Present to the boss

Attended the Pre-U Sem 2025 closing ceremony as staff in charge of my institute's delegation. Arrived just in time to catch one of my kids making a presentation about her team's project. She performed well, all bright, animated, rehearsed and polished but not beholden to script. What I didn't realize until a few seconds later was to whom she was presenting. It was to the new boss himself. Here you see the back of his head. It's the closest in proximity I've ever been to my industry's top brass. Just an observation.

Community approved graffiti

College's contribution to SG60 is a touch-up of the 50 SG50 community wall murals we put up 10 years ago, plus putting up an additional 10 new murals to make it 60. My CT got to paint one of the new ones, lucky us!

It was nice to see everyone engaged and focused on a singular task. Lacking experience didn't stop anybody. The paint-by-numbers task was simple enough, yet provided immediate feedback on how well (and how quickly) we were progressing. Various residents stopped to admire the new splash of colour, and commented appreciatively of the artwork, adding objective user experience feedback while we were painting.

Our mural was split between two load-bearing walls. The design was a triptych depicting 3 familiar local myths. The bottom photo represents Sang Nila Utama spotting his apocryphal lion, which gave our tiny island its current name. The above photo depicts a somewhat obscured legend of Kusu Island on the left, and the legend of Redhill on the right. Yes, somehow Redhill (Bukit Merah) is connected to a tale involving the defeat of a school of marauding swordfish that made a habit of skewering beachgoers, and some court intrigue.

Not often we get such high-profile opportunities to bond as a CT. Today's event was well-received by all involved.

The lanes, how I've missed thee

Well, this video was totally unsolicited. George, Bee, and I chaperoned the kids at an introductory course in bowling. Brought back memories of some of my earlier posts in this blog when causing our own chaos at the lanes was all the rage.

I joined in as a participant to make up for a vacancy and learned a couple of tips that benefited my game. Stand on the centre dot to start my walk-up and aim dead straight at the second aiming arrow right from middle. Stay focused and follow-through. That did wonders for keeping my first throws on target, mostly. Still need more work to convert the spares, but that was beyond the objective of today's toe-dip into 10-pin mayhem. Racked up a score just below the averages I used to get back then.

I loved the ball I selected from the public rack, this silver 11-pounder with holes that perfectly matched my grip. It fit so well and handled so easily that it gave me a lot of confidence using it. I wish I could have bought it there and then, but since I'm not bowling regularly any more, it would just have been a frivolous purchase. I didn't notice Bee taking this video of me but, damn, despite maybe a decade or more being out of practice, I still haven't lost much form. Good thing I did convert this spare, else it would have been all flair and no substance.

The elderly chief coach has inspired me to likewise be a bowling coach in my retirement years. Not long now...

Music box

A little souvenir from our staff bonding exercise today. We crafted our own music box diorama from a selection of figurines brought over by the vendor, Okdodoo, a local startup. My first attempt is messy with the use of too much glue. The residue is obvious in the shiny flecks on the display surface. I had my eye on a larger, more realistic looking tree, but was seconds too slow to grab it off the parts table. Hence this more stylized tree which I'll take as a metaphor for why we can't have nice things. Regardless, I'm pleased with the overall composition which avoids excessive symmetry, and things arranged along a straight line. The music is, of course, a couple of bars from the "My Neighbor Totoro" theme. The tone is pleasant, soothing even, and worth the wind-up, at least while the novelty still lasts.

A shout-out to the two partners of Okdodoo who are 'live' demonstrations of taking the path less traveled by foregoing their corporate careers to pursue a creative passion. Each item is hand-crafted by the two of them. They didn't detail their process, but it's clear they're fully committed to their craft and motivated by a love for what they do. Given today's activity theme of the future of work, these two gentlemen clearly embody some of the many traits that we would like to see in our kids as we prepare them for their futures.

Invigilation thoughts #28

Can't believe I've finally made it to the last official day of work before the December break. In honour of the cultural heritage of the one candidate I was assigned to oversee, I composed a haiku:

Final duty of the year.
Oh, no, it's the AA kid.
Time added.

If you know, you know.

It's not an exam, it's an opportunity

There are no exams to take for learning to ride a bicycle, or any other skill we pick up in childhood. Either alone, or helped by friends, we play, fall, mess up, and play some more until we develop an appreciable facility that need not be validated by an external moderator. What keeps us going is how much fun we are having while we practice, and the sense of empowerment we get 'levelling up'.

What is left when we strip away the exam component from the H1 General Paper (GP)? For most of the fraternity, and practically all GP students, the paper and the exam are sadly indistinguishable. None would take the subject voluntarily, so it is compulsory for everyone to take. Since the exam IS the thing, no one looks beyond the exam, and every student is happy to drop it as soon as the final exam at the end of second year is taken and passed. No one forgets how to ride a bike, but GP is one and done.

If we forget the exam and stop worrying about the results, we could stop teaching 'skills' that are only relevant to the exam. Without things like 'question types', and the nit-picky 'close reading', and the excessive paraphrasing, and many other limiting, rule-bound redundancies, GP as a skill would be rather therapeutic, at the very least.

If learning skills is about fun and empowerment, then GP combines current affairs with language to the effect that our young students can grab humanity by the collar, give us a good shake, and show us how we've messed up the world for ourselves, for the planet, and for the future. The subject presents a unique opportunity for teenage angst, frustration, anxiety, and despair to have a legitimate, yet positive outlet. And when the students are done railing at humanity, they can say, 'Do you see what you've done? Do you understand what you've done? And now, you know what you need to do to make it right!'

Students are tired of being told what to do, so let's have a little fun with the exams. The questions on the exam are not for the students to answer, but rather for them to make humanity answerable for so much that has gone wrong in the world today, and to make restitution and amends thereafter. That's empowerment. And if the students can see the opportunity instead of the exam, the results will speak for themselves.

Upsetting the balance (and everyone else in the fraternity)

We who teach argumentative writing are constantly aware of the requirement to present a 'balanced' argument. Perhaps it's the way this requirement has been phrased that we teach 'balance' as the primary objective of the written argument, but that is so out of touch with reality. As such, the way we teach kids to write arguments feels unnatural, and useless for any purpose other than for grading papers.

So we assume that arguments identify a subject in a state of disequilibrium, and that the purpose of argumentation is to return the subject to equilibrium. And perhaps the nature of our jobs contribute to this misconception, because that line of logic is less of an argument, and more of a scolding -- the kind that mollifies everybody and tells them to shake hands and make up at the end of it.

In reality, arguments exist to shake up equilibrium and cause disruption to what we assume to be 'normal'. In a state of equilibrium, there is no argument. Everyone agrees to not rock the boat, to maintain stability, and keep the status quo. Arguments arise when someone is no longer satisfied with the way things are, and raises a ruckus in hopes of making a change. Arguments advance a position to upset an existing balance, instead of forcing everyone back into a state of compliance and conformity.

Our mistake in teaching argumentative writing is in making balance the objective, rather than treating it as a means to an end. Instead, we need to teach that balance is important only so far as we are prepared to knock it all down. Balance is a pyramid of cans in a carnival game stall. Nobody approaches it to admire how well it is balanced. The attraction is to toss a ball at it and watch it explode into bits on impact. And collect the stuffed toy prize after.

Achieving balance is a lot of work, and yes, the effort is appreciated in the writing of the essay. But the fun part is in demolishing the balance which we have worked so hard to build. So, unfairly stacking the argument, as the kids like to do with the 'three points "for", one point "against"' conceit is like the same carnival pyramid of cans being nailed down on their pedestal -- no fun at all since the outcome is a foregone conclusion. So if that's what we're teaching the kids to do, ironically, what we call 'balanced' is ultimately biased from beginning to end.

Perhaps our mistaken approach is what turns off the kids from writing. We make them work for balance, but deprive them of the joy of demolishing what they have so carefully built, and sifting through the remains to find the prize: some discovery that brings a new understanding or insight to the subject of their discussion.

And that would be so much more rewarding for us to read, as well. There's always a sense that a balanced argument feels unfinished or incomplete. Like it's missing a 'so what?". Well, here's your 'so what'.

Education, the MMORPG

After the review session yesterday, from the fragments of observations other people talked about, I pieced together an analogy of how education works here, as in how it seems so successful at the early stages, then successes taper off at higher levels of development.

Our education system is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). All our kids play, or at least participate in the same game together. There are monsters to defeat, quests to undertake, and rewards to gain for every success. But it's quite a challenging, and punishing game in that it's a grind, meaning that we spend a lot of time doing repetitive, meaningless tasks to accumulate experience points (EXP) as we level up. Leveling up unlocks harder, but more rewarding challenges. Everybody wants to level up as quickly as possible to 'farm' the best rewards the game can dish out.

Most MMORPGs work this way, but our version comes with an online trading system. Advantaged players with the most resources at the start of the game immediately source out and buy the best Unique or Legendary items with which to equip themselves, even before encountering their first low-level rat-monster. Armed with the most powerful level-permitted weapon, and the toughest body-armour money can buy, players blaze through the earliest tutorial stages with ease. Their achievements are impressive, leveling up faster than the other players around the rest of the world. While most other players are still struggling with basic arithmetic, our players are already tackling rudimentary algebra. Collectively, we continue wowing the education world with players constantly topping the academic Olympiad and PISA leagues.

Our successes are based on the pay-to-win strategy that we are all complicit in. All the extra tuition, all the best assessment books, all the best IT equipment, everything money can buy that will give our players a leg-up we willingly spend on. We even pay for dubious 'cheat codes', as some tuition centres purport to offer. We believe in advantaging our players early so that they can have the best start in life. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, if our rapidly unlocked 'Achievements' are dependent on our money-bought equipment, then our players aren't really learning to play the game. They won't need to think around a task or puzzle, or figure out how to defeat a boss monster. You don't need to develop a strategy if you can just bludgeon a problem to death. Many of our players won't even need to consider co-op play -- since they can solo everything, why bother with the complexities of working with other people, and sharing the rewards after?

And so, for our players, education is a game in which they do nothing else but grind, level up, trade for new equipment, rinse and repeat until they max out their characters at the Level Cap -- that is, the level at which there are no higher levels to attain. At this level, our players believe they have attained "Education", and the game is over. After all, what's there to do when there are no more levels to grind for?

The thing with Education, the MMORPG, is that -- as with most MMORPGS -- the real game begins at the level cap.  At the End Game, the other players who have been learning the game instead of being 'carried' through start to shine. Having understood their characters inside-and out, and figuring out the game mechanics as they struggled through their levels, the real fun begins. They've learned to optimize their randomly-dropped equipment, and strategise around what they have instead of what they've bought to take on the toughest challenges. At this point of the game, the really good rewards are incredibly hard to find, but the sense of accomplishment is real, whereas those with a sense of entitlement are constantly frustrated by the rarity of the drops. Another reason to 'rage quit', since the game was never really very interesting for them to begin with.

What this analogy hopes to explain is how Education today seems to develop young minds so quickly and with so much promise, and yet in later life, most of them are stuck in unfulfilling, mundane job mediocrity, and are wondering where it all went wrong. So it's possible that we parents who so want to provide our children the advantages we never had growing up, could be killing their "joy of learning" with our good intentions instead.

Are you normal?

No one wants to be normal in Singapore. A 'normal' person takes 5 years to complete secondary education. That's too slow. Not when 'express' only takes 4 years. If a person has to take an extra year to be schooled, they must be stupid and are an embarrassment to their parents who will never be able to hold their heads up again among their contemporaries, all of whom have 'express' children.

Faith Ng's play, Normal, directed by Claire Wong, focuses on two students in their 5th and final year of secondary education. Daphne blanked out after studying too hard at her Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE), while Ashley obtained less-than-outstanding results at the same exam -- which they took when they were 12 -- thus qualifying them both as 'normal', and nothing more.

Like every other normal student, they bear the label as a stigma. They have little confidence in their own abilities. Their well-meaning teachers' insistence on upbraiding them on their attire, punctuality and decorum at every slight infraction is simply focused on making the normals conform in outward appearance, but does little to challenge them intellectually where academic learning really counts. As such, with every school day feeling like prison, the normals feel increasingly convinced that they will end up not graduating and their lives will be over.

Unlike the other teachers they have encountered, the new literature teacher who runs the Drama Club takes a different approach with the normals. She believes in them and helps them work out their fears, anxieties and frustrations through theatre and convinces them that they can succeed in the end. But in a plot reminiscent of Dead Poets Society (1989), Ms Hue is alone in her efforts and the system beats down on everyone eventually.

The play is beautifully set. There is the main playing area in which all the action takes place, while a corridor runs behind it framed to look like school chalkboards when lit in front, but becomes transparent when lit from the back (the magic of sharkstooth scrim), revealing the ensemble engaged in a variety of school activities. In a genius piece of lighting design, this corridor-frame is uplit at both ends, casting a shadow that creates the illusion of an old school tower on the upper back wall of the stage.

A snappy script keeps moments of tension, bleak humour, and awkward tenderness flowing at a brisk pace. Scene transitions are done by the cast in low light while singing familiar girls' school songs -- efficient, entertaining and relevant. The dialogue is liberally peppered with colloquial vulgarities, which could be shocking -- if we didn't already know that schoolgirls actually do speak like that. However, in performance, because the dialogue is delivered in perfect English, the colloquialisms feel a little forced and incongruous to the lines. 'Natural' speech is still a paradox local theatre here has yet to figure out. Nevertheless, the few soliloquies at the end are vivid in their revelations of past history leading up to the decision the normals make when events that have transpired cause them believe that kindness has turned to betrayal.

For a play that turns a critical eye on the rigidity of the education system and how it adversely pigeonholes people seemingly for life, it is disappointing that the normals make the decision that they do. The characters of Daphne and Ashley are built strongly and sympathetically. As such, it seems a bit of a stretch that they would succumb to their circumstance rather than rise above it. Perhaps that is the point: that the system wastes much human potential. Like the Alpha, Beta castes of Huxley's A Brave New World (1932), the system gives few opportunities for 'late-bloomers' to excel, or even bloom at all.

But it isn't so much the system that finally drives Ashley's decision as much as her own persecution complex which locks her in a vicious cycle, causing her to interpret every interaction with her teachers as hostile, and escalating that hostility with her own defensive reactions. If Ashley is the architect of her own fate while 22 of her classmates are able to move on from where they are, then the character of Ashley is only there to play the stereotype, pander to audience expectations, and raise sympathy rather than deal with the real flaws of inequality and injustice inherent in a system that is ironically supposed to support meritocracy.

Otherwise, Normal is an excellent and realistic view of school from both student and teacher perspectives. While teachers are well-meaning at heart, their personal biases and choices in responding to their students can be very cruel, indeed.

Review originally published on https://tsupp.wordpress.com (26 March 2017)

Arguing the extreme

Model essay time!

I detest 'balanced' arguments the way they are commonly taught. What usually results is something of a bipolar nature with little basis for resolution. Instead of arguments, what the kids generally produce are almost verbatim reports of 'he said' vs 'somebody else said', which is a neutral approach, but two arguments for the price of one is NOT an argument -- particularly if they are self-negating and hence, inconclusive.

Instead, I prefer turning the essay question back on myself. I don't care what the eternally conflicting straw-men have to say about the issue. What's important is what I think of the unvarnished truth of the matter. While I rail at the world, I am still able to 'balance' my argument by identifying the imperfections that make up the world and our experience of it, rather than shoehorning in balance via the polar antithesis of the question.

Anyway, here's what I think of the 'pursuit of excellence' and whether is is ALWAYS beneficial to [my] country: absolutely, unequivocally yes!

Edit 01:
Coincidentally, I just read this article about the intentional propagation of ignorance by the BBC, making me wonder if we were actively teaching kids to stay ignorant by teaching them to argue through polar opposites.

Don't wanna go back to school!

To Liu who wrote:

Globalisation could negate efforts in skills upgrading

From Liu Rijing -

October 6

I refer to The Big Read article “Despite being vulnerable, few PMETs heed call to learn new skills” (Oct 1) and wish to raise a few points.

First, threats to jobs come not only from technological change but also globalisation.

So how can we be sure that learning new skills will ensure we do not lose out to global competition when companies relocate owing to cost considerations?

Second is whether a new skill one picks up would still be in demand after one has spent time and money to complete the training.

Third, when companies can choose to outsource professional work to a worker based in a foreign country with a lower salary, how can skills upgrading help then? (Today Online)

If you are looking for assurances, there are none. Sorry. But if you don't want to undergo skills upgrading, that's fine. When enough of us refuse to do so, there will be more opportunities for overseas companies to outsource their crappy, low-skilled, underpaid, exploitative, dangerous jobs to us. That should put your overarching fear of unemployment to rest.

10 cents for career counselling, thanks!

Getting through

T -1 day to promotional exams. The going metaphor is that the exams are like a door to get through, which makes sense. Once past that door, the successful get to face a new arena containing a new set of trials and tribulations to traverse before they arrive at the next door.

Some kids think that they need a 'passport' or a 'password' to get through the door, and that they can find it in the assigned reading materials or last-minute hints dropped by their tutors in the last days leading up to the exams. But they are being silly. The fact is, there is no one guarding the door to hear the password or stamp the passport. The door is simply locked.

Who has the key, then? The good news is, there is no 'Master' key, so there is no need to scramble for a limited resource that doesn't exist. There is also no need to acquire a key in a standard design, because there isn't one either. Remember the trials and tribulations mentioned above? They exist to train each student how to pick the lock for themselves. Yes, not a key, but a set of lock-picking tools unlocks the door to the next level.

I like the lock-pick metaphor because unlike keys; passports; and passwords that only work once per door, we always hold on to our lock-picks, find new ways to manipulate them and pick up new upgrades along the way. Lock-picks work on every door, and how they are used is unique to the user, as long as they consistently practice their skills, being in the moment and not constantly worrying about the next door ahead.

Cliched, but if people valued the journey rather than the destination, they'd have less anxiety approaching their exams.

It's just a job

My Teachers Day thoughts, though a bit belated:

I'm a teacher. That's my job. But don't expect me bend over backwards and rip my own heart out to help each kid pass their exams when they aren't.

My best teachers were those who taught me nothing. They didn't pretend that their words were gospel or that if I didn't heed them, my life was over. They did share their ideas, but let me form my own thoughts and reach my own conclusions, and we had enjoyable tutorial discussions because of this kind of mutual understanding. They were an interested audience to my exploration of less popular pathways of coursework and were pleased to give me space and independence to bring back my discoveries for evaluation. Though they often graded my work with raised eyebrows, they were fair as well.

For my own part, all I really am is just some dude who picked up a couple of skills over a few decades of experience. All I do is pass them on to those who need them and can make use of them. I entertain no further aspirations nor illusions about this job my mother tells people I have.

The mask that students wear

The biggest stress factor in being a student is being a student. The "student" is a mask that kids wear to play a game involving arbitrary and often unnecessarily petty rules of conduct and impossibly difficult tasks that have little to no bearing on who they really are under their masks. The students we meet in class are pale shells of who they really are. It is when they are not in school that's where we find their true selves.

Keeping the two identities apart for a sustained period every school day makes school the torture that it is for most kids. The ones who suffer the most are the ones who have the clearest sense of self identity -- the musicians, the dancers, the athletes, the computer whizzes and the entrepreneurs -- who have to keep their real selves hidden while they pretend to be sheep when in school.

The identity of the "student" is formless and shapeless. Always incomplete, and hence always having to defer to the wisdom and authority of the "teacher". Students have nothing to say because they don't know enough. They are lumps of clay or rock which submit to the hands of the teacher who sculpts and molds them to whatever shape the school needs them to be -- usually a cube or a brick that easily fits in with everybody else who has been successfully 'bricked' after doing their required schooling time in their turn.

Schools and parents emphasize that exams are their kids' top priority. Everything else can wait until all the prerequisite 'A's have been garnered and paraded among family members and the education community. All the more so among the tuition agencies for whom exam results are their raison d'etre thus making the "student" identity perfectly solid. In the meantime, the identities which have been kept hidden often get forgotten or shelved in the process of brick-making.

Kids hate school because schools subvert individual identity, and level every student towards the lowest common denominator. The tasks they are assigned, the subjects they grapple with, the pressure they get to do their best apply to their student selves, but are completely irrelevant to their real selves. On our part, as teachers, we are stymied as to how to motivate our kids to work harder and do better; and for other kids who have no identity beyond the mask they wear, how to manage their stress before they go bonkers.

What if kids and schools agreed to dispense with the "student" mask and allow their true selves to flourish instead? We take the emphasis away from common exams in favour of allowing the kids to develop themselves as musicians, dancers, and whatever else they see themselves as first. Rather than have them suppress their talents and put them aside to study for exams, we show them how being smart in their academics supports their personal development and helps them become better at what they are or want to be good at. While they develop their physicality and skills, we train them in becoming better thinkers, analysts, strategists, and storytellers. That way, the exams make sense as they become part and parcel of their overall development rather than as a separate and unrelated obstacle they have to overcome before they are allowed to chase their dreams.

I'm not asking for much to change other than mindset. I want us teachers to recognise that we are supporting the cognitive development of individual people offering a wide variety of talents and abilities, rather than training a common mass of drooling zombies to jump through exam hoops. I want kids to bring their true selves to school and to class -- the ones who know who they are and who they want to be successful as, and not the "student" who only does things because they are told to do things.

A good school isn't the one that goes all-out to deliver the best exam results. It's the one which develops its kids to be whatever they want to be first, then good exam results follow as an after-effect.

Essay as a verb

It's always interesting to look at kids' faces the moment they flip over the essay test, scan through the question list and realize that they don't know the answer to any of the questions. There is shock, confusion and, more often than not, a look of having been betrayed.

It's true. The questions are seldom like what we had discussed in tutorials before, and deliberately so. No one is supposed to know the answer to an essay question beforehand. If anyone does, they probably cheated. Or worse, they think they know but they are operating on flawed assumptions at the very least.

The essay is the result of an activity -- in this case, the activity of essaying. Yes, 'essay' is a verb meaning 'to try', 'to put to the test' and 'to make trial of'. Look it up. Knowing the answer beforehand, therefore is prejudicing the outcome of a test or a trial.

The essay proceeds as a trial. There is the accused who is accused of a crime. The essayist has the prerogative to present the case as either prosecution or defence. Based on whatever due diligence they had done prior to the trial -- through research, study, tutorial activity, and topical readings for example -- the essayist has to improvise putting together the case and then presenting it formally as the essay submission for grading by the marker who plays the role of the judge.

Spending tutorial time preparing kids in advance with pre-digested answers does them a disservice, and is a waste of time. While we can and do help the kids with content material which is key to their case preparation, they need far more practice in courtroom procedure. As lawyers, their job is to develop their arguments through asking the right people the right questions in order to arrive at the conclusion that is most favourable to whichever side of the case they stand on.

The hard part of teaching kids to ask questions is in figuring out how to get them to switch off the parts of the brain that makes them think like parrots, and how to activate the other parts of the brain that make them think like people.

Orientation

With all this angst and rage over university orientation programmes leading to a full-on ban on orientation this year, I recall my own experience as a frosh during orientation week.

Every activity was voluntary. The ones I remember were a lunchtime concert by a homegrown band called 'Nacho Cheese' which never made it to big time; an evening double-bill movie screening of A Clockwork Orange and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (an experience of which I have never seen the like, and have not yet found found possible to duplicate); and a serious talk about responsible drinking on campus. There was a social tea event for scholarship students to meet each other and key faculty members as well.

I think it was Prof G who observed that orientation at York was much tamer more mature than most of the other Us in the province -- mainly due to our student population's average age being 25, including a large proportion of grad students. Sure, mature and dignified. That's us.

The gentle art of fencing

Teaching kids to argue is like issuing each of them a personal sword and teaching them to fence. At first, they are all excited with the weapon in their hand. They wave it around, wildly slicing the air and make sound effects as they play with their new toy [it's NOT a toy].

When the excitement has died down and they are calmer, maybe they will start paying attention to the rules of the sport. The most important rule: stop looking at your opponent's sword. As fun as it may be, the score is not counted by the number of times you hear the sound of metal hitting metal.

In this game, you keep your eyes on the target. You win by stabbing your opponent through the heart.

Spoonfed all the way

The dude that posted that "Teaching, not research should be universities' main mission" is sadly mistaken about the role universities play in society. The university is not play-school. The university is where the big kids go to learn stuff. Learn, not be taught. Universities are where discoveries are made, where expeditions into the unknown are undertaken. Universities are all about research, and for the verification of that which is purported to be True. Eventually, from those discoveries, new knowledge trickles down to be taught in schools.

At the university, there are no teachers. Every student is both a learner and a sharer of that which he or she has learned. The more experienced staff -- the professors and graduate students -- share their research, the undergraduates learn what it takes to challenge the research being shared with them, and if qualified, get to undertake research on their own in time.

Ironically, the letter writer has no clue that what he is asking for is at cross-purposes with itself:

Tertiary students are self-propelled, literate, curious and energetic. The “what” and “how” of engaging them should ride on this spontaneity. Let them participate and seek new ways of learning.There should be space for inquisitive minds to explore disciplines beyond their specialisation. Let them take elective modules in colleges outside their own.
They should be exposed to diversity, with student populations representative of the world. Cross-cultural acumen is imperative in this age of globalisation.

He is absolutely right about his observations about the activities that go on at the university, but if by the time one gets to become an undergrad and still doesn't know how to teach and make the best use of available resources for oneself, one is already handicapping one's own learning -- by going in with a fail-blame-other-people attitude. Such 'students' are only interested in possessing a titular degree, but have little respect for the responsibility that comes with it: that of contributing in return new knowledge through their own research thus enriching human understanding as a whole.

Standards and expectations

Thankfully, good sense prevails once again. Old Man Cambridge is still front and centre with his guidelines for grading GP essays. We just have be more specific about our expectations per question and grade accordingly. Ok, I can live with that.

Life got no standard

My thoughts on the 'standardization' of grading GP. Old Man Cambridge has already given us a fine set of guidelines that are a broad-based, flexible instrument that easily scales up and down as the need requires. Any tightening of these guidelines second-guesses the original intentions of the source and ultimately turns our subject into an assembly-line grading system, as the sciences and math have been for a very long time already.

If what we are grading is purely information content, then sure, an assembly-line makes the grading process quick and efficient. A tick here, a cross there, a rubber-stamped numerical assessment made assigning a piece of work into one quality band or another. Answers that are either right or wrong, without wiggle-room for interpretation, with the use of the appropriate formula applied correctly lend themselves to be graded via an algorithm. The math and sciences reign supreme here, some papers being done on an optical sheet and graded by computer even. If it can be done by them, then why can't it be done by us, goes the common sneery criticism.

Very simply, in GP we don't just grade for information content. The bulk of our attention goes into each student's ability to communicate their ideas to us, and communication is by nature a subjective thing. If I, the reader, am able to understand what is being communicated, then great! But that does not mean that my colleague will understand the same piece of work in the same way, or at all. That's because our medium of communication, the English language, is a slippery, imprecise means of transacting ideas, with lots of different interpretations and connotations complicating matters. And Old Man Cambridge's original guidelines are made broad enough to accommodate a general sort-of categorizing. But when we have to decide how 12 marks is different from 13, the endless quibbling effectively renders the point difference moot.

One concern that's been buzzing around is that the kids compare their scores now and wail when they got a particular grade while another who wrote the same thing got another.  We got this whole grading thing wrong. It's because we made every assignment a high-stakes life-or-death survival Hunger Games type deal, so every kid is desperately scrambling for any point he or she can scrape from the bottom of any available empty barrel. When we stop making every assignment such a mercenary concern, the comparisons will stop. Problem solved. But by standardizing GP grading, we are making each assignment even more high-stakes than ever. Promise equality and we will have to live up to it.

Standardizing GP grading goes by the assumption that we are going to get a lot of similar answers. That could very well happen when we emphasize practicing past exam questions ad nauseum; when we base content knowledge on the same set of 'content packages'; and when we prescribe formulaic approaches in response to identified 'question types'. But if I encounter two or more similar answers in GP, my first concern would not be whether they get the same marks or not. My first concern would be that we have a plagiarism issue. Replicating one another's work is not a trait to be encouraged in JC as the kids will get into serious trouble for it when they get to the Uni. So let's please not start a process that will eventually teach the kids the wrongest of values to bring with them to the Uni.

Besides, it's good to have at least one subject graded on a subjective basis. That's life.