Touching Base

Spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday touching base with the Singapore education scene at Suntec City. MOE’s ExCEL(Excellence through Continuous Enterprise and Learning) FEST turned out to be a pretty interesting experience for me.

I confess, ever since I began reading abt the new movement towards I&E (innovation and enterprise), promoting creative thinking etc in Singapore schools, I have been partly skeptical. I know too well from personal experience how quickly Singapore schools jump on any bandwagon pushed out by MOE. Whether or not the true spirit of reform and genuine benefit for students is present is often in question.

Quite expectedly, I was hit with one acronym after another at the fair. Other than the titular ExCEL, there was SAILing (Strategies for Active & Independent Learning) and SEEDing (Strategies for Effective Engagement & Development). I had anticipated that. And also quite expectedly, students and teachers were out in droves at the exhibition booths cajoling, explaining, advertising. And while most of the exhibits were interesting but not exactly out of the ordinary, there was an encouraging sense that there is at least a concerted effort in quite many schools to liven up learning in the classroom. The one innovation that stood out in my mind was The Dancing Multiplier, an innovation by Hougang Primary School. Utilizing the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) game, they’ve invented seven games of varying difficulty that allows students to “dance” while solving mathematical problems. Basically, the player will step on the different dance ‘spots’ to select answers to math questions under a given time-limit. Quick and accurate answering would effectively allow the player to dance aka DDR. Saw the various game machines taken up by enthusiastic primary school kids perspiring away to math (literally!).

I also thought that the Language Arts program in Dunman High School seemed like a very interesting interpretation of the “Teach Less, Learn More” directive. There, they have effectively replaced the traditional English Language curriculum with an interdiscplinary program which supposedly performs the “seamless integration of film, theatre, language, philosophy, political science and literature within a singular curricular framework.” I confess I wish I had something like that back in my secondary school days!

While I was happy to have gathered new understanding of the terrain of Singapore education for my own research, my most enjoyable experience at the exhibition would have to be having the young students earnestly explain their school’s innovation and exhibits to me. I was particularly impressed with a young lady from Yu Neng Primary School whose poise and confidence in guiding me through the Oral Learning Portal (OLP) belied her tender years. I was extremely entertained by another two adorable 8 year old pixies from CHIJ Our Lady of the Nativity who explained their project researching McDonald’s breakfast while holding hands the entire time. My most enjoyable moment was when I told them I knew their principal (who was my prefect mistress back in St. Nicks days) and saw them turn to one another in skepticism. “Really?” “(with a nonplussed shrug)I dunno.”

Speaking of St. Nicks, their “exhibit” was the Oat Cube – a candy/cookie which they made and sold during the Dec school holidays and with which they raised $7000. It was such hot property that this old girl couldn’t get a sample. While the girls looked smart and elegant in the SNG blazer, the teachers looked, erm, rather auntie-ish and NTUC sale-sy in their bright lime-green blazers.

I still feel like I know next to nothing about what’s going on in Singapore schools (this not a reflection of the exhibition but of my own lack of experience here), but I can honestly say I had quite an educational experience at the ExCEL FEST exhibition!