simply because even before a new idea could take root and grow, and develop into a proper system, some imbeciles who think highly of themselves will put his spanner into it and screw it up.
In this manner, it goes on and on, after every change of uneducated education minister. How can there be a system, to start with?!
Therefore, MOE can also be MONS, or Ministry of No System!
We are now encouraging mediocrity in our education just to please a few silly parents.
ReplyDeleteNo need to study and get good results and can go to good schools like in India. Everyone score distinctions and come to Sillypore to get good jobs.
In times to come, no one would believe the scores in the certificates, no one would believe in the degrees or diplomas.
And all the good students would be lost among the millions of average students when academic excellence is denounced or being top students are a shameful thing, Go and hide in the corner, not to be seen, not to be recognised.
Those who have children do not need to know about this. The system changes so often, it is an exercise in futility and waste of time getting to know it. Next year there will probably be further changes.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise how to justify their million dollar salaries? This is call 'creative selling'.
ReplyDeleteIf the MOE bows to the pressure of parents and moves in the direction of mediocrity, if good students are not identified to be channelled to be groomed into top talents, then there is no need for examinations, no need for grades, no need to go to schools even.
ReplyDeleteMake the schools a playground for the young, make them happy and do as they pleased.
All the jiggings on the grading systems are half past six solutions that would compromise the education system and discredit the reputation of our education system.
After so many years of mucking around with the grading system, think they no longer believe in the grades of our students.
ReplyDeleteSo they turned to foreigners and believed their good grades are real while our good grades are fakes.
This could explain why so many fake foreigners are now considered as top talents to replace our PMETs. Fakes and reals are now so mixed up that the imbeciles are also confused.
The imbeciles cannot tell the difference and ended up believing in fakes are reals and reals are fakes.
Right Anon 9.54
ReplyDeleteSince we are promoting a 'heritage trade generation' of employment opportunities like hawking, driving pirate taxis, delivery services, why is there a need to make mediocracy in education an important criteria?
After all, no matter how talented they are perceived to be, saying cotton wool comes from sheep makes a mockery of our education system, however much they tinker with it.
Aiyah, just label every school is a good school, every student is a good student
ReplyDeleteOr Every School is RI, Every Student attained All Distinctions Grades.
In reality, this place will continue with mass importation of Foreign Darens, wherever u come from RI good school or graduated with All Distinctions Grades 1st Class no employers will hire because some minionster said b4 u can have a degree but can't eat it. In the end is Whether u r Black Cat or White Cat u can catch a rat u r a good cat. No need paper or certs bcos hard to believe your skills & knowledge. And also no need a learning curve like a long runway, all must like the elites Commando parachute hit ground straight away open fire at enemy, thatz it.
All said, easiest solution is let us import the education system from India lah! In Red Dot it appears Indians educated in India are the most employable talents we need.
ReplyDeleteLet top schools sell certificates and Universities sell degrees. After all a degree is no more useful if you do hawking, delivery service or drive pirate taxis, right?
Then everyone happy. Students happy, teachers happy, parents happy, ministers happy too. Only tuition centres unhappy.
It took me three minutes to solve all the problems.
ST March 11 : [In a bid to shift emphasis away from academic grades, the two largest local universities - National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University - announced last year that more students would be admitted through aptitude-based admissions.
ReplyDeleteInstead of assessing them based solely on grades, consideration will be given as well to other merits and achievements, including their demonstrated ability and interest in the course, work experience, leadership, community service and other exceptional talents.'
like that, lousy-grades student applicants can pull strings if parents influential, while those with good grades might not get a place . . .
Like that a good con man with the glib of the tongue would be the top student by bluffing his way through. Just look good, appear to be smart will look, like American presidents. If one is ugly and did not look good, cannot speak well, sure flunk.
ReplyDeleteWhen the criteria for selection becomes subjective and not objective, all the fakes would do very well.
When con men are considered talents and deserve millionaire status, the system is already fouled and contaminated. Just like infected with coronavirus that mutated, after each charge of minion minister.
ReplyDelete"All schools should be rename under 10 schools"
ReplyDeleteThis must have got them worried, so they visited MOE to enquire which one of the 10 schools their pups is going into, to protect their turfs.
https://tinyurl.com/bdnbe3vp
BEST SOLUTION
ReplyDeleteThe Best Solution to this never-ending perennial problem is to close down all schools and universities in Singapore.
Also don't need a Ministry of Experiments to keep experimenting with the Experiment System with our easily suppressed students.
JUST SEND ALL SINGAPOREAN STUDENTS TO INDIA TO GET FAKE CERTIFICATES AND DEGREES FROM THE DEGREE MILLS!
IT'S CHEAP, EASY TO GET, SAVE TIME, SAVE COSTS, NO STRESS AND READILY ACCEPTED BY SINGAPORE 4G GOVERNMENT AND EMPLOYERS!
Can even do it on-line. Just need to make sure the fake documents are sanitized and sanforized.
ReplyDeleteDon't need to physically send our students to India and risk being exposed to the 17 types of Indian Coronavirus infections and various modes of corruption.
Just declare Red Dot as a colony of India and we have their patented license to print certificates and degrees. Actually a good idea, just like COE for vehicles. Selling a piece of paper that cost nothing for thousands of dollars makes good business sense.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many advantages too. Cheaper because no need to employ teachers, professors, principals or build schools. Even no need to have a Education Minister and expensive sidekicks. Better because is so cheap and easy to implement. Can even apply for certificates and degrees online and print yourself, up to PhD level. Faster because degrees can be awarded at any age. Why waste time and money on fees from Pre-nursery up to University, which is very costly for parents. I think parents would like it too.
If it can work for India, it should work for their colony as well. Hahaha