Archive for January, 2008

This entry on academic freedom in teaching by Elia Diodati inspired me to write this entry.

I think that educational institutions in Singapore has traditionally been viewed as manufacturing lines rather than a place for scholarly pursuit. The role of education is to provide the necessary engineers and technicians to fill up the jobs in factories. This is true right up to the tertiary level. Singapore would have been doomed if philosophers were produced by truckloads.

When education becomes a manufacturing line, it is small wonder that the emphasis is on grades. Since everyone is pretty much a carbon copy of each other in terms of knowledge, the only differential is grades. Those with good grades get the good jobs and those without good grades get the leftovers.

However, things have somewhat changed of late but the change isn’t because of a sudden enlightenment on the importance of scholarly pursuits but rather, it’s because education has been identified as another potential industry for further economic growth. This is a very cynical view but I believe that without an economic imperative, nothing advances in Singapore.

Despite my cynical view, I am thankful for the change because my university education is nothing like what I experienced previously. The first 12 years of my formal education were completely undone by 4 years of university education. I remember that in secondary school and junior college days, the buzzwords in education was critical thinking but I realised I never knew what was critical thinking until I reached university. Looking back, I am honestly not sure if there was critical thinking involved (maybe except for GP) in my classes. The standard operating procedure was to do the ten-year-series from front to back and back to front.

I have to thank my professors in university for their efforts in undoing my first 12 years of education. If I have to pick the single most important thing in university that all my professors taught me, that would be that there’s no such thing as a model answer. The answer you get depends on the perspectives and assumptions you think is “true”. I may be over-generalising but I think that the local education system prior to university somewhat follows the positivist tradition rather than the critical school of thought. There could be many reasons for this but I am of the opinion that the positivist tradition is less of a threat to the status quo than the critical approach (and of course, it is easier to grade when you assume there’s a certain “truth”, i.e. model answer).

Ultimately, how insidious education can be as a political tool depends on how far teachers are willing to abet the system. Academics, thankfully, are usually resentful of attempts to turn education into a political tool because they understand the importance of academic freedom in both teaching and research. I think that any rot in our education system stops at junior college and university education (including local university education) will provide the saving grace. Of course, this is assuming that the government continues to adopt a hands-off approach towards the universities.

Lui Tuck Yew has come out to defend the principal who advised her Secondary 5 class to transfer to ITE since they are ‘unlikely do well in the O levels’.

According to Lui, 40 per cent of Sec 5 students will not do well enough at the O levels to enter polytechnic. The principal in question apparently considers a 60% chance of entering polytechnic as being ‘unlikely to do well in the O levels’. I think that principal operates with really cranky logic. I would like to ask that principal a hypothetical question: if you have a terminal illness and the doctor says you have a 60% chance of recovery if you undergo surgery, will you do it? I wonder what her response will be.

Anyway, I digress. I don’t disagree with Lui’s point that certain tough messages need to be delivered. However, please draw a clear distinction between who should and should not be given tough messages. We are talking about N level students who worked hard enough to gain promotion to Secondary 5. Are these students lazy bums who need the wake-up call? Probably not. The lazy bums would not have made it in the first place.

So, is the ‘wake-up’ call necessary for these students? I don’t think so. I am of the opinion that these students should be further encouraged to better their good performance in the N levels. I can’t think of any reasonable justification to tell these students that they should seek a transfer to ITE as soon as possible.

There is no excuse for the behaviour of this principal, and Lui Tuck Yew just made things worse defending the principal. And, in defending that principal, Lui also said that educators should not be deprived of tools to manage student performance. Honestly, no one is saying that we should ban educators from delivering tough messages. The issue here is that the wrong tool was used. You don’t use a hammer on a screw, and neither do you use a spanner to saw a piece of wood.

Know who to give the wake-up call to, please. To demoralise hardworking students with such insensitive remarks is not the right thing to do for an educator.

Comments from my last entry on means testing have prompted me to think about what criteria would be a fair (or at least, less unfair) way to determine whether a person should be given more subsidy.

The basic yardsticks are usually income and housing type. Generally, if you have a high income and live in private property/high end public housing, you are quite likely to be able to afford higher medical bills. However, these two criteria, in my opinion, can lead to a misleading picture of whether a person is able to afford expensive medical bills.

Consider a hypothetical scenario of person A who is earning $8,000 a month and living in an executive condominium. Consider another hypothetical scenario of Person B who is earning $4,000 a month and living in a 4 room HDB flat. If we were to merely use the two yardsticks mentioned earlier to evaluate the two situations, the logical conclusion is that Person A should be subsidised less than person B should he/she be hospitalised.

However, what if Person A has to support three children of schooling age, two aged and sickly parents and a homemaker spouse who is not working to take care of the family, while Person B has to support a homemaker spouse and one child who’s of schooling age? Can we still say that Person A is still able to afford higher medical bills relative to Person B?

The point I’m trying to make is that while income and salary are useful basic indicators for means test, unfortunately, sometimes, they don’t give a complete assessment of a person’s ability to pay medical bills. I believe that a fairer means test should also factor in the number of dependents in the family. The greater the number of dependents, the greater the amount of subsidy the person should be entitled to. Of course, there are other criteria that would make for an even fairer means test but I believe that incorporating the number of dependents as part of the first level of assessment would help greatly reduce the number of legitimate cases who are unfairly excluded from receiving greater subsidies.

Of course, my discussion is based on a hypothetical scenario. If you want a real example, read this comment from a reader who posted her plight in my earlier entry.