sundaymorningstaple wrote:It's getting much better. The reason was a pragmatic one, initially. And it was found to have some long term flaws which are being corrected. When the country was young (as an independent nation) they needed to change the population from a bunch of coolies & night soil collectors to ones capable of working in factories, working in research, working as technicians, chemists, biologists, etc., etc, etc. This let to the "streaming" that fast tracked those who showed a strength in one field or another. Unfortunately, in the early days, there wasn't much need, for social sciences or history or geography or any of the non-hard disciplines. Therefore these were bypassed. This led to people who were knowledgeable about their field (within certain parameters - they still weren't told how to think outside the box) but who couldn't carry on a conversation outside of their field. e.g., they didn't get a "well-rounded" education. Same thing with the universities here. There was no such thing as a "Liberal Arts" degree. If it wasn't useful to the physical building of the country it was dispensed with as they didn't have the resources to cater for "learning for learnings sake". They have had to build the educational system from scratch and frankly, yeah, they made some grave mistakes early on but their international scholastic Olympiad results are something to be proud of considering the system is less than 50 years old. One much give credit where credit is due.....
I agree. I used to be a schoolteacher in Singapore (before I embraced the joys of motherhood!

) and in the six-and-a-half years that I taught at a very ordinary 'neighbourhood school', I never ceased to be amazed by my students or the education system here.
It's true that the education system in Singapore had (and still has) its flaws, but contrary to popular perception, I found the Ministry of Education officials whom I met to be willing to acknowledge their flaws (especially with a fellow educator) and eager to try to improve things.
Over the years, I saw the curriculum load lessen, and more time given to project work and individual exploration. I saw a wide variety of new education tracks opening up (including the Integrated Programme system), and a number of new specialised schools making their appearance (like SOTA). I saw fellow teachers, who were teaching at the Primary level going for re-training as MOE phased out examinations for all Primary One and Two pupils to give them the time and space to 'learn how to learn' and enjoy learning.
It wasn't always an easy shift. But I knew why they were doing what they were doing: the education system in Singapore had been created with an eye towards nation-building and growth, but MOE knew that technical knowledge could only get a nation so far and it was time for the next phase of development.
Admittedly, it will probably be another 10 to 20 years before we start to see any significant difference. But when I was teacher, I'm proud to say that I saw my students become more thoughtful, questioning individuals (far more than their parents were anyway!) with more room to grow. And I am very happy for them.
