Thursday, March 29, 2007

there's something about ..... arena final

Sometime in February, I did a post on Channel 5 debate program The Arena.

Yesterday I caught the Result show for the Final, between UWC and Hwa Chong Institution.

And Man... aren't I dissappointed.

When UWC last trashed Nanyang Girls, I thought perhaps UWC was sending girls much older.

Last night's final, they TRASHED Hwa Chong. Not even a close match. It was 78 vs 22.

So I decided to go to the website to check the age of the students and realised that all participants are 15 years old, even those in UWC.

What's wrong with our local boys and girls man!!!!!

While debate is about eloquence, surely logic and quick thinking can compensate for the language inferiority, if it was any inferior at all.

But to be trashed in a Final.....

I went through the Forum pages of the website. Some people was making a post whether it's fair to have invited UWC into a compeition like this. This chap was saying that they are international school and they have advantage over singapore school. He didn't say what advantages these International school has, but given these results, I do think their advantage is their curriculum.

Another fellow in the forum was argueing that UWC is also a school in Singapore and such they has every right to take part in such a competition.

Yes and no. UWC is a school listed in Singapore. BUT Singaporean is not allowed to be enrolled into UWC. So how is this fair?

I know... I know.... Eric Khoo studied there. But if my father own Goodwood Hotel and once the biggest individual shareholder of Standard Chartered, I'm sure I'm able to study anywhere in Singapore.

Arena really show how bad Singapore Education System is. All this talk about Singapore being a education hub is a joke. Getting China students into Singapore to learn English and IT do not make us a education hub!

If we cannot even let a 7 year old boy takes chemistry at "o" level because he is too young.... and he has to take it through British Council and eventually score a "B".... you know we have a long way to go.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Education is one thing, but I guess the environment for a debate culture is never there in the first place. Gone are the days when kampong kids played and learnt how to argue among themselves. Nowadays, children are told not to talk back when they try to reason with adults. Singapore school kids are told to accept what they are taught. Subordinates dare not oppose the will of their bosses. The general public can debate until it snows in Singapore, but can never change what has been decided.

It is like soccer in Singapore. We can get the best coach to teach our kids, but when our kids cant even play at void decks, soccer progress will be slow. Fandi probably started out in his kampong backyard.

Mr Anonymous