Before teachers and students alike get angry with me with the above, let me explain what I have in mind. Yes, I am going to suggest lengthening the annual academic calendar of schools in Singapore. But there is one very important caveat before I will agree to such a step. I propose that if schools (read teachers too) are willing to discard the written examination approach and teachers are allowed the freedom to allow time for their students to be able to explore what they learn meaningfully and deeply, with an emphasis on deep understanding and learning for transfer, then I say lengthen the school academic calender. Consider even banishing the school holidays.

I am inclined to believe that if schools decide that learning is to be done in this manner, students and teachers will find the teaching and learning more meaningful. It will not be the daily repetitive chore of the Singapore school sweat shop that students and teachers undergo. Teaching and learning would find new meaning and purpose. This alone, I believe, will inspire teachers and students alike to want to be in school. It becomes less of just mundane work.

Students can be given that independence to be real learners rather than just licking whatever that has been dished out to them or in many cases, rejecting what has been offered. Learning can be more in tune with the natural curiosity of students. When the task is consistent with nature, then it is not work but to be in a state of “flow”. The same will apply to the teachers. For students, it also means that they will not be treated like individuals with differing learning needs as opposed to the mass assembly line approach currently used.

Teachers will no longer find themselves as the Nuffield Review described, that is, as mere “curriculum deliverers” rather than “curriculum directors and developers”. Ownership of teaching goes back to the teachers. If that is not motivation for teachers then I do not know what is. It is telling the teachers that they are the professionals. It is telling the teachers that they are the ones who know their students best. It is reminding the teachers and reaffirming that they are the ones who know best what suits their students. It is also about humanizing a profession that has been reduced to concern only for high stakes examinations performance.

So extend the school calendar. But do so only if meaningful teaching and learning is encouraged and supported as the main activity of this place called school.

Very often when you ask students how they memorize anything that they have learnt, they will tell you that they do so by reading over and over again. This has perhaps been the time-honored way of memorizing done by students faced with the huge chunks of information that they get at trivial pursuit academies called schools.

Recently, I also wrote about the need to teach the accelerated learning techniques, like mind mapping and the different memory systems in schools as part of the need to prepare ALL students to learn. This morning I came across a post by Daniel Willingham (see here)where he mentioned that his university students in general do not know about memory and how it works. He said, “It turns out that they don’t know much about committing things to memory.”

He doesn’t blame teachers because he says “teachers are not taught much about about the practical workings of memory.” Here, perhaps I don’t quite share his views. While I will agree that this is usually not part of a teacher training course, teachers who are serious about helping students to remember would have made the effort to learn about memory systems and would have taught their students. Furthermore, from my experience with schools in Singapore (admittedly just anecdotal observations) teachers refused to teach students to remember using memory systems. Only on the rare occasion you will hear a teacher perhaps mentioning “mnemonics”.

I suspect this is due to two reasons. Schools still expect teachers to give traditional notes to students, usually called “concise notes” but in reality is usually anything but concise. Secondly, these teachers are probably the ones who have got away with the “reading-over-and-over” method of memorizing and therefore never saw the need for other more efficient methods. The thinking is probably if these teachers can do it while they were students, they don’t see why their current students can’t.

I think at the end of the day, a lot of the “teaching” that is done in Singapore schools is assumed to be transfered into the minds of students by some invisible hand or invisible osmotic process. Students somehow are assumed to have figured out how to do it.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore has made many grand announcements about its change of emphasis for the Singapore education system. It has introduced “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN)”, “Masterplan for IT in Education (MPITE)”, and lately “Teach Less, Learn More (TLLM)”. All these initiatives and other pronouncements from up high are supposed to help propel Singapore into the 21st century.

The MOE has also introduced new benchmarks and accompanying awards for schools and teachers to push the education system into the new era. ISOs and KPIs have become the norm in Singapore schools today. These jargons have become embedded into the langauge of the teachers and principals of Singapore schools. They now live, breathe KPIs and ISOs (and the examinations of course). These are now the new measures of progress in Singapore schools. It is the “New Stupid” that I mentioned in an earlier post.

I suggest a far simpler measure or assessment gauge for the progress made by the Singapore education system. MOE will not need a consultant to devise a grand plan and strategy for measuring progress and changes in the schools. All the MOE officials have to do is to listen if students and parents have stopped asking this question: “Will it appear in the examinations?”

When no one asks such questions anymore, then MOE has made real progress.