Letter to Education Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat

Promts:

1. To what extent do you agree with the issues that the student has raised here? Point out some issues of agreement and possible contention.
2. Examine her tone and attitude in this letter. Do you think it’s a well-crafted letter with the appropriate tone?
3. If you should write a letter to Minister of Education, what are some issues you would raise? Remember- your intention is to make the system better for society’s betterment via CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.

Recently, a Secondary four student from Nan Chiau High School wrote a letter to the Education Minister, Mr Heng Swee Keat, and generated a much heated debate about Singapore’s education system. In general, she argued that the education system is not good enough and needs a “transformation the PAP has adopted since the 2011 General Elections”.

She pointed out that the emphasis for factual memorizing is too great in the education system. She believes that children are curious and inquisitive but the education system stifles their inquisitive and curious mind. I agree that the education system does destroy the curiosity of children. Often, in this competitive environment, students have the mentality that as long as you are able to regurgitate out the facts, you can perform well. Students are having the mindset that understanding is not as important as memorizing. Even in an elite school like Hwa Chong, teachers still force students to memorize information, words and phrases. In Chinese, we memorize 4-word phrases. In Mathematics, we memorize theorems. In Science, we memorize facts. In History we memorize dates and in Geography we memorize places. It appears that the entire curriculum revolves around memorizing and anyone capable of cramming information like a computer hard disk will do well.

Secondly, she pointed out that students are taught as a collective whole rather than individuals. She claims that as a result, Singapore lacks talented people. I believe that this is also true. In Singapore we can see that much of our skilled workforce is foreigners. For example, in A*STAR, more than half of the researchers are actually foreigners. The Singapore government claims that this is to make up for the current lack of talent in Singapore, however, why doesn’t the government do something to the education system to produce more people who are capable of research. There is a flaw in the education system that causes people to be somewhat similar to leeches – feed of the knowledge of others but not generating their own. I believe that the education system is creating people who lack creativity and innovation.

Thirdly, the writer pointed out that there is a serious flaw in the character education. She wrote that character education is being taught for the sake of it. She added that character education was not very effective. I too agree but to a certain extent. We have heard a lot of cases especially on websites like STOMP about the bad behavior of students – students not giving up their seats to elderly, students causing a racket, even students engaging in illegal activities such as drug abuse. Why are all of these happening, even in elite schools, despite the fact that we produce top scholars in the world? I believe that there is a mismatch between the academic development and character development.

Next is regarding the writer’s tone. I feel that the writer was being quite critical. She appeared to be quite hard and demanding towards the Education Minister, yet tried to hide it by saying that she might be wrong. She seems to show a sense of frustration and desperation. In her conclusion, she said that she was “fighting for the changes” indicating that she had a strong desire for improvements. There is also a small hint of her showing lack of confidence in the Minister in the last sentence: “I believe that you have the power to make these changes happen, and if not, at least a thorough review of the policies made by your predecessors.”

If I were to write a letter to the Education Minister, I would bring up the issue about independent learning. I believe that the education system emphasized too much about memorizing information and not about how to obtain information. The world is now a globalized and rapidly-changing world and information I constantly getting outdated. In order to be able to keep up and stay ahead of the rest of the world, Singaporeans need to be able to gather updated information.