This is weird. I am still getting used to this lifestyle - a lifestyle of slacking and bumming. After 2 years of hard work, it is rather strange not having anything to do.

When you are so busy, you wished for time to relax. When you have all the time to relax, you wished for things to challenge yourself. Life is ironic, isn’t it?

8 months to kill time. What shall I do? I had wanted all the time in the world to slack last time, but I did not really give much thought into what I will do during that free time. I was too busy studying I did not have the time to dream and imagine about the future – my favourite past time.

Laugh as much as you like, but I like dreaming and imagining up stuff. I used to do it a lot back in secondary school but I had to cut down on them in Singapore.

Read this: Life in Singapore, especially the junior college is simply too rigid and stressful for me to imagine stuff.

Look Singapore, you want to create creative students right? You want to remove the conventional, conformist, indifferent attitude of people right? You want people to think in unique, out-of-the box ways right?

Well, your education system DOES NOT encourage the above. It’s too RIGID, too ORTHODOX and too EXAM-ORIENTED. Students are encouraged to chase NOTHING ELSE but As in examinations.

Yes, it’s a process called meritocracy; I understand that. Perhaps it’s a trade-off between conflicting education policies. You push your students hard to ensure they are strong in their Science and Maths, but at what expense? I understand the need for Singapore to be the best in this globalised world; your teachers did a terrific job in drumming that into me. But I pity your Singaporean kids. They slog all their way through from Primary 1 all the way to JC2.

Those stronger ones might have the opportunity to develop other aspects once they are strong in their academics. They might EXPLORE other avenues. But how many of your students actually DARE explore things beyond their text books? Doing so might cause their exam results to deteriorate A BIT and cause them to LOSE OUT a lot. Is it worth it?

I had a serious misconception about your country before coming. My perception of your country and your education system before starting JC was this: Because Singapore is a more developed country, it will have a better education system as compared to Malaysia. And when I mean better I mean an education system that encourages creativity and unorthodox thinking. And this often means it is LESS EXAM-ORIENTED because exams FORCES students to think in a RIGID, INFLEXIBLE manner.

Maybe I did not do my research well enough. Maybe I did not watch I Not Stupid. And that probably gave me a cultural shock when I first entered my JC. I am surprised at the frequency of tests. I HATED the fact that the only way for me to succeed was to ROTE-LEARN my lecture notes.

The amount of things I had to MEMORISE used up so much of my brain capacity that at the end of the day I just have no spare brain cells to indulge in my imagination. Just ask Albert Einstein how important imagination is.

‘Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.’

Anyway, I’m not out here to deride the Singapore education system. The system is also good in the following aspects.

1) The Singapore education system encourages one to think critically of a subject matter. Yes, all those studying and those tough tests actually improved my analytical skills, something that I did not learn very well back home. After 2 years I’m a different person; I can look at anything now and analyse it to bits and pieces – and the weird thing is, I actually enjoy doing so!

2) The Singapore education system makes a student more determined and competitive. Losing is not fun and the Singapore education system is excellent in making people lose. It is not uncommon for half the cohort to fail a certain subject. I thought exams are designed to pass students! Well, not here in Singapore. It’s design to fail student. Well it demotivates you, but it also encourages you to push harder to succeed. As long as you do not give up, the whole process just makes you a stronger person.

***

Ah, just my personal musings of the Singapore education system. I diverged a lot from my original thoughts. Perhaps I gotta write a more objective piece of the education system soon. 8 months to go - all the time to write.

Tags: Education, Singapore

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Diary, Education, Exams, Opinions, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.