Brendans just finished choosing what hed like to study in Secondary 3 next year (which of course may not be what hes actually going to be offered), so thats his last chore done and the school holidays start in earnest. I was going through the range of courses offered by the school (SJI). Im amazed. At this same age, and in the same school (40 years ago?), I was being streamed into arts, science or (worst) technical (which I chose, not knowing what that would mean) because thats probably the best Singapore education could offer then — utilitarian rather than inspirational, where the needs of the state counts for more than the individual needs of the child to reach his highest potential. But now Im truly amazed. You can put together a finely balanced curriculum between science (Biology, Physics, Chemistry) and the humanities (history, geography, English, literature) and of course Chinese and Maths. And then you get to choose music and fine arts. And then there are things like ArtScience (whatever that is) and Business Design Thinking. If you have enough hours in the day (and thats a big if) thats a pretty interesting liberal arts education for a would-be Renaissance Man (or kid). And this is not even RI, or one of the top, top schools. This is just plain old SJI, the school that produces mainly band-boys, priests and, ok, a couple of ministers :) The point Im making is the same point about progress, like about Tan Tock Seng Hospital. If you have peace, and the people are willing to work for it, you can get quite remarkable progress within even an individual persons lifetime. Good things come to those who wait...
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 07:45:43 +0000
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