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?

During the Vietnam War, the Americans used body counts, that is casualty figures for the enemy as an indicator of the success of their war against the North Vietnamese. Numbers are a convenient way to indicate success or failure of almost anything.

The problem is when those people who use such simple indicators begin to believe in that such numbers actually reflect reality. It is made worse when such indicators like body counts, is not used by your enemy as the indicator of a successful war. Ho Chi Minh once said of the French whom he had fought before the Americans, “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.” Clearly Ho Chi Minh had a better idea of what is real. Body counts were never his measure of success.

Education today is facing its own Vietnam. Policy makers, school administrators and teachers have become obsessed with key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of educational programs. Instead of body counts, we have test scores as our KPIs. The figures from such KPIs have a life of their own. Once adopted, it becomes an article of faith in terms of its accuracy. It becomes hard to let go of such measures because they become dogma. It becomes hard to let go also because the faithful cannot see any other alternative. Right or wrong it is held on to with the fervent of the converted.

So test scores, drop out rates and international surveys becomes part of the liturgy of education today. Never mind if intelligence cannot be reduced to a test score. Never mind too if many pass through these KPIs undetected. What is important is that we think have a measure. Sadly as the Americans found out with the Tet Offensive, body counts don’t count. Will we have to experience our own Tet Offensive in education before we realise this?

Recently, the Singapore Mass Rapid and Transit (SMRT), that is responsible for the MRT in Singapore, began airing in its stations and trains, a well-known local TV character as the teacher of basic courteous behavior for its MRT commuters. In a rap-like “musical” video, the TV character, Phua Chu Kang exhorts MRT commuters to stand away from the opening doors of the trains, give up their seats for elderly and pregnant and so on. It may seem strange to a foreigner to do this but the “exhortation-style of teaching” is fairly common in Singapore schools too.

Recently, and example of this teach by exhortation was revealed in Facebook. A teacher friend of mine was lamenting how difficult it was to teach her students to think deeply. This was a perfectly legitimate lament. However, soon there were others who chipped to say that it is not difficult as all my friend had to do was to tell her students that they will fail if they cannot answer the question which require deeper thinking and added that it always worked! And this is supposed to be many years after the teaching of thinking skills has been introduced to Singapore schools by the Ministry of Education (MOE).

I am frankly ashamed and indeed appalled by such a response form someone who is a teacher in a school in Singapore. I guess I felt appalled because I know that this is not an isolated instant of the kind of teaching practices that goes on in Singapore schools. To say that students can think better by just threatening them with failure, is tantamount to telling a drowning man that he better swim harder or he will drown. Absurd isn’t it?

Yet such an approach is used everyday in schools in Singapore. Students are told to behave well but not taught how to. For example, they are told must not fight with one another but are not taught skills to manage their anger. Students are told to write better but little time is given to serious teaching of good writing skills. They are even told to work harder to get better results but are not taught proper study techniques and skills. And as in the example above, students are expected to learn to think through some invisible osmotic process.

Obviously all the above seldom, if ever, work. But teaching by exhortation will continue to be one of the accepted ways fo teaching in Singapore. After all, the government in Singapore always exhorts Singaporeans to work harder. It is believed this is how learning takes place. Do you or your teachers teach like this?