Singapore 9 APR 1983

Archives & Oral History Department

S i n g a p o r9eA P R1 9 8 3

Acc. No.

01-1/83/04/04

SPEECHBY PRESIDENTDEVANNAIR AT THE INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION'STENTHANNIVERSARYCONFERENCOEN "RESEARCH

AND TEACHEREDUCATION"AT THE WORLDTRADECENTRE AUDITORIUMON MONDAY,4 APRIL 1983 AT 8.45 A M

The perfect education system exists nowhere. What we can speak of are relatively more successful or less successful systems. A tree is known by its fruits. Judging by results, we can boast of a fairly successful system.

The percentage of PSLE passes (all media) increased from 74.2 per cent in 1979 to 87.3 per cent in 1982. Consequently, the percentage of pupils retained in Primary Six declined from 18.9 per cent in 1979 to 8.8 per cent in 1982.

We also had a bigger number of PSLE candidates scoring four distinctions, 9,341 in 1982 as against only 5,699 in 1981.

GCE 'O' level results for all language media also tell a similar story. The figures for candidates with one or more 'O'level passes progressively improved from 94.03 per cent in 1978 to 97.9 per cent in 1982.

Candidates obtaining three or more 'O' level passes progressively improved from 62.29 per cent in 1978 to 75.37 per cent in 1982.

2

More pupils are also achieving 'perfect scores' as seen by the increasing numbers obtaining Grade 1 distinctions in seven or more and eight or more subjects.

Steadily improving performance is also revealed in the combined GCE 'A' level examination results.

64.15 per cent of candidates obtained at least two 'A' and two 'AO' level passes (including the General Paper) in 1982 as against 60.3 per cent in 1978.

At the top band, more students have obtained passes in four 'A' and two 'AO' subjects including the General Paper. Wore students have also obtained top results scoring distinctions in four 'A' level subjects and four 'A' and two 'AO' level subjects.

The most striking evidence of the merits of the new education system is the almost five-fold decline in drop-out rates in both' the primary and lower secondary levels. At the Primary One to Six level, the drop-out rate was only 0.67 per cent of total enrolment in 1982, as against three per cent in 1978. At Secondary One to Two level, the drop-out rate was only 1.9 per cent of total enrolment in 1982, as against 9.3 per cent in 1978.

The pluses are certainly gratifying.

By and large, our

teachers are hardworking and dedicated. We cannot explain

the improvements in performance, otherwise. we also know of

outstanding principals and teachers, who have achieved

phenomenal results in improving the performance and

standards of schools which had previously been stigmatised

as low grade schools with below average students.

3

Our friends and well wishers, however, will become rightly suspicious if we gloat over our pluses and say nothing about our minuses. For the distinguishing mark of forward-looking educators is the frankness with which they acknowledge their own shortcomings and those of the system they work under, and the intelligence and vigour with which they identify and deal with these failings and shortcomings. The problems teachers face, both in Singapore and elsewhere, are essentially professional challenges, which need to be frankly faced and overcome, and not embarrassing dirt to be swept under the carpet.

Recently I requested to meet two groups of teachers. One was a group of 20-odd teachers, most of whom had three to four years teaching experience after graduating from the Institute of Education. The second was a group of principals who were in charge of schools with more than their fair share of problems.

I was heartened by the frankness and intelligence with

which the teachers discussed their problems. I was even more heartened by the principals, who clearly believed that

l

the best way to deal with professional problems was not to

run away from them. A good deal of what I have to say today

I owe to their contributions to my own thinking on the

subject of research and teacher education. The credits

belong to them. The blemishes are mine.

I am not qualified to pre-empt the several learned papers that will be presented to this Conference, and will not attempt to do so. What I hope to do is to pose for your consideration some of the vital priorities of educational research and teacher education in Singapore. These must necessarily be related to the goals of education policy in our Republic.

In brief, we require a population with the skills of

hand and brain necessary for a rapidly modernising

technological society. But we must enter a very important

caveat here. At least some manpower planners need to be

reminded that a discussion about education is not a

discussion about robotics. We are talking about the

body-mind-spirit conglomerate which constitutes the human

being. Which means that the paper chase cannot be the

be-all or end-all of the educational process. A good human

being and a good citizen must have more than paper

qualifications,

in the shape of desirable qualities of mind,

heart and spirit. Programming a robot is a mathematical and

technical affair. Arousing and motivating a human being is

a qualitative and inspirational one.

Regrettably, the demands of life in a modern society being what they are, human ingenuity has failed to devise anything better than an examination system to determine and assess standards of professional and academic competence. Nobody in his senses will want to take chances, for example, with dentists who may pull out the wrong teeth, engineers who will build fly-overs or bridges which collapse, doctors who will kill more patients than they cure, and so on. Nonetheless, it would be a grave if not fatal error to yield to the easy temptation to make of our schools totally, or even predominantly, examination-oriented institutions.

It seems to me that one of the most pressing problems teacher-educators need to address themselves to is how to combine the examination objectives of our school system with the vitally important non-examination objectives of a total education policy.

5

To begin with, we might recall an illuminating passage

on the subject in the dialogues of Plato, where Socrates

compares himself to a midwife who does nothing more than

help the mother give birth to offspring.

He recognised that

the primary activity takes place in the learner, not the

teacher, `as it does in the mother, not the midwife. In

short, the teacher is always only an instrumental, and

never the principal cause of learning. Even the best of

teachers cannot deliver what is not present in the student.

But a teacher fails if he is unable to deliver, and release"

into action, what does lie within the capacity of the

student. Once this is acknowledged, we can begin to deal

with the problems of teachers, having to cope as they do

with children of widely varying capacities, abilities, and

social backgrounds.

We know the geometrical axiom: "The shortest distance

between two points is a straight line". But this is neither

a geographical truth nor an educational one. For there

usually are troublesome obstructions in the way and a detour

may be more convenient, and often indispensable.

The goals

of education policy are not to be attained by neat and

straight Euclidian pathways.

It bears repetition that educational goals do not

involve points in space. They involve human beings -

students, teachers and parents. In education, we have to

concern ourselves with the qualifications,

needs and

capacities of the arousers and the aroused, the purveyors

and the recipients of perception, knowledge and skills, and

of the motivators and the motivated. And if things go

wrong, we may end up with non-motivators at one end and

the unmotivated on the other, both equally uninspired.

Worse still, we may end up with demotivators and the wrongly

motivated. In the Singapore context, this can only mean a

devastation of the only natural resource we can reasonably

boast of - our people.

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download