INTERVIEW WITH THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, ONG YE KUNG
The school year is coming to an end. The coming holidays are a time for you to reflect on how you did in 2019 — and to look ahead to 2020. What is the path you are on? Are you heading in the right direction? Are you moving fast enough?
These are big questions. WHAT’S UP, Singapore’s newspaper for students, sat down with the Minister for Education, Ong Ye Kung, and asked for his advice. Below, you can read our conversation with him. We think his answers can help you have a better school life.
WHAT’S UP: Grown-ups say that schools prepare kids for success in life. What does “success” mean to you?
MR ONG: It depends on what you define as your life goal. Success has to be measured according to that. Don’t let other people measure it for you. Sometimes, you let society or friends or parents or parents’ friends define success for you. They may say, you must become a doctor or lawyer, or you would have failed. You must be rich, and earn so much by what age, or you have failed.
Define your own success. Then, work towards it. Actually, most kids do so, even at a young age. When asked what they want to be when they grow up, most children have an answer, and rarely do they say, “I want to grow up and work in an office and earn my first million dollars by the time I am 40 years old.”
Instead, a child may say, “I want to save lives, I want to be a fireman.” Or, “I will be a teacher, I will teach children just like my teacher does.” Or, “I want to keep the streets safe, so I will be a policeman.” Or, “I will fly a fighter jet.” They have so many different dreams.
WHAT’S UP: Aren’t these just childish dreams?
MR ONG: No, these are the purest ideas of success that our children have from young. These are their individual aspirations. Our education system and our society must help children achieve them.
WHAT’S UP: So there are many different ways to succeed in life?
MR ONG: Yes, there isn’t just one dimension.
WHAT’S UP: The other side of success is failure. Nobody likes to fail, whether in exams or in games. How can we avoid failing?
MR ONG: You cannot have success without some failures. Without some failures, you won’t even value your success. You try, fail, try again, and finally you succeed.
WHAT’S UP: Does this mean we don’t have to feel bad about failing?
MR ONG: It depends. There is a big difference between “failure to perform” and “failure to achieve”.
“Failure to perform” means you are not trying. You don’t care, and so you fail. Please avoid this. You don’t want that kind of failure. Always try your best.
But, sometimes, despite trying your best, things are not in your favour. Or, your opponent is just too strong, and so you can’t win. That is when you fail to achieve. This is something you can still be proud of. You learn something from it. Next time, you try to do better. So never be afraid of “failure to achieve”.
WHAT’S UP: So, failing to achieve is different from failing to perform. If we fail to achieve, we don’t have to feel like a loser?
MR ONG: You will feel like a loser only if you fail to perform. If you fail to achieve, you may feel bad for a few days. But, if you have the right attitude, you can learn from it and it goes away. For each failure, there is always something to learn, much more than from success.
WHAT’S UP: Do you know successful people who experienced failure?
MR ONG: All of them. Even top scientists. So many experiments of theirs failed before they finally succeeded… but they tried very hard. They refine their experiments over and over again.
WHAT’S UP: But, we usually hear more about people’s great successes.
MR ONG: Yes, in the news, we hear more about success stories. Social media highlights the extremes – very bad news, or, glamourous, successful people enjoying themselves. We don’t see what is in the background, how hard they tried and how often they failed.
WHAT’S UP: Our Primary 6 readers are probably worrying about whether they have done well in their recent PSLE. Even after the exams are over, many find it scary to think about the results. What if they don’t succeed?
MR ONG: You may feel as if it is “do or die”. But, the fact is this: if you pass your PSLE but don’t do as well as you had hoped, it just means you may not get into the secondary school you prefer. But, you can still get into a secondary school. It could be a school closer to your home, so you get to sleep a bit more! You will get to make friends there, and you will probably find it is not too bad at all.
You may fear that if you don’t do so well at PSLE, you won’t make it to the Express stream and that may seem devastating. But don’t forget, we now have Subject Based Banding. By 2024, we will phase out the streaming system.
Some secondary students feel if they don’t do well enough in their O levels, they can’t go to a junior college and they will end up in a polytechnic. But polytechnic students who do well can still go to university.
Or, after polytechnic, you can start work first. A polytechnic diploma is a work-ready qualification that enable students to start a good career. After you work and get some experience, you can apply to university if you are keen. You will be applying with your job experience, and our universities will recognise that.
WHAT’S UP: Maybe they feel embarrassed or ashamed if they don’t do well in these big exams.
MR ONG: That is all pressure from outside, making exams more important than they are meant to be.
There is no dead end in our education system. Even if one exam doesn’t produce results to your satisfaction, you can still reach the point through other pathways.
Students in Secondary 4 say that if they get into junior college, they can go to university after two years; but if they go to a polytechnic, they will take three years.
Nothing very wrong with taking one year more. I lost an election. It took me four years more before I won an election and could become a Member of Parliament and then a Minister. I still could achieve my goal.
WHAT’S UP: You said Singaporeans may be focusing too much on exams, and treating them too seriously. Now, the ministry is making schools remove some exams. Can you tell us more about this plan?
MR ONG: We are removing one of four major exams. It is not a huge change.
We have more than 300 schools and 33,000 teachers, so it takes time. We have to convince all principals and all educators that this is the right thing to do.
We laid out a three-year plan. In the end, 90 percent of our secondary schools decided to remove Sec 3 exams next year, which is one year earlier than we had planned. And, 50 percent of our primary schools decided to remove P5 exams next year, also one year early.
Teachers, parents and students have been depending too much on exams to tell them whether the student is doing fine. Exam results do not always paint a full picture.
WHAT’S UP: How come? Other than exam results, what else do we need to know to figure out whether students are doing well?
MR ONG: Are you enjoying learning? Did you really understand? Did you grow? Are you curious?
WHAT’S UP: So, instead of children studying to improve themselves, children are just studying for the exam?
MR ONG: Yes, we have quite a bit of that now. We recognise that.
WHAT’S UP: When some exams are removed, does this mean that students can be more relaxed?
MR ONG: That is not the main reason. The main reason the Ministry of Education is removing some exams is to free up time for teachers to use in other ways.
Every exam costs the school three weeks of curriculum time. By removing an exam, we can return three weeks, for each two-year block. It means that teachers do not need to rush so much to finish the curriculum. When you rush, some students just don’t get it. Then, they feel they must have private tuition.
When you free up that time, teachers can take their time and teach better. This is very important for weaker students because you will give them more time to catch up. That time can also be spent on making lessons more interesting. They can teach the class differently, in much more memorable ways.
WHAT’S UP: Can you give us an example?
MR ONG: If I am a teacher teaching fractions to children, I can write on the board what is 1/2 x 1/3, I can show on the board how to multiply top and top, bottom and bottom, and get the answer. Get them to memorise it, give them worksheets to practise. I am done in 15 minutes.
But, if I truly want you to understand, I can give you a watermelon or pizza, and ask you to figure out how to work out 1/2 of 1/3.
Children will get into groups, chop up the watermelon, make a mess. They may cut the watermelon into half, and cut that half into thirds, and work out that the answer is 1/6. Someone will say, “Eureka!, I’ve got it.” They may discover that if you multiply the numerators and the denominators you get the answer.
That may take an hour, plus cleaning up!
WHAT’S UP: So, this may take longer, but the students will remember it better?
MR ONG: Yes, they will remember it better, when they have something they can touch and feel and have gone through a thinking process of figuring out the answer for themselves.
WHAT’S UP: It sounds as if you believe that learning should be fun, and not something children suffer through?
MR ONG: Of course it must be fun. There will be some suffering, though. Part of learning involves doing something you don’t like, or doing something that is quite hard, but you have to overcome it.
When you overcome something difficult that initially you don’t like, you practise over and over again, and then you master it and like it — this is resilience.
One common example is Mother Tongue. Many people disliked it when they were in school. But, later they use it at work, and they say, “Thank goodness I went through all that. It opened up economic opportunities, and gave me a sense of who I am.”
WHAT’S UP: It’s like learning a musical instrument. In the beginning it’s not fun but later you can enjoy it.
MR ONG: Yes. Or, some people don’t like mathematics. In my case, I did not like anything with lots of words. But today, one of my favourite pastimes is reading history.
WHAT’S UP: Nowadays, we hear a lot about “lifelong learning”. This sounds kind of scary. School is already so long. When will the need to study end?
MR ONG: Learning doesn’t end. We all go through stages in life. When you are in primary school, you stay in class most of the time, with a tight time-table. It’s like going to Hogwarts.
Even in polytechnic or university, studying is different from school. It is not a fixed curriculum and not so regimented. There is a lot more freedom for you to choose what you want to study. There are some compulsory courses but also many electives that you can choose. You can pace yourself.
And, you are not in the classroom most of the time. You are learning from many other experiences, like going overseas and doing internships, maybe tinker with prototypes and building something.
When you go to a higher level and you are a certified wizard, you still learn, but you are teaching others at the same time, you get to participate in many other projects. But you can’t reach that stage without the more regimented process of learning.
If you are doing a job you like, you will be committed to it, and will probably enjoy learning. In fact, you would be miserable if you think you are not learning. Today, working adults complain when they are not learning anything new at work.
WHAT’S UP: Adults want to keep improving and growing?
MR ONG: Yes. I myself am taking a course, by Laurie Santos, a professor in Yale University. It is on the science of happiness. I am learning that because I feel mental well-being is an important issue for many of our children. I want to understand that a bit more so I thought taking this course would help. It does, and I find it a joy.
WHAT’S UP: What makes you happy when you see today’s schools?
MR ONG: Something that wasn’t there when I was in school is that teachers are like friends to the students. They still respect the teacher but they talk as if they know each other very well, with very little barrier.
Students will confide in their teachers about their problems and what is bugging them. I see a whole new teacher-student relationship that I never had when I was in school. I think that shows the strength of the system and how far the teaching profession has come.
We want an education system in which children are encouraged to be curious, to discover who they are, and define success in different ways. For this, they need guidance, they need mentors. And teachers step into that role.
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