Lets Get Angry!

The Arena - An eye opener about the Singapore education system

Published Wednesday, March 28, 2007 by Singapore Election |

By: deepb

... as compared to the one available at the United World College (UWC).

I hope it will serve as a wakeup call to the Education Minister and his top HQ officials, principals and teachers. I hope they would do some soul searching about how young Singaporeans are being educated, apart from being trained to become future economic digits and workhorses for the country's economy. People have only ONE life to live and money is not the be all and end all of a human being existence, who will walk this earth but once.

I have been following the series closely and it is abundantly clear that Singaporean students cannot think very well on their feet!

The lack of depth and grasp of a topic being debated is so very obviously written all over many of their inscrutable dumbfounded faces. Their lack of a wider grasp and a very apparent rigidity of 'sticking to the script' approach saw them 'done in' by the UWC who were most impressive with their fluent, effortless and extemporous style (which was no doubt the result of both rigorous and vigorous preparation).

The UWC debater obviously came well prepared and able to think out of the box. In contrast, the Hwa Chong debaters seemed troubled, flat footed and unable to even talk themselves out of a bag! The HC were not the only ones, I saw the same hapless expression on so many other Singaporean students' faces during the series, many from so called 'top' local schools. On the other hand, one bright spark, a girl student from Loyang Sec, a neighbourhood school, stood out impressively and endearing with her gutsy and spontaneous style.

We can all see just how much hype there have been about our 'impressive' educational system and how much more 'superior' it is compared to other countries' esp. those of the west. But where it counts most in a globalised setting our students/scholars are no match to the free and easy, flexible, truly creative approach of the rest of the world.

I doubt if we can even hold our own vis a vis regional or other Asian nations when the chips are down and words of disagreement turn to push and shove. As LKY so sycophantically re-affirmed once again recently, we have to take cover under the apron string of our US nanny.

It was telling that the teacher who coach HC was an obviously young teacher and in contrast the UWC coach was a middle age lady teacher. So it is patently not necessary true that our young can think better, do better. Like in all substantive issues, it would seem that maturity and experience really count for much more than mere youthful enthusiasm. And it's all happening here in this 'uniquely' current Singaporean habit of throwing out the mature and experienced workfore in favour of the young FTs who happen to be also cheaper.

There was this story about Col Boey Tak Hup, a scholar in the same NS cohort as LHL: He was once asked to comment on the youthfulness of Spore's senior army officers as compared to an obviously more senior in age Col of the Australian Army during an SAF commissioning dinner. BTH apparently replied his questioner to the effect that being younger he can think better and faster in a given battle situation. He forgot that while he may have to rack his gray matters to think of how to respond to a situation, the Australian Col in all likelihood would have already been there and done it too!

"The Arena" is a debate-style television show produced by Mediacorp Channel 5.

5 Responses to “The Arena - An eye opener about the Singapore education system”

twasher on 12:36 AM SGT

A "benevolent dictatorship" like the Sg govt has no interest in training critical thinkers. Its power is conditional upon the people it rules being either passive and receptive to propaganda, or too apathetic to agitate for socio-political change. Needless to say, good debaters have the opposite qualities: they are passionate and can think critically. It is in the interests of those in power to maintain Singaporeans as mere bovine economic digits --- cows placidly chewing cud in the field while being milked. People who can see the govt's flaws and make good arguments against them are dangerous.
Anonymous on 10:44 AM SGT

To be fair, UWC did get very easy side of one-sided topics along the way to the finals, such as Singapore needs to improve our service standards and Mothers should stay home and look after the kids.

To also be fair, they never met the traditional giants in the debate scene like Anglo-Chinese School. I don't know, I wasn't following the Arena.

I have seen UWC and I wasn't completely impressed. They had the style and snazzy accents but only ok. The debates at JC level are far more engaging.
RSE on 4:54 PM SGT

I haven't been following 'the Arena', but I got the impression that, eh, back when I was in the debate scene, the debaters were far more impressive (okay, some of them were really bad, but better than Arena standard). I really should watch it someday and play arm-chair adjudicator. Back in my day, we penalized debaters for memorizing and sticking to scripts, y'know. :p

It's true that kids stick to the script during debates, but for some teams has to do with debate coaches being 'control freaks', what, especially with the kids on national TV. Some of them probably refuse to even trust the kids to write their own scripts, for all I know, lest they embarass the coach. In debate, egos are HUMONGOUS.

Draw your own parallels here, folks.
Galven Lee on 10:00 PM SGT

You got a good point, but you seem to be ignorant of the flourishing, impressive and world class (by ranking) debating (mostly local) community which has been in existence in Singapore for several decades now.
KiWeTO on 11:03 AM SGT

Then,

if our local community is so world class, and our JC level debates (never been there) so engaging,

why were the majority of people in the debating club at university foreign talent?

any team we sent, the home-brewed MoE-trained pink-card carrying student was in the minority?

Is that a truest representation of our talent pool?

or our debating minds forever poisoned by MoE's pedagogy?

E.o.M.

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The Arena - An eye opener about the Singapore education system

5 Responses to “The Arena - An eye opener about the Singapore education system”

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