You know streaming is in trouble when even the chairperson of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education calls for that “sacred cow” to be slain (aka MP for Jalan Besar GRC, Denise Phua).
While Ong Ye Kung is still milking that sacred cow (like his predecessors did for the last 40 years), saying that it has produced good outcomes, five MPs have come forward in Parliament yesterday to call for it to be abolished.
Indeed, the milk has turned sour for Ong and MOE may have to anticipate the death of streaming in the near future if the MPs’ voice gets any louder and strident.
Dr Intan Azura Mokhtar (AMK GRC), who was a former secondary school teacher said: “It is time for us to move on and recognise that academic streaming places self-limiting beliefs on students who think they are only as good as the stream they are in.”
Ang Wei Neng (Jurong GRC) said that “Normal stream students had a sense of “resigned acceptance and defeat”, especially when he tried to teach them topics that were beyond their syllabus.””
“As a young and idealistic teacher at that time,” Ang recalled, “I tried to interest the students in science no matter which streams they were from. Even when certain sections were not supposed to be taught to the Normal stream students, I went on to teach them as it was interesting.”
Ang continued: “However, the Normal stream students were quick to dismiss most of what was in their textbooks. They said, “We are taking the reduced syllabus, no need to learn.”
Like the catchy Jack Neo movie, I Not Stupid, the echo chambers for the self-limitation the students feel is “No Need to Learn”. And its subconscious script playing in the mind of a Normal Stream student is “Why bother? I am not in the Express Stream.”
Charles Chong (Punggol East) was concerned about “how streaming can create a “class divide” between students who are deemed by the education system to be academically able and those who are less so.”
You can’t get anymore visceral about such hidden but powerful stigmatisation by streaming - which Ong Ye Kung calls a form of good customisation - than with last year’s video documentary “Regardless Of Class”.
I recall one Normal Stream student admitting this: “they think we are quite stupid, so they seldom talk to us.”
Playwright Faith Ng, who was from the Normal stream, said: “The teachers would say things like ‘even though you’re from Normal’. And that ‘even though’ already would imply a lot. So you kind of deduce that it means you're not as good as everybody else.”
Of course, unless there is a hidden agenda in the society to create a gentry class of scholar-technocrats at the most efficient pace so that we can staff them at the right places in government to make sure Singapore maintains her reign on the World Class stage for years, if not decades, to come, then the clarion call by MPs for a reform and the slaining of this sacred cow ought to keep Ong Ye Kung up at night thinking about whether to have a succulent steak for his next meal.
Levity aside, here is the MPs collective thought on what should replace streaming.
Denise Phua said: “Doing away with streaming does not equate to putting everyone in the same class for every subject, ignoring the need for each to learn at their own pace and method. Far from it.”
She noted that “in 2008, MOE scrapped streaming in primary schools and replaced it with subject-based banding, which allows pupils to take a combination of subjects at either Standard or Foundational level.”
Journalist Amelia Tang reports that “all five MPs who spoke on streaming called for subject-based banding to replace it, allowing students to take a combination of subjects at different difficulty levels, but without clear-cut labels such as “Normal””.
And Ang said: “Clearly, (the success of) subject-based banding has shown that sometimes we pigeon-hole and stream our young too early.”
Lesson? One, and it centers around the theme of “pigeon-hole” and “stream our young too early”.
Are we guilty of pigeon-hole-ing our young too early?
The irony is that we have fought for decades since independence to create a Singaporean culture, a resilient national identity, that is embedded in our pledge reminding us this: “We the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion.”
And just when we have achieved a good measure of that, that is, unity based on a multiracial, multilingual and multireligious people, we are now struggling with a unity threatened by inequality, class divide and streaming at a young age.
Indeed, poverty and prosperity come with their own issues.
Is civilisation then really a cycle where the initial struggles give way to success, and cursed by success, with mounting hubris and self-grandeur, we return back to our initial struggles? (this time, our struggles are magnified because of our obstinacy?)
Let me end with this thought I have about putting our young kids into the pigeon-hole academic grinder. It is called “Mommy, did you hide my childhood?”
Mommy, did you hide my childhood?
It was there yesterday, where’s it now?
As I sit beside my pencil box and textbook,
Where is my childhood mommy, I hope it’s found.
Mommy, I know you wish me well,
With enrichment classes and all.
But can’t you see and tell?
Is this really what I am living for?
Mommy, my best memory is spent with you.
Doing the things we love to do.
These memories are becoming few.
Cos you often say studying’s more cool.
But is it really so, is it really true?
Mommy, did you have your childhood too?
If you had yours, then where’s mine?
Is this how you and I bind?
So mommy, let’s look together for my childhood.
I can hear its cry, we can track its sound.
Unless mommy, I misunderstood.
That you’ve never intended for it to be found.
Cheerz?
No comments:
Post a Comment