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). :mrgreen:

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.