Education, schmucation...

Recently I have been reading quite a bit about the state of education in Singapore.
Most are from the view of educators, and people who are not having said education being applied to them (the adults).

The environment has changed indeed. When teachers are being appraised by everything else but the thing they are actually supposed to do - teaching and interacting with their students - something's definitely off with the system. I could agree that measuring the growth of students as a teacher's main appraisal criteria is no easy task. However, when the other appraisal criterias takes up so much of a teachers time - time they could have used to help their students learn and grow - that they become overworked, it does not make sense.

Thinking about this brought me back to my own days as a student. I remembered starting out very slowly in Primary 1. That was when I first started to really learn my A B C's and numerals. Here nowadays, most kids already have to know how to read by the time they enter Primary 1. My "class ranking" did not pick up until I entered Primary 5, only to fall again when I entered Secondary 1 in Singapore. It went up again, and remained in the upper percentile until I entered University (personal hindsight: lousy choice of a degree).

My University grades really sucked. Not a single 'A' in my core subjects and plenty of 'F's. (Knowing a few someone elses who can get 'A's in their core modules without breaking a sweat does not help :P). Somehow, with minimum study, I managed a few 'A's in my electives. As I think about what I learnt about in University, and trying to recall some of the examination questions, I wondered how on earth I managed to graduate in time.

There is one common factor though. It is easier to find "fun" and therefore "excel" in something that is enjoyable. Even the "perception" that something as enjoyable is usually sufficient. Unfortunately, being able to switch perceptions and maintaining them is a difficult skill to practice.