Holistic education

There's almost something thought-provoking that comes up everytime I talk to James. He was sharing with me about how his brother-in-law (with only an O' level certificate) set up a business at age 30 with only $5000 and is now the biggest distributor of its kind in Singapore.

His questions

• What are the sort of values and attitudes that someone must possess to find success in such unconventional way? Compared to scholars who breeze their way up through the ranks of a civil service job, for instance.
• What experience in education can imbue a person with these values such that they can replicate such successes?

This is what I meant by holistic development - thinking about what skills the students need, and then working backward to see how we can provide it. MOE tries its best, but ultimately most of its efforts is only geared towards academic excellence. Providing life skills and inculcating good attitudes are only things that schools try to do outside of curriculum time.

And also, he differs from the typical educator who believes that lessons should always help students achieve success, no matter how small, in order to keep them going. To him, learning to manage failure should be an integral part of character education, and the only way to build resiliency. There should be situations where teachers have lessons which plans for failure, with a stake that's symbolically important but realistically trivial, such that students can be led to reflect on their experiences.

But then again, motivation is the objection of building successes, and without that, I think many of my school's kids will not attempt something again after meeting with failure once. But I think a knowing what your end objective is for the students, and having a balanced curriculum is important.