Remember when our value was tied to how well we fared in exams? To the A’s or B’s that we got in our subjects? Well this is all going to change for our children.
In an unprecedented move, our Ministry of Education had announced that they will be making several changes to exams and assessments in school. Some of these changes include removing weighted assessments (including class tests, group projects) and exams for Primary 1 and 2 students. Mid-year exams will also be removed for Primary 3 and 5, as well as Secondary 1 and 3 students.
These are bold changes, as Singaporeans have long questioned the effectiveness of our education system and the emphasis we seem to place on academic grades.
It’s a move welcomed by many, but along with these changes are several other concerns. For one, when we take away one of the major means of gauging a students understanding and proficiency of a subject, what yardstick are we going to assess them with moving forward?
Speaking at a recent forum with parents and students, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung posed the question back to parents: What is the yardstick that they will use to measure their success as a parent?
It’s a difficult question to answer, because all our life up till the point where we start working, we have been measured by the A’s, B’s, or C’s from our performance on test and exam papers. These grades have inadvertently transformed into something our society uses to define our worth. It is why we have a society that deems students in the ‘normal’ stream as of a lower calibre than those in the ‘express’ stream.
These cliched perspectives are so deeply entrenched in our society that it is hard for us to envisage how else we can measure the success of a student if it is not through exams and grades.
In a quick poll I did on Instagram, 33 out of 41 respondents actually voted that exams are good for students.
These are the same group of people who, through my understanding of our generation, have complained about how we have wasted so much time in our earlier years learning and being tested in subjects that have no relevance to our lives today.
However, 80% of them maintained that exams are still important, because it helps to assess a student’s grasp of a subject.
“Exams provide feedback. Its replacement must still critique a student.”
It is because of the kiasu culture we have in Singapore that have turned it into a competition of grades rather than a way to assess a student’s progress, as parents want their kids to ace exams to get into better schools, which they believe will give their child a better shot at success.
This is further egged on by the disparity in which we judge and treat people of different academic backgrounds. It lies in the way scholars are said to enjoy a faster career progression, and in the way some we tend to compare the quality of students based on their alma mater.
Even if you and I don’t judge people by their academic level, the society will. We still compare schools and we still regard graduates from esteemed schools, like Harvard, with higher respect.
The purpose of removing exams is to reduce the emphasis on academic results, but more importantly, what are we replacing it with?
One 27-year-old, Vic, explained that it’s less of abolishing exams than changing our perspectives: “I think students’ education or knowledge can still be measured with tests but the stigma of failing a test should be abolished. What I'm proposing is a mindset change.”
She also proposed for an abolishment of a grading system, which is one of the changes implemented by MOE, where details like grades and class position will be removed from end-of-year assessments. Secondary school students will also be streamed according to subjects instead of the ‘Express’ or ‘Normal’ streams that we had in our time.
In this case, the changes are also a way to free up time for students to pursue non-academic interests. In order to get there, however, schools and teachers need to be able to create a wholesome environment that enables students to achieve that.
On the aspect of achieving academic rigour, suggestions I got from respondents include challenging students with problem-based assignments to cultivate in them analytical and critical thinking abilities which will help them in the future.
Other suggestions include group projects or learning trips that allow students to explore a broader range of non-academic interests. These are alternatives that will help expose students to both academic and non-academic areas of interest.
Unsurprisingly, most of the (serious) suggestions given were centered around the idea that a student should be prepared to handle the intricacies of real-world and work situations, more so than acing exam papers.
The problem lies in our obsession with the ten-year series, which is characteristic of students who are more preoccupied with learning how to ace exams than learning the concept of what’s being taught in each subject.
One respondent, who’s currently assisting her father in running her family’s F&B chain, said: “A lot of students just learn how to deal with exam questions, instead of understanding the concept of how the content or solution work. Knowing and understanding how things work goes a longer way than knowing how to score in exams.”
At some point, all of us would have talked about how there are many things we learnt in school that have absolutely no relevance to our lives today. I, for one, have no idea how to apply pythagoras theorem to my life or line of work—not that I can even remember the concept today.
With that said, it was my decision to pursue a career that does not require proficiency in math. There are plenty of other professions that requires one to apply maths at work, like engineers.
Subjects like maths or history will not necessarily help us in our jobs, nonetheless, I see them as a foundation that sets the base for us to further pursue our preferred vocations in our tertiary years. If anything, these valuable general knowledge help us form a more well-rounded view and understanding of the World. Let’s not forget that Singapore’s education system is seen by outsiders as one of the best in the world, and perhaps it is for these knowledge we are armed with that makes us ‘superior students’ to the rest of the world.
Though, arguably, having to study all those ‘foundational subjects’ means a longer route to success. In comparison, Koreans (for instance) can start training in K Pop from as young as 11. Then, at 17 or 18 where an average Singaporean would have just gotten the opportunity to start pursuing vocational studies, these K Pop trainees would have already made their debut in the industry.
Which brings us back to the question of whether Singapore, as a whole, is capable of embracing students with non-academic passions.
If a student wishes to pursue career paths in performing arts or culinary arts, will schools and educators be able to offer resources to nurture this student in those areas?
Should there already be programmes and resources in place, will parents and by extension, our society, be able to accept and encourage a child to pursue such non-conventional pathways at the tender age of 11?
At the end of the day, this all depends on what we, Singaporeans, want to place value in: In achieving academic excellence before attempting a vocation, or in embracing a more progressive education that not only allows, but encourages students to explore beyond the English, Math, and Sciences, from a young age.
Regardless, these changes are a work in progress, and whether our children in the future reaps the benefits of this system is heavily dependent on how we, as future parents, react to the changes that MOE has rolled out.
For as long as we have kiasu parents around, the competition to be The Best will always be there.
At the end of the day, it boils down to what we want to instil in our 15, 10, or even 3-year-olds. If grades are not the way forward, what do we want to teach and assess our kids with?
With qualities like kindness and compassion? With communication skills like speaking and presenting? Or with a mix of soft and vocational skills to help them navigate the complexities of the world?
Also read: Is There A Need For Better Sex Education That’s More Than STDs And Abstinence?.
(Header Image Credit: Wikipedia)
"Exam period was the only time I could get my son to study properly. It’s going to be hard to get him to study now." - Lavenia, parent of 7-year-old in P1Like NTB2DO in the screen capture above, several users on the HardwareZone forum have been discussing the move since MOE’s announcement. While a handful of these users were just complacent Singaporeans without children, just eager to put their opinions out there, there is an abundance of those who shared their legit concerns on what this would mean for their children’s future. We cannot expect children (or anyone) to enjoy taking exams, but it’s undeniable that exams have significantly pushed many children to be a little bit more disciplined and studious. We also can’t deny the amount of distractions kids have these days. Back when millennials were children ourselves, all we had were our Barbie dolls, Game Boy and a handful of other toys and we still managed to get distracted. Just look at how many distractions kids have today. “I’m definitely worried that my son will spend more time playing more games and what not," says Lavenia. Could this mean more pressure for parents to supervise their children?
“I would want my daughter to be exposed to going through an exam in P1 or P2 at least, because she’d have more time to warm-up before her streaming year.” – Ilena, parent of a child enrolling into P1 next yearWith the pressure from their parents, coupled with how they're going to be introduced to 'the exam environment', students could find themselves in a more stressful situation than before.
“I feel intense pressure coming from kiasu parents all around me. The competitive academic culture and the pressures that it places on parents and thus on children are very real.” - Germaine, parent of a child enrolling into P1 next yearAccording to Germaine, parents around her are sending their kids for enrichment classes that teach them to read, spell, and solve math problems way before the enter primary school. Everyone wants their child to be the best in the race, and this consequently contradicts MOE’s stance of wanting to focus more on kids’ personal development over academics in the first two years of primary school.
“If parents and teachers continue to stress over the consequences of not getting good grades, we’ll be right back where we started.” - Esther, parent of 7-year-old in P1
Complementing the messages of preventing STDs were lessons on using condoms for safe sex. Naturally, watching a grown adult roll a condom down a banana stood out for many.“‘Don’t have sex or you’ll get pregnant and die!’ - something that I took away when they taught us about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in secondary 3” – Aisha, 25
It’s great that we have a sex education program in place at all. In countries like China, sex education is almost completely non-existent and experts say that this has contributed to the<a href=" rise of HIV and abortion cases amongst the Chinese youth. While I'm grateful that such statistics isn't that much of a worry in Singapore, many of us still find our sex education program to be pretty sh*t.“When learning how to wear a condom properly with the use of a banana as example, they told us, ‘always remember to the pinch the top!’” – Natasha, 27
The more you tell a teenager not to do something, the more s/he will do it. Rather than trying to prevent the impossible i.e. teenagers having sex, and living with the idealistic mindset that teens will abstain till marriage, schools should address the obvious straight-on. It’s time sex education lessons started giving students answers to questions that they shouldn’t be looking for on Google. Let's be honest. We learnt a lot more about sex and protection through the videos and stories we see and read online than through our sex ed. But that isn't necessarily the best way to go when the resources available online may not always be 'healthy'.“I remember that a lot of the focus was not really on the process, but on the DANGERS of unsafe sex. Telling teenagers ‘DO NOT HAVE SEX, YOU WILL GET HERPES’ just makes them scared to seek help if they need it.” – Melissa, 28
“It was a lot of out-dated scaremongering and it didn't maturely teach teenagers how to practice safe sex at a point in their lives where they would be naturally sexually curious, if not already active.” – Nikki, 25It is a problem and we need to rethink the way we teach sex education because it is invaluable knowledge that will impact the rest of our lives. Abstinence and encouraging safe sex are good messages, but there are many bigger concerns that teens will come to have when they become sexually active.
“The school was so obsessed with talking about the dangers of sex that they didn't give us practical advice, like informing us about the various forms of birth control and where to get them.” – Sophia, 23As a teenage girl myself once, I knew close to nothing about contraceptives. I had only heard about condoms and learnt about the existence of birth control pills through movies and television. When I reached a stage in my life when I had to use it, I jumped to Google to gather all the information I now know about contraception. I wish my school would have given me a “Contraceptives 101” crash course (or even a sex education talk worth remembering). Let’s take the image below for example. It shows us the various methods of contraception. Even looking at it now, I can’t say that I am entirely sure how some of these contraceptives work. Can I Google it? Sure. But I shouldn’t have to. In Northern and Western Europe, students learn about contraception as part of their sex education program and where, no surprise, the rate of unintended pregnancies is low. But not only does learning about contraception prevent unintended pregnancies, it arms teens with the knowledge that will help them be less vulnerable and more prepared in the face of unforeseen circumstances. For instance, if a teen who hasn’t been taught about emergency contraception ever finds themselves in a vulnerable position after unprotected sex, they’re more likely to feel confused and scared than someone who has learnt about them.
“Boys should know to ask for consent and to cope with their sexual urgencies and girls should be empowered to say 'no' if they don't want to have sex.” – Victoria, 26Sex needs to be openly discussed. By keeping this conversation confined behind closed classroom doors and separating girls and boys during this talk, we’re only reinforcing the message that sex is “bad” and “wrong”. If we teach sex education the way we teach students Math, for example, we’ll be creating a safe space where students wouldn’t need to shy away from seeking help if ever they find themselves in a predicament. And if teens today find themselves feeling confused or conflicted like we once did, all they'd need to do, is ask. While the act of sex may be done behind closed doors, the conversation shouldn’t have to be. Also read: Let's Talk About Sex: 15 S'poreans On Whether Sexual Compatibility Is Important In A Relationship
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