Education in Singapore

Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein

This is something that educators in Singapore have not quite grasped. Singaporeans, like most Asians, tend to be goal-oriented and tend to take the easiest possible path. Educationally this translates into students who merely memorize for the sake of the exam even if they do not understand the concepts, and teachers who teach methods and rules instead of concepts and reasons.

This isn't a bad thing in itself, if success is premised on exam results and mere memory power, but it is not. Certain ideas in business and accounting must be understood first because these principles can be derived after understanding the underlying concepts. Why does understanding lead to success? Because real-world problems are not going arrive in standard exam format, nor will they be framed in your teacher's or professor's style. Real world problems depend on understanding and applying, not memorizing. This is also the reason why Physics is extremely unpopular in Singapore. When teached from an exam-oriented viewpoint, Physics is degraded from a subject the simplest conceptual framework possible, into a subject that has students memorize endless lists of formulae.

So this leaves only one reason that students take the exam-oriented studying route: the education system. I think many people would agree that it is a given that our Primary and Secondary and to a large extent, Junior College systems are exam-oriented (I am speaking about the GCE system here, I know nothing about the IB system), but I have discovered that the same problem appears in our tertiary institutes. In my institute in particular, the framework for a truly conceptual and stimulating education is avalailable to professors and students, but things are slowly shifting to the "memorize for exam" route, and meanwhile SMU students have locked themselves in a prisoner's dilemma in studying effort.

In the end it is about change. Smelling the educational roses along the road is not something Singaporeans are used to doing, but there is a general push in that direction, with the oblgatory counter-pushes and eddies. The change is slow, but the country is changing nevertheless.

He said, "Go and tell this people:
"Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'" - Isaiah 6:9