Listening to Avril Lavigne - My World
As much as my brother is rather messed up in the area of studies, I believe that he is very slowly becoming more mature to understand the fact how important education really is in our country. Though I would not call the senseless memorization and regurgitation of facts and "education", at least on the bright side it does train one's memory to hair-splitting ends.
Like when I met up with Brother's geog teacher in ACJC on Friday (F Maths meets Geography!), she was telling us that even as topics from the syllabus is being removed, more is being "slapped onto the other topics". I couldn't agree more. I mean, they reduced the "content of the syllabus for physics by 10%" and that 10% turns our to be some O level topic called elasticity as well as states of matter. What really takes the cake is that the grand total combined number of pages of the textbook the topic takes up is 3 pages. And that constitutes a "10% reduction in the syllabus"? Perhaps from one mathematical perspective, it is having 2 topics out of 20 removed. But really, have they seen the horrific topic of waves that spans a considerable percentage of the textbook? Once again, a gahmen organisation and their PR rubbish.
Anyway, thank God that my brother, from being in the secondary 4 normal (academic) stream, he has been promoted to secondary 5 express. So far, I know of plenty of people who promote to sec 5. But the jump academically is so great, that up till today, I only know ONE person from a sec 5 class who has made it to JC, a few to poly and the rest to the ITE's. Not that I condemn ITEs, but really. Why waste the additional year?
Being in the "Normal (Academic)" Stream in Sinapore isn't so "Normal" after all. Its just a mocked, laughed at and misunderstood stream for a bunch of "stupid students who screwed up their PSLE". We've too much exams in this country. However, the silver lining is that my brother has told me that he has been allowed to offer Additional Mathematics at O Level. As far as I know, the Barker Principal, Cheezy (As we all call him fondly) was once a top mathematics teacher in ACS. He is really passionate about teaching the subject to all the students, as far as possible, irregardless of stream. He fought and clashed with the MOE officials so that single science stream students could offer A Maths, now I guess he's really taken it one step further.
I really enjoyed maths lessons with my Barker principal. He is one solid teacher. His lessons are always so super fun and the whole thing is just a learning adventure. Often, we'd go back to school on a saturday so that he could go through and revise the syllabus with us. If my now retired sec 4 A Maths teacher was wonderful. Then Cheezy is very zai.
Well, mum is deliberating whether to let him drop geography, because my brother does not exactly write very well and in the detail expected of the humanities, in favor of cramming two years of mathematics into one year, to fight with all the express and special stream students for the O level exams. I bet my brother can do it, in fact, I am willing to coach and teach him all the way. Much better a purpose than wasting my time away in front of my girlfriend (The Computer).
If my brother really works so hard, since the year has only just began, I hope he scores an A1 and we could use it as a bargaining chip to bang the MOE in the forum page of the straits times that their streaming policy is utter rubbish. Like one taxi driver told me, "If you don't stir shit up in life, people in big organisations will just step over you and run the system even if the system is faulty and sucks". We al know how screwed up the "defence ministry" is - with all the suffering and horrendous administration as well as customary abuses in the SAF and how the whole system really works like the opposite of a hot knife through butter.
Now the greatest quote on the MOE I've ever heard makes me ponder:
"That's how screwed up an education system you get when you put defense people in the education sector".
True? Both systems are screwed up big time after all. I mean, just check this out:
-Courageous
-LTC accused of cheating SAF
-Commando Death and apparent cover-up
-Regular and NSmen deaths after taking IPPT runs
-Air Force bombing exercise gone wrong (3 deaths)
Go Think.
As much as my brother is rather messed up in the area of studies, I believe that he is very slowly becoming more mature to understand the fact how important education really is in our country. Though I would not call the senseless memorization and regurgitation of facts and "education", at least on the bright side it does train one's memory to hair-splitting ends.
Like when I met up with Brother's geog teacher in ACJC on Friday (F Maths meets Geography!), she was telling us that even as topics from the syllabus is being removed, more is being "slapped onto the other topics". I couldn't agree more. I mean, they reduced the "content of the syllabus for physics by 10%" and that 10% turns our to be some O level topic called elasticity as well as states of matter. What really takes the cake is that the grand total combined number of pages of the textbook the topic takes up is 3 pages. And that constitutes a "10% reduction in the syllabus"? Perhaps from one mathematical perspective, it is having 2 topics out of 20 removed. But really, have they seen the horrific topic of waves that spans a considerable percentage of the textbook? Once again, a gahmen organisation and their PR rubbish.
Anyway, thank God that my brother, from being in the secondary 4 normal (academic) stream, he has been promoted to secondary 5 express. So far, I know of plenty of people who promote to sec 5. But the jump academically is so great, that up till today, I only know ONE person from a sec 5 class who has made it to JC, a few to poly and the rest to the ITE's. Not that I condemn ITEs, but really. Why waste the additional year?
Being in the "Normal (Academic)" Stream in Sinapore isn't so "Normal" after all. Its just a mocked, laughed at and misunderstood stream for a bunch of "stupid students who screwed up their PSLE". We've too much exams in this country. However, the silver lining is that my brother has told me that he has been allowed to offer Additional Mathematics at O Level. As far as I know, the Barker Principal, Cheezy (As we all call him fondly) was once a top mathematics teacher in ACS. He is really passionate about teaching the subject to all the students, as far as possible, irregardless of stream. He fought and clashed with the MOE officials so that single science stream students could offer A Maths, now I guess he's really taken it one step further.
I really enjoyed maths lessons with my Barker principal. He is one solid teacher. His lessons are always so super fun and the whole thing is just a learning adventure. Often, we'd go back to school on a saturday so that he could go through and revise the syllabus with us. If my now retired sec 4 A Maths teacher was wonderful. Then Cheezy is very zai.
Well, mum is deliberating whether to let him drop geography, because my brother does not exactly write very well and in the detail expected of the humanities, in favor of cramming two years of mathematics into one year, to fight with all the express and special stream students for the O level exams. I bet my brother can do it, in fact, I am willing to coach and teach him all the way. Much better a purpose than wasting my time away in front of my girlfriend (The Computer).
If my brother really works so hard, since the year has only just began, I hope he scores an A1 and we could use it as a bargaining chip to bang the MOE in the forum page of the straits times that their streaming policy is utter rubbish. Like one taxi driver told me, "If you don't stir shit up in life, people in big organisations will just step over you and run the system even if the system is faulty and sucks". We al know how screwed up the "defence ministry" is - with all the suffering and horrendous administration as well as customary abuses in the SAF and how the whole system really works like the opposite of a hot knife through butter.
Now the greatest quote on the MOE I've ever heard makes me ponder:
"That's how screwed up an education system you get when you put defense people in the education sector".
True? Both systems are screwed up big time after all. I mean, just check this out:
-Courageous
-LTC accused of cheating SAF
-Commando Death and apparent cover-up
-Regular and NSmen deaths after taking IPPT runs
-Air Force bombing exercise gone wrong (3 deaths)
Go Think.
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