Can you imagine what it is like to be seating quietly in a class for hours on end? Oops I forgot. My sincere apologies, most of us went through that when we were in school. I did too,

All too often today, this classroom “management” approach of expecting students to be quiet is still being practised. Students are expected to seat still, facing their teacher who invariably would be at the front almost hugging the white board, be quiet and listen attentively.

Is this a classroom full of live human students or dog training school (I often wonder if dog training school is actually better)? Is a a quiet classroom good for the learners in the class? By learners I mean both the the students and the teachers.

In my view, a quiet classroom is a reflection of the teacher’s lack of ability to manage the class in a more dynamic way. Management of the class is by enforced stillness.  Have such teachers stopped to ask themselves if making students keep still in the classroom a natural thing for young children or even teenagers to do? Have they ever stopped to ask if they, the teachers themselves, have enjoyed it when they were students themselves? Even in passenger aircraft today, they want passengers to move around to ensure blood circulation. Ever wonder what happens to brains starved of oxygen due to lack of blood circulation that is due to keeping still in the classrooms?

Such classrooms only benefit the teachers whose main goal is the teaching of unquestioned obedience. Marshall McLuhan has pointed out that in such a classroom, where information flows in one direction only, what is learnt is not the information that is being “transmitted” by the teacher but what the students are allowed to do. Since they are allowed to only sit and listen they will then only learn unquestioned authority.

In a quiet classroom, students are likely to be passive learners if they learn at all. All that energy and curiosity that exist in the young bodies and minds is strangely channeled to learn to be still. The mind slows down to the barest level of activity as the teacher drones on. The stillness is only interrupted when the teacher has a question and the mind is expected suddenly to be at its best to answer the question. When are the students encouraged to reflect and think? When are the students encouraged to construct meaning for themselves about what they are supposed to be learning?

But unfortunately, for many, never mind all these because, to quote Mr. Gradgrind from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times:

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

For many, the quiet classroom is usually not a place for noble educational goals. The classroom is quiet usually because the teachers want to cover the syllabus for the examinations. Any interruption is frowned upon because it slows down the teachers and the teacher will not be able to cover the syllabus in time. There is a lot to teach.

So in a  quiet classroom, learning is also not a social event. Students do not learn to work together. Students do not get the chance to sound off each other and learn from one another. Everyone is expected to be deep in his private thought. In the real world does learning take place in this manner? Yet, students expected to become team players at the workplace when they leave school. In the quiet classroom, it is everyone for himself.

I cannot help feel that often foreign observers who view the Singapore education system tend to see it through rose-tinted glasses. This is not to say that there are no strong points in the Singapore education system. However, some of the examples cited by foreign observers makes me wonder if they are really seeing it for it really is.

For example, the oft-cited prowess of Singapore students in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Singapore’s 10 and 14-year old students came out tops in both Maths and Science among the 49 countries assessed. The Minister for Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen, recently said about the TIMSS results:

But more importantly, note that our lowest quartile is above the median of the world. In other words, students who are academically weaker do better in our system compared to others.

While trying hard not to belittle these results, one wonders how much of it is really due to the school system and the teachers in Singapore? It is a well-known fact that many students in Singapore go for extra tuition with private tutors. Top students go for tuition to get even better grades and weak students go for tuition to improve on their pass grades. That is Singapore’s most well-known educational secret. In fact, the government, has tacitly also encouraged the tuition industry by encouraging local \\”self-help\\” groups like Mendaki, CDAC and Sinda to organise tuition classes as perhaps their main activity to uplift the locals. With a whole army of tutors coaching both top and weak students can we honestly say that the education system in Singapore is as great as they say. This is not to mention the huge amount fo extra classes that the teachers and students have to put in schools in Singapore to drill the students on exam paper type questions. If the system is so good why is there a need for all these?

In my view, what it does suggest is that the school system alone is inadequate to even get most of our students to do well on its own. The exam-oriented curricula covers way too much for most students to absorb or do well within the given time. What the system does is not hothousing the students. What it does is to make them go through a sweat shop. There is a difference between the two. Foreigners who still think that the system is good and is responsible for the good test scores, just need to talk to parents about it. Ask them how much time students have for any other thing besides school and tuition.

What is even more scary is that some schools in neighboring countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and even China want to copy the Singapore school system without considering all these. Do parents really want a system that would mean a lot of private tuition for their children? Is this what education is all about?

All too often, students do not see the connection between what they learn and their lives. It is only natural that students wonder why they are learning for example, the Periodic Table, or about states of matter, quadratic equations and so on. Students too often soon learn that in school, they are not to bother about why they are learning something. The learning is only for the school examinations at the end of a semester or year. Very often teachers do not give reasons or make connections about the relevance of the students’ learning to the rest of their latters’ lives. Yet, schools often claim to be preparing students for life. Teachers must make a more conscious effort to make these connections for their students or this claim is only a huge dishonest public relations exercise.

Making connections for students to see the relevance or significance of what they are learning, or teaching for transfer or bridging, is important. Teaching for transfer is important because it satisfies the innate curiosity of any child about why they are learning something. Satisfying this innate curiosity itself is a very important motivator for their continued interest in their learning. Nobody likes to feel that he is wasting time learning something, even if it has been justified in the name of high stakes examinations. Teaching for transfer will allow him to anticipate useful outcomes from their learning in the classroom. He will will be alerted to occasions when he would be able to apply what he has learned in different contexts. Learning, therefore, becomes more engaging.

Teaching for transfer also means that students will be able to build upon their understanding of concepts. Here again, I refer to my discussion about the need for deep thinking and understanding in my previous posts. For example, when teaching map reading, teachers should also make the connection between map reading and their students’ lives. The most obvious is of course in the actual use of maps like road maps for directions. However, if the teacher takes the time to discuss maps as representations of reality, it becomes a basis for further discussions on the concept of “representation”. It becomes a point of discussion when discussing the art works which are representations of what is in an artist’s mind. In fact, this concept can be used to discuss about the various media as representations. In the world of science, the student would be able to see that even in science, the world is ‘represented” differently. The Newtonian world view and the Einsteinian world view is definitely different.

If the teaching for transfer is done, students can take the ideas and concept beyond the confines of their classroom. This makes their learning in the classroom more akin to the beginnings of the threads of a giant web. They will be free to make the connections and explore concepts and ideas and reflect upon their relevance to their lives. Learning becomes organic and natural. Teaching for transfer will then end this phenomena where students leave behind whatever they have learnt in school, in the examination halls.