The Dark Tower at Buona Vista, Part 2

Typical of De Maitre, whose cynical view of the world exposes the dark machinations and miserable failures of our education system.

De Maitre identified three issues in our education system:

One, the obsession with grades,
Two, the failure of policy,
And three, the over-valuation of certain subjects.

But looking at the issue a little deeper, one realises that there is more to it.


First, the obsession with grades.

Who started it? Parents, or the state? Thinking about the dynamics between parents and the state in this respect led me to realise that there is a two-way relationship.

Parents are obsessed with grades, so they force their children to take up certain courses in school, or certain schools, leading the government to react by regulating the terms of entry, making it even more valuable in the eyes of parents.

Alternatively, the state is obsessed with grades, so it creates cut-off points for certain courses or certain schools, creating the impetus for parents to push their children to meet those grades.

And the reasons? One word: Meritocracy.

As I talked about in a previous post, What is Intelligence?, I mentioned the problem of meritocracy: How does one measure ability and effort? Because of this difficulty, the state relies on grades and certification as methods of determining ability and effort. Hence the importance of grades in our society today, because that’s what the state, and consequently society as a whole recognises as “success.”


Second, the failure of policy.

I’ll talk about three subjects that best exemplify the miserable failure of our education system. Actually, De Maitre has talked about them too, but here I have a different way of looking at it.

The subjects are: Project Work (PW), Social Studies (SS), and History.

Starting with PW.

Ask any JC student, and he/she will say “PW sucks”. But why does PW suck?

De Maitre talked about the irrelevance of PW in actual university work. I agree. Group work in university is very different from PW.

I think there are three main reasons why PW has failed to meet its objective.


First, students spend a disproportionate amount of time in learning those so-called “critical thinking skills” in “PW lectures”, rather than to internalise them in the process of doing that project. The critical thinking skills that are so important in a university cannot be simply taught, they have to be experienced. As many others have criticised, it is “the absurdity of teaching us how to think”. In other words, PW is a waste of time.


Second, university work is so different. There is the regular term paper, group presentations, and ultimately, the thesis at Honours year. What is important for PW to do is to internalise students on the processes and skills behind doing these assignments, which unfortunately, the PW system doesn’t.

Let’s look at what’s missing. For any assignment at university level, there has to be research done. Research has to be done for the term paper, for the group presentation, and a hell lot of research for the thesis.

What PW fails to do is to teach students how really to do research. Students waste time sourcing information they don’t need, just piling them in the bibliography for it to look impressive, students cite references, but have no idea the principles behind citation, and worse, students can’t tell the difference between what is and what isn’t plagiarism right until university itself.

So if PW IS SUPPOSED to prepare students for university, what kind of a job is it doing?

Of course, it is important to consider the differences in methodology towards PW between schools, but my point is, the skills that are so important for PW have not been properly inculcated.


The third reason is that PW can take so much less time than it actually does now. The situation now is this: up to five students spend close to one year (the 2nd year of JC) on a project question, requiring them to come up with both an oral presentation and written report. But this begs the question: why are students spending so much time?

This was how long I took in university:
A group presentation: one week.
Term paper: three days.

Of course one might retort, “But you are already a university student! You already know all the skills!”

My answer to that is simple. I never used any so-called “skills” taught by PW in the first place.

Group work is about getting people together, discussing the issue, dividing the work evenly amongst the group members, and putting up a good performance during the actual presentation. How much time should that take? How much time does it take to meet up to talk about the question allocated or chosen? How much time will it take if one divides the work evenly? How much time does it take to prepare the presentation slides?

Ultimately, why are students spending months on something that can be done in weeks or even days?


Moving on to SS.

SS is propaganda. For fairness, I would say, “to a certain extent.” Not to be politically correct or whatever, SS does have some value. At least, the topics are meaningful. Governance, Racial harmony...

What I HATE about SS is that is so one-sided. To truly understand our society, we have to study it objectively, highlighting both the good things and the problems that face our society. There’s no politics or the so-called OB markers involved, just an objective, truthful account of our society.

It is NUS’s way of teaching Singapore that I feel should be the way for SS to be. In NUS, there are Singapore Studies modules, where we well, learn about Singapore. I took a course on Singapore politics (yes, politics) and I had a very good experience. It was far from a process of “government indoctrination”; there is constructive critique as well. If our society is to improve, this is the way to go.

As for De Maitre’s idea of replacing SS with sociology, I am personally supportive of that idea. This is because the sociological perspective allows us to challenge common sense assumptions and see problems in our society to be improved. Either way, it’s more fun.

To be continued...