Quite a few of you came to my post, “A rose-tinted view of Singapore’s education system”, from a link that had this comment:
“Just because many enrolled in extra tuition doesn’t necessarily diminishes contributions made by teachers in schools.”

I think the comment is off the mark. If he had just bothered to read carefully, the point I was making was that too much credit has been given to the Singapore school system by far-away foreign observers.

Our teachers are hard-working. Quite a few are too hard-working for their own good. Some time ago the local paper, The Straits Times reported that teachers made up the largest group of professionals who visited the local Institute of Mental Health (and I am not even suggesting that they are lunatics because of this). The local teachers’ union when asked if teachers were coping well with the work load would always claim that their members were coping well despite this piece of evidence, not to mention that many of the older teachers trying to get out of teaching through “early retirement” on medical grounds. The latter is another open secret of the Singapore education system. So our teachers do work hard.

But in all honesty I think the school system in Singapore is unable to cope with the high stakes exams as it is now without all these extra-school “assistance” like private tuition. The school hours have also been extended yet there are still lots of extra classes. Why is there a need for this if the system is so good or if there is sufficient time? Talk to teachers and they will tell you that they are always in a mad rush “to complete the syllabus in time for the examinations”. Why must learning and teaching be in a rush? In such a “rushed” situation, do they really teach conceptual understanding properly? The focus in our schools is not the mastery of such things; it is the mastery of the examination questions that is sought. Now if these are not evidence of an overloaded, unrealistic exam-oriented syllabus, then I don’t know what is.

Do we want to own up that teachers and students “officially” work longer than the official school hours designated for lessons that we want to tell to our foreign audience. I know of schools where principals close a blind eye to teachers carrying out “illegal” classes on Saturdays in school even though Saturdays are supposed to be off for teachers and students. That would be more honest. And if we do that would our system look as “great” in the eyes of foreign observers? Our education system is pretty good. But let us not go overboard with its achievements.

While we may want to teach our students to think, it is also important for us to know that our students know how to think. To find out how our students think, we can use graphic organizers to “peek” into our students’ minds.

As mention in my earlier posting, “Framing our thinking with graphic organizers”, graphic organizers can help students to learn to think.  From the teacher’s point of view, a graphic organizer can also help a teacher assess the thinking processes of the students. Assessment of the ability to think is important. If there is no assessment we will not be sure if our efforts to teach our students to think have actually taken root in our students’ minds. Through assessment, we will also know if our students are able to transfer that thinking process to other situations.

A good teacher who uses graphic organizers to teach thinking will model or demonstrate the use of these graphic organizers. The teacher will also teach the students how to use the graphic organizers in stages so that the student understand the mental processes that are taking place. The teaching of the mechanical routines of the thinking processes must be followed by more practice and also opportunities for students to transfer that newly-learned thinking skill in other situations.

Throughout all these stages of teaching thinking with graphic organizers, teachers will be able to “see” their students’ thinking processes. Timely intervention can be done to correct flaws in the thinking processes before poor thinking habits or processes become fossilized. The thinking becomes clarified on pen and paper (or any other media) for all to see and assess.

Perhaps more importantly, it is not only the teachers who can see how their students think. The students themselves would be able to see where their thinking has gone awry and make the necessary changes to their thinking processes. When students can make those changes on their own, then they are on their way to becoming independent learners.

When I was a teacher in schools in Singapore, I always make a point to teach my students to learn how take notes. I would usually teach them how to create Mind Maps. This is my favorite way of taking notes and is the way that Tony Buzan advocates. I like it because it gives me great flexibility to arrange my notes in a structure that makes sense to me. It’s arrangement reflects the way I think of the subject.

The Mind Map is a very effective graphic organizer. Graphic organizers are diagrams that represent the relationships of ideas through the use of abstract symbols and words. Graphic organizers in fact can be used to help us frame our thinking and many different graphic organizers have been designed for the specific kinds of thinking that we want to do. The graphic organizer to help someone do a comparison is different from a graphic organizer that helps someone to show how to make a proposition with reasoned arguments.

Graphic organizers help teachers and students be focused on important information. It helps students and teachers to sieve through a lot of information at a glance. Graphic organizers also helps to arrange information in a coherent manner so students and teachers can see the relationships between concepts and elements. Too often students get bits of information from their books and teachers but if they cannot make sense of the information, then it remains only as disparate bits of information and not knowledge. Knowledge is attained only when students make sense of the information. Graphic organizers help students to make knowledge out of information by allowing them to see the relationships between concepts and elements.

Teachers must make greater effort to use graphic organizers in their classrooms. They must also teach their students to choose the correct graphic organizer for each of the thinking skills that the student is going to employ. Graphic organizers help make our students knowledgeable.