Blog Prompt 4: Letter To The Minister Of Education

1) To what extent do you agree with the issues that the student has raised here? Point out some issues of agreement and possible contention.

Actually, I do agree with the issues raised by the student. It is sad to say that the education system now is ineffective and it promotes the pure memorising of facts as a mean to succeed. Well, one good example would be the Integrated Humanities module and term test. The test is split up into two sections, construction explanations and inference questions. There were cases whereby people scored full marks for their inference questions, but as a result of their inability to memorise score low marks for their explanation question, failing the test. In the future, would memorising or inference skills be more important? I guess that most of you would say inference, so why is this happening? What the current educational system is doing is forcing facts, morals and politically correct ideals into people’s minds, so that they would be able to rise to the top in the future at work. However, is this “memorising technique” relevant to the future? Another thing I would like to say is that the current education system does not go by our interests and talents, and what we are learning might not be applicable in the future. I have a cousin that is talented in the areas of cooking, but he is currently not able to cope with the education system in Singapore, and as a result is considering moving to England to study. Would this education system be backfiring and sending talents at areas not tested and thus claimed not “important” to other countries to develop? This is highly likely. I think that one’s passion for learning and desire to improve is what is going to bring success to him in the future, and not the constant fear of failing and being trampled on in the race of life, which results in people working hard, but in the end, the hard work is for no reason. Many students in Singapore have the mentality of working hard so as to have a decent job next time, and this materialistic mindset would only “mechanise” them into robots that work for their wants, but not to work for their passion to want to do something with their lives. Now, the current education system just require one to remember facts and follow certain rubrics of formats to be able to do well, but in life, such rubrics and formats would not exist, and no one would tell you what to memorise, and it is in this type of situations where the real successful people, able to be flexible, creative, mentally strong and morally upright, would appear, standing on the heads of the robots that the educational system is currently churning out, and mass producing.

2) Examine her tone and attitude in this letter. Do you think it’s a well-crafted letter with the appropriate tone?

I think that this letter is rude. The writer was constantly aware of the commotion she would kick up, but she constantly excuses herself with lame excuses like “I am too young” and at the same time treating the minister like her servant. Her tone was almost like demanding the minister to so something about the system. She was totally unaware of her tone when she was writing this letter by addressing the minister impolitely, using the caps lock button and criticizing the system by not clearly stating her rationale. Although the issues that she brought up might be correct, but sadly, her tone would make people take her words lightly and render her as another idealistic teen trying to change the world, but obviously failed.

3) If you should write a letter to Minister of Education, what are some issues you would raise? Remember- your intention is to make the system better for society’s betterment via CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.

I would like to tell the Minister of Education that although the current education system can prepare the students for the future, but it neglects many other aspects, such as moral and character build up, and it stifles the student’s ability to explore their talents and their creativeness and curiosity. I would suggest the Minister of Education to implement an all rounded education system such that students can choose what they want to learn, and explore what they want to do in their future. The Ministry of Education can start by giving more CCA choices, and lowering the bar for recruitment and the level of competitiveness altogether such that the students can truly learn what they want to learn, and not win what they want to win. The MOE can also offer elective courses like we had for our Chinese curriculum, for us to choose what we want to study in a certain subject, and then go ahead to implement a system whereby students only need to take the subjects that they desire, and they have the freedom of choice about what they want to learn, after experimenting with the elective classes. This would lead to students being more independent and they can also take charge of their own lives better, at the same time having to learn and explore their passion, and give the conditions for their talents to bloom.