
Singapore to rethink high-stakes math tests - prostoalex
http://qz.com/780752/singapore-is-rethinking-high-stakes-tests/
======
yomly
From experience, there is a tendency to favour quantity over quality of work
in Asia. This can be seen from how students in China are given stacks and
stacks of mindnumbing multiple-choice questions for homework or how children
are measured by time-spent practising music or sports rather than being
encouraged to practice smart.

I suspect part of this comes from (relatively) uneducated parents (recall that
50~60 years ago China was in the middle of a cultural revolution and the
Singapore of 1960/70 would be barely recognisable when compared to today's).

But I also wonder how much of this is baked into the culture through the
language: character-based languages require a great deal more rote learning
than others, and especially for children --who have no conceptual grasp of
syntax / grammar-- memorisation is probably the most effective way of teaching
it. It would then naturally follow to expand on that learning style on other
disciplines...

~~~
posterboy
> character-based languages

> children --who have no conceptual grasp of syntax / grammar--

Do you speak Chinese? I doubt you know what you are talking about, because
IMHO complex semantics are hardly possible without syntax. If you imply that
Chinese are in general incapable of ideas as complex as American's, only
because of the language, that would be perceived as a slur. Can you
substantiate your claim?

> memorisation is probably the most effective way of teaching it

as evident by the myriads of data structures developed to memorize data,
memory is syntactic and by that I mean ordered.

~~~
Accacin
I think he means that children in general don't learn a language by learning
syntax and grammar.

~~~
Accacin
With English and I guess other languages, you just learn your alphabet and you
can guess words pretty well. This is not the same as in Chinese, so children
would most likely need to use repition a lot more to learn the characters that
they need to learn.

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lordnacho
I think the key take-away is they're using evidence to make decisions. There's
no end to prescriptions in education: small class sizes, start early,
selection, non-selection, child-led, and so on.

From my own experience, it makes sense to make less of the tests. I liked
tests, and I did math contests, but a lot of people don't like it. And when
you look at work, you rarely have an occasion where it's just about knowing
something and doing a calculation, which is what they do in high school maths.
The times I've done math at work it's been something like this:

\- We have some option model that needs to be implemented

\- The model turns out to require a function that we don't have in the
standard lib (Bessel function)

\- There's a book with an implementation in C

\- There's a wikipedia page that we'll scan to make sure there's no gremlins

\- We then start to write the implementation in our own lib

\- We do some tests to make sure the number that comes out of the Bessel
function is correct

\- We do some tests to see that the option model comes out with the right
number

None of that workflow is anything like in school, where you'd take some
function, apply some trig relations, apply the list of integration rules, and
plug in the starting value. Without a book.

------
adamnemecek
We have to rethink the way schools work. The current system is fundamentally
flawed. It assumes that people use logic when in reality people use pattern
matching but this isn't really reflected in the way we teach. School of the
future should teach reading as quickly as possible and from then on, it should
be mostly a co-working space where you read and where the teacher doesn't
really teach but mostly just helps with things when you get stuck. I think
that the current curricula can be compressed into much fewer years, like
something equivalent to a high school education can be compressed to like a
half. Also the lack of 'immediate feedback' is terrible from the educational
point of view.

~~~
donw
Having high school education last until the onset of adulthood does have a
number of benefits, but to realize those benefits, Americans need to stop
treating high school as the first step towards University.

The purpose of government-provided education _should_ be to prepare its
students to become citizens.

As a side benefit, those students are also employable, because the gamut of
skills that you need as a citizen overlaps heavily with what you need to
succeed, either as an employee, or as an entrepreneur: critical thinking,
rhetoric, art, logic, practical mathematics, writing and communication,
collaboration, physical fitness, maintenance of health and wellness, self-
directed learning, a knowledge of history and politics, knowledge of both the
sciences and how to apply the scientific method, and probably more than a few
more things that I have overlooked.

American high schools teach few of these. Sure, you are required to learn
"science", but I don't recall my school ever forcing us to go through the
process of creating a theory, designing an experiment to attempt to falsify
our theory, and running through the experimental process.

Same goes for critical thinking -- arguing against the teacher's viewpoint is
strongly discouraged. You are only allowed to color within the lines.

Physical fitness classes are largely a joke, mostly because they don't cater
to things that might be interesting to people that prefer individual sports. I
would have _loved_ if my school offered Karate, climbing, or even just hiking
as physical fitness courses.

We should also take a page from Japan, and make students responsible for the
upkeep and maintenance of their schools, under supervision, of course.

I doubt any of this could be done in public schools at this stage, though --
the liabilities are too great, and there are too many special interests that
make a large amount of money off of the current system.

~~~
projektir
I don't know how productive some of this would be, really. School is too
stressful, and goes too fast, to really understand an example with creating a
theory and designing an experiment. It will be perceived as troublesome, most
wouldn't understand or be able to keep up. Look at that list you have there.
Logic, mathematics, writing, history and politics, and science. These things
are huge. Schools /have/ been trying to cram these things in to the point
where there was no room left for all the other things you mention.

I think one of the core issues with modern education is trying to teach
children complex and specific concepts in the first place. Their brains are
not yet developed, their motivation is nil, and there's not enough time. It
benefits those with higher base intelligence for the most part. Anything they
do understand is quickly forgotten. The same concepts are so much easier to
understand 10 years later, and there's a higher chance that they would be
grounded in something they actually care about at that point as opposed to
trying to explain to a 13 year old why Shakespeare is interesting.

Of course, that would require a fundamental restructuring of society, and more
push towards people learning in their 20's and 30's and beyond. But I think
it's extremely silly to devote the first 1/5 of one's projected life
expectancy to heavy learning, at a point where they barely understand
anything, and their motivations are not their own, and then almost completely
drop it for the other 4/5 where you just work, work, work. And the first 20
years are probably more important for the rest of your life than anything you
do afterwards. The focus on employment is part of an issue. The problem isn't
with schools producing employable people. The problem is the concept of
employability itself and what it does to society. Why are we trying to make
schools more aligned with something that's a bigger problem in itself? What a
waste.

School should focus on learning how to learn, how to discern information,
where to find information, etc., and core skills that are going to be relevant
to effectively everyone - such as some that you mentioned, like health and
wellness, and I'd add cleaning and cooking to the list and things like being
considerate towards other people.

