ANDERSON JUNIOR COLLEGE GENERAL PAPER EDUCATION Basic Education Notes FUNCTION OF EDUCATION: (1) To prepare students for

examinations. (2) For vocational practices. (3) Knowledge for its own sake. (4) Knowledge for lifewhich is becoming an increasingly important factor. The SCHOOLS: Their dominant focus is to prepare students for examinations and due to pressure from society plus schools ignoring education for vocational practices as well as knowledge for life, eventually, parents and employers and students expect themselves to be prepared solely for examinations, and sometimes to the detriment of the latter. There is an obsession/over-emphasis with/of examination. This leads to an irony: Society puts pressures on teachers for examination results, and yet they continue to criticize the school systems on over-emphasis of exams. There is a limiting factorTime: Students spend about 30% to 50% of their time at home. With limited time, especially since expectations from parents and teachers increase, therefore focus would be predominantly on exams i.e. a pragmatic approach. This is another irony: This approach is not good for students. Though this is functional, it is still somewhat dysfunctional, because for a society to thrive, it needs people with an inquiring mind and those who innovate. This is especially so for Singapore, as were a country with limited natural resources and absolutely no minerals. Is Singapore any similar to Silicon Valley in the United States? In China, the leaders are starting to look at innovations though they can already be competing with the world superpowers even without it, because they already have hard work of their citizens and the quantity of manpower. With this, they can achieve what Singapore cant, and do things cost effectively. The shift/transition in world power is normal. History tell us that all great empire and economy rise and fall due to over inflated pride. Thus, Singapore has to maximize human population, i.e. education is paramount to compete and to develop socially as well. There is a great demand for education, especially with our small population. We must be pragmaticthe budget indicates our priority and education is only second to defence, which is extremely cost ineffective, as much of it would be used in wars and then thrown away. Whereas for education, it can produce people who can work for the economy and thus produce economy cycles. It is essential that we harness the potential of education, and this will allow the population to grow and the society to evolve. However: What is potential? A favourite maxim of education is to maximize potential, yet what they are doing is just maximizing aspects of potential, and they cannot maximize our potential, mainly because they do not know what is the human potential and they are unable to understand the human brain. Ironically, the brain has evolved, yet we are unable to work out how the brain works. We are unable to understand our character fully, which is a complex object. Cognitive ability and character is completely two different things. Facts can be learnt are placed in the cognitive part of our brain, though exams are not good at assessing our affective ability, e.g. emotions. If we are unable to assess our affective ability, then we cannot innovate, as it comes from creativity, and our education system is no good at teaching us how to innovate. Truth be told, there is not much innovation in the world today. Some good individual innovators from Germany, USA and Britain are recognizable, but they are just pockets of the population. So, although Singapore is leading in the field of cognitive studies, they are miles behind for innovation. They are in a dilemma, as they very thing, innovation, that pushes the economy is not harnessed in education. Why despite importance of innovation, we still choose to focus on cognitive? Firstly, it is very functional. Secondly, we can assess fact rather easily as compared to creativity, which has no definite correct and wrong. Thirdly, creativity is extremely subjective, and since it is such, it is difficult to assess

properly. Thus, education takes a functional and pragmatic stand to assess people and integrate them into the society. However, our approach is flawed, since little amount of knowledge is retained and an even miniscule percentile of knowledge is applied to our future life. This is an impractical application. We must find to way to integrate potential with knowledge available. Education is dysfunctional we must find a way to harness education, not just focus on cognitive. Thus, Ministry of Education introduces Project Work. However, despite the good intention, it has bad practice. Project work was supposed to encourage innovation, but the assess criterion is based on right and wrong. We should not underestimate the critical impact of innovation. Example: The MOE EXCELFest, which is a gathering of teachers for a conference and sharing sessions to enhance teaching methods and bring forth ideas to encourage innovation. However, with a good intention, there is minimal outcome. Another irony is that some people who are best innovators turn out to be lousy students themselves. All of them were not good students in school, and had even left school. Imagine this, students leaving school to be able to innovate, yet schools are supposed to harness it. If such people are leaving, how are we to harness them and spread their ideas? Education is not a race on the track field, and How are we to harness creativity in the 21st century is especially critical. We become automated with scholarship, and become part of the system and it restricts us. Another ironymany of our ministers are saying that innovation is extremely important, and yet nobody is taking any action, i.e. knowing the problem but not tackling it. For education examination results, the results are created based on societys needs in the next 5 years, and thus there is no comparability. Although the government is proactive as they anticipate the future, though they distort the comparability of education. Agencies of education: Media, Parents, Friends, Peers. A lot of knowledge is outside syllabus and they all either have vested interest (e.g. Media) or limited potential. The system in almost every country is the same and their system is limited. Due to the obsession of assessment, limitation and restriction is present. Thus, we are in a dilemma, that if we could innovate better, well be good. AmericaSilicon Valley SingaporeCreative Technologies Example: Barack Obama and David Cameroon. America borrows money from china, as the latter buys bonds from the former and they are in debt. Most of American-owned houses/cars are predominantly owned by China. The leaders are claiming that they should cut back, and yet spend money on war. Protracted wars will drag and eventually suck the country funding it dry. This results in individual becoming rich while the country becomes poor, i.e. Steve Jobs is a rich man in a poor country. Credits: Mr. Adrian Bell Question: The strong do what they will and the weak do what they must.