• What would you like to see more/less of in a typical primary school classroom? What would you like to see more/less of outside the classroom? • What could be done that would enable primary school pupils to develop a stronger eagerness and curiosity to learn, confidence in themselves, a good grasp of communication skills, and the facility to work and cooperate with others? • Should CCA participation be scaled up for primary school pupils? Should CCAs be offered within curriculum time, and for which levels of primary school? • What are your thoughts on using drama or outdoor education as enablers to achieve a more holistic education? Are there any other areas worth exploring?
Creating More Time and Space for Holistic Education through Single-Session Primary Schools
• What are your views on single-session and if it can help achieve a more holistic education? • With single-session, how can schools make better use of the time and flexibility to organise the school day? • What are some of the challenges in implementing single-session? How do you think we can overcome them?
Building Teacher Capacity
• Do you think schools will benefit from an all-graduate teaching force? Why? • What do you think are important qualities and competencies of primary school teachers that need to be further developed?
Levelling Up Opportunities
• Should schools have an after-school care centre that organises activities for students and supervises their homework?
i think what needs to be clarified is the aim of primary education. what is it we want our primarly school leavers to achieve? And are there different objectives for students with different scholarstic ability?
Discussing the various solutions to improve primary education such as holistic education and teacher capacity, without having the objective clarified, is anologious to putting the cart before the horse.
Nevertheless, the over-riding objective for all primary school leavers, regardless of scholarstic ability, ought to be to prepare them for further learning, whether the learning is to be academic, technical, or skills.
The primary education ought also to equip sufficient literacy in our school leavers to allow them to comprehend written instructions and news.
The primary education should also be the place to instill in our young minds fundamental values binding our society such as tolerance towards a multi-racial society, respect for equlity, a basic understanding of history and rule of law of singapore.
With this idea in mind, i believe the basics in primary education ought to be covered well. Rather than over-loading all our primary students with above average academic requirements, we need to make sure that even those who pursue other technical and skills education after primary schools are fully equipped to be useful members of society.
To a significant portion of the students, primary education may be their only avenue of formal education and we need to make sure they get the most out of it.
As such, i suggest we do more of the following:
(1) history of our nation, and basic legal concepts such as the constitutions, and various aspects of commercial and crminal laws (2) introduction of the history of the different religions and races of singapore (3) common values binding an open and diverse society - such as tolerance of mult-culturalism and harmony in a mult-racial and multi-religious society (4) basic commercial skills such as financial management, contract law and communication skills, even culinary skills.
we may want to do less of the following, which can be learnt in families or by individual effort later in life:
(1) geography, world history, religions, literature, etc. (2) activities which may require special aptitude - arts, music, calligraphy, abascus, etc.
Actually in the USA, the elementary (primary) education emphasizes on :
(1) history of USA, and basic legal concepts such as the constitutions, and various aspects of commercial and criminal laws (2) introduction of the history of the different religions and races (3) common values binding an open and diverse society - such as tolerance of mult-culturalism and harmony in a mult-racial and multi-religious society (4) basic commercial skills such as financial management, contract law and communication skills, even culinary skills.
They do not emphasize on examination or test at all. The grades are just A (Approach requirements), M (Meeting requirements) and E (Exceeding requirements). They also do not do ranking and rating at elementary level.
My kids know more religions than me because of all the projects they did in school. They will also invite parents to go to classroom to help out with show and tell to let the students know about different cultures.
They also have projects to let students track stock market. They have fake money and at Grade 5 they let students play the stock games.
One thing clearly in my mind I dislike the education in Singapore is too many exams and many kids have to have tuition teachers. In the USA, they organize projects to let kids use their brain for creativity. For example, in Science when they talk about trees, the kids need to go to their yard to identify different kinds of trees. When they talk about birds, the kids need to know all the birds that fly into their yard. So my kids can call out names of birds in my yard, but I can't, sort of embarrassed.
We were told by the school that nowadays students are expected to do school work using the Internet.
This is really a form of stress for the students, and will you think the eyes condition for students are going to be adversely affected?
Besides, I am also worried that illness which working adults face from using the computer over a lone time such as neck pain and back ache as well as strained palm / fingers worsening to become Cervical spondylosis may also develop.
What form of additional medical / helth care will the government provide for our young pupils?
The idea of having after school care centre is actually good for working parents.
BUT these centre will only be effective and helpful for students if the staff are trained to be able to guide the students with their homework, or even better if they can provide additional help in the school curriculum. Therefore, by keeping the students in the centre, the parents will not have to engage home tuitors.
However, the fees payable to the centre must be reasonable and affordable. Some families may not be able to afford to pay for such extra services.
Using internet to do and submit homework is unavoidable because those computer companies like Microsoft and Apple are behind it big time. If they do not push the schools to have students do and submit homework using internet, where can they sell their computers?
Currently, all the middle school and high school (grade 6 to 12) will need to use computer to submit their homework. I do not think elementary school is that case yet.
That is the reason they have computers in the library for the kids to use for free just in case the parents cannot afford a computer.
The idea of having after school care centre is actually good for working parents.
BUT these centre will only be effective and helpful for students if the staff are trained to be able to guide the students with their homework, or even better if they can provide additional help in the school curriculum. Therefore, by keeping the students in the centre, the parents will not have to engage home tuitors.
However, the fees payable to the centre must be reasonable and affordable. Some families may not be able to afford to pay for such extra services.
The after school program is very common in the USA for elementary schools. It is usually for an extra fee, but affordable. They do different kinds of enrichment programs including art and crafts, swimming, drawing, field trips, gym, homework and watching TV. Each day the program is different.
Jane
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主题: 回复： 小学教育检讨-Primary Education Review 5/1/2009, 8:17 am
另外该文还指出了令人惊心的发现：十月初，哈佛大學一項學生學習成效調查結果，在哈佛教授間投下了一顆震撼彈。哈佛大學伯克教學中心（Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning）針對二十門課的教授、四百位學生，分別調查老師與學生是否掌握課堂「」（Big Idea）？跌破教授眼鏡的是，只有不到三成的學生，抓到教授在那門課想傳達的核心概念。
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