What Would You Do?

In this post WK is going to adopt a slightly different style. Usually I write about serious things pretty seriously, but today, I’m going to talk about something serious based on a bad experience I personally had one particular morning.

I was on my way to school with a friend, and we chatted while we were on the bus. Our conversation eventually moved in the direction of my pet topic, the education system (specifically the JC system), and we got critical of the system, commenting how it does a pretty inadequate job of preparing students for university.

But just as we were discussing the issue, the person who sat in front of us (another student at my school, whom neither my friend nor I knew) got very angry. And we could feel it. (I was dumber, I only realized it when he started getting vocal about it). So we kept quiet, right till we alighted from the bus, and went our own ways to our classes.

It was a very bad experience, and I, wouldn’t say was disturbed, but I was quite uncomfortable with his response.

Personally, and honestly, I would apologise for making him so angry, but I wouldn’t apologise for what I said, because first, we did not mention any names, and second, what we said was ultimately, true.

Even though I’m quite likely to be criticized for intellectual snobbery…
So, what did I say? This brings me to the issues I want to discuss today in this post.

As I have discussed in my previous posts, there are problems in our JC system. My friend argued that a problem was that JC was supposed to prepare us for university, but this intent was distorted by the A level system, which compelled teachers to prepare students for the exam rather than for university culture, which are two very different things.

I argued that another problem was that some teachers only teach the bare minimum. They teach precisely enough for the A levels. What I used to do (when I encounter such a situation, which I did) was to ask the teacher questions, and give ideas that were outside the textbooks, or from readings outside the required list, and possibly, out of anyone’s imagination (sounds like a crazy troublemaker, aren’t I?).

My friend added that it had a good effect of pushing the boundaries of the lesson, though not everyone will be happy with this, because some people really, just want the bare minimum, and to be spoon-fed. They either don’t have the energy, or the time, or the capacity, or all of the above, to deal with such things.

My friend then added that such students ultimately suffer in university, because in uni, lecturers never feed, and you shouldn’t expect to be fed anyway.

The second issue is that of learning. We discussed this particular point about the differences between the sciences and the humanities, and my friend commented that in the sciences, one problem was that students learn formulae, are told to remember them, but they may not understand how these formulae actually come about, or the underlying concepts behind them. In other words, they know, but they don’t understand. (I think that comment was the boiling point of that guy I was talking about earlier).

So, what got that person so angry? The real reason I will never know, but a fair guess would be, I hit a soft spot, or stepped on his tail. Something, somewhere in the conversation related to him somewhat, and he felt angry about it.

But then it begs the question, if what we said was unfair or untrue, why respond like that? A mature university student surely would be able to take up a debate?

Besides, by responding angrily, aren’t you already implying we were right, and you do have a problem? A wise person would have simply laughed it off, or kept quiet (but then, we could have been wiser to have kept quiet too). But well, all these are beside the point.

I think another reason for that anger is that we threw out of the bus window many ideas and assumptions about school, which some (like probably that guy) would rather hang on to.

For example, it is safe to say that all who go to NUS (or any of the other of the Big Three) are smart people. After all, we survived the JC system, many probably very well.

But, the good performance experienced in JC may not be continued in university. A former triple or quadruple ‘A’ student may find him/herself in trouble because of schoolwork.

And the issues we discussed during that conversation in the bus were PRECISELY the reasons for this contradiction.

But there are people who refuse to accept it. When they don’t perform and they don’t understand why, they blame everyone except themselves, or they hang on to the reasons we’ve thrown out of that bus window. They refuse to understand that there are fundamental problems.

I am not a smart person. I wasn’t the “straight A student” in JC, I am not some student in law or medicine, but I can say my grades in university are, so far, good.

I know it doesn’t give me the authority to say what I said, but I feel that we have the right to talk about these things, regardless of our standing.

If you meet the same situation as I did, what would you do?