This morning I caught the news on Twitter about the death of Gerald Bracey, an intelligent and biting commentator of education in the US. Although I only got to know him virtually only recently, I have enjoyed reading his work. He was passionate about education and had a critical mind to:

“smell an education scam a mile away, and his informed exposure and comic lambasting of the propagandizers, hucksters, and snake oil salesmen of the education industry earned him the ire of public schools enemies, from Bush I in the early 90s to Eli Broad and Bill Gates today.” ~ “Gerald Bracey Will be Missed” in Schools Matter

I won’t pretend that I modeled my writings on him and neither will I pretend that I will reach anywhere near his reputation and stature. But I liked that he tried to cast a critical eye on his country’s education system. I like that he tried to make it simpler for the layperson to understand what is happening in education. This has been one of my goals in writing on my blog.

My target audience has always been the people among those who matter most, namely, the parents and teachers. I have never written in the hope of changing the minds of the powers-that-be in Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) simply because I believe they don’t listen anyway.

It is the parents out there who have children in the schools system in Singapore that I am most concerned for. Parents who have been brainwashed into thinking that there is no alternative except the Singapore system of high stakes examinations. It is also my way of telling Singapore parents that perhaps our expectations of our children have been driven by a system that is unjustly skewed towards a narrow measurement of intelligence.

My postings are also for my teacher friends and other teachers who happen to stumble on my blog. The criticism I made of the Singapore system is to awaken those who have been asleep and so caught up with the “wonders” of Singapore’s school system. The postings on my blog tries to offer possible alternatives so teachers too won’t begin to be lulled to believe that we have the best school system.

It is not easy to criticise a system that has been much lauded. But I hope to continue what Bracey has done for the US and that is to speak the truth about the education that we have here in Singapore.

I have written a few posts warning my friends and readers in the countries around Singapore, like Indonesia and Thailand, not to blindly ape Singapore’s much vaunted education system. I have warned about looking at Singapore with rose-tinted glasses. I have argued that Singapore does not have an education system. What Singapore possess is a huge test prep system. Everything that is done in the test prep centers (they call them “schools” in Singapore) is geared towards preparing students to pass those high stakes examinations. I have also written about how foreign observers are eager to praise and copy the Singapore system. Even Barack Obama has mentioned how “well” Singapore’s “education” system is during his campaign trail.

Some readers may argue that there are schools that are skipping traditional examinations like the GCE O levels but they forget these are only for the elite top schools in Singapore. Why is this not the norm in Singapore? I have argued passionately that the examinations system is out of date and is one factor for the disconnect that affects many teenagers in schools in Singapore.

Yet, the Singapore system is being imitated by schools in the Southeast Asian region in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam, and even as far away as China. Today, we see this trend being followed eagerly by Obama‘s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. To quote Gerald Bracey:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wants a longer school day, a longer school week, and a longer school year and national subject standards, which will inevitably lead to one national test. Duncan wants to institute merit pay, which is a euphemism for paying teachers to produce higher test scores. Such merit pay, combined with national academic standards and one national test, will inevitably continue to transform our public schools into test prep factories. Thus, more and more of the same old industrialist factory model of education. All we need to do to improve schools, says Duncan, is intensify the command-and-control model of education.

Do all these sound familiar to Singaporeans out there? Is it a surprise that Arne Duncan wants something akin to what Singapore has now? TIMSS has caused American bureaucrats and politicians to panic. They fear that the dragons of the East will leave America in the dust with the dragons’ consistent high rankings in TIMSS. But they forget that it is precisely America’s lack of centralized control that has allowed it to produce the world’s most creative talents in all fields that has powered America’s ascendancy in the world today.

Yet, even in Singapore, the Ministry of Education (MOE) is trying, probably reluctantly, to move away from the traditional examinations mode because it recognizes at least officially, that there is a need to change the schooling experience to reflect the 21st century needs. But the change is only for the elite schools. But as Bracey puts it:

“Shouldn’t every child have an education like the President’s daughters?”

Bracey was of course commenting on Arne Duncan’s reforms. He was highlighting a clear contradiction between what the Obama Administration intends for education for the rest of America, and what the President’s daughter receives. In Singapore, what the “elite” receives, is different from that of the lesser mortals too. The elite in Singapore, like Obama’s daughters, will get schools that are not factory-like in nature, boasting of enlightened approaches to education. The rest of America, like the rest of Singapore, will get the rags and the factory assembly line which is indicative of where the powers-that-be think such students should be heading for.

“The working, the working, just the working life.”

- “Factory” by Bruce Springsteen

Are schools today still relevant? In other words, what is the role of schools today? In Singapore, the education system is often seen as necessary to prepare its people for the employment market. The Singapore economy needs them so the schools must produce them. In fact, education today in Singapore schools is really about the needs of the economy. It is not about education at all but rather about training workers. Schools in Singapore have long given up that role as educational centers. They are in reality training schools for the job market.

But what if the economy is going to undergo rapid and constant changes? What if, as it has been predicted that people will have many different jobs (some say up to 16) by the time they are 40 years old? What can the schools teach to keep these people meaningfully employed in their later years?

Can a school system that emphasizes mainly content be relevant in this age? Can a school system that only emphasizes producing exam smart students be relevant? Can a school system that emphasizes giving only “correct” answers be of any use to an economy that requires workers with skills relevant to the 21st century?

Schools need to change their priorities with regards to what is taught if they want to remain relevant even in its narrowly defined role as training ground for the future workforce. In a future (some say even current) environment where content is no longer king, and skills matter more, schools in Singapore, and the rest of the world must move towards emphasizing the teaching and learning of skills. Content must be taught in greater tandem with skills. If this fundamental shift does not take place, then school obsolescence will become permanent.