By KRISTIANO ANG, The New York Times
SINGAPORE — For some time, Goh Joo Hin, a Singaporean company, used the faces of top students to publicize New Moon Essence of Chicken, a concoction used as a study supplement. The advertisements were seen everywhere, from newspapers to bus stops. Now, the company may have to look elsewhere for its models.
Shortly before the release of primary school graduation examination results last month, the Ministry of Education said it would stop releasing the names of top-performing students, as well as those of high-scoring candidates at the “N” and “O” levels. The news media here devote significant coverage to those top students, who sometimes appear in advertisements for study aids and tutoring centers.
The ministry’s decision is the latest in a series of efforts by Singapore to reform a public education system that does well in international rankings, but is sometimes criticized for being overly stressful. In September, the ministry announced it would stop grading secondary schools according to “bands” based on past exam performance, and cut back on some awards offered to educational institutions for academic achievements.
The ministry said the move would allow “every school to be a good school in delivering a student-centric, values-driven education.” Recently, there have been calls by several lawmakers to scrap the primary school graduation exam, which basically determines a student’s academic path through high school.
Those efforts have not been universally supported. Without official notice about the top scorers, some parents went to KiasuParents, an online forum for Singaporean parents with almost 75,000 members, to compare scores and share stories of tears shed over results. (“Kiasu,” in the Hokkien dialect of Chinese, means “afraid to lose.”)
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressed the issue during an appearance at a primary school last month. “We have to find the right balance so that we don’t want to have excessive pressure,” he said, Channel News Asia reported. “Where there is, we have to make adjustments, tone it down.”
Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s Harvard-educated education minister, addressed the issue on Facebook. “The change is not to address stress per se or to move away from merit,” he wrote. “It is not possible, nor desirable, to eliminate stress completely. Nor should we be shy about achievements.”
In Hong Kong, newspapers like The South China Morning Post run the names and photos of students who get perfect International Baccalaureate results. Similarly, The Standard had named the schools that had produced the five local students, out of a total of 73,000, who got perfect scores in secondary school examinations. The fierce competition to get onto a path to an elite high school starts as early as kindergarten.
Less discussed is the stress caused by such highly competitive systems. According to a study conducted by Hong Kong Polytechnic University, about one-third of local students admitted engaging in “self-harm” and 13.7 percent had contemplated suicide.
Next year, Hong Kong’s English Schools Foundation will work with the U.S.-based Hawn Foundation to introduce its MindUP program, which addresses student stress, The South China Morning Post reported.
But the government has not announced similar initiatives to combat stress at the Chinese-language public schools that serve a large majority of students.
Joyce Lau contributed reporting.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário