This is nothing short of shameful
Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 10:25PM The much-praised Singapore education system may have produced some of the best scores the world has seen, but this academic achievement comes at a cost that sacrifices more of our soul than any metric can measure, as this story clearly shows.
Susan Elliot has spent three decades in education and taught thousands of students. She is bright, articulate, and has a great sense of humor. She teaches social studies and history to mainstream and hearing-impaired students-all in the same classroom. Her unique ability to teach social studies and history to both "regular" and hearing-impaired students in the same classroom is a remarkable display of master teaching. Susan is the perfect educator to help represent America's teachers and deserves a key to this Asian City Upon a Hill.
Once the Singapore education officials discovered that Susan was hearing-impaired, they retracted her invitation. The so-called discovery and subsequent retraction of her invitation was an act of disingenuous statesmanship because the Singapore education officials knew all along that Susan was deaf. The official in charge of inviting and then disinviting Susan attributes the mistake to miscommunication. Wait a minute. Singapore is renowned for its academic prowess; surely the highly educated official could read a simple biography that very clearly noted Susan was hearing-impaired. The Singapore education system may be perched on a higher hill than the American system but something is not quite right.
This is just one of many stories and anecdotes about the Singapore education system that sends a shiver down my spine. It is clear that this system has successfully replaced values like compassion, integrity, and strength of character with deliverables such as GPA, attendance and graded CCAs. While we can score magnificently in the latter categories, any development done in the former values are done in spite of the system, not because of it.
I think this is a damaging message to send out to our students and to the world. Susan Elliot deserves better, and our students deserve no less. This behaviour by our education officials are nothing short of shameful, and the Ministry of Education owes everyone involved a really good explanation.
Reader Comments (4)
Hardly surprising.
The Singapore Education Ministry as a matter of policy REFUSES to be responsible for the education of hearing-impaired Singaporeans as well as other handicapped citizens.
THE MOE and govt see this responsibility as that of CHARITABLE organsiations which receive little or no funding from the ministry for the task.
The message is simply that such disadvantaged children are beneath any care or concern of the govt because they are a liability to state coffers and impossible to exploit as economic digits, unlike the able-bodied ones.
To allow the American teacher on is akin to slapping the govt's face, so which education bureaucrat worthy of her career path, would dare to do it? It would be SHAMING the minister to his face! If she does that she have better start packing her stuffs in her cushy office.
This should be an opportunity for the rest of the world to unmask and discredit where it is due.
Kind of weird....
For all the praises to kingdom come of singapore education policies....so far no nobel winners.
At least america current education policies still produces original thinkers and creators.
Something awry here for singapore.
And it is wrong to treat Ms. Susan Elliot an accomplished and proven educationist this way. Very wrong.
In Singapore, there is this thing that everything HAS TO BE PERFECT.
Perfect school, perfect grades, impeccable background, perfect genes.
I am currently living and working in North America.
My daughter Grade 5 class teacher is dyslexic.
He has double university degrees in Geology and Education.
He will NEVER become a teacher in Singapore due to the PAP civil servants' concept of "perfection".
All these "perfection" thing starts from the top PAP gahmen - is actually permeating throughout into the civil services.
Yes - as parents we are aware of his little "imperfection" but he is a good teacher with elementary school children.
Yes - he made "mistakes" in his class but his class made a conscious effort to spot his little spelling mistakes here and there.
The value education is there as everyone learn to accept some short comings and help everyone to learn and progress in life.
I never felt so ashame of what the Singapore MOE has done.
Good and passionate educators are not easy to come by especially someone who has already a "disadvantage".
Despite these MOE people being so "educated from top notch" schools with knowledge and facts,
It shows that Singapore as a whole has failed in their education system of the heart and soul.
So far with the current policy of the PAP gahment of "importing" "foreign talents" and with their so call locally produced scholars who goes to top notch Ivy Leagues schools, isn't it strange that Singapore has not even a Nobel Prize norminee OR even come close to having a Bill Gates OR a top fortune 300 individual created company except for Creative Technology ?
@enci-liu: Well said. I like your last paragraph. Didn't thought of that before.