Education to serve social/political or educational goals

SINGAPORE: Education Minister Ong Ye Kung announced the momentous move to end streaming in secondary schools by 2024 in March.

Schools are now encouraged to do away with the practice of grouping students into form classes by academic ability and instead experiment with innovative ways to group students.

The idea is that this will encourage children from different backgrounds to interact with each other. In the long run, this would lead to better social mixing and greater societal cohesion – or so is thought.
CHALLENGES WITH DOING AWAY WITH ABILITY-BASED CLASS GROUPING
Doing away with ability-based grouping necessarily implies that each form class will comprise a more heterogeneous mix of students than before. A pertinent consideration is whether teachers are well prepared to teach such classes.

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/streaming-subject-based-banding-group-class-cca-secondary-school-11531090

 

This is the latest change in our education system, dismantling the past objectives of churning out the best in our students in their respective fields of excellence. Now looks like this is not in the interest of the state, that students excelling in academic subjects should be secondary to the goal of social integration, mixing the able with the less able, the rich and the poor, and all races into a melting pot is more important than producing academic excellence. Is this the way to go forward, is this what parents want of their children or what politicians want of our children?

 

What do parents spent so much time and money for, to produce children that can mix with everyone at all social levels, intellect and backgrounds instead of being top scientists, engineers, doctors etc and etc? Look at what is happening to China, sending its best students overseas not to study soft subjects but hard sciences to compete in high technology of the future and turning China into the most advanced state in science and technology surpassing the Americans in many fields. Would we want to be like China or like some suka suka half past six countries, good for nothing but happy go lucky young of the future?As it is now, our young could not even compete with third world graduates in getting jobs in our own country. How would this turn out if our young of the future turn out to be mediocre good for nothing graduates?

 

One outcome mentioned in this CNA article is the difficulty in teaching a class of bright and less bright students to the teachers. Going too fast will affect the slower students, going too slow will hold back the faster students. So you will end up with a class of mediocres.

 

An analogy in the mixing of paints in art classes would suffice to explain the outcome of this social/political policy. If one is to add white paint with white paint or black ink with black ink, the result will be whiter paint or blacker ink. If one is to mix white paint with black ink, you will end up with a spread of grey, from less white to less black, never white or black.

 

The thinking and objectives of an educationist and that of a politician would be world's apart. Never shall the twains meet. If we have a soldier or whatever to meddle with our education policies, the likelihood is that the system will produce an army of soldiers or whatever, for a soldier would be thinking of producing more soldiers or whatever.

 

I am wondering what the parents would choose. Definitely they would not want soldiers to determine the education policies of their children. Would our parents choose the social/political results of a politician over the goals of academic excellence for their children? A degree is not important, cannot be eaten? Or would this new change lead to better academic performance of our children? Would the system end up producing more potential politicians? This may not be bad as it is the surest and fastest way to become immediate millionaires.

What do you think?

Education – Why are we so cruel to our children?

The demands on our children are so out of this world. No children in the world are subject to what our children are exposed to, expected to, in our education system and social norms. They are not only expected to score straight As in schools, but to excel in sports, in ECAs, even in trying to make money, to think like business people and entrepreneurs, to be able to dance, to sing and to appreciate the arts, in sports. What else do we need our children to do to be a better person and to compete against the world?
 
And the poor parents are not spared either. They need not only to spend the time and money, yes, some are really poor to pay for all the extra costs needed to bring up our children as the most well educated people on earth. They need to spend time to monitor the progress of their children personally. Leaving them to third world maids would not do unless they want all their effort and sacrifices go the third world ways.
 
But these are not all that our children are faced with. After coming out from the ‘best’ education system with a string of ECAs, they would need to compete with children that do not need to know or appreciate arts, no need to be an all round super kid, just passed their village examinations, real or by cheating, in order to be hired by the foreigners now in our local companies doing the recruitment with unfair biases for their own kinds, or be assisted by foreign recruitment agents and placed for jobs in our local companies, including ministries and GLCs, neglecting our super kids from our very expensive education system. Some even have to spend money going overseas to experience what is being overseas thinking that it would be an advantage.
 
The foreign kids need not be super kids, need not be worldly wise, just street wise, to beat our expensively schooled kids and get the jobs, stole the jobs from our kids, deprived our kids from the good jobs that they paid a small fortune in our education system and hoping to land in one.
 
Why are we so unfair to our kids? Oh, wait a minute, our poor kids still need to ‘waste’ one and a half to two years running up hills and bashing through jungle terrain before they can start to look for a job that the foreign kids need not have to. Why are we doing this to our poor children, and smugly telling them that they have to compete with the rest of the fucking world?
 
You do not need the devils if you have such wicked morons ruling and ruining our lives and the lives and future of our children. Maybe some of these morons are thinking that our children should not be working as their parents are all millionaires, and their lives are meant to live and play, education is just for fun, to be a well rounded person, not to look for jobs.