1.5 yrs ago i blogged abt education having a long tail, and apparently, the long tail has hit back yesterday. coincidence with the arrival of the (water) snake perhaps? :O
yesterday, an estimated 3000-5000 pple gathered at the hong lim park to stage a protest of the recent white paper on population 2030. so how is this the long tail hitting back? before that, our teachers deserve a pat on their backs cos this is an excellent example of how our education has succeeded (:
one main argument seems to be focused on the figure “6.9”. since young, we were taught by our teachers that singapore is a very small island, with no natural resources. we acknowledged that we are but only one dot on the map, and some teachers may argue that a dot can be too big to represent singapore. we are so very small, we are so limited in land, resources. this idea has long been drilled and wired into many of our belief system. and this is the result of the explicit curriculum.
our learning from the implicit curriculum came from our day-to-day living experiences. those of us who grew up in relatively newer neighbourhoods such as Bishan, Yishun, Tampines, etc will have the smallness of singapore reinforced in us everyday. cos our blocks of flats are built in such close proximity that we can almost look across and see/smell what our neighbours’ cooking, and if they need us to pass them any ingredients via the windows. for those of us who drive, the carparks are again another channel of daily reinforcement of the smallness idea. every turn of the multi-storey carpark is like taking the Z-course in practical driving test. it feels good that we pass driving tests everyday, without scratching our cars against the wall or others’ bumpers when negotiating those sharp turns that is (:
when we are hit with the (big) number 6.9, the teaching in us immediately reacts to the stimulus. how can our such a small place contain much much more pple? 6.9 and the smallness & limitedness teachings react to each other like the like poles of magnet.
the success of our teaching has caused many of us to lose the deep blue sea thinking, or what benjamin zander termed as “the universe of possibility”. we could have totally lost it due to the explicit and implicit curriculum.
the long tail of education has hit back and to me, it doesnt appears to be a good stroke in this instance. #iwonder what other hits are waiting in line.
