A medieval high stakes test. Click on picture.

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

~~~

(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

~~~

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

~~~

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

~~~

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

~~~

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

~~~

(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

~~~

 

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

~~~

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).

I just read a Straits Times report about the controversy over whether the national examinations should be allowed to carry on despite a Supreme Court decision upholding a High Court ruling requiring that the Indonesian government upgrade teaching and school facilities nationwide before conducting another national examinations. The courts had made a ruling in response to a suit by a group of parents and students. Also the Jakarta Globe was quoted to have criticized that by going ahead with the examinations, the education ministry or Diknas, was assuming “all students across the country had access to the same opportunities and information, which is far from the truth.” In justifying his Diknas’ rationale for going ahead with the examinations despite the Supreme Court decision, the Education Minister Muhammad Nuh, argued that would be almost impossible to to wait for all schools to be standardised before Diknas can carry out the examinations.

From the controversy here, I think both opposing sides seems to have one thing in common. They both believe in the written examinations that is typical of the national examinations in Indonesia. It is implied in the Education Minister’s argument that the examinations must go on. It is also implied that the people who brought the law suit also believe in the examinations usefulness as they only seem to opposed the unequal opportunities that can skew the examinations.

In my view, both sides are wrong to place such emphasis on examinations in the first place. I have written a lot about this in my blog. Examinations as they are usually carried out are poor indicators of student intelligence and achievement. It does not matter if all the schools and teachers are of equal quality. The problem with examinations is the inherent philosophy and design behind such examinations. For these reasons alone, high stakes examinations should be abolished not only in Indonesia but also for the rest of the world.