Its all too easy to say "relax" to a person hu's having stress, but to be relaxed while having stress yourself is not an easy task.
'Teach less, learn more' yet to be achievedSTIMES0020050509e15a0000d
ST Forum
288 Words
10 May 2005
Straits TimesEnglish(c) 2005
Singapore Press Holdings Limited
IT HAS been almost nine months since Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said 'we've got to teach less so that our students can learn more'. I am curious as to how the idea has taken off.
Hailing from one of Singapore's 17 junior colleges, my experience is that not much has changed. Even though school hours have been reduced (for my college, at least), the workload has not got any lighter.
Assignments and tutorials take up most of our free time; weekends are seldom spared. It is no wonder then that most of my classmates have stopped trying to keep up with the schoolwork.
For a person who does his homework religiously and tries to keep up with school, any free time would be welcomed as a break, and is unlikely to be spent pursuing even more knowledge.
A teacher once said: 'Many children come to us naturally creative and curious, with a sense of wonder and excitement, only to be turned off shortly after they start school.'
I understand that junior-college teachers have a syllabus to finish in two years. As much as they may want us to have a meaningful education, they have to complete the syllabus in time for the examinations.
To go beyond conventional teaching methods would be too much of a hassle, and might also be deemed too risky.
The road to teaching less, learning more is not a smooth one; perhaps much courage is needed for those involved. And until we actually take that 'leap of faith', as my maths teacher would put it when solving problems, it's back to the tutorials for me.
Istyana Putri Ibrahim (Miss)