Still very much a textbook-answer education system!

My son told me recently that in one of his English class tests, a fill-in-the-blank question was asked: Bruce Lee is a Kung Fu ______________ . My son and some classmates answered : master. They were marked wrong and were told the answer is: actor.

Goodness me, I am a Bruce Lee's fan, both his Kung Fu and movies, since my childhood days, and my son is currently watching The Legend of Bruce Lee every Sunday. I think he knows Bruce Lee better than the teacher who marked his answer wrong.

This is the trouble with the education system in Singapore, there is no room for creative and outside-textbook answers even though here and there, those in education always sing and preach creativity.

I still remember, when my eldest was in Primary Four, the Mathematics teacher told the class to use only the first method while there were three other methods listed, to solve the problems given in the Mathematics textbook. How to promote and encourage creativity with this sort of instruction? I thought a more creative way would be to tell the class to use any of the three methods but try to think of the fourth method if they could!

A young girl in my neighbourhood, while in Kindergarten, during colouring lessons, she coloured a refrigerator black. The teacher told her that there is no black refrigerator! The girl told the teacher, "The refrigerator in my house is black in colour!". On a separate occasion, the teacher taught the class, "Red apples can eat, green apples cannot eat.". The girl went home telling the mother, "My teacher said green apples cannot be eaten." when the family has been regularly eating green apples.

I think it is high time such teachers wake up their ideas, and those who are put in-charge in the respective ministry should put their ears to the ground to hear what is going on at the ground and operational level, even though some positive things are being introduced into the preschool education system right now.