Best Education System = No Improvement ?

One of the most prided joys of our government is having a top education system in the world. As a Singaporean, I'm proud of that too. However, a few recent issues have caught my eye and make me wonder if being at the cream of the crop have stifled our desire to improve.

Recently one NTU staff committed suicide and another student assaulted a lecturer there before plunging to his death. At the same time, some of my friends in local universities are also complaining about systems they use to teach in local universities. So is there really an underlining of trouble in our seemingly perfect education system?

A casual question asked to my friends and grievances poured out instantly. One of the top issues I realized are the lack of social interactions within the universities. Because lessons are so dispersed from one another, people have lesser opportunities to interact with one another. With the heavy load from their school work, students also have lesser time to meet up with their friends outside. Lesser social interactions may cause problems as students may become less confident and tend to keep problems to themselves.

Another problem I noticed was that lecturers don't seem to place much emphasis on their students. They come and deliver their lessons, and they go. No effort was made to connect with the students. Where were the good old days when the professor will swing by and ask you what is wrong when he noticed a troubled look on your face? It seems that lecturers these days are more preoccupied with delivering knowledge than fulfilling the full requirements of a teaching career. Teaching is more than delivering knowledge. Teaching is about caring and nurturing your students too.

A rising trend I obeserved about teachers in higher levels is the notion that students will take responsibility for their own learning. I respect that and comment their efforts to treat as as young adults. However, some teachers have brought this concept to a higher level. For example, there was this lecturer in a biology class and she was so frustrated with the class not paying attention and she quickly zoom through the lecture and gave a sarcastic comment saying "If you guys are not interested, then you might as well skip the lecture, I will not mark you as absent." I felt she had every right to be angry over this, however, she is a university professor for God's sake. Blowing your head over your class is not professional. Furthermore, there were a few attentive students in the class. Lowering the quality of your teaching because of a minority that are not interested in the class is just unfair for the rest.

An event that angered me even more was an experience that my friend had. Her lecturer was not free for the lesson that was supposed to be conducted next week. He suggested to postpone it to another day. However my friend was not free on that time slot as she had music class. The rest of the class could make it accept her. Instead of giving an alternative date or time, the lecturer simply said "So you are not coming right?" What is this? It totally sends the message that as long as it is the minority, it is ok. We can forget about them. It is totally immoral and not upright for the teacher to do so. Is that teacher trying to say that it's just one person so we can forget him or her? It is totally unfair to the student. When the teacher was saying that to my friend, the whole class was staring at her, waiting for her to say yes. This behaviour displayed by the lecturer was totally unacceptable. I wouldn't be surprised if students being taught by this teacher would discriminate miniorities in the future. This kind of behaviour are absorbed by the brain and performed subconciously as well.

Universities always claim that they care about their students and show that they care by organizing activities such as counselling and giving out scholarships to help poor pupils. However, they do not realize that this means that you are caring for your students. Caring for someone is at a more subtle level. Displaying notions that the students are not important would hurt the students and undermine their pride and confidence. I personally feel that if the people around were more caring, then the recent tragedies in NTU would not have happened. If lecturers were really teachers at heart, then students would have a more fun time in school.

So is our education system really the best already? I think we have alot more work to do...