The arbitrariness of the system
I have just been thinking about school, education and results. Education seems to have lost its meaning. The purpose of education is to share, to enlighten, to teach, to garner experience-and practical experience at that. But what do we see in the education system? It is nothing more than a benchmark, a ranking of sorts, to see who is better than the other on a scale of first to last. And worse, this obsession with benchmarking is magnified when it is done en masse, and you find schools transferring out weaker students "because they don't want their rankings to be affected". How is that education? We find students scrambling to mug for examinations, not because they want to learn or are caught by the passion for knowing more, but because without it, they will end up as failures. Education no longer represents a merit; rather, the lack of education is perceived as a liability. You are no longer blessed if you know more, but you are cursed if you don't. People nowadays are learning but not knowing wherefore they are learning.
On top of that, they are all made to learn the wrong things. It perturbs me that students are being forced to learn things like Human Resource Management when such things cannot be learnt from a book. Human nature is fluid and there can be no textbook answers. It was worse before: in my freshman year, there was this compulsory module that taught you how to think (I kid you not). (Perhaps more depressing than the fact that we were made to go through this module is the fact that there are people who actually look like they need it.) And ironically, the arena in which I learnt the most HR management was hall, where I joined committees, worked my way up, and learnt to manage people along the way. True you might stumble and fall, but that's how you learn-not by memorising from a textbook. Just take a look at OSA and see how in touch with reality they are. Ultimate proof that academic overkill doesn't enrich you but instead makes your grey matter rot.
It also amazes me how the emphasis in lower education is also skewed. You have fresh undergrads who can't even write a grammatically correct text to save their lives. These are the products of a fundamentally flawed education. My JC home tutor used to say that no education is complete without Literature (and perhaps Philosophy), and all over schools are drumming into their students that science is the way to go-and the only way to go. But somehow in JCs and varsities, Arts students tend to be the thinkers and not the robots. I listen to students groan and stress about how GP is a killer, and realise that anyone who has had a fulfilling education should not have any problem at all with GP, as that is really what counts: how much you are aware of your own cognition and how you employ it to a world outside your own little sphere.
Finally, it strikes me, the whole arbitrariness of the system. You are tested on how successfully you have been educated not on how you apply your life skills to your life, but how much you can memorise and regurgitate, and whether this is what the marker would have regurgitated too. This sem. I studied for my papers as barely as I did last sem. (meaning I skipped almost all my lectures and quite a few tutorials) and I got A B+ B B D compared to an F last sem. Now supposing I had walked into the exam hall knowing exactly as much as I did but the papers were set differently. I might easily have gotten B- C C D+ F. But does that mean that I knew any less? No it doesn't-it boils down to sheer luck.
I see friends study for the same exam, and one who studied only the night before comes out with an A- whereas the consistent student gets a C. And it's not because the former is smarter, only that he was lucky. I see other friends take the same paper, one gets a C, one a D and one an F, and it's so obvious to your intuition and perception that the latter two deserve to have scored higher than the former. I am disturbed that the most brilliant thinkers I know personally are smart enough to outclass their peers in intellect, but are also those who are not academically smart. The system of assessment is so grossly inaccurate that it has even become arbitrary.
And therein lies the problem with the teaching service. The reason why people are reluctant to sign on as teachers is because deep inside, they know this. They know that they are destined to see brilliant students struggle with exams, see the deliquents scrape through with flukes, and they know that all their efforts at teaching will be in vain just because of the arbitrariness of the system. Why dedicate your whole life so something so uncertain and fluid? You can impart all you know to a bright student only to have him screw-up one important paper and he ends up regarded as a failure because the benchmarking and the system played him out.
'I am summoned to see the headmistress at morning break on Monday,' said Miss Brodie. 'I have no doubt Miss Mackay wishes to question my methods of instruction.... The word 'education' comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust."
-Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
On top of that, they are all made to learn the wrong things. It perturbs me that students are being forced to learn things like Human Resource Management when such things cannot be learnt from a book. Human nature is fluid and there can be no textbook answers. It was worse before: in my freshman year, there was this compulsory module that taught you how to think (I kid you not). (Perhaps more depressing than the fact that we were made to go through this module is the fact that there are people who actually look like they need it.) And ironically, the arena in which I learnt the most HR management was hall, where I joined committees, worked my way up, and learnt to manage people along the way. True you might stumble and fall, but that's how you learn-not by memorising from a textbook. Just take a look at OSA and see how in touch with reality they are. Ultimate proof that academic overkill doesn't enrich you but instead makes your grey matter rot.
It also amazes me how the emphasis in lower education is also skewed. You have fresh undergrads who can't even write a grammatically correct text to save their lives. These are the products of a fundamentally flawed education. My JC home tutor used to say that no education is complete without Literature (and perhaps Philosophy), and all over schools are drumming into their students that science is the way to go-and the only way to go. But somehow in JCs and varsities, Arts students tend to be the thinkers and not the robots. I listen to students groan and stress about how GP is a killer, and realise that anyone who has had a fulfilling education should not have any problem at all with GP, as that is really what counts: how much you are aware of your own cognition and how you employ it to a world outside your own little sphere.
Finally, it strikes me, the whole arbitrariness of the system. You are tested on how successfully you have been educated not on how you apply your life skills to your life, but how much you can memorise and regurgitate, and whether this is what the marker would have regurgitated too. This sem. I studied for my papers as barely as I did last sem. (meaning I skipped almost all my lectures and quite a few tutorials) and I got A B+ B B D compared to an F last sem. Now supposing I had walked into the exam hall knowing exactly as much as I did but the papers were set differently. I might easily have gotten B- C C D+ F. But does that mean that I knew any less? No it doesn't-it boils down to sheer luck.
I see friends study for the same exam, and one who studied only the night before comes out with an A- whereas the consistent student gets a C. And it's not because the former is smarter, only that he was lucky. I see other friends take the same paper, one gets a C, one a D and one an F, and it's so obvious to your intuition and perception that the latter two deserve to have scored higher than the former. I am disturbed that the most brilliant thinkers I know personally are smart enough to outclass their peers in intellect, but are also those who are not academically smart. The system of assessment is so grossly inaccurate that it has even become arbitrary.
And therein lies the problem with the teaching service. The reason why people are reluctant to sign on as teachers is because deep inside, they know this. They know that they are destined to see brilliant students struggle with exams, see the deliquents scrape through with flukes, and they know that all their efforts at teaching will be in vain just because of the arbitrariness of the system. Why dedicate your whole life so something so uncertain and fluid? You can impart all you know to a bright student only to have him screw-up one important paper and he ends up regarded as a failure because the benchmarking and the system played him out.
'I am summoned to see the headmistress at morning break on Monday,' said Miss Brodie. 'I have no doubt Miss Mackay wishes to question my methods of instruction.... The word 'education' comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust."
-Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie