Passion for life

An ideal education should inspire a person to have a passion for life.

He who has passion for life is one who gives his best in all that he does; from whatever walk of life he comes from. He gives total commitment to whatever he does.

Such a person is likely to exude confidence and a positive self-esteem, and live a very fulfilling life. He is thus well placed to contribute to the betterment of society.

As you know, we are now in the age of globalisation where countries and cultures are increasingly interconnected. This is facilitated by the increase use of IT especially with evolution of knowledge-based economies (e-commerce).

The result of this is that with technology advances at a faster pace, we must constantly acquire new skills for the new knowledge. Therefore it is critical that we must constantly up-grade, relearn, retrain themselves. We must embrace change in this "Brave New World."

It has been said that being illiterate today doesn't mean inability to read but it means the inability to learn, unlearn and relearn.

It follows that we must be willing to adapt in an ever-changing world in increasingly short periods of time. Adaptability goes beyond the readiness to retrain ourselves. It also means that we must be able to adopt other cultures' perspectives, and adapt ourselves to different ways of looking at the world and different ways of doing things. We must be flexible in our outlook

At this point, schools are very much compartmentalised into different disciplines

For e.g. in universities – Students are very specialised in their respective disciplines. E.g. the social sciences, medicine, business, arts. There is no cross-disciplinary perspective. This limits our perspective in looking at our subject matter and stunts creativity. 

We would like to see more cross–disciplinary project work. We would like a curriculum that encompasses subjects from different disciplines. E.g.: A student could take a mixture of subjects from the sciences, arts and maths for projects.

At present, modes of assessment are exam-orientated.

We believe that a curriculum that is heavily reliant on exams may not necessarily help in real learning. It merely just hone memory work, exam skills instead of genuine understanding of the subject matter and application of knowledge.

Exams place a lot of unnecessary stress on students. It also kills the enjoyment out of learning.

Solution: Less weightage is given exams but knowledge is tested with different assessment modes E.g project work, roleplays, presentations etc

We are still quite used to traditional classroom teaching methods. E.g.: the whiteboard, heavy reliance on textbooks.

Solution: more field trips so that lessons really come to life. To gain first hand experience.

CBL learning which is more interactive in nature compared to the textbook. This can extended to virtual classroom, digitised notepads. Simulate the environment for a more enriching learning experience.