The following is from ST Forum of the STraits Times dated 19 August 2010
ST Forum
Aug 19, 2010
Demand raises questions about effectiveness of remedials
IN RECENT years, there has been a growing emphasis on work-life balance. This is much welcome, but efforts seem targeted at working adults.
I think we have overlooked the same need for our young.
Our children not only attend school, but they must also stay back for project work, a host of activities other than co-curricular programmes and, on top of these, remedial classes.
Students, especially those in upper secondary, stay back as late as 5pm or 6pm for compulsory remedial classes for different subjects on different days of the week. And when they finally get home, many have to rush through dinner as they probably still have homework to complete, tests to revise for and maybe projects to work on.
Besides, much as some people would like to deny it, private tuition is almost a necessity nowadays.
This insatiable need for tuition should set school managements thinking: Are the remedial programmes effective?
We need to make time for students to wind down, recharge, reflect and relax. They need time for family and friends.
We cannot have a system in which academic excellence always prevails.
For the many students who are of average calibre, this kills passion for learning anything at all, not to mention the adverse effects on their self-esteem, and relationships with friends and family.
I hope the Education Ministry and Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports will study the issue and craft policies and programmes that complement one another. This can be done by having the needs of our young in mind.
Constance Lee (Ms)
Friday, 20 August 2010
Tuition industry lacks regulation
The following is from the ST Forum of the Starits Times dated 19 August 2010.
Aug 19, 2010
CONSUMERS UNPROTECTED
Tuition industry lacks regulation
WAS surprised and relieved to see the article on Sunday ('Is your child's tutor qualified?').
I am the chief executive officer of the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA) and last year, while in Singapore, I met two large tuition companies here to speak about issues that the tuition industry could address.
These issues included:
· Tutor qualifications;
· Child protection;
· Truth in advertising; and
· Consumer protection.
Both businesses expressed interest in forming an association similar to the ATA. However, neither has acted despite both recognising serious issues in the industry.
In Australia, the ATA has given consumers a choice between those places offering accountable, honest and open tuition, and those that do not.
We do this by having members agree to abide by our code of conduct, which is available online to consumers and to which all members are accountable.
Why isn't there a tuition association in Singapore which benchmarks minimum standards for all tutors?
Why is the industry unregulated?
Who is most vulnerable?
A responsible industry has a representative body. It seems odd that in Singapore, where there is a real focus on education, the private sector is not called upon to demonstrate more initiative with regard to consumers.
The worst aspects of the sector in Australia are similar to those that occur here: Online tuition and the use of agents (in the case of tuition agencies that are not registered with the Ministry of Education).
I think serious questions should be asked about the tuition sector in Singapore, and all related businesses should be subject to greater consumer scrutiny until there is a representative body that is prepared to publicly call for minimum standards and work with the Government as well as consumer protection and educational bodies.
Mohan Dhall
Aug 19, 2010
CONSUMERS UNPROTECTED
Tuition industry lacks regulation
WAS surprised and relieved to see the article on Sunday ('Is your child's tutor qualified?').
I am the chief executive officer of the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA) and last year, while in Singapore, I met two large tuition companies here to speak about issues that the tuition industry could address.
These issues included:
· Tutor qualifications;
· Child protection;
· Truth in advertising; and
· Consumer protection.
Both businesses expressed interest in forming an association similar to the ATA. However, neither has acted despite both recognising serious issues in the industry.
In Australia, the ATA has given consumers a choice between those places offering accountable, honest and open tuition, and those that do not.
We do this by having members agree to abide by our code of conduct, which is available online to consumers and to which all members are accountable.
Why isn't there a tuition association in Singapore which benchmarks minimum standards for all tutors?
Why is the industry unregulated?
Who is most vulnerable?
A responsible industry has a representative body. It seems odd that in Singapore, where there is a real focus on education, the private sector is not called upon to demonstrate more initiative with regard to consumers.
The worst aspects of the sector in Australia are similar to those that occur here: Online tuition and the use of agents (in the case of tuition agencies that are not registered with the Ministry of Education).
I think serious questions should be asked about the tuition sector in Singapore, and all related businesses should be subject to greater consumer scrutiny until there is a representative body that is prepared to publicly call for minimum standards and work with the Government as well as consumer protection and educational bodies.
Mohan Dhall
Is your child's tutor qualified?
The following was a report in the Sunday Times dated 15 august 2010.
---------------------------------------------------
Aug 15, 2010
Is your child's tutor qualified?
Many parents rely mostly on word-of-mouth referrals when hiring tutors
By Lin Wenjian, Relatively Speaking
When the English language tutor Mrs Lynn Woo hired told her daughter to 'ownself do' a question in an assessment paper, the concerned mother who overheard the Singlish phrase decided to sack the tutor.
Never mind that it was only the first lesson.
Mrs Woo, 35, an insurance specialist, says: 'I spoke to her only briefly on the phone before I agreed to hire her. It was when she was here in my home that I heard her talking to my daughter in broken English. So I terminated her services immediately after the first lesson.'
The incident happened last year. Mrs Woo paid the tutor the $30 fee for the one-hour lesson through her colleague who 'knows her and highly recommended her', but not before 'I chided my colleague for recommending someone like that'.
Mrs Woo's daughter, now in Primary Four, is currently taking English lessons from another tutor - also a recommendation, this time by a cousin.
She says: 'I was more careful this time. I asked my nephew, who had been taught by the tutor for about two years, about her teaching style and confirmed her qualifications and experience over the phone before I agreed to hire her.
'And during the first lesson, I observed the way she taught my girl.'
Tuition is a minefield for parents because it is a big-money industry that is largely unregulated.
According to the latest data from the Singapore Department of Statistics, there are 495 Ministry of Education-registered tuition centres here in 2008 - up from 387 in 2004 - with total operating receipts of $137.1 million.
These figures exclude fees paid to private individual tutors and tuition agencies which find freelance tutors for students. Private tutors and agencies need not register with the ministry, which means there are many unknowns when it comes to hiring them, the chief ones being the veracity of their qualifications, their ability to teach as well as their moral character.
Hence, parents have to take on the responsibility of checking the quality of extra academic help they get their children.
If parents are slack in checking the tutors they hire, not only might their children not improve in their studies, they might even be abused.
Madam Sally Lam found out that her son was pinched by the tutor hired to teach the eight-year-old and his twin sister.
'My son complained that he was pinched on the cheeks a few times because he was playful. But he is only eight years old, how do you expect him to behave all the time?' says the 40-year-old homemaker, who has another son, aged 12.
There was another reason she sacked the tutor just six months after he started work on the recommendation of the twins' previous tutor.
'My children's grades didn't improve after one semester and he struggled with the mathematics problems my elder son asked about, so I don't think he is very good even though he is a university graduate and even brought his certificates to show me on the first day,' she says.
Although some parents verify the credentials and qualifications of prospective tutors, most still rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from people they know.
'A degree and tutoring experience are good, but I am more concerned about whether they can get along with my sons and if they have the ability to communicate effectively,' says Mrs Patricia Chua, whose two sons, Keith, 14, and Warren, 12, have had tuition since they were in Primary One.
She got more than she bargained for with one tutor - she got along too well with Warren and talked to the boy more than taught him.
'When Warren was in Primary Three, his English and science tutor spent most of the time chatting with him in the room during lessons, and we also did not see improvements in his results,' says Mrs Chua, who replaced the tutor with the boy's current one after one year.
Private tutors whom LifeStyle spoke to agree that with the industry still largely unregulated, there are bound to be some black sheep among them.
Mr Ronald Wee, 50, who runs his own distributing business, has been tutoring primary and secondary school students in mathematics and science on weekends for five years. He says he knows of 'some private tutors who will not accept students with poor grades for fear that it might affect their reputation if these students show no improvement or continue to fail after taking tuition from them'.
Some tutors lie about their experience.
Events manager Jerrine Lim, 28, who gives tuition part-time, says: 'I've seen some tutors claim to have full-time teaching experience when they have done only some relief teaching in schools.'
While private tutors acknowledge that the bulk of their business comes from referrals, they insist some forms of checks are necessary for parents to have peace of mind.
Full-time tutor Ryan D'Souza, 36, believes that 'qualifications definitely matter for the subjects I teach'.
A tutor for the past 10 years, he teaches mathematics, chemistry and physics to students from primary school to junior college.
'A bachelor's degree is an essential requirement to teach upper secondary and JC students,' adds Mr D'Souza, who has a degree in mathematics, physics and computer science awarded by an overseas university.
Beyond the checking of qualifications, another full-time tutor Angel Ngoh, 34, usually proposes 'a paid trial lesson' to parents of potential new students.
'I'll encourage them to sit in during the trial lesson and they are free to observe how I conduct lessons,' says Ms Ngoh, who specialises in teaching primary- and secondary-level mathematics and science subjects.
Tuition centres are another option for parents who want to be sure their children are getting the help they need. The organisations that LifeStyle contacted say they put prospective tutors through a few rounds of screening and interviews before hiring them.
Mr Dennis Ng, director of Kent Ridge Tutors, which has 11 centres islandwide, says the company 'imposes very strict criteria on the selection of our tutors'.
Among other things, new tutors must be graduates who have taught in a government school for at least three years.
They must also possess the X factor. Mr Ng says: 'Our tutors don't just teach. They must also be able to build rapport with our students and their parents.'
Over at Potter's Clay Education Centre in Marine Parade, chief executive and principal Darren Chua has implemented a 'demo-teaching' class for all prospective hires since the centre opened in July last year.
'The candidates are assessed on three key areas: knowledge, delivery and presentation, and rapport with students,' says Dr Chua, who adds that his centre may contact potential tutors' previous employers for character references.
Tuition centres keep up the checks even after the tutors are hired. Mrs Rosabel Teo, 39, centre director of Kip McGrath Tampines North Centre, will routinely check the lesson plans prepared by her team of five tutors. Once a month, she will also sit in and co-teach a class 'to ensure the consistency of the tutors'.
'The students, especially those in secondary schools, are also good judges of a tutor's ability and can give me feedback immediately,' she says.
These measures tuition centres have taken seem to be working. According to the Consumers Association of Singapore, there were just 15 cases of complaint against tuition centres and tutors last year, down from 27 in 2008.
While that is good news to parents looking for tutors, the best advice they could heed might be Ms Ngoh's.
She says: 'A suitable tutor is one who is able to accompany the students on their learning journey and to motivate them to learn independently.'
To find those tutors, there is no shortcut but for parents to talk to their children.
---------------------------------------------------
Aug 15, 2010
Is your child's tutor qualified?
Many parents rely mostly on word-of-mouth referrals when hiring tutors
By Lin Wenjian, Relatively Speaking
When the English language tutor Mrs Lynn Woo hired told her daughter to 'ownself do' a question in an assessment paper, the concerned mother who overheard the Singlish phrase decided to sack the tutor.
Never mind that it was only the first lesson.
Mrs Woo, 35, an insurance specialist, says: 'I spoke to her only briefly on the phone before I agreed to hire her. It was when she was here in my home that I heard her talking to my daughter in broken English. So I terminated her services immediately after the first lesson.'
The incident happened last year. Mrs Woo paid the tutor the $30 fee for the one-hour lesson through her colleague who 'knows her and highly recommended her', but not before 'I chided my colleague for recommending someone like that'.
Mrs Woo's daughter, now in Primary Four, is currently taking English lessons from another tutor - also a recommendation, this time by a cousin.
She says: 'I was more careful this time. I asked my nephew, who had been taught by the tutor for about two years, about her teaching style and confirmed her qualifications and experience over the phone before I agreed to hire her.
'And during the first lesson, I observed the way she taught my girl.'
Tuition is a minefield for parents because it is a big-money industry that is largely unregulated.
According to the latest data from the Singapore Department of Statistics, there are 495 Ministry of Education-registered tuition centres here in 2008 - up from 387 in 2004 - with total operating receipts of $137.1 million.
These figures exclude fees paid to private individual tutors and tuition agencies which find freelance tutors for students. Private tutors and agencies need not register with the ministry, which means there are many unknowns when it comes to hiring them, the chief ones being the veracity of their qualifications, their ability to teach as well as their moral character.
Hence, parents have to take on the responsibility of checking the quality of extra academic help they get their children.
If parents are slack in checking the tutors they hire, not only might their children not improve in their studies, they might even be abused.
Madam Sally Lam found out that her son was pinched by the tutor hired to teach the eight-year-old and his twin sister.
'My son complained that he was pinched on the cheeks a few times because he was playful. But he is only eight years old, how do you expect him to behave all the time?' says the 40-year-old homemaker, who has another son, aged 12.
There was another reason she sacked the tutor just six months after he started work on the recommendation of the twins' previous tutor.
'My children's grades didn't improve after one semester and he struggled with the mathematics problems my elder son asked about, so I don't think he is very good even though he is a university graduate and even brought his certificates to show me on the first day,' she says.
Although some parents verify the credentials and qualifications of prospective tutors, most still rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from people they know.
'A degree and tutoring experience are good, but I am more concerned about whether they can get along with my sons and if they have the ability to communicate effectively,' says Mrs Patricia Chua, whose two sons, Keith, 14, and Warren, 12, have had tuition since they were in Primary One.
She got more than she bargained for with one tutor - she got along too well with Warren and talked to the boy more than taught him.
'When Warren was in Primary Three, his English and science tutor spent most of the time chatting with him in the room during lessons, and we also did not see improvements in his results,' says Mrs Chua, who replaced the tutor with the boy's current one after one year.
Private tutors whom LifeStyle spoke to agree that with the industry still largely unregulated, there are bound to be some black sheep among them.
Mr Ronald Wee, 50, who runs his own distributing business, has been tutoring primary and secondary school students in mathematics and science on weekends for five years. He says he knows of 'some private tutors who will not accept students with poor grades for fear that it might affect their reputation if these students show no improvement or continue to fail after taking tuition from them'.
Some tutors lie about their experience.
Events manager Jerrine Lim, 28, who gives tuition part-time, says: 'I've seen some tutors claim to have full-time teaching experience when they have done only some relief teaching in schools.'
While private tutors acknowledge that the bulk of their business comes from referrals, they insist some forms of checks are necessary for parents to have peace of mind.
Full-time tutor Ryan D'Souza, 36, believes that 'qualifications definitely matter for the subjects I teach'.
A tutor for the past 10 years, he teaches mathematics, chemistry and physics to students from primary school to junior college.
'A bachelor's degree is an essential requirement to teach upper secondary and JC students,' adds Mr D'Souza, who has a degree in mathematics, physics and computer science awarded by an overseas university.
Beyond the checking of qualifications, another full-time tutor Angel Ngoh, 34, usually proposes 'a paid trial lesson' to parents of potential new students.
'I'll encourage them to sit in during the trial lesson and they are free to observe how I conduct lessons,' says Ms Ngoh, who specialises in teaching primary- and secondary-level mathematics and science subjects.
Tuition centres are another option for parents who want to be sure their children are getting the help they need. The organisations that LifeStyle contacted say they put prospective tutors through a few rounds of screening and interviews before hiring them.
Mr Dennis Ng, director of Kent Ridge Tutors, which has 11 centres islandwide, says the company 'imposes very strict criteria on the selection of our tutors'.
Among other things, new tutors must be graduates who have taught in a government school for at least three years.
They must also possess the X factor. Mr Ng says: 'Our tutors don't just teach. They must also be able to build rapport with our students and their parents.'
Over at Potter's Clay Education Centre in Marine Parade, chief executive and principal Darren Chua has implemented a 'demo-teaching' class for all prospective hires since the centre opened in July last year.
'The candidates are assessed on three key areas: knowledge, delivery and presentation, and rapport with students,' says Dr Chua, who adds that his centre may contact potential tutors' previous employers for character references.
Tuition centres keep up the checks even after the tutors are hired. Mrs Rosabel Teo, 39, centre director of Kip McGrath Tampines North Centre, will routinely check the lesson plans prepared by her team of five tutors. Once a month, she will also sit in and co-teach a class 'to ensure the consistency of the tutors'.
'The students, especially those in secondary schools, are also good judges of a tutor's ability and can give me feedback immediately,' she says.
These measures tuition centres have taken seem to be working. According to the Consumers Association of Singapore, there were just 15 cases of complaint against tuition centres and tutors last year, down from 27 in 2008.
While that is good news to parents looking for tutors, the best advice they could heed might be Ms Ngoh's.
She says: 'A suitable tutor is one who is able to accompany the students on their learning journey and to motivate them to learn independently.'
To find those tutors, there is no shortcut but for parents to talk to their children.
Friday, 16 July 2010
Wii love learning (DL dated 14 July 2010)from
The following article is from the Digital Life (DL) of the Straits Times dated 14 July 2010, Wednesday, by JOYCE CHUA.
Maris Stella High students use an interactive screen system in class which they helped to develop. JOYCE CHUA reports
Mention the Wii Remote and large-screen TV and the idea of fun and games comes to mind.
However, at Maris Stella High, they are the ingredients of a breakthrough system which takes learning to the next level.
The Wii Remote, used with game consoles from Nintendo, is a key component in an interactive screen system developed by the staff and students of Maris Stella High.
Dubbed the Student Interactive Screen (SIS), this system has made learning more fun, collaborative and interactive at the school.
During a Maths class, for example, groups of students can tackle complex algebraic equations on the screen and then save the notes and sketches they have scribbled directly in their laptops. They can then easily share the content.
The school said that compared to the traditional classroom whiteboard, this system has made students more proactive during lessons. Building it from scratch, instead of buying a commercial system, has also saved the school thousands of dollars.
Secondary 3 student Lim Yu Liang feels that the new learning method has allowed him to speak his mind more easily, hence boosting his self-confidence.
The staff of Maris Stella High came to know of the technology through a YouTube video posted by Johnny Chung Lee, a researcher at Microsoft Applied Sciences and a Carnegie Mellon PhD holder.
In his video, Lee demonstrated how a Wii Remote can turn any flat surface into an interactive screen with multi-touch capabilities. His clip has had over 3.2million views since it was uploaded in late 2007.
With the information and software provided by Lee on his website, Maris Stella High developed a working prototype in September last year.
The school has since developed three different versions: a classroom version, a portable version and one using a mini-projector instead of a TV.
The classroom and portable versions both use a 32-inch LCD TV, while the mini-projector version uses a small projector to display images on any flat surface, turning these surfaces into interactive screens.
Creating an interactive screen system from scratch helps cut costs, said a spokesman for Maris Stella High. An in-house system costs less than $1,000 to assemble, while commercial systems cost about $5,000 to $10,000 each.
What is unique about the SIS is that students play a crucial part in making the system work. All students are required to make their own infrared LED pen from schematics given to them during the compulsory Design and Technology classes.
The main objective is to help students lead discussions and engage in self-learning, while the teachers guide and facilitate the process.
'The use of the SIS has helped me become a more independent learner,' said Denzel Low, a Secondary 3 student who uses the SIS for various subjects, including Maths.
It will not be surprising to see other schools adopting this technology, said a Maris Stella High spokesman. It has already shared its expertise with over 20 schools, including Raffles Girls' School and Woodlands Secondary School.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
An Example of Japanese Atrocities in Singapore during World War 2 (Original title: 'I was chopped, I fell and fainted' )
The following a report by By K.C. Vijayan in the Straits Times dated 15 march 2010.
IN EARLY 1942, Mr Yew Kian Chang and eight other men in their 20s were roused by a squad of Japanese military police from their dormitory in Bukit Timah.
They were marched, hands tied, to a nearby railway track and made to squat there.The next day, they were beheaded one by one.
Mr Yew was the last. When the metre-long blade struck his neck, he fainted and was left for dead.
But the Singaporean, now 93, survived the horror, which he recounted last month to oral archivists seeking to preserve the remnants of stories about the Japanese Occupation during World War II.
The National Archives of Singapore's Oral History Centre has collected more than 870 hours of testimony from 261 survivors. But Mr Yew's is one of a kind. He is the only one to have lived to tell about being nearly beheaded.
The closest parallel is an account by Washington-based Barbara Scharnhorst, now 77, whose father had been with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Singapore and was beheaded by the Japanese in Bahau, Malaya.
Oral History Specialist Lye Soo Choon said the centre had embarked on collecting accounts for several years, but time was running out to get to the whole truth of the Occupation.
The Japanese Military Administration that ruled Singapore left almost no written records behind in Singapore regarding its work.
'The newspaper and magazines they published present only one perspective of the Occupation,' she said. 'It was to close the gap in our knowledge of our past that the Oral History Centre launched the project on the Japanese Occupation.'
The Straits Times visited the nonagenarian in a four-room flat in Bukit Batok where he lives with his wife, not far from the railway tracks in Bukit Gombak where his life had hung on the edge of a sword more than 60 years ago.
Mr Yew's unlucky compatriots were all single, like him. The married men, who lived in another block nearby, were not taken.
As he marched, the Fujian native was resigned to his fate.
'It was night, I was afraid and did not dare to look around,' he said in Hakka with his daughter translating. The next afternoon, they were taken one at a time, made to walk a few metres to lower ground and had their heads felled in a single blow by a sword wielded by a Japanese soldier.
There was no interrogation before the killing began.
'There was no commotion, no noise, no struggle. I felt resigned and did not resist and walked without feeling,' he recalled.
The men were not blindfolded. He was the last.
Clad in a singlet, shorts and China-made cloth-shoes, he walked to the spot where he was to die, and knelt down.
'When I was chopped, I fell and fainted,' he said.
It is believed he fell as soon as the blade hit him just below the neck and the downward slide of the blade missed the vital areas. The Japanese left him for dead.
Mr Yew believes he lay unconscious for more than a day, 'then I heard the voice of my grandfather as if in a dream, calling me to get up and run'.
With his hands still tied, he got up and fled to a friend who treated the wound on his neck with herbs. But maggots appeared in the gaping flesh after some days.
'My friend told me there was nothing more he could do and I had to seek medical help.'
Mr Yew found help at the Nanyang Clinic in the North Bridge Road area. After months of recovery, he fled to Endau, an agricultural settlement in Johor, Malaya, where he remained till the end of the war.
Till this day, a deep scar is visible on the back of his neck.
When the war ended, he returned to Singapore before going to China to find a bride.
He has been married for more than 65 years to Madam Lee Ah Hang, now 85, and they have eight grown-up children and several grandchildren.
Mr Yew was a carpenter by trade before and after the war. He went on to become a construction foreman and site supervisor before retiring in his late 60s.
Long ago, he had made peace with the unspeakable. 'I have no ill-feelings towards the Japanese soldiers who chopped me at that time. I thought they were just following instructions,' he said.
A Japanese group of peace activists, whose aim is to promote better understanding among the Japanese about the atrocities that took place in the region, visited Mr Yew last month.
Its spokesman Yoshiyuki Onogi told The Straits Times in an e-mail yesterday: 'To directly hear the story from someone like Mr Yew is rare, valuable and momentous to let ordinary Japanese people learn historical facts related to Japan during World War II.
'He may be the last possible person who can bear witness to the first-hand experience of the horrible massacre.'
The hard truth about soft skills
The following is an article by Janadas Devan, Review Editor in the Sunday Times dated 14th March 2010.
==========================================
A holistic education entails more than teaching a little of everything
By Janadas Devan, Review Editor
In 2006, Cambridge University, the London School of Economics and a few other British universities issued a warning to prospective students that they would not gain admission if they did 'soft' A-level subjects. Cambridge University's list of soft options included information and communication studies, design, sports studies and dance.
'To be a realistic applicant, a student will normally need to be offering two traditional academic subjects,' a Cambridge University prospectus warned. 'For example, mathematics, history and business studies would be an acceptable combination. However, history, business studies and media studies would not.'
Contrast that to the headline for the front-page story in this newspaper last Wednesday on Education Minister Ng Eng Hen's speech in Parliament: 'Schools to develop 'soft skills''.
To be sure, the minister didn't propose to make these 'soft skills and values' examinable A-level subjects. But there was no mistaking the fact they weren't to be dismissed by virtue of their softness either.
Referring to them as '21st century skills', Dr Ng spoke of nurturing in each child 'a confident person, who can tell right from wrong, is adaptable and resilient, knows himself, is discerning in judgment, communicates effectively and takes responsibility for his own learning'.
Schools are to develop in their charges 'social and emotional competencies' - everything from developing 'care and concern for others' to establishing 'positive relationships' - as well as a list of 'key competencies for a globalised world': among them, 'global awareness and cross-cultural skills, civic literacy, and critical thinking, information and communication skills'.
To someone as decidedly of the 20th century as I am, it all sounded rather alarmingly New Agey - as indeed the term 'holistic education' in the brochure accompanying the minister's speech suggested.
'Holistic', by the way, comes from 'holism' - from the Greek holos, 'all' - a term coined by that strange man Field Marshall J.C. Smuts to describe the tendency in nature to produce ordered wholes, like organisms, from disparate units. Smuts, a philosopher of some distinction, was also a military leader in the Boer War and the segregationist prime minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924, and again from 1939 to 1948.
The essence of holism though goes back much further than Smuts and can be summed up by Aristotle's famous dictum: 'The whole is more than the sum of its parts.' I, however, leery of New Agey emanations, can't hear 'holistic' or 'holism' without thinking of 'holes' - as in the head.
And that wasn't the only reason I found myself fidgeting when I read the report announcing schools were to develop 'soft skills'. For someone of my generation, it takes some getting used to hearing the word 'soft' being pronounced by a politician without a sneer.
The only context I recall the word 'soft' being used by politicians of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's or Dr Goh Keng Swee's vintage was in formulations such as 'soft culture', 'soft-headed' (meaning foolish, silly) or 'softy' (meaning weak). If they used 'soft' positively - as when referring to the limited virtue of being 'soft-spoken' or 'soft-hearted' - it would be followed immediately by the qualification 'but hard-headed'.
Soft skills or values had no place in their rugged society. Even the values now considered part of our 'soft' equipment - telling right from wrong, resilience, adaptability, responsibility - were considered decidedly 'hard' then. That 'soft' can now appear in so positive a light - that the Government can be promoting 'holism' - is nothing short of revolutionary.
In part, that revolution was enabled by the changing fortunes of 'soft' in the wider global culture, spawned by the glamour of 'software'. Originally referring in the 19th century to 'perishable goods', it was applied to computer programs in the 1960s, to distinguish them from computer 'hardware'. That in turn led to a whole host of other soft-hard binary oppositions, in which 'soft' invariably appeared superior to 'hard' - as in 'soft power' as opposed to 'hard power', 'soft knowledge' (systems) as opposed to 'hard know-ledge' (technology), and so on. Thus soft came to suggest fine, and hard, crude; soft, mind and hard, matter; soft, creative and hard, mechanical.
Still, the fact that Cambridge University and LSE can be warning students of pursuing 'soft options', while here in Singapore, schools are being urged to nurture 'soft skills', suggests there is something else going on:
While the West, especially Britain and the United States, after a prolonged flirtation with soft options in education, is trying to claw its way back to the traditional centre, Singapore, after a prolonged insistence on rigour, seems to be discovering there is something to be said for a 'kinder and gentler' approach, after all.
Its new emphasis on the arts and sports is an attempt to recover some of the grace and delight that we may have lost as a result of a narrow insistence on academic rigour. There can hardly be a parent who would object to this.
At the risk of being unpopular, though, let me sound three warnings.
First, contrary to the suggestion in the word 'soft', there is nothing easy about art, music or literature. We can't insist on uniformly high standards for all students in these areas, but we shouldn't allow the assumption to take root that the 'soft' subjects are easy.
Second, contrary to the suggestion in the word 'hard', there is nothing lumpish about the sciences. Again, we can't insist on uniformly high standards for all in these areas, but we shouldn't allow the assumption to take root that the 'hard' subjects can't be as full of surprise and delight - as creative and human - as the 'soft' ones.
And finally, being 'holistic' entails more than adding together the parts - a bit of maths, a bit of art, a bit of civics, a bit of sports, et cetera. The whole is more than the sum of its parts - but only if the parts are actively made whole. If it is easy to be holistic, to reconcile what C.P. Snow once called 'the two cultures', any number of famous programmes - Harvard's 'core curriculum', Chicago's 'Great Books', et cetera - would have accomplished the feat. They haven't.
I'll discuss why and what we might do about this enormous challenge in my next column.
==========================================
A holistic education entails more than teaching a little of everything
By Janadas Devan, Review Editor
In 2006, Cambridge University, the London School of Economics and a few other British universities issued a warning to prospective students that they would not gain admission if they did 'soft' A-level subjects. Cambridge University's list of soft options included information and communication studies, design, sports studies and dance.
'To be a realistic applicant, a student will normally need to be offering two traditional academic subjects,' a Cambridge University prospectus warned. 'For example, mathematics, history and business studies would be an acceptable combination. However, history, business studies and media studies would not.'
Contrast that to the headline for the front-page story in this newspaper last Wednesday on Education Minister Ng Eng Hen's speech in Parliament: 'Schools to develop 'soft skills''.
To be sure, the minister didn't propose to make these 'soft skills and values' examinable A-level subjects. But there was no mistaking the fact they weren't to be dismissed by virtue of their softness either.
Referring to them as '21st century skills', Dr Ng spoke of nurturing in each child 'a confident person, who can tell right from wrong, is adaptable and resilient, knows himself, is discerning in judgment, communicates effectively and takes responsibility for his own learning'.
Schools are to develop in their charges 'social and emotional competencies' - everything from developing 'care and concern for others' to establishing 'positive relationships' - as well as a list of 'key competencies for a globalised world': among them, 'global awareness and cross-cultural skills, civic literacy, and critical thinking, information and communication skills'.
To someone as decidedly of the 20th century as I am, it all sounded rather alarmingly New Agey - as indeed the term 'holistic education' in the brochure accompanying the minister's speech suggested.
'Holistic', by the way, comes from 'holism' - from the Greek holos, 'all' - a term coined by that strange man Field Marshall J.C. Smuts to describe the tendency in nature to produce ordered wholes, like organisms, from disparate units. Smuts, a philosopher of some distinction, was also a military leader in the Boer War and the segregationist prime minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924, and again from 1939 to 1948.
The essence of holism though goes back much further than Smuts and can be summed up by Aristotle's famous dictum: 'The whole is more than the sum of its parts.' I, however, leery of New Agey emanations, can't hear 'holistic' or 'holism' without thinking of 'holes' - as in the head.
And that wasn't the only reason I found myself fidgeting when I read the report announcing schools were to develop 'soft skills'. For someone of my generation, it takes some getting used to hearing the word 'soft' being pronounced by a politician without a sneer.
The only context I recall the word 'soft' being used by politicians of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's or Dr Goh Keng Swee's vintage was in formulations such as 'soft culture', 'soft-headed' (meaning foolish, silly) or 'softy' (meaning weak). If they used 'soft' positively - as when referring to the limited virtue of being 'soft-spoken' or 'soft-hearted' - it would be followed immediately by the qualification 'but hard-headed'.
Soft skills or values had no place in their rugged society. Even the values now considered part of our 'soft' equipment - telling right from wrong, resilience, adaptability, responsibility - were considered decidedly 'hard' then. That 'soft' can now appear in so positive a light - that the Government can be promoting 'holism' - is nothing short of revolutionary.
In part, that revolution was enabled by the changing fortunes of 'soft' in the wider global culture, spawned by the glamour of 'software'. Originally referring in the 19th century to 'perishable goods', it was applied to computer programs in the 1960s, to distinguish them from computer 'hardware'. That in turn led to a whole host of other soft-hard binary oppositions, in which 'soft' invariably appeared superior to 'hard' - as in 'soft power' as opposed to 'hard power', 'soft knowledge' (systems) as opposed to 'hard know-ledge' (technology), and so on. Thus soft came to suggest fine, and hard, crude; soft, mind and hard, matter; soft, creative and hard, mechanical.
Still, the fact that Cambridge University and LSE can be warning students of pursuing 'soft options', while here in Singapore, schools are being urged to nurture 'soft skills', suggests there is something else going on:
While the West, especially Britain and the United States, after a prolonged flirtation with soft options in education, is trying to claw its way back to the traditional centre, Singapore, after a prolonged insistence on rigour, seems to be discovering there is something to be said for a 'kinder and gentler' approach, after all.
Its new emphasis on the arts and sports is an attempt to recover some of the grace and delight that we may have lost as a result of a narrow insistence on academic rigour. There can hardly be a parent who would object to this.
At the risk of being unpopular, though, let me sound three warnings.
First, contrary to the suggestion in the word 'soft', there is nothing easy about art, music or literature. We can't insist on uniformly high standards for all students in these areas, but we shouldn't allow the assumption to take root that the 'soft' subjects are easy.
Second, contrary to the suggestion in the word 'hard', there is nothing lumpish about the sciences. Again, we can't insist on uniformly high standards for all in these areas, but we shouldn't allow the assumption to take root that the 'hard' subjects can't be as full of surprise and delight - as creative and human - as the 'soft' ones.
And finally, being 'holistic' entails more than adding together the parts - a bit of maths, a bit of art, a bit of civics, a bit of sports, et cetera. The whole is more than the sum of its parts - but only if the parts are actively made whole. If it is easy to be holistic, to reconcile what C.P. Snow once called 'the two cultures', any number of famous programmes - Harvard's 'core curriculum', Chicago's 'Great Books', et cetera - would have accomplished the feat. They haven't.
I'll discuss why and what we might do about this enormous challenge in my next column.
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