My thoughts on the education system

This is a collection of some random thoughts I have about the education system in Singapore. For starters, it is extremely tough for someone like me, a student, to thrive. Very often, on Twitter, I will see fellow students complaining about the education system. Now, it’s my turn to share my thoughts

What I like about the Education System

There are still a few good things about the education that I must commend. It does not centre only on academic merits, but also a “holistic, all inclusive education”. For example, secondary schools allow Direct School Admission through CCA or other talents, which is good as it shows that we are not ranked according to intelligence ONLY.

What I dislike about the Education System

What I don’t like about our system is that it is too pressuring and torturous. What I see in my secondary school life is that most subjects, especially science and humanities like Geography and Social Studies, centre on memorization ONLY. So basically, may the person with the fastest and biggest brain win. Although it may seem easy for a person like me, because after all the ONLY thing you need to do well is the conviction to commit your syllabus to memory, it will still make or break a person and cause intense panic when one forgets a single nugget of information.

To get into JC, you need an L1R5 of 20 or below. This means a B-grade average. This is not as easy as it sounds. Also, this is only the BARE MINIMUM to continue on the hierarchy of education. To really survive, you need ‘A’s, and straight ‘A’s.

While I am in envy of various European countries such as Finland that have scrapped the tests and exams that have made us work like mad pigs to study for, I believe there is a reason for our education to be this way, which I may or may not want to know.

What Students Experience

You know, one thing I do not quite get about our system is the difficulty curve. Minimal revising is needed for primary school, but the moment you enter secondary school, it is memorise or die. Is there really a need to step it up so much? Or is it just the teaching style? In primary school it was textbook-powerpoint slides-workbook with major spoonfeeding. In secondary school, I don’t even know where the workbooks went, but it still includes slides. No spoonfeeding involved.

I don’t even see the point of teachers anymore. When they actually start to teach a new topic, the students may or may not pay attention, and the chances of retaining information is very low. When a test comes, they only refer back to the textbooks, which I call “mugging”. So, what happened to teachers? 

Our education is the drilling of route-memorized data into the heads of students (think memorising the textbook) to – and I quote the education ministry – “Score the highest possible marks in exams”. Students hang on to knowledge ONLY for as long as it takes to complete the exam paper – then they completely, conveniently, forget everything for the sake of preserving their sanity. Then they repeat the process for the next exam. How does this even help in life?