Cat Stevens wrote this words many years ago:

Oh. I know we’ve come a long way,
we’re changing day to day,
but tell me where do the children play.
Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air,
but will you keep on building higher ’til there’s no more room up there.

Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry,
will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die.
I know we’ve come a long way, we’re changing day to day.
But tell me, where do the children play.

(from Where will the children play by Cat Stevens)

I often wonder about this song and what we in Singapore are giving up in a our race to build skyscrapers. Singapore has come a long way since its independence. However, one wonders where we are taking our children to with the high pressure examinations system that is the Singapore school system. Our students are known for acing their examinations. Our students also do well in international surveys and examinations. Our students are able to enter the top universities.

Do the others know what price Singapore students have to pay for these? Do they know of the very long school hours that the students have to put into school? Do they know about the amount of mechanical learning and rote-learning that is being done in Singapore schools? Do they know the amount of drilling being done to pass the examinations? Most of all do they know “where do the children play”?

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

“As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults.” ~ Wikipedia

If talk about a school curriculum today, very often the curriculum that we are talking about is more akin to that described by the Wikipedia quote above. There is the idea that all the things that need to be taught in a school are to be done as if all the students and teachers are participating in a good old-fashioned Ben Hur-like, Roman chariot race.

That there is a race to complete the syllabus is not a doubt. The race is governed by a deadline which is usually an artificially imposed time limit. That time limit is signified by the semestral examinations or the even more important schedule of international examinations. Learning becomes a sprint although many will say that the current school system of learning is more of a marathon. Actually it is not one sprint, but many sprints.

In such an environment, little time is given to real learning where there is serious effort made at concept-building, deep understanding and building on what has already been learnt. Everything is compressed because the conveyor belt of learning in modern schools keeps moving faster and faster. As more things are seen to be essential to learning are added on, less time is given for everything to be fixed on that conveyor belt of learning. The conveyor belt is then speeded up to accommodate more parts. Learning in such a school environment is a real race. But unfortunately, real learning cannot be done in this manner.

A more accurate analogy for learning is that given by Lao Tzu above. Learning is very much an organic growth experience. It takes time. It takes nurturing. If it is an organic experience then it accepts that the starting point is different for each one of its participants. When time and care is given, the outcome is a completeness and a wholesomeness of the student. Is it a surprise that the product of a system that is harried and rushed is far from that? They tend to look like a product at the end of a race; tired and exhausted or one indistinct from another. Just mere clones to keep the economy going.

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.