Singapore's educational system is political - meritoracy in name.
Grades and academic performance are the key features of Singapore system.
Results : It produces a nation of academic with people generally sold to the belief that by possessing some paper qualification especially of straight "A"s and university degrees of certain grades from certain universities recognised everything will be taken care of.
Such a system makes the students over-confident neglecting application of knowledge, creativity and entrepreneurship which the education system hardly develop.
A broad-based education adopted by Finland, Switzerland and Denmark and to a certain extent Taiwan emphasises on developing, using and applying existing knowledge in whatever fields even non-traditional and non-academic ones in real business start-ups.
The latter broad-based education approach is more practical and will help both the good and not-so-good students to be interested in study and knowledge application not pure study for study sake or paper chase.
No wonder today, Singapore is suffering from a lack of entrepreneurs and it is high time our students are prepared to apply knowledge and not just obtain academic grades to show off or satisfy only political goals. Politically a population believing in study and getting university education is good for governing as no one will object to promoting academically qualified to become our administrators. Practically this kind of meritocratic educational approach of the past produces many academically qualified people who are competing for limited jobs. It will continue to add to our high-educated unemployed or under-employed.
The above-stated comments were given in feedbacks to Feedback Unit two years ago. What do they do except to send Dr. Tony Tan to Europe to study their model of education.
Government has to wake up and wake up fast that academical approach to education is incorrect and narrow-minded and politically motivated. It will not make us economically competitive or produce more entrepreneurs. The upbringing of our students in schools to make them entrepreneurs should be a much more important and bigger goal than smallist politically motivated meritocracy.
As I am writing this now, many of our top computer and IT graduates are joining other countries because they could serve in the right technologically advanced industries which Singapore is lacking in because of narrow-minded approach in developing its own excellence.
The above-stated post is a repeat of my many postings to Feedback Unit on this topic but apart from justicications more TV programmes showing a few success stories here and there among schools, what have changes in terms of major governing philosophy or polcies affecting education and production of next generation of industrial leaders to serve our country.
