I have this habit of making inferences about what I have observe and what I have read. I do that all the time because that is part of critical thinking. Here I  do not mean critical just in the negative sense. I draw conclusions as best as I can. Most of the time, in life, you cannot wait for someone to appear and tell you what events mean. Of course, my conclusions can be wrong but then again just tell me why. That is fine with me.

What in my view is sadder, is that people do not want to or are reluctant to infer. Worse, some don’t seem able to make inferences. Someone, once told me how she had gathered a group of parents to teach them about reading to their children. She told me she held one of those “big books” and sat in front of the parents and asked them what they thought the book was about. All of them said they didn’t know and one explained that they wouldn’t know because both she and the parents had not read the book. She pointed out to me that the book that she was holding had a beautiful cover illustration and of course the title. She was amazed that the parents could not make any inference about the story by looking at the cover and the title.

This little anecdote illustrates a few things. Oops! I nearly told you what they are. Perhaps, you will like to make your inferences about what they are?

Below are some quotes pertaining to the importance of numbers for our reflection. Have numbers distorted our perceptions of reality?

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(Francis) Galton is also known as the founder of “eugenics,” a term he coined, which means the science of arranging marriage and family so as to produce the best possible offspring based  on the hereditary characteristics of the parents. He believed that anything could be measured and that statistical procedures, in particular, were the technology that could open the pathway to real knowledge about every form of human behavior. The next time you watch a televised beauty contest in which women are ranked numerically, you should remember Francis Galton, whose pathological romance with numbers began with this idiocy. Being unsatisfied with vagueness about where the most “beauty” was to be found, he constructed a “beauty map” of the British Isles… If this was not enough, he also invented a method for quantifying boredom (by counting the number of fidgets) and even proposed a statistical inquiry for determining the efficacy of prayer.

~ quoted from “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” by Neil Postman

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Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s many recent visits abroad appears to have paid off – the 62-year-old ranked No. 32 in the inaugural list of top thinkers that mattered most this year in the latest issue of the influential Foreign Policy magazine in the United States.

~ quoted from “Anwar listed from among 100 Top Global Thinkers” by Debra Chong, The Malaysian Insider

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Rainer Kalb, a veteran writer who’s spent six years at kicker, once said: “The yearning for grades is a reflex to the debates about school grades in childhood. Now you can once again get upset about what you consider an injustice.” If that’s supposed to mean that the players secretly, subconsciously wish to be graded, it’s rather been my experience that it’s the writers who secretly, subconsciously react to a childhood experience. Now they wield the power to rate and grade and classify, now they are the teachers. WTF.

~ “Making the Grade”, Soccernet by Uli Hesse

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There is a sad joke about a fifth-grade teacher in a ghetto school who asked a grim Negro (sic) boy, during the course of a “science” lesson, “How many legs does a grasshopper have?” “Oh, man, he replied, “I sure wish I had your problems!”

~ quoted from “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” by Neil Postman & Charles Weingartner

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Schools in a nation are viewed as factories of one national industry that produces the product to compete with that of other nations’ education systems, and henceforth should be held to the same standards and produce the same values.Further, schools are considered as businesses and test scores on a few subjects represent their profit margin – the bottom line to judge their performance. As a result, it narrows the curriculum to a few subjects considered essential for competing with others.

~ “Global Competitiveness Reinterpreted: Homogenization vs Diversification” by Yong Zhao

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(Added on)

Singapore had the largest proportions of highly competent students who reached the advanced benchmark in Primary 4 Science (36%), Secondary 2 Science (32%) and Primary 4 Mathematics (41%). For Secondary 2 Mathematics, Singapore’s proportion was the 3rd highest (40%) (behind Chinese Taipei and Korea). [international medians: 7%, 3%, 5% and 2% respectively]

quoted from “Singapore Performs Well Again in Latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007, Press Release from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore

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The top student in this year’s Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a China national Qiu Biqing, 13, from  Qifa Primary School, who achieved an aggregate score of 290, with four A*s and a Distinction in Higher Chinese.

~ quoted from “Top student in PSLE this year from China”, the Temasek Review

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This post was inspired by my friend, Dennis, whose intelligence is not impaired by his O levels only qualification. He compared the Singapore school system to the English Premier League (EPL).

Recently, I boarded a local public bus service to go to the National University of Singapore (NUS). Until today, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at what I saw plastered on the back of the seats in the bus.

On th back of each of the seats were plastered advertisements for teachers. They were adverts from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE). In bold letters it said, “NO CHILD SHOULD BE LEFT BEHIND” (NCSBLB). I stared at it for awhile between puking and laughing. Surely, it must be inspired by George Bush’s discredited, high stakes examinations focused, “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) policy. It must rank as high as the MOE teacher recruitment advertisement at Raffles Place which I had written about.

Is it a coincidence that the people in MOE had approved the NCSBLB advert? Is MOE drawing inspiration from the US? Or is it the other way around? Or the educational authorities in both countries are equally confused? Surely, since our leaders are talking about preparing its people for the new economy of this century, they need to send out a very different message. NCSBLB is no different from NCLB. Or is that telling of the attitudes of those in MOE?

PS: See the PR shot below released by MOE of its staff all decked in black (and leather?)