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.

Many years ago, when I was still fairly new at teaching, I attended a course on assessment for History. The course was meant to provide teachers with a better understanding of the marking of student’s History essays. This was before the days of the current History syllabus with the incorporation of the thinking skills. It was conducted at the National Institute of Education (NIE).

What I remembered most of the experience was the lecturer telling us that there wasn’t much to discuss as we all should know how the marking should be done and we would already know what is a good essay. He said that by just reading a good essay we should “know”. Of course, I immediately felt that I had wasted my time coming for the session and it turned out to be just that.

Several years later, when I was with the Educational Technology Division (ETD), I was asked to chaperoned some foreign guests from the ASEAN countries to the NIE. The visitors were all officers from educational institutions from the ASEAN countries. We were going to look at NIE‘s use of discussion forums in their teacher training. We were given an overview by one of NIE‘s lecturers and at the Q&A after the overview, a Malaysian guest asked the NIE lecturer how they assessed the students learning on the forum. The lecturer rather flippantly said that they just read the comments and contributions of the students on the forum and have a “feel” for the correct marks. I remember cringing and shifting uneasily in my seat, when the Malaysian who had asked the question, looked at me and whispered, “What he means is that he is just doing impression marking?” I also remember just smiling sheepishly at him. I was at a loss for words as I knew what the Malaysian guest meant.

A few days ago, I was at a meeting between teachers and parents of my son’s class. Just before the actual meeting started, a teacher for Design and Technology, was complaining to a parent about her son’s portfolio work that was due to be submitted for the GCE O levels. The parent accepted that her son was not doing what he should and asked the teacher what was lacking in her son’s work. All the teacher said was that her son was not doing “enough”. The teacher proceeded to say that her son was over-confident and had thought that he was doing a good job. The parent asked again what was lacking and again the teacher only said that he was “over-confident” and that her son had thought that he had done enough when in reality it was far short of acceptable standards. It, perhaps, never crossed his mind that it wasn’t a case of over-confidence at all but rather the student not knowing how to assess his own performance.

As I watched this last incident, the first two incidents came to my mind. I have come to the conclusion that students in Singapore are, in general, not taught how to assess their own learning and performance.In the first two examples, it seems that even the teachers concerned have no clear inkling of how the assessment of learning is to be done. If teachers have no idea of how assessment is to be done, we can safely assumed the students have even less of an idea of how to do it.

The sad thing is that, the last incident showed that it is still happening today. Teachers mark with some hazy idea in their heads about the assessment standards. Because they are hazy about it, they cannot transfer their knowledge to the students. Students will, therefore, always be dependent on the teacher to assess their performance. The students cannot do it on their own. I suspect this haphazard approach to assessment is still prevalent in Singapore schools. I am sure many students, for example, don’t know why their English language essay is considered good or bad. Sure there will be marks and some comments made on the student’s essay paper but rarely is the student given clear criteria for what constitutes a good essay. Writing essays is a hit-and-miss affair. Students who do well, don’t really know why their essay is good. The poor essay writer also does not know why his essay is good. They are all dependent on the teacher.

Now this might seem normal to some of us but at a time when schools are spouting slogans like “independent learners” and “life-long learning”, how do we expect students to display such characteristics when they are not taught to assess their own learning? How are they going to be taught this if teachers themselves are hazy and vague?

In my view, independent learning and life-long learning will not happen as long as this state of affairs continue. It is just as bad for students to be waiting for an “assessment” from the teachers about their learning, as waiting for the teachers to provide them with ready-made notes.

The independent learner needs to be taught how to assess his own learning. He has to be his own “man in the mirror.” He must be able to reflect accurately on his own abilities and decide what he lacks and what he is good at. Without this skill and attitude, independent learning will only remain an illusion.

I’m Starting With The Man In

The Mirror

I’m Asking Him To Change

His Ways

And No Message Could Have

Been Any Clearer

If You Wanna Make The World

A Better Place

(If You Wanna Make The

World A Better Place)

Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change

(Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change)

- “Man in the mirror” by Michael Jackson

“Students can read a typical high-school “history” book from cover to cover without learning that real history emerges from the examination of evidence and the exercise of reason. Students can read a typical book from cover to cover without learning that the construction of real history involves a lot of detective work — e.g., the appraisal of claims and counterclaims, the separation of supportable assertions from superstitions and folklore, the scrutinizing of documents and other kinds of evidence, the detection of counterfeit documents and artifacts, the resolution of conflicting interpretations of evidence, the rejection of unjustified inferences, and the demolition of unwarranted generalizations”

- from “Good Stuff for History Teachers” by William J. Bennetta

There is a need to take another look at the teaching of History in Singapore. This is because most of the time the teaching of History is very much textbook-bound. Teachers tend to just explain what is already in the textbooks and get students to refer to the textbook as almost the undisputed master of information and opinion on historical events. What is of greater concern in Singapore is that while there is a shift in emphasis in the History paper for the high stakes examinations in recent years, the shift in the manner that History is taught has been far from revolutionary.

While there has been an emphasis on the higher order thinking skills and the need to interpret historical sources in the examinations, the way that History is taught in Singapore schools seems to be very disconnected from the way the students are assessed. While the current History syllabus in Singapore requires students to demonstrate an ability to think, and perhaps to think like a Historian would, teachers in Singapore do not teach students to think for this purpose.

Usually any thinking skill teaching done in a typical Singapore school History class is done only to teach students how to answer the examination questions which have been set to ensure that students demonstrate thinking skills. In other words, in the course of the lessons, thinking skills is not emphasized. Teachers would still dish out their notes or just “cover” what is said in the textbooks. What is said in the textbook are “givens”. They are taken to be facts.

Teachers only go through the thinking process with their students only because it is a requirement of the examination paper. Even then the manner that it is done will be very mechanical and little thought will be given to the need for the transfer of those skills to other situations other then through some invisible osmotic process. In other words, thinking is taught but with a spirit which is contrary to the whole purpose as to why these thinking skills were introduced into the syllabus in the first place.

This happens mainly because of the heavy examination orientation of the Singapore “education” system. Teachers know that, in Singapore, only the examination grades matter despite some recent pronouncements from up high to move away from that.The content heavy syllabus, which is based on the examinations requirements, has seen numerous reductions over the years but it is still a lot to cover. This has led to teachers still teaching rapidly to “cover” the content. There is little time for serious teaching for understanding. Very rarely will you see a teacher who actually uses mainly primary or secondary sources to teach History so that students have a more profound understanding of the learning of History as a process of learning that involves “the examination of evidence and the exercise of reason”. Little is done to show that History is:

“the appraisal of claims and counterclaims, the separation of supportable assertions from superstitions and folklore, the scrutinizing of documents and other kinds of evidence, the detection of counterfeit documents and artifacts, the resolution of conflicting interpretations of evidence, the rejection of unjustified inferences, and the demolition of unwarranted generalizations.”

If some of the above skills or processes is done in Singapore schools, it is done only when the teachers teach their students to answer the so-called source-based questions for the high stakes examinations. What this leads to is a cynical inculcation of thinking skills. The approach only teaches students to think that the thinking skills only makes their life harder and see no other application of the skills in the rest of their lives. Worse, it does little justice to a very interesting subject and students will continue to believe that History is nothing more than the learning and regurgitation of facts. Unfortunately, for too many in Singapore’s education system, it does not matter because students still ace their examinations.