The Straits Times reported today that the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be introducing compulsory writing modules for freshmen from August next year. The modules will focus on topics like press freedom, information and technology, or the environment. Students are expected to pick up skills ranging from taking good notes, effective presentations, analyzing texts and constructing coherent arguments.

The university’s provost, Professor Tan Eng Chye explained that the university needed to introduce such modules because NUS students have been found wanting in presentation skills, or are inarticulate or unable to write succinctly.

Professor Tan was reported to have said that he had attended presentations where students would read from their notes rather than make eye contact with the audience. He also was reported to have said that:

“I have also read minutes of meetings written by university students that are not clear at all.”

The report reminded me of a book by a Harvard education professor, Tony Wagner, who had argued that secondary students in the US are not “jury ready”. By this, he meant that students leave school without acquiring the skills to be able to analyze an argument, weigh evidence, and detect bias. In his book, “The Global Achievement Gap”, Professor Wagner defines his “Seven Survival Skills” for students to succeed at the university and at the workplace, and in life in general. The Seven Survival Skills are includes problem solving and critical thinking, collaboration across networks, adaptability, initiative, effective oral and written communication, analyzing information, and developing curiosity and imagination.

It seems that Professor Wagner’s view about this inability to produce “jury ready” students is not only true for the US, but also for Singapore, an island lauded for its rigorous education system. One wonders what our students are learning in their English Language classes in our schools?

Why are our students still unable to master these skills by the time they finish their secondary or junior college education? Is the format of the GCE O levels English Language paper to be blamed? Most teachers in Singapore will tell their students to avoid the expository essays for the examinations and concentrate on writing descriptive or narrative essays. This is their “pragmatic” strategy that they teach their students in order to get better grades in the high stakes examinations.

Should the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore seriously reconsider how English Language for the GCE O levels is designed? To be sure, students in Singapore, at the Junior College level are required to sit for General Paper, where they are required to write expository essays  and analyze text more critically, as part of their GCE A Levels high stakes examinations. Many have found this subject “tough”. They are also required to do a Project Work module. In addition, they have also been taught thinking skills in the other Humanities subjects like History and Geography even at the O levels. So why are our students still not “jury ready” that NUS now has to consider compulsory modules to instruct its students in these skills?

I suspect that despite thinking skills being officially incorporated in the secondary and junior college syllabuses, teachers in Singapore have found a way to work around these to prepare students for their high stakes examinations in a very mechanical way. What is supposed to be  the teaching and learning of critical thinking skills has been reduced to rote learning and mechanical operations only.

This is made worse by the lack of interdisciplinary connections across subjects. Students, therefore, think that the skills they have learned are only for use within the specific subject matter. Little transfer of knowledge or skills is emphasized perhaps by the teachers and MOE. A silo mentality is created where little of what has been learned in school is used for anything else. This is despite MOE’s “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (TSLN) and “Teach Less, Learn More” (TLLM) drive. Teachers and students still think that what matters most are the grades students obtain for the high stakes examinations that mainly encouraged rote learning and mechanical operations.

The new NUS initiative, while laudable in its aims, is in my view, too little, too late. Our students should be “jury ready” at an earlier stage of their education. All our students should be “jury ready” irregardless of whether they finally attained a university education or otherwise. After the secondary education, our students will be channeled to the university track or the polytechnic track or the technical education institutes. To think that such skills are only required of those in the universities will be folly. We cannot afford to be so wasteful in the face of the challenges of globalization in the 21st century.

“In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours.”

- John Lennon

I have just read a book called “The Outliers: the story of success” (click cover on the right), written by Malcolm Gladwell. The book is a study of success. The writer tries to zero on the factors that leads to success. One of these factors is what he calls the “10,000-hour rule”. In his book, he quoted neurologist, Daniel Levitin, who said:

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being world-class expert – in anything…In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.”

Levitin was again quoted to say:

“…no one has yet to found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

The Beatles, perhaps, the greatest band the world has ever seen, paid their dues in the strip clubs where they played for hours on end. John Lennon described this in an interview:

“We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over.

In Liverpool, we’d only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours so we really had to find a new way of playing.”

Pete Best, who was the Beatles drummer at the time, was quoted as saying:

“We played seven nights a week (emphasis mine). At first we played almost non-stop till twelve-thirty, when it closed, but as we got better the crowds stayed till two most mornings.”

The last word perhaps about the effect of their time in Hamburg is from Phil Norman who wrote their biography, “Shout!” He wrote:

“They were no good on stage when they went there and they were very good when they came back….They learned not only stamina. They had to learn an enormous amount of numbers – cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock and roll, a bit of jazz too. They weren’t disciplined on stage at all before that. But when they came back, they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.”

What about Bill Gates? He started doing real-time programming since he was an eight-grader back in 1968. Gates said this about that period:

“It was my obsession… I skipped athletics. I went up there (Information Services Inc.) at night. We were programming on weekends. It would be a rare week that we wouldn’t get twenty or thirty hours in.”

By the time he dropped out of Harvard, Gates had been programming non-stop for seven years. As Gladwell puts it, “He was way past ten thousand hours.” We all know who Bill Gates is today.

What about Singapore schools? We make our students sit quietly for hours for much of the school year. We discourage them from asking too much or being curious for most of their time in school. We also teach them to wait for notes and answers. We also trained them to work for individual success. We drill them fully for the examinations for hours. We do these for at least ten years until they are sixteen.

We all know how well our students do in examinations and international surveys like TIMSS!

But, with the ten thousand hours spent on such things, will the Singapore student be able to acquire the soft skills required for life? Will they be creative problem-solvers? Will they be able to learn independently? I believe we know the answers to these questions.

Seems like Marshall McLuhan is right. “The medium is the message”. But at least we have something in common with the Beatles and Bill Gates.