Education during this pandemic

[TransparentReminder]

Millions of children across the globe have dealt with months of learning from home as countries struggle with the pandemic. Now, as many begin returning to school, thoughts have turned to not only the lost education, but also the long term impact on their mental health.

In Singapore, in a reminder of last year, a recent spike in cases - including some in schools - has prompted tighter measures across the city-state. As part of efforts to keep people further apart, students went back to online learning for 10 days in late May.

But in its highly academic, competitive environment, even this short break was enough to pile extra worry onto students.

This year, weekly sessions started at primary and secondary schools to encourage students to talk about their feelings and improve how they handle stress and anxiety. Sessions feature animated videos to help students identify and cope with stress, while teachers share their personal experiences to encourage the free flow of ideas and discussions.

So, as a student, do you think the government has done its best to make it possible for you to study with ease during this pandemic?

 

[zhihau]

snowflakes

 

[flushroses]

In my opinion, the government did a good job with regard to online learning. It may not be perfect but they tried their best to make sure that education does not put to a halt. Their priority is the safety of all students.

 

[pvtpublic]

the teachers are woefully unprepared for online learning. some simply cannot "teach" online and students are suffering.

 

[zhihau]

snowflakes

The bedrock of an education is to be able enrich one’s mind- to learn how to learn, learn how to unlearn, and learn how to re-learn. The teacher can only point the way and the student has to walk the path to reach his or her destination.

The moment you start to pander to students and/or parents like they’re customers, something has gone wrong somewhere. Do schools really need to pander to complains about having too much home based learning, not enough home based learning, and what-nots have you- seriously?

While technology can afford us the luxury of asynchronous and synchronous learning at the comfort of our homes, does every household have a stable network connection? Do the students have the discipline to complete their work at home or just idle the time away?

Not sure where all the grit has gone to, but I see that we’re growing soft. Brace yourselves, folks.

 

[mudhatter]

stinkypura

the most boring country ever

no character
no originality
no inventiveness
no talent
no legends
no scenery
no history
no ingenuity
nothing
zip
zilch
nada
zero

 

[laksaboy]

Millions of children across the globe have dealt with months of learning from home as countries struggle with the pandemic. Now, as many begin returning to school, thoughts have turned to not only the lost education, but also the long term impact on their mental health.

In Singapore, in a reminder of last year, a recent spike in cases - including some in schools - has prompted tighter measures across the city-state. As part of efforts to keep people further apart, students went back to online learning for 10 days in late May.

But in its highly academic, competitive environment, even this short break was enough to pile extra worry onto students.

This year, weekly sessions started at primary and secondary schools to encourage students to talk about their feelings and improve how they handle stress and anxiety. Sessions feature animated videos to help students identify and cope with stress, while teachers share their personal experiences to encourage the free flow of ideas and discussions.

So, as a student, do you think the government has done its best to make it possible for you to study with ease during this pandemic?

A generation of kids will grow up into damaged adults due to prolonged wearing of masks and draconian restrictions.

That is, if they ever reach adulthood. Vaccinating 12+ year olds... that's cold-blooded, even by Tiong standards.

 

[Chase]

School got more chance to cheat money,
Look at the "forced purchase" below with Edusave - not only no student price, no group-buy offer
the model is phasing out soon, priced almost 50% more than apple store for including logitech keyboard, extended warranty and 1st gen Apple Pen

 

[zhihau]

No one wants to spill the beans?

We’re economic digits- from manufacturing in the early days to proteomics in the 80s, the IT drive in the 90s to biomed at the turn of the century. 2 decades after, what have we done? What hub are we currently?

 

[Chase]

What hub are we currently?

Prositution hub. Prior to COVID, my overseas customer were very impressed with Geylang, each street hosts ladies from different countries, in their own words like International Buffet. Migrant workers can also get their cheap fucks, locals get their KTVs served by Cambodians, Viets, PRCs, and the rich served by PRCs, Koreans, and sugarbabies from local private schools.

 

[TransparentReminder]

Prositution hub. Prior to COVID, my overseas customer are very impressed with Geylang, each street hosts ladies from different countries, in their own words like International Buffet. Migrant workers can also get their cheap fucks, locals get their KTVs served by Cambodians, Viets, PRCs, and the rich served by PRCs, Koreans, and sugarbabies from local private schools.

Dude, you're on point. But yeah, as to answer my own question. Nope, the Government hasn't done their best at it, they were only forced to have students study in their homes because that's just the most obvious way to do this pandemic. It's not like their fault we are on pandemic right now, anyway.

 

[Chase]

study with ease during this pandemic?

Study with ease?

1. In the beginning of 2020, MOE instructed students not to wear masks to school, not because it was wrong but because we were out of masks and MTI did not know that we had massive stockpiles in the civilian world. In addition, the largest N95 stockpile (outside US) from 3M and Honeywell were all in Singapore.

2. Now, we are brainwashing, coaxing kids to get vaccinated when 99.999% of them do not get killed by COVID-19. In the end, we have a few weekly cases of students being admitted to hospital for vaccine injuries that went unreported in July 2021.

3. Single-session classes did not split into morning/afternoon sessions. Class-sizes remain huge while we advocate that dining-out should be socially-distanced.

4. Many schools were covided in July and we ringfenced the cases in a minimal way. Our local unlinked cases also exploded further when we stopped naming clusters, some with 10-50 cases.

5. Even PE teachers were unsure of what to do. No-brainers include making students sprinting with masks-on, and more theory-based PE lessons.

6. The face-shields that were distributed fogs and scratches easily, some complainted about vertigo. The kindergarten kids went on to receive a toxic-version made with PVC that is considered hazardous in Japan as they emit or leach out chemical additives after prolonged use, posing unnecessary dangers to children because their noses are right besides it.

7. During last year's lockdown, local ISP crashed repeatedly disrupting WFH and HBL. It was too tedious for school teachers to plan online teaching resources in 2020 and 2021. MOE should have consolidated common lessons to ease teacher's workloads, eg. make all Geography studies attend Geography online lectures directly with MOE and school teachers will just conduct online tutorials.

8. This year, IT infrastructure remained weak for HBL in May 2021 with lessons being abandoned for the first few days, despite last year's experience. Lastly, I also cited an example (above) of schools profiteering with vendors to rip off edusave funds in the name of HBL.

 

[pvtpublic]

The bedrock of an education is to be able enrich one’s mind- to learn how to learn, learn how to unlearn, and learn how to re-learn. The teacher can only point the way and the student has to walk the path to reach his or her destination.

The moment you start to pander to students and/or parents like they’re customers, something has gone wrong somewhere. Do schools really need to pander to complains about having too much home based learning, not enough home based learning, and what-nots have you- seriously?

While technology can afford us the luxury of asynchronous and synchronous learning at the comfort of our homes, does every household have a stable network connection? Do the students have the discipline to complete their work at home or just idle the time away?

Not sure where all the grit has gone to, but I see that we’re growing soft. Brace yourselves, folks.

my comments will be from the perspective of primary school, not sure about secondary and JC these days:

HBL works for the academically bright students. they will often finish their daily HBL work within 2-3 hours, leaving them time to explore other interests.

for the average student, HBL will only work if mommy, daddy or tuition teacher is around to help explain some of the difficult concepts. I've seen the online zoom classes, no way the teacher can help the average students as it's too chaotic over zoom.

the weak students? good luck to them if their parents can't afford tuition.

it's the gold standard to churn out self directed students who can flourish on their own. perhaps in upper secondary onwards it might be possible as the students are more matured. but at the primary level at least, the students need much more face time with the teachers.

so far, none of the primary schools I know of are offering home based remedial classes to help weaker students. just as china cracked down on private tuition, it's time for MOE to take a long hard look at itself and ask why private tuition in Singapore has grown into a billion dollar beast.

 

[Chase]

so far, none of the primary schools I know of are offering home based remedial classes to help weaker students. just as china cracked down on private tuition, it's time for MOE to take a long hard look at itself and ask why private tuition in Singapore has grown into a billion dollar beast.

There are formulas, recipes and methodologies to write good essays but these are never taught in mainstream education, so parents have to sent kids for private classes for their languages.

For Mathematics, most, if not all kids who qualified for GEP or get awards from Maths Olympiads went for enrichment courses or parents grilled them with Maths Olympiad books. Again, these are not taught in schools even to their best students.

In a way, MOE intentionally left something out in mainstream education for the tuition centres to make a living and differentiate between the rich and poor kids.

 

[pvtpublic]

There are formulas, recipes and methodologies to write good essays but these are never taught in mainstream education, so parents have to sent kids for private classes for their languages.

For Mathematics, most, if not all kids who qualified for GEP or get awards from Maths Olympiads went for enrichment courses or parents grilled them with Maths Olympiad books. Again, these are not taught in schools even to their best students.

In a way, MOE intentionally left something out in mainstream education for the tuition centres to make a living and differentiate between the rich and poor kids.

this is terrible for common prosperity.

MOE should produce these resources (essay writing tips, maths enrichment courses etc) in-house and make it nationally available at the community centers.

we spend the equivalent of 10% of MOE's annual budget on private tuition. looking at it another way, the government is under-funding education by at least 10%.

 

[parrardee]

stinkypura

the most boring country ever

no character
no originality
no inventiveness
no talent
no legends
no scenery
no history
no ingenuity
nothing
zip
zilch
nada
zero

mudhatter no brains, no IQ.

 

[zhihau]

Study with ease?

1. masks
2. vaccines
3. class size and sessions
4. transparency on COVID
5. PE lessons
6. face-shields
7. common lessons packages
8. IT infrastructure remained weak

It’s all about ROI for them, isn’t it?

Teehee...

 

[zhihau]

In a way, MOE intentionally left something out in mainstream education for the tuition centres to make a living and differentiate between the rich and poor kids.

If GEP classes are pegged at 25 and regular classes can go to 40, you jolly well know something’s not right.

 

[zhihau]

MOE should produce these resources (essay writing tips, maths enrichment courses etc) in-house and make it nationally available at the community centers.

What ever happened to the good old CDIS?

 

[pvtpublic]

What ever happened to the good old CDIS?

they all left to become tutors?