No, we don’t even make the cut of the
first 70! As the report published yesterday confirms Singapore has topped the
WORLD LIST for Science, Maths and Reading the three that are measured for this
PISA ranking. (Programme for International Student Assessment) This is a
remarkable achievement for a place that only became Country in 1965 and was way
behind Sri Lanka when we obtained independence in 1948.
It is time to acknowledge first that we
are bad, as that is the first step realizing how the world’s best brains at
birth through a hugely flawed education system does not even make the cut in international
rankings!
This bullshit about 99% literacy that we
have heard since the day we are born in not worth the paper it is written on,
when the closest place to Sri Lanka which is one of the few places Sri Lankans
can travel without visas, has the best education and it goes for rich and poor
alike, quashing the theory that family wealth plays a part!
The BBC article is also worth reading in
full to understand why Singapore is so good, and what it is we MUST do before
we can even think of getting there, as I believe we can in my lifetime if we
begin today.
I want my readers to know that I have
written over 150 articles in the 9 years I have been writing this blog on
Education Topic alone, and the answers are all within this blog. As the links
more than amplify, the secret is in good teachers who are able to get the best
of the students and motivate them to show their true potential. It is
elementary my dear Watson, there are NO secrets to it.
We have some of the dumbest teachers and
most regressive system of hiring and remunerating teachers in the world, and we
have not learned this simple lesson. It was proved that one of the schools that
topped the Country in the Scholarship exam did not have proper class rooms or
facilities, only dedicated teachers. What more proof do we want?
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38173237
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38173237
We must sack Ministers and
Administrators and start from scratch. Give me 5 years as Czar and I will show
you what can be done! The Govt. allocated 6% last year and could not even spend
1.5% (a quarter) need I say more?
3 comments:
Sri Lanka's National Institute of Education is a dump of idiots, it is where you go to learn how to UNLEARN
So send our best teacher trainers to the Singapore's National Institute of Education for a year to learn how to teach the teachers as a start. Do that today, and results may come in 20 years!
I guess our politicians only have a vision for themselves for another day, not for the Country 20 years from now. So we must just do away with the current set of politicians if we are ever to make the grade. They are the reason why we are failing and they don't realize how bad they are. So we must just strip them out for life.
Most teachers are illiterate in their own mother tongue, so a knowledge of English to read this article and understand the implications is simply beyond them. We just have start with importing people to teach the teachers!
Good (and valuable) article, but you miss one important point. The primary mode of education in Sri Lanka is still "learning by heart", a practice encouraged by our religious superiors. Many of the questions in PISA (which is the basis of the ranking) require learning to figure things out, to think critically, to read a passage and debate and understand different points of view. This is the right idea (more so in this day and age when you can look up anything in google without having to memorize everything) and is also vital for future development. It is the lack of this capability which make many students, even those who seem to pass out apparently well, unable to do a basic job properly because every job, no matter what it is, will require "thinking out of the box".
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