An alternative to tuition in Singapore?

Okay, I have once again managed to provoke a lot of controversy with my last post on tuition and I have written a lot about the issue. My regular readers will know that I am vehemently anti-tuition and I strongly feel that students should not be vigorously spoon-fed through the tuition system. They should be encouraged to act in a far more autonomous manner so that university wouldn't come as a massive shock to the system when the spoon-feeding stops. A friend on Facebook did challenge me, "It's so easy for you to criticize the system, why don't you come up with an alternative to tuition then? Something that will be worthwhile for the students to do in their spare time that will lead to them gaining fruitful employment in their adult lives."

I accept your challenge.

Only ten more chapters to go before I can go to bed...

My spare time in my school days in Singapore was spent doing sport and little else - but I did achieve enough impressive results in it to help set me apart and give my CV just enough sparkle to make people sit up and go, "hey, this guy is a former national champion gymnast". The world was a very different place back then in the late 80s and early 90s - most of all, it was before the era of the internet and mobile phones. I have heard parents complain that their kids are very distracted by things like Facebook and Twitter and they would have to keep their kids in a technology free zone to force them to study. That's a terrible approach, this is the parent thinking, "Well, I didn't have all this Facebook and social media crap when I was a student, so I will turn back the clock for my children and make them study the same way, 80's style".

Wrong wrong wrong. Even if that approach did work for you back in the 1980s, you shouldn't impose it in your children for the simple reason that it is 2012 today, not 1984. Trying to impose the 80's on your child will only lead to resentment and alienation and widen the generation gap - it is ultimately counter-productive. It's one thing to share your 1980s music with your child, it's another to inflict your 1980's student experiences on your children!

I am going to talk to you about an event which is currently taking place in London: Young Rewired State 2012. It is a hackathon for under 18s. Now hackathons are nothing new in the IT industry, in fact, it is a growing trend with hackathons happening all over the world from Sydney to Singapore to Silicon Valley. They are a great way for IT professionals to network with other like minded professionals, meet potential employers or business partners and improve their skills. Normally, these hackathons are pretty much only for working professionals and whilst you may get some university students who come along and observe, if anyone under 18 wanders in, the reaction would be, "hey kid, are you looking for your dad or mum?"

This is why I think Young Rewired State 2012 is such a brilliant event because it is giving the teenagers (some as young as 13) the chance to function like working adults and work with their peers. There are no 'teachers' per se, only mentors who are instructed not to treat the teenagers like students, but adult peers who need help, rather than spoon-feeding. The event is sponsored by some of the biggest names in the industry: SAP, Three, GoSquared, Cloud Foundry, Google and DXW - so clearly, they have a vested interest in trying to nurture the next generation of coders.

Now I thought, perhaps they are already doing this in Singapore - I remember being given some IT lessons back in RI all those years ago, surely things have evolved since? No, it hasn't. I had a look at VJC's 'A' level curriculum - there is nothing available for those interested in IT, just the usual academic subjects that we did back in the pre-internet days of the 1990s. I then went to the RI website and had a look and thankfully, they do have an IT department with a very respectable programme - phew. At least they're not in the dark ages. However, that was only for the juniors in year 1 - 4, when I then went to look at the departments for year 5 - 6 (ie. leading up to A levels), IT had disappeared. Why? Good grief, WHY? After having nurtured your students for 4 years with technology, you then decide it's not important for trying to gain admission into university so you do the Singaporean thing and focus on academic subjects like maths and physics instead?

You know what pisses me off about this very stupid Singaporean approach? You guys are losing sight of the long term goal - the long term goal of education is to prepare the student for the working world, so that the student may be equipped with the right kind of skills to get a job when s/he leaves full time education - not to simply get the most number of As possible in order to qualify for the best university. Duh. That is why you have the problem in Singapore where graduates are unable to find gainful employment because they were simply not geared up for the working world as a student.

And do you know why this is the case? Whilst there may be younger teachers entering the profession all the time, the people at the top of the food chain in MOE (and the private schools) are all ... well, for want of a better word - old. I'm not being ageist and this is a speculation at best, but yeah, I am speculating that the MOE is run by old fogies who simply don't get modern technology and most importantly, are very stubborn and set in their ways about what education should be. They are old dinosaurs who refuse to evolve and it's painful to think that we have to wait for them to die (or retire) before someone younger can come in and shake up the whole system to bring it into the 21st century.

Is this the MOE's attitude about IT and how important it is in this day & age?

The crux of the problem is that these old dinosaurs are blissfully unaware of just how out of step they are with the needs of young students today - they think, "I'm not ignorant. I am on the computer all the time, I have a smart phone, I know about the internet." Yes, but there is a big gap between using a computer and understanding computer works - which is why coding is so important for children and I am shocked that it is not a part of the curriculum in Singapore today. These dinosaurs don't know about coding - and so they deem it unimportant or irrelevant, which is a terrible mistake because they are only looking at the world from their point of view, a kind of 井底之蛙 tunnel vision.

Furthermore, IT professionals tend not to end up in teaching. There is a gulf between the world of teachers and the world of IT crowd. The thing is that the most ambitious IT professionals think, "I am going to invent the next app that is going to make me millions!" They don't think, "I'm going to not invent anything new but end up teaching in a secondary school." What you do end up with are the IT professionals who are probably unable to get a job either with a big name in the industry or get jobs interdependently as a contractor  - and they think, "oh shit I have got to pay the bills", so they end up teaching. Sorry if that's a bit of a grim picture I am painting but there you go.

Granted not every child will go into IT as a career, but surely some attempt should be made to teach coding to students in Singapore and if they are good at it, then they should have the option to do it as an A level subject - as is the case in Britain where ICT is a popular 'A' level subject. It is a brilliant way to show students something that is pretty darn close to the working world, given how so many IT professionals do coding for a living. C++ should be offered alongside foreign languages in the curriculum whilst the hardcore academic subjects like maths, physics and chemistry should evolve into a kind of applied engineering science, rather than a strictly academic exercise based around memorizing chunks of facts and formulas.

It's time to embrace the future. 

To make the problem worse, Singaporean parents are too... I was going to use the word rigid but actually the word stupid is far more appropriate. Yeah they're too bloody stupid (truth be told!) to question how wrong the system is and bludgeon their poor kids through this very warped system even though it is not going to do their kids much good in the long run. Perhaps it's not so much the relative intelligence or stupidity of the parents - but it's just this Singaporean mentality not to question the system, to 乖乖听话 and follow the rules that create such bad parents in Singapore. It is not in the Singaporean nature to question the system, even when it is shockingly bad. Heck - at least 60.14% of Singaporeans are precisely like that.

Indeed in some good schools in some countries, IT is already a vital part of the students' education from a young age but if your child is not lucky enough to be in such a school, rather than spend all this time and money on all this pointless, useless tuition - why not give your child the chance to learn something far more useless and practical in the long run like coding, which is not taught in school but may well lead to a future career in IT for your child?

What kind of skills would you need to find a good job?

I wonder if there are any junior hackathon events like Young Rewired State 2012 in Singapore which will give teenagers a chance to gain such valuable experiences - if so, do leave a comment and let me know. Such events are so good for young people, to have the chance to code alongside industry experts and be mentored by working professionals - man, I wish I had that opportunity when I was a teenager and get close to the working world.

So there you go parents, seek out opportunities like that for your children to get them ready for the working world - tuition does little to help children prepare for the working world for it only wraps them up further in the world of books, homework, exams and school, alienating them from the working world. In fact, the only career that schools and tuition may prepare a child for is that of teaching - be it as a teacher in a school or as a tuition teacher. So if you want to be a teacher - fine, but for the rest who do not desire to enter the noble profession of teaching, please, let's prepare them for the working world.