Blog Prompt 4: A Letter from a Student to the Education Minister

A Secondary Four student recently wrote a letter to the Education Minister, Mr Heng Swee Keat, which generated much heated debate again about Singapore's much-discussed education system. I agree with the issues that the student has raised in the letter. Indeed, Singapore's education system makes learning 'dead' for the students as they are supposed to memorise and just throw whatever they have learnt in answering the questions. This is not beneficial to them as they do not understand what they are learning. They are just memorising the answers for the sake of memorising. Therefore, some students may get good marks in their work but actually they are not smart. They only change what they have memorised to anwer the questions. To some extent, they are not even thinking. In the future, if they were to be in charge of a company or even govern Singapore, they will not do a good job and lose out because their minds are not flexible, too prone to memorising stuff. Therefore, Singapore's education system plays a significant role in nurturing students. But under circumstances, Singapore's education system is quite effective. Even though it results in the students memorising most of the model answers, they will also be able to learn something, at least. When they revise their work another time, they may try to understand the answers to the questions they did so as to make memorising easier. Through this process, the students are naturally gaining some knowledge. And also, if Singapore did not apply this education system, there will be lesser successful people in the future and this will lead to Singapore's downfall.

As for Singapore's Civics and Moral Education, I feel that it is also ineffective to some extent. Teaching Civics and Moral Education through file and texbooks in the form of Social Studies will definitely not help the students to hone their character and teach them good values. As long as the students are not paying attention, this method of teaching Civics and Moral Education is not beneficial. If Singapore want students to inculcate good civics and moral values, they have to do it from the bottom of their heart and willingly, not by being taught from textbooks and files. But sometimes, Singapore has no choice but to try all sorts of ways to let students have good civis and moral values because most of them simply lacks those values and this is worrying. Regarding the fact that teachers often eat up CME lessons to have their own lessons, I am agreeable. This tells us that the teachers do not take CME lessons seriously but only academic studies. But if someone were to be smart but did not have good civics and moral values, they will be unaccepted by the society. Because they will not get along well with others and will result in failure. But eating up CME lessons may be necessary at times. the teachers may really be lagging a lot on lessons and are thus afraid that students may flung their tests. This is even more worrying as this will result in a straight failure in the future. It is better to carry out more academic lessons as students will also not pay attention to CME lessons, so why not teach them something which can let them have higher chances of having a bright future?

I feel that the letter the Secondary Four student wrote is a well-crafted letter with the appropritae tone. She addresses the Education Minister, Mr Heng Swee Keat, formally and her tone is also very encouraging. She lists out her arguments but did not say that what she listed is totally correct as she mentioned that she is young and may not be so mature in her arguments and thinking. Her attitude is also very pleasant as she did not write any strong words to describe her argument and does not offend Mr Heng Swee Keat in any way throughout the letter.

If I should write a letter to Minister of Education, I would raise a couple of issues, including those two regarding Singapore's Education and Civics and Moral Education system raised by the Secondary Four student. One of the other issues I would raise would be the dressing of the teachers. Some of the teachers dress too brightly or attractively, and this would divert the students attention to the teacher and not the lesson. The students would be easily distracted and would not pay attention in class. This would affect their scores in tests and exams as they hardly learn anything in the lessons. Another issue I would raise would be the durations of diffent subject lessons in a week. There are times where a certain subject has a greater emphasis over other main subjects as more time is given to the subject lessons. This is unfair because the students will only gain more knowledge out of that certain subject but as for other subjects, they will learn less. This will not be benefical to the students as when there are tests or exams which all Singapore schools will take, the students will noly excel in one or two subjects and may not do well in the other main subjects.