The myth of quality education

To be ranked as world best university by western organisations seemed to be a highly desired accolade for many universities. To be ranked among the top 10, the top 100, confers the graduates from these universities as among the best in the world, top talents. In general this looks like the case and of course there are exceptions. Some universities are ranked very high but produced duds, useless graduates that are good only at mid executive levels at most and many could not even find gainful employment and have to resort to part time jobs, some even have to drive for Grab.

Then there this outstanding exception that has stunned the world. India, without any university in the top 100, maybe not even in the top 500 best, is producing the most top executives for MNCs in the whole wide world. The Indian graduates are beating the Europeans and Americans in their home ground, taking over their companies not just as middle executives or senior executives but as the top dogs, the CEOs. There are thousands of Indian CEOs heading western MNCs, even Japanese MNCs and of course Singaporean MNCs.

Surprising, shocking, not true? Yes, the Indians have got their education system right. Many may still think the Indian education system is half baked, primitive, and basic. Think again, and look at the names of all the top CEOs in western MNCs, the big and reputable ones, the Fortune 500 companies, they are mostly Indians. They must be teaching the right stuff, and not the unnecessary and frivolous. And Singapore is salivating at the prospect of bringing in more Indians to fill the top posts in business and in govt. The Indians are the best in the world, in business and in govt. Ok, the latter still needs more proof.

The irony, very few foreigners would want to send their children to India to benefit from what they are doing right and to become future CEOs of big MNCs. And more surprising, some Indians are sending their students to study in Singapore's world class universities that could hardly produce a MNC CEO other than in local companies in tiny Singapore. Increasingly Singapore companies, the bigger and more established ones, are going to be helmed by Indians from India.

What is the moral of the story? Go to India to get a good education, an education that would turn graduates into future CEOs if that is what you want. And Indian education is relatively cheap. Do not send your children to super expensive highly ranked universities that are good on paper only, good to look at, good to brag about but turning out unemployeable graduates or graduates at best be good enough to work for MacDonalds or Grab.

Get the idea? See the myth? What is good and real is in the pudding.

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.