I always felt that while education is important, our education system is putting the focus on the wrong aspects. The emphasis seems to be more on memorising theories and facts, than to really teach and learn something practical that value-adds our lives. Thus, I had a nonchalant attitude when it comes to studying (of course, my laziness played a part too). As a result, my academic results were average at best, and always fall a little short in getting to my desired school.
I started in Yishun Primary School. I was consistently in the first class since they started to band us according to our results. I received the honour of First-in-Class in primary three and Best-in-Mathematics in primary four. However, there was a sudden slump in my results when I was primary five. Luckily, I managed to improve on my results during primary six, and got an aggregate of 241 for my PSLE.
My desired school of choice then was Anderson Secondary School, which required an aggregate of 250 then. I was eligible for St. Joseph Institute, where 2 of my best friends had picked as their school of choice, but my family did not allow me to choose a school located too far from home. I was pressured into choosing Yishun Town Secondary School, a mediocre school which I heard was filled with bad kids back then.
I realised I was wrong on my misconception about Yishun Town Secondary School after I went there. It indeed use to have a reputation of having a lot of rowdy students, but that was in the past. A new principal and discipline master was appointed, and the school's culture changed drastically from what I heard.
I maintained my nonchalant attitude towards studying during secondary school, and expectedly, I went from first class in secondary one to second class in secondary two, and subsequently third class in secondary three & four. Although I was consistently among the top two in the cohort for Mathematics, I was poor in my other subjects, especially English. Throughout my entire secondary school life, 16 examinations, I managed to only pass my English paper thrice. I passed my English paper during secondary one's CA1 and SA1, and failed all the way before I finally passed my Prelims in secondary four. Luckily for me, I managed to pass my English paper for 'O' Levels too. Eventually, I got a L1R5 of 18 and L1B4 of 12.I never considered junior college as an option due to my poor English standard back then. I was looking at polytechnic, and a diploma in accountancy sounded full of potential to me. I was marginally eligible to take up accountancy course, but was beat by the strong competition for the limited intake of the course. Eventually, I was enrolled into my fourth choice: Diploma in Integrated Event & Project Management at Singapore Polytechnic.
The common belief about Polytechnic is that it is technical, hands-on, and not about memory work. These beliefs are rubbish, at least for the course I took. Sure, there are some technical and hands-on work about once a year, but that's it. The rest are all memory work. In fact, the amount of things that I'm required to memorise made me drop my nonchalant attitude and started to revise for examinations for the first time in my entire schooling life. I remember I failed one of my papers not because I gave the wrong answers, but because I did not answer the question using the textbook answer word-for-word, despite my answers having essentially the same meaning, just worded differently. Overall, I got a pretty poor GPA of 2.6+.
I feel that the current education system is focusing more on expanding the memory capacity than to impart actual knowledge or skills that one can put into use in life. There are plenty of people who can memorise real well and score well in their examinations, but knows little and cannot do much after that. These people are what the society call "paper scholar". Is this what our education system is hoping to nurture? I hope not.
Every individual has different strengths, and our current education system just doesn't allow for some of these strengths to be expanded or showcased. Everyone is being tested on the same thing; some may thrive as it is their strength, while others may falter.
With that, I would like to share a picture which I feel wraps up the flaws of our current education system.
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