I said that the premise of the act is flawed. Actually there are three flawed premises. First, NCLB promotes a catastrophically narrow idea of intelligence and ability. The result is a terrible waste of talent and motivation in countless students. Second, it confuses standards with standardizing. The result is that schools across the country are becoming dreary and homogenized. And third, it assumes that education can be improved without the professional creativity and personal passion of teachers. The result is that too many good teachers are streaming out of the very schools that urgently need them to stay. All of this is holding America back in a world that’s moving faster than ever.

- Sir Ken Robinson, “Transform Education? Yes, We Must” on The Huffington Post

I was reading the post by Sir Ken Robinson posted on The Huffington Post. He was commenting on education in America. He was especially commenting on American education in the NCLB era.

For those not in the know, the NCLB has led to a greater “teach to the test” approach in US schools. This has caused an uproar among many teachers and others in the education field. In other words, the US education system is becoming more like the “education” system you see in Singapore. You now have high stakes examinations coming to the fore in the US like it is now in Singapore.

As Sir Ken Robinson correctly points out the NCLB “promotes a catastrophically narrow idea of intelligence and ability.” The same could be said of Singapore’s education system. Only recently is there some shift but even then when attempts are made to honor the other intelligences, you find that it did not come from the Ministry of Education (MOE). For example, the School for the Arts (SOTA) was set up not by the MOE but by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA). The Singapore Sports School was set up by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS). Surely this tells us something about MOE’s attitude towards what constitutes intelligence. This MOE attitude towards intelligence has also led to a very skewed and misguided Gifted Programme. This has led to to what Sir Ken Robinson calls a “terrible waste of talent and motivation in countless students.”

Sir Ken Robinson also said that the NCLB “confuses standards with standardizing” and has led to schools in the US “becoming dreary and homogenized.“ This same comment is also true of the MOE’s approach to education and assessment. MOE almost always talks about the standards that it has achieved and is trying to maintain or improve upon when put on the defensive about its high stakes examinations-centered approach to education.. The reality is perhaps closer to what Sir Ken Robinson has written.

This is what a teacher has written in a poem entitled, “Dressings”. Schools in Singapore, instead of allowing students the chance to dress up in the best of clothes which individually fit each student best, serve these students only rags. It is this force fitting of students into ill-fitting rags that has perhaps led to many good, passionate teachers leaving Singpore’s education service just as Sir Ken Robinson has indicated above.

“As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science.”

- Robert Tai, Associate Professor, University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education

In a post on the teaching of science, I have put forth the view that not much science if actually being taught in Singapore schools. I was referring to the lack of the teaching and application of scientific inquiry in Singapore schools. What it means is that the teaching approach for science and the humanities in Singapore is probably no different as what they amount to most of the time is a strong reliance on textbooks and teacher-prepared notes. Not much in the way of skills to differentiate a student of science from a student of the humanities. I also suggested that perhaps this is because of the high stakes examinations-based science curriculum in Singapore.

The high stakes examinations in Singapore schools also meant that a premium is given to the teaching of a wide range of topics rather than depth. This I have suggested is a reason for the lack of proper teaching of concepts. Teaching is at best tuned at the superficial level of the kinds of examination questions that students in Singapore schools are likely to face at the PSLE, GCE O and A levels. In the light of this it is important for us to take note of a recent study made in the US. The study found that “high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and spend less time on each.”

The study (click here for more) done by a team comprising of Associate Professor Robert Tai of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, Marc S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington, and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, compared the performance of 8310 students. They found that in courses that stress mastering a particular topic had double the impact on students as compared to those students in courses that touched on every major topic.

In another interesting conclusion, the team found that standardized testing “may not capture a student’s high level of mastery in a few key science topics.” Tai also noted that teachers who “teach to the test” may not be properly preparing their students’ chance of success in college science courses.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore should take note of this study. It is another piece of evidence which shows that the Singapore’s education system while garnering lots of accolades is in serious need of a major overhaul. If Singapore is to prove itself competitive in the economic and scientific fields it has to produce students who have greater and deeper mastery of what they have learned rather than make them just masters of high stakes examinations and international surveys like TIMSS.

Are schools today still relevant? In other words, what is the role of schools today? In Singapore, the education system is often seen as necessary to prepare its people for the employment market. The Singapore economy needs them so the schools must produce them. In fact, education today in Singapore schools is really about the needs of the economy. It is not about education at all but rather about training workers. Schools in Singapore have long given up that role as educational centers. They are in reality training schools for the job market.

But what if the economy is going to undergo rapid and constant changes? What if, as it has been predicted that people will have many different jobs (some say up to 16) by the time they are 40 years old? What can the schools teach to keep these people meaningfully employed in their later years?

Can a school system that emphasizes mainly content be relevant in this age? Can a school system that only emphasizes producing exam smart students be relevant? Can a school system that emphasizes giving only “correct” answers be of any use to an economy that requires workers with skills relevant to the 21st century?

Schools need to change their priorities with regards to what is taught if they want to remain relevant even in its narrowly defined role as training ground for the future workforce. In a future (some say even current) environment where content is no longer king, and skills matter more, schools in Singapore, and the rest of the world must move towards emphasizing the teaching and learning of skills. Content must be taught in greater tandem with skills. If this fundamental shift does not take place, then school obsolescence will become permanent.