Recently there was a suggestion from the political leaders to introduce political education to Singapore schools. Law Minister K. Shanmugam proposed that schools teach comparative political systems in the hope improving the Government’s effectiveness in reaching out to younger Singaporeans. The goal is that Singaporeans be better informed about their political choices.

I will not discuss what others have already pointed out or alluded to by others like the issue of “objectiveness” in such an undertaking (see for example here and here). Nor will I discuss whether it is a new thing to introduce political education in schools in Singapore. It has been done for years. I will instead suggest an alternative to political education in schools.

What is most needed for citizens of Singapore to be “better informed about their political choices” is to teach them to think. Yes, I know we have the grand “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (TSLN) slogan dished out by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore which runs most of the schools in Singapore. Yes, I know the MOE has also rolled out thinking skills programs in the past and invited thinking skills gurus from all over. But ask any parent or student or teacher in Singapore, and they will tell you teaching thinking skills is not at the forefront of education in Singapore despite all all the hype and international conferences on thinking organized by MOE. It is still Trivial Pursuit-style written examinations that is central to the education system currently.

I am calling for a renewed effort to teach thinking seriously in schools. I am calling for the thinking agenda to be at the forefront of all educational endeavor in Singapore schools. I am calling for the teaching of thinking to be done not just because there are “thinking skills questions” in the high-stakes examination papers. I am calling for a change in the assessment of learning in Singapore schools to reflect this emphasis on thinking.

You can only get people who can make informed choices only when you have produced students who can think and reason. It is only when students are seriously taught to be inculcated with good habits of mind that they will become good decision makers. It is when they can display curiosity, and an investigative mind.  It is when they can do systems analysis. It is when students can check assumptions, do deductive and inductive reasoning, classify, compare, analyze for errors and analyze for multiple perspectives that they can be making good decisions about their lives, including decisions about politics.

This are the skills that Singapore students need to be able to do well. These are the skills that will help them not only make better informed political decisions but also in other spheres of their lives. Teaching political education is a only a half-baked solution and invites cynicism about its very existence.

“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.”

Mr. Gradgrind

From Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

Does this sound familiar to you? Many schools all over the world have as their educational philosophy something similar to that of Mr Gradgrind’s. The sad thing is that when Dickens wrote that it was for an age long gone, namely, the Industrial Revolution.

Yet such a view about what schooling should be all about is still very much prevalent, even in a country like Singapore, which is often lauded for its “good” education system. The emphasis is on stuffing the brain. Just fill the brain with facts. The teachers’ job is to fill the brains with facts, or more accurately, as David Perkins has pointed out, with “factlets” or disparate bits of information with little relevance except for the great Trivial Pursuit game that most high stakes examinations are.

Never mind if the facts make little sense to the students. What is important is that they pass their examinations which for many is just a ticket to a place in a university or a job. For many, they will never see the relevance of the thousands of bits of information that they have learned in school. Makes one wonder if all that learning has been a monumental waste of time and money?

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.”