I am currently reading Bill Bryson‘s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”. It is a funny and wacky look at Science and other human discoveries. Such books are not new and I do enjoy reading them despite my Humanities background. What I do remember when I first started reading such books was why was my experience with senior high school, Science such a boring one? I remember feeling uninspired when learning about Newton, about light or Planck’s constant and others. I didn’t see much meaning in what was taught and I suspect that if I had asked why I had to learn all these, the answer would be “because it is in the examinations, stupid!”

It got so bad that when I had a chance to go to the university, I went to the Arts Faculty and studied History and Political Science among others. It was after I left the university (the learning wasn’t very universal then…still is?), that I started reading again about Science. I read books about evolution, physics and general science topics. I even read about the history and philosophy of science. I found them fascinating because the authors were writing in a very fascinating way. Reading them, you felt that Science was a human endeavor with heroes and villains, and humor too, as Bryson has shown.

It is not just about rote-learning. It is not just about knowing how to calculate and getting the correct answer to an examination question. I wanted to know more because it was interesting and it was interesting because a context was given to the information that was there. When the context is given it made more sense or meaning for the learner. At the end of the day, knowledge is about making sense or meaning of the information that one receives.

It is perhaps for this reason that Neil Postman, argued in his book “The End of Education”, that it is important for schools to teach narratives. Teaching and learning has to go beyond the mechanics of passing the examinations. Much of the disconnect that happens in schools today is mainly because of this mechanical approach to school and “learning“. Students and teachers are cut off from the “story” of knowledge. That story is very much a human story. When the teaching and learning is cut off from the human story, school becomes a dehumanizing experience.

There was an interesting news report yesterday in the Straits Times (22 July 2009), entitled “Retool for a world after the recession”. The report was essentially the result of an interview with the Education Solutions Executive for IBM’s Global Education and Industry, Ms Patricia Sullivan.

In the report, she argues for a need for a change in mind sets especially in education. With the increasing emphasis on KBEs and the need for workers with “21st century skills”, the education system has to change to meet these demands. The education system must produce students who are “flexible, adaptable and proficient with information technology”. She warned that:

If an education system is not aligned with economic objectives and strategies of a region, country or state, then it’s going to lose its validity and certainly its value.”

I have stated on numerous occasions in this blog about the need for Singapore to change its education system and move away from the traditional emphasis on written high stakes examinations because such an approach does not help Singapore to produce the workers that it needs. In fact, I have also suggested that this current emphasis on traditional written examinations and accompanying reliance on indicators like TIMSS, is misleading and can lead us to being lulled into a false sense of complacency about the prowess of our content-emphasized education system.

The emphasis in a new education system will be on the learning of skills rather than content. It will be on real world learning rather than on participating in a giant Trivial Pursuit or “guess what is on the teacher’s mind” game.

Ms Sullivan believes it will not be about grades and the teacher’s role will be one of intervening only when the students go off track. In the interview, she challenged Singapore by saying:

The world is truly going to become a global education market…you want to export your education services and import students, and the only way that’s going to be possible is by finding new ways of delivering education in non-traditional, non-classroom approaches.”

This ties in also with what I have been writing about the way Singapore pushes itself as an educational hub in the region. Singapore is still taking advantage of its reputation as an education hub based on an already outmoded approach to what education is all about. I have described how many “educational consultants” from Singapore have simply adopted a “cut-and-paste” approach in their dealings with schools in the region. Little thought is given about what kind of education is relevant for this day and age. A “simple” transfer of the examinations-oriented system is usually their solution and modus operandi, never mind its relevance. This mind set is not only found among private educational consultants but also in the people in the civil service who deal with educational matters.

I have written about how in Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), the emphasis is still on written examinations as the focus of learning and assessment. While there are some schools doing away with the traditional GCE O levels, the assumption is that only the top schools should do that because the students will do well in them anyway. What they don’t stop to consider is whether the O levels is good indicator of learning for all students in the first place. Those students not normally regarded as bright in Singapore may simply have other types of intelligences and habits of mind that the MOE simply doesn’t want to focus on but which Ms Sullivan is saying may be even more important today and in the future.

The MOE also persists with streaming despite all criticism. According to the Straits Times report Ms Sullivan was reported to be of the view that:

…more change is needed as the standardisation and structure of society along with continued streaming at a relatively early age may not translate well into the future. She sees technology enabling students to individualise their learning and progress at their own pace instead of being part of a cohort who methodically go through the same learning process.”

What she is essentially criticizing is also the very basic approach of our school system which is no different from that of factory assembly line system.

We see also the old paradigm in the thinking of Singapore’s attempt to be the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) syndicate of the East. Singapore has set up the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB) . The SEAB is part of Singapore’s plan to be an educational hub. However, what it promotes is nothing visionary in the area of assessment. It sells the iPSLE to neighboring countries.

This is definitely not as Ms Sullivan that is “delivering education in non-traditional, non-classroom approaches.”

There is a driving school in Singapore where they don’t give you a chance to drive a car. The only instruction that you will get from them is when they will ONLY TELL you how to drive. Will you enroll in such a driving school? I think the answer is clear. Yet there are many such schools in Singapore, where the teaching of skills is just by mere telling.

Recently, my son who is studying in one the polytechnics in Singapore, had an assessment for a communications module in his course. In the assessment, he was required to speak for about three minutes. I believe he was able to do that quite easily but he also described how some of his classmates struggled with the assessment. He described how they struggled for words, spoke in monotones, in short end up looking like very incompetent speakers. That got me and my son into a discussion about the module and the assessment.

I asked if they were taught how to speak during the course of the module. He initially told me that they were taught to speak but when I probed further it was clear that they weren’t. What actually happened was that the lecturer only outlined what are the aspects of good communication. The lecturer only gave an outline of the art of speaking but in theory only. When I probed my son, there was no opportunity to practise what they had learned during the module. Yet the students were assessed through an actual public speaking exercise.

In my view, this is just like learning driving through verbal instructions and perhaps some written notes. It would be unheard of and no one will take such a driving school seriously. Yet similar practices are being done in Singapore’s “educational” institutions. Worse no one seems to take notice of it, much less mind it. The situation is just incredible. You don’t need to be an expert on education to know that in order for someone to master a skill, you need lots of practice in that skill. Such skills are known as “procedural knowledge”. Robert Marzano et. al. in Dimensions of Learning says:

“Learning procedural knowledge requires the learner to perform a process or to demonstrate a skill, that is , to take some action.”

These skills can be mental or physical skills but the teaching of such skills are characterised by a breaking down of the skills into logical smaller steps and the learning and teaching of these steps are accompanied by repeated practice until mastery is achieved.

What had happened in my son’s class was a pretense at teaching a skill. If my son did well, it is IN SPITE of the teaching. If the other students struggled with the assessment, it is because of the poor teaching. No excuses ought to be given for this.

This may not happen in some aspects of the Singapore school experience. We know Singapore teachers are good at drilling the students to the test. But this applies I believe only to the acdemic subjects where they will face written examinations at the end of the year. However, where the soft skills are concerned, usually, it is a case of the “non-driving” driving school. Yet, it is these soft skills that at the most basic level, employers are seeking from the graduates of Singapore’s educational institutions.

Even local Singapore employers have been complaining of graduates who are academically bright but unable to fit into the work environment which demands skills far beyond the rote-learning and memorizing often demanded in Singapore’s educational institutions.

In case, you are still wondering if such a driving school exist in Singapore, the answer is they don’t. But you can find similar ones in our highly rated educational institutions.