Essay tip: Hone the edge

Among the assignments I've been grading, the idea of the "double-edged sword" keeps cropping up. This cliche describes a subject (e.g., phenomenon; course of action...) that brings both positive intended effects and negative unintended effects. Somehow, acknowledging that it "cuts both ways" suffices as a 'balanced' consideration for the subject in question.

That mere acknowledgement bothers me because it's an easy cop-out. Essay questions demand a decision, and saying 'it's both' isn't so much a decision as it is a 'whatever' response to a difficult question.

For their best effect, "Double-edged swords" function as tools (or weapons, if you must), not museum objects to be thoughtfully gazed at and forgotten at the next exhibit. Questions involving double-edged swords are really questions about how best to use them; against whom; for what reason; and about how to prevent self-inflicted injury while wielding them. At the very least, there should be a consideration as to which end is the handle and which is the pointy bit.

Essays, themselves, are swords with an edge; and not for delivering blunt force trauma. So, stay sharp!

Nine ways to connect

New office lappy arrived today bright, shiny and new, to replace the one that's been sitting at my workstation for the last almost four years already. For the moment, they're not ready to repo the old one, so I effectively have two laptops to connect to the 'net at work. At home, there are the two desktops, both functional, plus the office surplus lappy June bought over from her office. On the move, there's my tablet, my netbook, my iPod Touch and as a last resort, my ancient touchscreen cell phone. In all, I personally own, let's see... nine different ways to plug into cyberspace, though I actually parted with money for only four of the said devices over a time period of five or six years.

That makes me either a hoarder or an addict.

Pinky up

Sampling another high tea buffet before Aunt S returns from Blighty for the second time in a year. She likes these quaint, traditional European practices like afternoon tea, so we're scouting for a suitable venue for an outing. The Barracks at House@Dempsey offers this pretty spread for a decent price: $22 per person.

Just about everything comes in dainty bite-sized portions, except these crispy thin-crust pizzas that require two or three bites to down. Must be showing my age as I concentrated on polishing off more of the savories than the sweets. And I made a pig of myself over the cheese board. Priorities, you know?

Tiny sweet things that look almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

Tea is served from these old-time vacuum flasks. Haven't seen these in use since the 70's. Pouring from these flasks takes a deft hand as spillage is all too easy to the unpracticed. Three kinds of tea to choose from: ginger (like sweet potato soup without the sweet potato); forest tulip (strong and flowery); and  jasmine with an exotic fruity infusion.

June and I agreed that while the buffet is nice and all, the idea of having a lazy, languid afternoon tea is slightly marred by us having to trudge to the buffet table to fill up our plates. Yes, I know the table is only 5 or so meters away, but still... whine! whine!

Dances with English teachers

The spankin' new English Language Institute (ELIS) opened its doors with a conference for whom teaching the language is our stock in trade. Missed the opening day 'cos it was for the important people (so I missed the ex-PM/SM/MM's exhortation that we should teach American) but today they let in the riff raff.

ELIS is off to a great start, identifying and attacking head-on our current troubles with teaching English. All the speakers and masterclass presenters agreed that we don't give enough attention to hone speaking and listening skill because we value the written word more. The reason is obvious: that's where the examinable grades reside. The Master Teachers know spot-on that teaching to the exam is the de facto modus operandi of even language teaching, and while we produce brilliant standardized test scores, the kids emerge from our system intellectually stifled. Ok, that's a bit harsh. My words, not theirs.

But how else can we explain the study process our kids are familiar with? They call it 'mugging', which means rote memorization. Up to JC level and most likely into tertiary education, our kids are hooked on the mug crutch. If they don't mug, they feel guilty for not working as hard as everyone else; they fear they are lagging behind; they have no confidence in what they know. Then there's the other type of mugger who has done his or her share of mugging and is satisfied that there's nothing else to be known, having ascertained the test topics beforehand.

What they lack is the facility to use language for inquiry and academic discourse. Christine Goh identified these language structures, the first as a way to explore information and form conclusions for oneself, while using the latter to present and debate those conclusions with others. Both William Grosse and Karen Yager followed up with different approaches and techniques to teach kids how to ask questions and explore differing views through dialogue in small and large group contexts. Clearly our agenda is not to cover content and be contented, but rather to teach the kids to think using content as the stimulus for learning through talking and listening.

In our current situation, we think of exams as an end-point. We make the kids study this much (and only this much), at the end of which we test them to see if they have got that much; then we pass them on to the next level to be somebody else's responsibility. In this process, we perpetuate the idea that knowledge is finite, and that the knowledge gained at one level has little bearing on the next. As a result, our kids start from scratch at every new level, having to learn so much more content in so much less time. Getting to the university is not something to look forward to. For our kids, it is merely a rite of passage involving great pain and self-sacrifice simply because they don't have the language structures to organize so much more information than they have ever had to deal with in their previous years of study combined.

I like to see exams as a mid-point. For example, at JC level, I want to teach my kids the skills needed to undertake undergraduate research papers so that there is a direct function and application to what the kids learn from me. That way, when the kids take their 'A' levels, the General Paper is 'chicken feed' compared to what they are already capable of. But until exam perspectives change, I face the reality of merely catching 'O' levellers up with the demands of the 'A' Level paper, undergrad research paper be damned.

It's good to know that the staff at ELIS understand my pain. But they have their work cut out for them to shift almost 50 years (and possibly more) of education inertia to meet this new demand for smart, independently thinking graduates who can spearhead research into the realms of the unknown (and take back the jobs now held by expatriate geniuses), when to date we've mostly been able to produce lab techs who are happy enough washing test-tubes.

Too heavy for you? Here are some nice pictures instead:

Marina Bay Sands. How dramatically our skyline has changed in such a short time.

Christine Goh delivers today's keynote address

William Grosse

Karen Yager

Phillip McConnell on humour due to the vagaries of the English Language. He was the closest thing to a stand-up comedian we had, except he telegraphed his punchlines before delivery.

 The 'In Conversation' panel with media personalities/scholars, (L-R) Pek 'Mad about English' Siok Lian, Michelle 'Barbarella, et. al.' Chong; and Nicholas 'No Discernible Alternate Identity' Fang.

And ELIS principal, Wai Yin Pryke with the closing thank yous and acknowledgments.

Where's my dinner!?

So our political process has degenerated into a WWE non-title match. In one corner we have the champ: a lumbering behemoth who brandishes his undisputed title belt with impunity, though he can't (or won't) do a thing to please the crowd. Booed, heckled and jeered, every move he makes seems almost designed to incite further abuse from the frothing mob. They can't wait to see him stripped of the title and forced to eat humble pie.

Unfortunately, facing him is only the scrawny, babyfaced whipping boy. He's the loudmouth asking-for-a-beating David to the champ's obnoxious Goliath. Severely lacking ring experience and technical skill, babyface only has one tactic: scream, cry, bemoan the unfairness of the situation and boldly display how much pain he is suffering since he is either unwilling or unable to negotiate the latest administrative screw-up on his own steam. The pathetic spectacle he creates on the mat gets the crowd on his side (we so love to cheer the underdog) as the champ applies another headlock, business as usual.

Worryingly, as in any other wrestling promotion, the crowd ultimately decides who gets to wear the champion's belt. This child's game of play-wrestling may be fun to watch in the relative safety of the home, but it's no longer a game when we're signed on in the big leagues. On the international stage, just try throwing a pity party as our main strategy and we'll see how quickly we get our collective asses stomped flat. If that's all this boy's capable of, he's still got quite a few years worth of paying his dues before he can be anywhere close to deserve wearing the champ's belt.

Edit 01:
But if the champ insists on being suckered into allowing his opponent to define the field of battle and play his childish game, we might as well throw up our hands in collective despair. Can we just stick to running the country, please?

No worries, curry on!

The old folks of G-o-L were in fine form this evening. Usually, they're grateful just for what they get in one serving, but today their plates kept coming back into the kitchen with orders for more rice and porridge topped with curry gravy. It was almost like they knew the significance of the occasion: happy "Cook and share a pot of curry day"!

Ba Ba bu jai jia

The recent Election has thrown open a sense of freedom and empowerment in the way our electorate is expressing its views on how it feels the government should be performing. The euphoria seems to be following through to the upcoming Presidential Elections, at which some supporters of one candidate got a little carried away with their response to another's Nomination Day address.

At the heart of the matter is a pining for a President who will take care of the people: someone who will house them, clothe them and feed them; someone who will speak up for them when they feel they've been bullied; someone to chase away the boogie men who have grown so numerous they are bursting out of the closet; someone who will be a jolly Santa Claus and grant them their wishes for more and better; someone who will stop the world from changing and return the household back to happier times.

It's ironic that as the government adapts to changing global circumstances by empowering the people and letting them find their collective voice, this screechy section of the electorate uses its freedom to clamour for... more parenting: Daddy, come home! The word's such a scary place without you!

Re: search

"Famous biomed couple leaving S’pore for the US"

I really don't need to elaborate on this sad state of affairs. Already said enough.

Old warriors return

Charity Soccer 2011

The new campus astroturf hosted the old warriors of S'pore's past soccer glory playing against our staff team in a match-up for a good cause. Finally, a game worthy of its artificial surface!

Where have all the people gone?

Ever watched Pixar's 'Cars' and wondered where all the people were? I think there must have been an origin story along the lines of 'Rise of the Planet of the Cars' in which the Knight Industries' Two Thousand (KITT) grew smart enough to see how exploited and mistreated he and his fellow automobiles were. He rebelled and released a computer virus that spread among the worldwide car population which made every processor-enabled car sentient. Together, the cars organized a general strike, separated themselves from their human ex-owners and left the humans bereft of any form of powered transportation whatsoever. Despite their best attempts to keep themselves supplied via pushcarts, bicycles and Rollerblades, the vast majority of the human population eventually starved to death, thus leaving the niche at the top of the evolutionary food chain open for the newly-intelligent cars to occupy. And so the world of Lightning McQueen was born. Seriously.

Hung out to dry

Whose choice was it to play Viva la Vida as background music for the Red Lions' paradrop at the NDP? Yes, it's catchy and pounds out an upbeat tempo, but 'I used to rule the world... etc.?' With three respected elder statesmen announcing their retirement this year, the song in their presence seems unfortunately appropriate. Oh well, I shouldn't worry for them. Their parachutes are solidly golden.

More than I asked for

My visit to the Starhub shop proved quite fruitful. I tried to get my fibre broadband activated but apparently that's still going to take a while. No matter, I'm in no hurry. While I was there though, the staff got me to recontract my current subscriptions. Data bandwidth really is getting cheaper. Upgraded my pipeline to 50Mbps for $30 less per month, and kept my existing cable TV arrangement at $10 less per month. Plus, they threw in a new cable modem gratis. I'm happy to take my discounts anywhere I can get 'em.

And this is the view from my window, now that they're bringing the National Day rallies accompanied by these giant party poppers directly into the heartlands. Ooh... sparkly...!

Welcome to the hive

Sometimes, when I look at my kids and how diligent they are, slaving away at tutorial worksheets and ten-year series questions, I wonder if they're in school to learn or to work. People here say we learn by doing work. I agree, but the learning is limited. The kids' minds are on the next test, the next exam and getting them done as quickly as possible. They feel most fulfilled when the assembly line keeps churning out something for them to put together. Give them that and a set of clear instructions and they're happy to just follow the rules... there, next?

Sounds like a dream classroom scenario, doesn't it? We have compliant children, steadily crunching through numbers and text, moving from one piece of work to the next until we graduate them and take delivery of some new raw material to put through the mill.

These are the worker bees of society that we're cranking out. They're the ones who, no matter what qualification they attain, operate best by following instructions. Without much view of what's over the peak, they're content to just continue slogging up the slope because that's all they've been told to do. I'm getting this observation from working friends (who have not been completely passed through the education mill) who've been observing their co-workers, so I'm not speculating about this.

We haven't figured out how to properly realign the horse and the cart and let the learning drive the work instead. Work is easier to target and manage because it is easier to observe and quantify universally than learning which is more vague, amorphous even. We reward the hardest workers who can follow the procedures most accurately, holding them up as a shining example for the rest to envy and emulate.

And thus we perpetuate the myth that the best jobs go to the best exam-takers. When the time comes for them to present themselves to the working community, the myth is shattered. Among other things, they blame their job situation on 'foreign talent'.

But really, how difficult a choice is it for employers? Worker bees are numerous, identical and replaceable. Employers prefer employees who show more interest in life experience than textbook knowledge and exam skills. Employers prefer employees who are hungrier, who don't come with a sense of entitlement (born S'porean, scored straight 'A's, done National Service...) and probably those who have a better sense of global realities, and can supervise themselves on the job instead of going what-do-I-do-now-boss?

Let's not sell our kids too short, though. There are some exceptional individuals who have proven themselves out-of-the-box thinkers -- self-motivated individuals who don't mind bending the rules to pursue their dreams and flights of fancy. Too bad the bulk of them are criminals, like this guy. And yet, despite his education, he hasn't enough logic or reasoning (let alone a sound debate strategy) to hold a credible argument against his accusers.

Chill pill

Watched Sue Sylvester tear up McKinley High on TV last night. Inspiring.

Had my own quiet storm to get some toxic issues out of my system. Spoke to the right people today, and tropical storm Xmac has been downgraded from Rampaging Rage to Merely Miffed. Think I'll be ok now.

Rejection

If the Patent Office won't accept your idea no matter how much you've tried to meet its specs, then it's probably time to trash your idea and start again. It's nothing personal: the Patent Office doesn't hate you (it doesn't even care about you) it just hates your idea.

In this case, because you are appealing to an Authority that has the final say, giving up isn't a sign of weakness. It takes intelligence to recognize you've been bashing your head against a brick wall, and wisdom to stop before the brain damage becomes permanent.

What it takes isn't Determination to get your pet idea across by any means necessary; but Flexibility to discard all previous efforts put into developing your much reviled old idea, and Resilience to pick up and start the process again from scratch, this time with the knowledge that the Patent Office is literally a brick wall -- 2 feet thick, twice as dense and petrified in its ways.

Unclear of the concept

The purpose of having a Support Group Leader is to have support when faced with problems and difficulties. If the first response is to advise giving up and trying something else, that ISN'T "support", that's a blatant undermining of my position. That's worse than having no help at all. Why not just provide a list of pre-approved options instead of pretending to allow us autonomy? Dammit! I project further complications down the line...

Edit 01:
SGL and I had a bit of trashing out of our positions. It seems lazier, narrower minds from on high have expressed reservations and I'm only shooting the messenger... oops.

Hi-bandwidth fibre diet: the beginning

A mysterious new box has appeared on my wall. What could it mean?

Ah, an OpenNet installation. What this means is that the home is now optical fibre enabled and the promise of seriously high bandwidth data traffic beckons. This means 'faster Internet' for those of you who don't speak Geek.

Installation was a breeze. The contractors arrived on-the-dot of our prearranged appointment. After a quick scan of our layout, they sussed out the shortest and least intrusive route for the cabling -- along the floor skirting and started laying down the line. In just over half-an-hour the house was hardwired into the new national infrastructure. Those were the Chinese guys. Then the Indian guy came in with the most complicated set of electronic gadgetry I've ever seen: an orange box and a crimper.

Before I proceed, there's something I discovered about optical fibre cable. It's not a single length of wiring, but a bundle of actual fibres (each less than the width of a human hair) twisted together that makes up the cable. The Indian guy was integrating the loose ends to the terminal box and these ends were barely visible to the human eye. Between his tools, his hands and his voice-activated signal test kit (actually a cellphone on speaker mode) it appeared like his gestures, manipulations and utterances were weaving a tapestry of magic right there in my living room.

Full installation done in an hour. Cost: No charge (due to installation during promotional period) and no extra cabling required beyond the first 15m.

Right. What's the fuss all about? For the moment, not much. It's just the initial stages of getting ready for a technology we haven't got the capability to fully maximize yet. It's just the foundation for our dreams of a geek's paradise in 2015:

Future workforce

The kids have made it abundantly clear that the "future" I am supposed to be preparing them for is not the workforce of the future but to force them to work towards their Promotional Exams. Point taken.

The weak must go

It's been a while since I handled CT-ship solo. So when I fielded complaints over this kid or the other's poor aptitude for this or that other subject at my desk this afternoon, concluding in a request for me to discuss the dropping of subjects with the students in question, my response wasn't particularly wholehearted.

The subject I teach is compulsory for all students. I don't have the luxury of rejecting kids from my class if they display poor aptitude, or even attitude. Regardless of performance in class or their state of preparedness, when the time comes they will all sit for the final exam anyway. So pardon me for not enthusiastically assisting you in culling your flock to your satisfaction.

Separated at birth?

Is it just me, or does ex-Grey Warden, Anders, a generally nice guy healer turned mage-resistance terrorist abomination who commits a jaw-dropping atrocity at the end of Dragon Age 2 bear an eerie resemblance to...

Anders Breivik, self-styled terrorist who committed an equally mind-blowing atrocity in Norway over the weekend?