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by Jonathan in Life on Tuesday July 29, 2008 at 2209hours

… is where the heart is.

Roof and walls are down, and the acute saddness can only be attributed to the moments spent there with my grandma.

“Love lost is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair give them a massage or move them around a dance floor cycle out to mail letters for them. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn’t.”

- Mitch Albom

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Lunch

by Jonathan in JE on Thursday July 24, 2008 at 2140hours

Fried rice from Yishun beats Long John Silvers hands down. =D

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On Schooling, Education and Creativity

by Jonathan in Education on Tuesday July 15, 2008 at 0112hours

Just finished watching a talk on TED ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html ). Video is below if you’ve got 20 mins to spare.

The speaker touches on the interesting topic of creativity and how education effectively kills it. (Although his main point is education in the States/UK, I see some relationship with education here in Singapore).

Lets talk about the paper chase in Singapore schools. I’m sure most readers would be all too familiar with it. There, i just sneaked that one past you didn’t I? The part on paper chase. I think we’ve gotten so used to our education here being about chasing papers (for the unacquainted, ‘papers’ refer to paper qualifications, diplomas, degrees, masters, PHDs and what have you).

Remember your primary school days? Lower primary was fun. Discovering new things; making new friends. Then PSLE drew nearer, we stopped discovering and started studying because a good PSLE grade means entry into that ‘holy grail’ of secondary schools. Right? And attending that ‘holy grail’ of a secondary school means getting into a solid junior college! Wow! Then if you work hard enough and score all ‘A’s for the A’ Levels, you get to attend that prestegious University.

Ho Hum.

I guess the crux of the matter is that we’re getting too caught up in the whole process of doing well now to get to the next level that we start to lose ourselves. To put it another way, as Ken Robinson mentioned, “that public education is a protracted process of University entrance.”. Even Mark Twain once said, “Never let your schooling interfere with your education.”.

I really cannot agree more.

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