Thursday, June 22, 2006
9:28 PM
Was studying at the airport with Grace today. Bored.

Today finally something not so rv. Hahas. I was thinking about education and what it really means to teach and to learn. Studying is progressively difficult, as what it seems to many people. From easy peasy primary school, it increases greatly through secondary school then up to tertiary education. But if you realise, university is so much easier than jc. Many people told me, taking a double degree in university is even easier than doing a 4 sub jc course. Why? This is because of the sheer amont of stuff to complete in jc.

The amount of things jn jc forces many of us to just painfully remember it by hard. But are they necessary? Alot of people would say its obviously not necessary and most of them are crap. Why should we be learning how much our kidneys can do or worse, how come a wave diffracts. All these are science. Yes they are interesting facts, but are they necessary for our education? Do they make us analyse things better or understand better? I dont think so! In fact i would say its the contrary. The obscurity of these topics make people feel bored. Of course a physicist would not think that way, but to the general public, its crap?

Singapore talks alot about pragmatism. But if you realise, our education, though one of the best in the world, it is also one of the least pragmatic system in the world. Holistic education and the syllabuses are not tailored well to the society needs. Not everyone wants to be a scientist or a gerographist or historian, but people choose to take combinations like triple science simply because they want to keep all their routes open. Not everyone desires to be in the medcine course! Everyone thinks that all triple science students want to get into medcine, but in fact many dont! So what is the point im trying to make, it is that the things that we study now are almost vaguely related to what we want to study next time or even to what we would work as.

JC is a stepping stone towards a higher level education. Yes it is a step we must go through, but do they need to cramp so much into us? Cant we be allowed to choose our specific disciplines earlier? Why must we go through all these? Since its just a stepping stone, there are so many other ways to sieve out able people. I just think the amount of time invested into all these crap is not necessary.

`someday my princess will come. She just took a wrong turn, got lost and is too stubborn to ask for directions]]* ;