Lip service: My thoughts on the latest meddling in the education system

The Ministry of Education (MOE) yesterday announced a host of drastic changes in the education system with the aim of reducing the emphasis on grades. (TODAYonline article)

I have mixed feelings about the changes. Some are heading in the right direction while others fly totally wide of the mark.

Here are the major changes and my reactions to them.

Change: Primary 1 and 2 pupils will have totally no exams. Primary 3 and 5 and Secondary 1 and 3 students will only have exams at the end of the year.
I don't like to eat vegetables. Every time vegetables appear on my plate, I will use my fork and poke at them halfheartedly, pushing them here and there but never actually putting them in my mouth. That's exactly the analogy I would use to describe this change. The vegetables represent the exam-related stress that MOE purports to be trying to reduce. The child holding the fork is MOE itself. By getting rid of some exams but not others, they are simply taking the stress that would have been allocated to the exams they got rid of, and piling it onto the exams that are left. The total amount of stress doesn't change. In fact, it's now concentrated on the few exams that are actually still around. The poor kids will end up suffering because they coast along happily for almost two years with no exams, then get hothoused intensely to face a set of exams that loom suddenly from out of nowhere, then coast along happily for close to another two years, then get hothoused intensely to face another set of exams, et cetera. They don't get to build up the soft skills required to take exams effectively and cope with the associated pressures, and that's no good because at the end of the day, the monstrosity that is the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is still there.

Change: All students from Pri 3 to Sec 4 or Sec 5 will not have more than one weighted assessment per subject per school term. Weighted assessments count towards the child's overall score at the end of the year and include class tests and project work.
This change runs totally counter to what MOE should be doing. They should be having more weighted assessments, each accounting for less of the overall grade. That's how to redistribute the stress load and reduce the emphasis on exams. There should also be a greater variety of assessment methods, like topical quizzes, short speeches, longer presentations, and activities where kids have to create something from scratch. Everything should contribute to the final score somehow, similar to the way we are assessed at the tertiary level where we do a few assignments that, together with the formal tests and exams, make up our final grade. Exams don't inculcate 21st century competencies. Assignments and projects do. So have more of them, and make them count.

Change: The report book will be redesigned as shown in the diagram below, taken from the MOE press release.

Taken from the TODAYonline website; original source from MOE press release.

Let's look at each deleted element individually.

• Class and level position: No arguments here. I can see how this might breed an unhealthy sense of competition and discourage weaker students. Students don't need to know their exact ranking to have a sense of where they stand relative to their peers.
• Class and level mean: This, I disagree with. Like I've said before, the national exams like the PSLE and O Levels aren't disappearing anytime soon, and everybody knows those use the bell curve for grading where students are competing directly with their peers to get the coveted A grades. Therefore it's very useful for these students to be able to keep track of their performance relative to the rest of their cohort throughout their time in school. It doesn't need to be in the form of rankings, which are unnecessarily detailed. But mean scores are important because students who see that they are below the mean in a certain subject will know that they need to do something to improve in that subject. Ignorance is bliss but it'll lead to a rude shock later when the national exam results are released, but by then it'll be too late.
• Minimum and maximum marks: I disagree with this for the same reasons as explained in the point immediately above. Students need to see if they're falling close to the minimum score so that they can make efforts to buck up. Conversely, students who are close to the maximum score in a certain subject can choose to strategically re-prioritise their study time for that subject to their weaker subjects instead.
• Underlining and/or colouring of marks for subjects failed: Empty and without substance. That's all I have to say about this one. Unless all students and parents in Singapore become visually handicapped or numerically challenged, this particular tweak isn't going to achieve anything. People will still look at the scores and highlight the failed subjects in their minds anyway.
• Pass/fail result: Why is it bad to tell students if they passed or failed? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I shall say this again: Until we get rid of exams completely, students need to know how they are doing. They don't need the fine-grained details like their precise rank, but at least give them some statistics for them to chew on. Pass/fail is the most nominal, non-threatening piece of information for the purposes of performance tracking. I see no good reason for it to be removed.
• Mean subject grades: As a single summary value to represent how one is faring in school, mean subject grades (MSG) are without a doubt one of the most useful. Critics will argue that students can go around asking one another "What's your MSG?" and this fosters unhealthy competitiveness, but students can do that with the raw scores that are still in the report book too. And they can always compute the MSG themselves based on their raw scores. It's a simple averaging calculation that an upper-primary child can do in one minute. So taking it away, once again, serves no purpose.
• Overall total marks: Everything I just said about the MSG applies to this too. I'm tired of repeating myself.
• L1R5, L1R4, EMB3 and EMB1 for Lower Secondary levels: I guess the question here is whether L1R5 et al only become relevant at the upper secondary level when admission to junior colleges and polytechnics move to the forefront of students' collective consciousness. Do lower secondary students not need to know their L1R5? Again here I'd like to point out that it's the work of ten seconds for any student to figure out their L1R5 on their own, so what's the harm in giving it to them right away?

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is, providing students with information about their academic performance is not all bad. They need such information in order to survive within the current system which still requires them to take high-stakes exams at the so-called transition points in their educational journey. The key is to strike a balance between giving them too much information and too little. I say that numbers that are too exact, like a student's rank, can be justifiably removed, but more "big picture" statistics like averages, minimums, and maximums should be retained.

Change: Under the revised criteria for the Edusave awards, students will be assessed based on factors such as diligence, curiosity, collaboration and enthusiasm in daily lessons and learning activities.
It sounds good in theory, but such a qualitative and subjective system is open to a lot of abuse, discrimination, favouritism, bias, and, dare I say it, corruption. Singapore prides itself as a meritocratic society. Let's not design our education system in a way that rewards sucking up. Or are we now being cynical and training our young to be good at brown-nosing from an early age so they have an advantage at the workplace when they grow up?

The latest announcement by MOE ticked a couple of boxes for me, but sadly there were more misses than hits. However, it will be seven years before we get any concrete indication of what effect these changes have truly had, when the first batch of pupils under this revamped system take their PSLE.

My recess week: AY2018/19 Semester 1

With no more online modules, I'm spending more time in school nowadays compared to previous semesters. But that's okay because fortunately, the module combination I've chosen is light on project work and heavy on individual assessment components, meaning that I have more control over how I spend my time and plan my workflow without having to accommodate the schedules of other people as much.

Nonetheless, this recess week has been a nice respite from the grinding cycle of readings, tutorials, and writing up lecture notes for every topic of every module every week. I got some fun stuff in, to recharge my mental energy and get me ready to deal with the second half of the semester.

Here are some highlights.

Johnny English Strikes Again

In my humble opinion, the Johnny English film franchise is the best thing to happen in the realm of action comedy. Having greatly enjoyed the first two movies in the series, I almost fainted in delight when trailers for a third appeared early this year.

The movie had an aggressive marketing campaign behind it. Advertisements bombarded me on television, social media, and out-of-home. It certainly worked on me, as I coughed up some of my meagre pocket money on Thursday to take myself and my parents to watch the film.

We went to Shaw Cinemas at Punggol Waterway Point. Shaw is the most affordable cinema chain in Singapore with a regular adult ticket for weekday afternoons priced at $8.50, a dollar lower than the competition. It also offers unbeatable deals for students at $6.50 for a weekday afternoon screening, and seniors at $4.00 for the same. I bought one of each of the three types of ticket so I paid $19 in total.

Cost aside, Shaw is also very friendly to disabled patrons. Their website lists detailed instructions on accessibility arrangements to the various cinema halls, taking the guesswork out of trying to decide where to go to catch a movie as someone in a wheelchair. As disabled patrons are usually accompanied by caregivers, the cinema also provides a short row of three special seats right at the back of the hall next to the slot for the wheelchair, so that the caregivers are guaranteed to sit next to their charge. This special row of seats is usually blocked off and nobody can book them, and the counter staff at the box office will only open them up for booking when a disabled cinemagoer turns up with caregivers.

Screenshot of the Shaw Cinemas Waterway Point page. The blue box contains information specifically for disabled patrons.

When the blue box is clicked, it expands to reveal the information inside.

Let's give a round of applause to Shaw Cinemas.

Moving on, the film itself was a delight to watch and justified every single cent I spent on it, and then some. Though it may be chockfull of slapstick gags, sharp wit, wry British humour, and the evergreen rubbery facial expressions of Rowan Atkinson, the movie's plot unmistakably offers us a serious warning about the direction the world is currently heading in. With our ever-increasing reliance on digital services being controlled by an ever-shrinking pool of giant technology companies like Facebook and Google, we should be asking: "Are we really still in control of our own lives? Or are even our governments at the mercy of these companies now?"

Personally, I particularly identified with the theme of a "dinosaur", the secret agent Johnny English who is trained in old-school spycraft, being confounded by the new world, where the spies use smartphones in place of pistols and have to sign Health and Safety indemnity forms every time they use a new gadget. The Johnny English franchise explored this theme somewhat in the second film, Johnny English Reborn, but the focus then was more on how the world has become so commercialised and politically correct that the spy agency English works for got rebranded to Toshiba MI7 with the tagline "Spying for you".

I'm quite a relic myself. Sure, I use a smartphone and have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. But I get bored of these relatively quickly and would much rather spend my leisure time in front of the television or, when my wallet is fat enough, inside a cinema. The trend of people shunning the cinemas for Netflix escapes my comprehension. The experience of a movie that you get in the cinema, with the giant screen, booming sound system, and frigid air conditioning, is something you'll never be able to replicate at home.

Back to the movie. I also liked the abundance of Received Pronunciation accents among the characters. How refreshing to hear a movie in English that isn't filled with the American accent! The movie had several nods to pre-2000 culture too, including the songs Rasputin by Boney M and Venus by Bananarama, and the comedy television series 'Allo 'Allo! by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

It's definitely a silly movie meant for one-and-a-half hours of mindless entertainment, so if you're the type who gets frustrated by a scene of a medieval suit of armour being able to stop bullets from a modern gun, don't watch. But that's not to say it's a simplistic movie that kids will be able to appreciate either. Many of the jokes require you to take note of something that someone says early on in the movie and relate it to something that happens towards the end. You must also be sharp enough to understand the humour in lines like: "Get me a vodka and tonic, no tonic, no ice."

Panna Cotta

Saizeriya is extremely underrated. Their food is excellent, their portions are massive, their menu is comprehensive, and their prices are low.

Being a fan of Italian food, namely pasta, I've understandably come to love this casual dining restaurant chain. I recently discovered the joy of the dessert item panna cotta, which Saizeriya sells for $4.90. Made of cream thickened into a pudding-like consistency with gelatin, the version sold here is specially flown in from Italy so you can be sure that you're getting the authentic dish!

Panna cotta with caramel sauce from Saizeriya at City Square Mall.

Suitably rested, I'm now ready for the next two months until the next break in December!

Some small tweaks to the design of this blog

I just made a couple of minor adjustments to the design of this blog.

This semester, I am taking NM3217 Design for Strategic Communications, and we learned about typography during one of the lectures. And true to the spirit of my major, Communications and New Media, this is my attempt at applying the lessons to the real world.

Our lecturer said that body text, which forms the bulk of the content on a page, should use typefaces with serif. A serif is the little line at the ends of strokes in, for example, Times New Roman. Look at this character N. See the short horizontal lines at the bottom of the stroke on the left and at the top of the stroke on the right? Those are serifs.

In contrast, Arial does not have serif. Such typefaces are referred to as sans serif. They are usually used for display text, such as headlines and titles.

The reason for using serif typefaces for body text is because body text involves chunks of words arranged in paragraphs. The serifs form guiding lines, sort of like rulers, that help the reader's eyes keep track of where they are on the page. Without the serifs, the reader's eyes might stray into neighbouring lines and the reader will have to expend mental energy to figure out where they got lost.

As communicators striving to make our writing reader-friendly, that is something we want to avoid.

So here are the changes I made to this blog.

1. The typeface for the body text of posts, i.e., what you are looking at right now, used to be sans serif. It is now good old Times New Roman, a serif font. This change was applied retroactively so posts from the very beginning of this blog are also affected.
2. I increased the font size from 12 points to 14 points. This should make it more comfortable on your eyes.
3. The font size of post titles was increased from 22 points to 24 points so that it contrasts better with the body text.
4. I decreased the width of the blog. You should be able to see more of the legal pad paper-like background picture now. Previously, the total width of the blog display area from the left edge to the right edge was 1500 pixels, with the right sidebar containing the blog archive, email subscription box, and my tweet feed taking up 300 of these pixels. With the main display area having a width of 1200 pixels, my blog entry text had a stringy look, as long lines of characters stretched across the page like the cheese oozing between slices of pizza. Long lines are no good for readability because the eyes tend to lose their way somewhere in the middle. So I reduced the overall width to 1000 pixels. The right sidebar is still 300 and the main area is now 700 pixels. You should see shorter lines and blockier paragraphs as a result.

Hopefully these changes improve your experience as a reader of my blog!

Cross-posting my LinkedIn article: Press release

Besides writing on this blog, which I reserve for less serious topics, I also publish articles on LinkedIn about my learning experiences in communications and public relations.

Click here to see an article I wrote on 2 May 2018, Press release: A newbie's anecdote.

The fascinating world of mixed martial arts

Recently I caught the MMA bug. It's all thanks to the live telecasts of One Championship on Okto.

Typically taking place on Friday nights, these live telecasts show the action from One Championship's mixed martial arts (MMA) events wherever they are in Asia.

One Championship bills itself as the largest MMA promotion in the world, and says it is watched in 138 countries globally.

I don't really know how true those claims are, as I am by no means knowledgeable about the MMA scene. My enjoyment of the sport is in its infancy and I'm only just getting to grips with everything that goes on.

But what I do know is that One Championship's product is wonderful to watch.

I'll admit that I wasn't always accepting towards MMA. Like many who are not fans of the sport, I used to sneer at how MMA was basically gay pornography, as it involves two sweaty same-sex people writhing together on the ground.

That's not exactly fighting, is it?

Well, a few months ago, I decided on a whim to tune into one of the Okto broadcasts just to have a look. I thought I'd give it a chance to prove itself. And I like watching things live on television for free, so I wasn't going to waste this opportunity.

Besides, live sports broadcasts go fantastically well with Pepsi, my beverage of choice.

What I saw surprised me. It was hugely entertaining from start to finish. The only draggy bits were when the fighters make their overly exaggerated and tacky entrances accompanied by epilepsy-inducing lights and cringeworthy soundtracks, but these are mercifully short.

And the quality of the action was great. It obviously won't be as thrilling as professional wrestling of course, because that is scripted and performed by trained actors and stuntmen. There are no "No Disqualification", "Street Fight", or "Falls Count Anywhere" matches where fighters bludgeon each other half to death with weapons.

But MMA has the one thing that professional wrestling will never have: an air of legitimacy. When the two athletes in the cage are slugging it out, you know that they're doing it for real. They're giving it everything they have.

And when somebody wins, it's because he/she really came out on top.

Regarding the comparison to gay porn, I have to say that although fighters do go to ground and grapple, they spend roughly the same amount of time on their feet trading punches and kicks. In MMA, there are many ways to win, and knockout is one of the fastest and most exciting. The fighters know that, so they try to finish their opponents this way if they can.

One Championship also introduced a new initiative not too long ago known as Super Series. Matches in this series are muay thai kickboxing bouts, meaning that they are purely striking and grappling is banned.

Even when the contest goes to the floor, it's still fun to watch if you know what to look for. Grappling is like a chess match, with each athlete constantly manoeuvring to gain an advantageous position. Many fighters have some form of training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), which emphasises the use of leverage in the arms and legs, so you'll often see them moving their limbs around a lot. It's a good mental exercise to take note of all these movements and guess what will happen next.

I also enjoy judging the fights in my mind by predicting who will win if the match goes to the judges' scorecards. Most of the time this doesn't happen and the match ends in a decisive finish such as through knockout or submission, but title fights tend to go all five rounds without a clear winner as the two contenders are equally strong. And I'm pleased to say that so far, I've got most of my judgments right, and the fighter I choose to win is often the one the judges pick too.

Football rules and refereeing is one area that has always captured my interest and I find myself paying attention to the referee in MMA too. The referees in MMA hold quite a lot of power as they can directly influence the result of a match by awarding victories through technical knockout, which happens when they think that one fighter has suffered excessive damage, or disqualification if they deem that an illegal move such as a suplex or soccer kick was used.

They are also responsible for keeping the fans happy by making sure there is enough action going on in the cage. No one likes to see two athletes circling round and round, posturing here and there without actually hitting each other, and if the fighters in One Championship do that, the referee will issue them with a yellow card, and the payment they get for taking part in the event will be reduced.

But the thing that most impresses me about MMA referees is their positioning and movement. They are exceptional at this. MMA cages are very tiny spaces compared to football fields, yet football referees somehow manage to get in the way of the players and the ball quite often. This wouldn't do in MMA. If a referee strays too close to the fight, he might catch a flying elbow with his face!

Having discovered the joy of watching MMA, I now tune in faithfully to every One Championship live telecast and strongly advise you to give it a shot too. Check when the next One Championship live telecast is scheduled at https://www.toggle.sg/en/channelguide/oktosports.