in the tertiary education system, they have the PEARLS points
PEARLS stands for:
Participation
Enrichment
Achievement
Representation
Leadership
Service
The 1st time I heard of this thing 2 years ago, I knew it was flawed. In an average JC, of about at least 1000 teenagers forming the student body.. this PEARLS system applies to each and everyone of them. This PEARLS system is flawed because it is designed to encourage this 6 traits.. but only in a hand few of chosen proud students.
Let me ask you.. how possible is it for 1000 students to "participate" in events, even though we do admittedly have many CCAs, there is enough places for all students to merely participate.. even an "energy saving rep" is participating.
Next, this is subjective, some people are more "enriched" than others, but NOT everyone will be enriched.
Now here comes the moment of truth. How possible is it for all students, or majority of students to be able to have "achievement" in their CCAs, via awards. Think about it, you always see a few people being awarded for doing CCA stuff in school.
How possible is it for all students to "represent" their CCAs in important s-h-i-t? Impossible, only a few chosen Ones will be able to represent their CCAs.
How possible is it for all students to be in "Leadership" positions in any CCA???
The PEARLS system is flawed because it only helps a handful of people. But then again out of the 6 characteristics, only 3 characteristics are VERY FLAWED, these are Leadership, Participation and Achievment. Thus it is quite a balanced flawed system heh.
Can the ENTIRE approach to educating our young truly achieve the final objective of having our young becoming EDUCATED, KNOWLEDGEABLE, and (most important of all) CREATIVE ?
The policies implemented to help in a ROUNDED EDUCATION - that not only places emphasis on SUBJECTS but also on SPORTS, are well intended.
Unfortunately, either the methods or approaches to achieve the objective were not well THOUGHT THROUGH, or the implementation or the executors of the methods had got it all wrong.
One of your ministers himself said this... maybe it was LKY, dunno... "Creativity can only flourish in a DISCIPLINED environment". THis is wrong, creativity flourishes in a borderless world, which is not in Singapore sad to say.
E.g. "Can I have my clouds green?"
Art teacher will say "NO!"
"Hey mr TCS director, what say you to having Wheel Of Fortune Singapore?"
TCS director: "No your crazylah" (Based on a true telephone call made me ME when i was 12 years old).
And recently one comment I made to a school teacher, in my old secondary school:
ME: HEy wtf? We could be earning more $$$ via patenships, instead of this CIP bullshit, begging for coins int he street in exchange for stickers.
Teacher: Do you have any patentships, dun talk big
Me: Yes, our D&T department in school has many new impressive gadgets, (e.g. Mechanical Spiders which cling onto glass surfaces and crawls on tall buildings, cleaning windows, saving $ on bangla window cleaners). We could have patentships
Teacher: SEow Lar! Go back into the streets and beg, take some more stickers with you.
Months later, the D&T project prototype for the spider was thrown away, because the new batch of Sec4s came in, and more space was needed for their projects. What a waste (ALL BASED ON TRUE STORIES OF STUNTING CREATIVITY IN SINGAPORE)
Back to the quote: Your PE programme is pathetic.. it should be called PT, not PE. Since nowadays, PE is just another form of NS preparation. No emphasis on sports.
But, we must not diss the pursuit of knowledge. It is very important. because without knowledge, you cannot use the knowledge if you dont have it, even if you are creative. However. what is wrong with this system is the stress and hectic schedules of life. People don't have time to go on dates, much less be creative about what they have learned.
Teachers try to drill Creativity by not "spoon-feeding" students in class, forcing them to look up their own materials. Yes it is a way, but given the limited time that students have to study, plus the mindless CIP routines, plus the PEARLS bull-s-h-i-t. There is not enough time... 2 years is not enough time. 2 years does not even take into account the severe Ego issues possessed by local teachers... where local teachers cancel lectures if even 1 student insults their superiority by "taking"/"whispering", resulting in less curriculum time.
This is not the way to go.
When i look at your system, i would cry if I were one of you. Something is seriously wrong, if a foreign infidel without any knowledge of mandarin, can master the language in 3 years in Britain or Australia, while a local student is still struggling after being in school for 16 years. Something is seriously wrong.