Sensei Michael

It is not just America's educational system that are failing its boys. This claim was made from an article I read, which squares with what I have encountered in the modern educational system. Virtually all modern humanistic public education systems are stacked against their boys. I do not agree with all the points written by the author (since I believe they are irrelevant to the topic of boys being failed), so I shall only point out the ones I agree with. 1. Boys mature more slowly compared to girls. The modern educational system requires a lot of early maturity to achieve early. Early reading. Early attention. Sitting down and not moving. All these require maturity early. 2. Boys are innately more competitive compared to girls. The modern educational system is de-emphasizing grades and sports achievements, both areas where the innate competitiveness of boys come out. They are being set up not to do as well, in an environment which emphasizes collaboration. 3. Education now require...

Answer by Richard Muller: I had a graduate student who, as an undergrad at Cornell, had more A+ grades than As -- about 15.  Once I asked him how he did that.  "I use tricks" he said. They all seemed so obvious when he told me, that I'm not sure I can recall all of them.  Below I'll mix in what he said with some of the things I observed in other great students. He said he always read the assignment before lecture, not after. Do that, and you know what to pay most attention to.  You can ask questions about things you didn't understand.  You can't ask a book questions, but you can ask a professor. Moreover, your professor will be impressed that you ask the best questions. Remarkably, it takes no longer to read all the material before class than after class. Visit the professor during office hours.  Some professors will just try to intimidate you into not coming so often; ignore them. Some will be delighted to have visitors.  It is a great opportunity to interact...

A teacher has again come under media scrutiny because of her abuse of a child. Police arrest childcare teacher suspected of child abuse The video has gone viral and the public could see how the teacher man-handled the child, eventually causing the child to suffer a fracture. The story from the school to the parents was that the child had suffered a fall. The parents demanded to see the CCTV and were horrified to see the images (the mother was clearly hysterical at the suffering her child went through). I am a teacher and also believe that no child should be subject to what the child was subjected to. It is clearly a breach of the duty of care we have as educators, not to harm our charges. I was a school manager and believe that management should not lie to their parents regarding what had actually happened. It is clearly a breach of the duty of care we have as managers, to assure our customers that their child is safe in our hands. Now that I have put all my beliefs ahead, I wish that ...

I reproduce here a response I made to a parent who pointed an accusing finger at teachers, during a discussion at KiasuParents.com . I am surprised I am still so passionate about the teaching profession! CluelessMa wrote: What do NIE teach the teachers? Not on handling the children? What NIE taught was very ideal. It assumed 1) small class sizes, 2) very supportive school leaders and 3) teachers with no life of their own beyond their students. Everything falls apart once any of these assumptions are not met. Indeed, what did we learn once we hit the schools? That we are all finite beings with emotions and who can feel exhaustion, pain and fears. Those students whom we can help, we give our all to help, but we simply cannot help all. There are too many starfishes. We can at least console ourselves that the particular starfish we threw back to the sea was helped. Quote: In fact, I must say that my friend is very tolerant with the school. She informed the school when child first join the ...

Back in the days when I was doing my PSLE, we simply took the total of our 4 subjects and add them together, for a total maximum part of 420 (English 110, Chinese 110, Mathematics 100 and Science 100). I scored 389 back in those days, putting me squaring among the top 10% of the national cohort. In Singapore, where the PSLE is used to rank a student for his choice of secondary schools, such a simple method soon had its issues, especially if the cohort is very strong or very weak, or the paper very simple or very hard. When students cluster around certain grades, it makes it difficult for the school to sieve them out (which, again, is the real reason for the PSLE). In order to avoid the clustering, and allow the entire cohort to resemble more of a bell curve, a transformed score is used instead of the raw score for each subject. Explaining exactly what the transformed score is would belong to a statistics lecture (which I am not qualified to give, even though I do a lot of data analyses...

With the advent of keyboards and the computer, China realised it needed a mean of input into computers that is better than the current clumsier method using keystroke input. With more and more foreigners streaming into China, the nation also realised it needs a mean of romanising its Chinese characters, into something anyone who uses Latin languages can read. Chinese Hanyu Pinyin came about precisely because of all these reasons. The romanisation, however, is different in many ways from how an English-speaker uses these same letters. Even the way the Chinese initially pronounce them is different, just like how A is not read as "ay" but "ah" in Indonesia. Of course, as China modernises, and the English language assumes an importance as a compulsory second language, our familiar "ay", "bee", "see" returns to the Chinese tongue. As a bilingual and bicultural person, I could understand the many hilarious situations that come about when the...

Introduction   The non-profit International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) was started in Geneva in 1968 [1] , with the launch of the Diploma Programme. Although adopted initially by predominantly private international schools, today about 50% of schools running the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes are state schools.   The IB programme consists of the Primary Years Programme (PYP, 3 to 12 years), the Middle Years Programme (MYP, 11 to 16 years) and the Diploma Programme (DP, 16 to 19 years) [2] . The PYP and the MYP lay the foundations for students to take on the demanding Diploma Programme. Students with the IB Diploma can then proceed to apply to the 2544 universities in 75 countries that recognize the IB Diploma [3] .   Current Status of IB in China   There are a total of 58 schools in China offering the IB programme [4] . Peking University is listed as recognizing the IB Diploma but no recognition details are available. It is likely that this university recognizes the ...

This was an essay written to reflect my beliefs in teaching methods. I believe very strongly that a teacher’s character and personality influence his pupils’ learning experiences immensely. A student under an unassertive teacher will not be inclined to learn, while a student under a hostile teacher will be too pressurised to learn properly. A teacher who cares, is friendly and yet firm, will ensure learning in his pupils. I am also a teacher who tends towards behaviourist and direct teaching methods. I have used reinforcements and direct teaching effectively for six years, and my students (both soldiers in the Navy, training for electronics, and Primary Six students in Sunday School, learning Bible Knowledge), have shown signs of learning and retention even without all those constructivist learning theories. I must admit I do incorporate some elements and branches of constructivism in my teachings, but behaviourism is still by far the major stem and root. To investigate if a teacher is...

This essay was meant to be written as an article in a school magazine but never saw print, unfortunately. “I ain’t got no know this, c’est ne pas?” If you find yourself not understanding the above, you are in exactly the same position as a foreigner first exposed to Singlish. Do you find the sentence above very annoying? You can be very sure Singlish is annoying to them too. Singlish is a local form of English that has its roots in the largely uneducated masses attempting to communicate in English. The influences of their mother tongues (including the dialects) are both direct (“siong” being Hokkien for “a lot of hard work required”) and indirect (Singlish grammar is different from English). Since both the ministry and the parents are trusting us to educate the children properly, it is highly important that our students learn to speak the proper form of English. You may think to yourself – the teacher here can understand me, what is the problem with me using Singlish? While it is true ...

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences The Theory of Multiple Intelligences was presented by Professor Howard Gardner (1943-present), Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education in his book  Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligence  in 1983. In his book, Prof Gardner defines intelligence as “the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings.” He claims that there are actually eight different types of intelligences that all human beings can present, to different degrees of ability. His ideas were initially greeted with skepticism by academia (and still are to some extent today) but the teaching faculty embraced his ideas readily – for too long they have observed in their students the truth behind his ideas. The Eight Intelligences Prof Garner defines 8 intelligences that a person may have. Some of his students have suggested other possibilities, but he has been hesitant to adopt them and add...