Our extremely planned education has resulted into an utter lack of critical thinking abilities in the masses. Far too few individuals possess powerful critical thinking abilities till the level that it can be a little shocking for a country that prides itself is moving towards being 1st world.
The highly rote learning style of teaching predominant in Singaporean schools has greatly diminished unconstrained creative thinking in youths. Although there has been a trend initiated by the MOE to move away from the rote learning style to a more free and creative style of teaching and promoting critical thinking in learners; getting them to learn more by themselves without needing teachers to learn. Sadly this trend is taking forever to catch on for by adopting such tactics the schools might potentially have a drop in results achievements as the current tactics are highly focused to achieve good PSLE/O Level/A Level results. For fear of having to answer to the board of directors, principals gennerally still get teachers to pile up on rote learning, making students memorise and not comprehend.
As such Singaporeans tend to focus on the little things and not upon the larger picture or just wish that by looking hard at the big pictures and ignoring the details that makes things happen. This is pretty much evident from forum discussions and web postings by Singaporeans. I dare say that Singapore’s netizens have a distinct style which set them apart. We enjoy looking at blogs where one blogger flames another on a personal level with little rationality. And we relish in following the saga which ensue. We argue over things for the sake of debating as can be seen from the latest budget discussion.
We debate about whether or not the jobs credit scheme is likely to be useful in saving jobs. And while I agree on the need to scrutinise this new creative and daring scheme,we should not be disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing and not think of a better alternative. In addition we allow the press to luring us into thinking that there is only 2 ways to save jobs by CPF cuts and the job credit scheme, to me this is a false dichotomy. There are other options that can be implemented like by injecting funds into companies to turn them into GLCs. Rather it is out of the various ways available, these two are the best contenders. Thus if by looking into the schemes and reaching that the job credits is the lesser of the two ‘evils’, then we should be attempting to see how best to implement it to help those who really require the assisstance.
Another seemingly lack of critical thinking is where Singaporeans tackle political issues. Opposition is but of course great to keep the party in power on their toes. But we need to engage the issue critically and not just blast it like some Drs as if it is a must to have free democracy like US for in our small country(no bigger than a state in US in terms of sizes) it could results in far too much disruption. We need free speech to talk about issues critically and not disagree with the government by carrying out arguments ad hominem attacking the people and not their arguments. Sadly some Singaporeans do get taken in by such ad hominem arguments. While I don’t always believe in PAP’s policies, they are ar sounder than those of the opposition. Our spineless opposition needs to learn to attract people of calibre and not those who only can disgrace our country on the international stage.
Hopefully one day we can correct our severe lack in critical thinking by making our students actually think. We tend to only start attempt to grasp these concepts in the working world without a proper framework, making it hard to catch up on lost time in schools. Hopefully, whatever little analytical abilities I have does not get fully erode by the place where having critical thinking will adversely affect your standing in the organisation.
-wonght
Thinking critically starts with small steps like disagreeing with my arguments
