What we lack
These days the government has been giving out a lot of autonomy to colleges in Singapore. Allowing them to adjust fees on their own and intake numbers. And in response, the colleges raised their fees. However, what we need is to allow educators to have more autonomy in the way they teach their students. For example, teachers should have the ability to plan the methods of teaching.
There are times when a student may be doing very well in a subject, but because of his disabilities in other subjects, he is placed in a class of students who may be week at the subject that he aces as well. This, would be a hindrance to his development.
Also, we encourage our students to be early for school, for lessons, or at least be punctual. However, in Singapore, you would hardly find teachers who do the same for their students. They would either delay the duration of lesson time, or even when they are done for that day, they just wouldn't allow their students to leave early. Part of this is due to school and government regulations, sometimes, inadvertently due to the pressure of parents to blame the school for events leading to the injury of their children. However, this is just another issue we have to look into.
We shouldn't allow the effects of one affect the others. If we do not want the students to waste our time, then, we should not waste the students' time. "Do unto others what you want others to do unto you"
June 15th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Hi,
Thought you presented an interesting article so I thought I would give some comments on your “argument”
Teachers in the school/college (I know of) have a degree of autonomy in deciding on how they would like to deliver their lesson to the class. Naturally I agree this is important because students are (after all) humans so there is no fixed way/method to teach them to ensure optimal understanding. However a complete freedom in letting teachers choose how they want to teach is not ideal because of several factors.
i) Difficulty in assessment of students
Imagine if all the teachers teach different topic to different class at the same time, it would become a nightmare to assess the students understanding of the subject (with the exception of the end of year exam). And it may also lead to a non-uniform assessment for all the students because new question have to be set every time a class is taking an assessment in that topic. This in turn may generate unhappiness and complains that the assessment is slanted towards certain people.
ii) Certain method of instruction may not be suitable
Certain MOI may take up too much time and resources (eg. exploring a certain concept) Thus although it may be an ideal way to learn subjects scientific in nature schools would not usually use such a MOI to cover the entire syllabus
iii)Diversity
Assuming that the teacher can find a MOI where the students can understand perfectly. The management may still require the teacher to adopt a variety of MOI so that the students are expose to the various MOI commonly used so that they would not be shock when they have a change in teacher or when they go on to a new school.
With regards to your second point on where to place a student ideally speaking of course the student should be stream into a class where fellow students inside are of the same calibre for every subject correct ? But logistics wise it would be quite a mess and that would break up the class spirit entirely. Would that be ideal? But I do know of school that do that for certain subject.
As for teachers being late, I think it is over generalisation to say most teachers are always late for their appointment with their student. First point I would like to point out is no matter in what occupation there will always be people who are late. Secondly, most teachers I know of are always punctual and if they are late it is usually beyond their control such as they were stuck in a meeting & etc. As for the issue on school not allowing student to leave early, as far as I know of usually most teacher do not have enough time to cover the entire syllabus and some even have to resort to having extra lesson so such a issue is quite non-existent (at least that is what is happening in most neighbourhood school)
June 16th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Well thanks for your feedback, for which I would reply to each individual point.
1) I think you got my point wrong here. My ideal purpose is not to have a teacher teach different topics for a subject. It is to promote a wider range of subjects. Instead of the current system where students are exposed to the entire range of subjects in their first and second year in Secondary school, perhaps allowing them to choose their department of studies earlier? And instead of assessing students on a range of 9 subjects at the end of a semester, try to spread it out?
2) I do not remember mentioning the point of teachers being late for class. I can understand why they might be late occasionally. However, there are some teachers who abuse their authority as a senior teacher to be late. Others are affected by a tight schedule.
What I’m pointing out is they ought to be on time on covering the syllabus. It’s not that it is impossible. It is entirely possible because I have seen excellent teachers who produce students of excellent caliber (even those who may not be as strong) who managed to do it. However, some teachers waste their time in class on unnecessary matters such as disciplining students who have not submitted their work. This ought to be done before or after lesson. The punishment for a group of delinquents should not affect a class. These behaviors are products of the rat race people are tied in.