David Orr. He proposed the 6 new principles for education. I agree fully about the six principles that he has proposed.
Firstly it would be “The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one person”. This is one of the most important ideology of the whole education is necessary in Singapore. As we start off as children, as small and innocent Primary 1s, we start to realize that this is our path, and that education is our life for the next 12 years. As we continue on, progressing from Primary 1 to 2 and the on to 3, we realize that we are just chasing the perfect score of 100%, or in other words, absolute numbers which determine whether we would be scolded by our parents or not. As we start to grow up, we then start to listen to our parents who start to become philosophers, or trying to be, who talk about how education changes our lifetime. As we start to mature, we then understand that learning Mathematics is not just about the formulas, but about your analytical skills, and your logical thinking. The same applies to Chemistry or Biology experiments, it teaches us how to be procedural, and how to do things in a step by step process. By understanding the topic or subject at hand, you understand yourself even better, understanding your character and personality and this is the ultimate aim of education.
Why do we learn new things everyday? Why do we bother to attend school? It all boils down to the hunger for knowledge. We learn in order to gain new knowledge and why so? It is for your future, our kindergarten teachers say. It is for your own good, our parents remark. It is for your own use, our teachers say. They all make sense and they all possess one common characteristic. That it requires responsibility to know how to use it in order for it to be beneficial to us and our future. Mr Orr has also touched on this topic, when he said : “knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world”. We learn knowledge not for ourselves, as the exact opposite of it is engraved in our minds due to the myths that we grew up with. We have to use it for the greater good and not to be selfish. An example of a person being irresponsible with the knowledge he owns would be the Fukushima Nuclear plant disaster as well as the Chernobyl incident. Both are similar in a sense that these were possible because of the knowledge created in science for which no one was ultimately responsible. With knowledge, comes great power and with it, comes great responsibility.
Lastly there are many common characteristics amongst all the subjects that make them so similar yet so different. They are all environmentally related. Well a simple example would be like Mathematics and Geography. Mathematics is essential in our daily lives and by learning trigonometry, it allows us to calculate how short Bukit Timah hill is or by using differentiation, able to find the difference between two objects. Geography not only allows us to read maps if we are lost in the jungle but also know how it is related to economics with the demand and supply curve when studying about distribution of food. All the subjects are all related in one way or another, directly or indirectly, obvious or not obvious, to the environment and everything around us that revolves. It is the core of the point of education.
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