Australia V Singapore - BAD MATHEMATICS

Yup. Spent years talking and working with Singaporeans… and it’s pretty clear I’m not even sure these people could locate it on a map.

Well noted is Singaporean streaming. In addition, I have heard hundreds, if not thousands of tales of religious tutoring in mathematics and science since pre-kindy ages, with children’s days mapped out from 7am-8pm (and then later to 10pm at night) if they are to succeed. And due to the streamed nature of the schools, they either pay through the nose for the tutors or private school access, to guarantee they have the foundational skills required to gain admittance at university to law, engineering, medicine etc, or they go overseas.

Meanwhile, I’m teaching my own child phonics and reading now because Apparently the kindy isn’t allowed to, and I’ve been doing maths with them and plan to have song rote learnt times tables just like I bloody did.

And you know what- MINE LOVES IT- they love being able to start looking at the book with me and have fun. Shooting ourselves in the foot for this ‘developmentally appropriate’ crap.

Look at year 8 acara now- apparently kid’s aren’t able to understand calculating formulae of compound shapes until year 9.

We’re doing poorly in maths because we have ‘It’s ok to be bad at maths’ people at the helm in too many areas, and too many people who are afraid of challenging kids and letting them see what they can achieve, either because not teaching core skills would help kids think above their station, or because of hubris, fear and stupidity.

Gosh, I hope it’s the conspiracy option, but occam’s razor tells us that it is likely just maladministration. Wait till you see (in 50 years time) the curriculum realise that maybe having constant sources of cognitive load drain in the classroom (tablets) is not the best thing for students (much less to say about the effect of them+multicommunicative formats on gray matter). (1)(2).

Of course Singapore outperforms us in mathematics. I’d wager they’re just as religious about academia life as you hear in Japan…

They certainly didn’t note the huge, huge, huge issues in economic disparity in Singapore and that maybe education is meant to raise people out of poverty, not entrench it, but who am I to comment

(1). Since tablets became prominent the numbers of children seeking speech pathology grew 300% (see parliament inquiry regarding speech path seeking in 2015 or 2016, from 2010). Note that screens are associated with speech and learning delay, with ~1 hr a day minimum associated with a 1 year delay, and that a screen cannot replace a real life person in learning to talk. (90’s research using a tv vs. IRL speechie).

(2). More recently, social media was associated with significant gray matter decline [0%,60%) in teens using social media more than 1 hr a day. Recently some theorised and coined ‘multicommunication’ referring to things like “Slack” and “Discord.” Due to their shared commonalities (notifications, messages, multiple things to see and interact with on the screen), I (personally) believe that many of these things are as akin to social media and just as dangerous.

I don’t know what to do about it but I’m working on purging it from my own life and removing all notifications and ‘black holes of time’ where possible.

This doesn’t mean all devices are bad, per se, it just means, quite simply:

Kids who are still learning self-regulation skills do not need extra burdens on their ability to self-regulate time and impulse control, rather they need assistance in dealing with it.

Who would guess that magpies like shiny things, and the monkey brains of young, emotional people seeking validation and self-worth would be drawn to systems that create dopamine loops and our brains would adapt to seek them out like cocaine or cigarettes. Especially in this scary time, where it’s clear that half the kids, even if they aren’t adept at some academic pursuits, can see the ineptitude and apathy at the top of the chain.