Education System

http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/07/12/an-open-letter-to-the-education-minister-from-a-secondary-4-student/

1)To what extent do you agree with the issues that the student has raised here? Point out some issues of agreement and possible contention.
2)Examine her tone and attitude in this letter. Do you think it’s a well-crafted letter with the appropriate tone?
3)If you should write a letter to Minister of Education, what are some issues you would raise? Remember- your intention is to make the system better for society’s betterment via CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.

1)I agree to a great extent with her points.
She wrote in the letter that she preferred the Dictionary.com definition of education to the definition found in the most commonly used Cambridge dictionary. Yet, if we were to scrutinise the definitions, we would find out that they are basically the same.
Cambridge defined education as: the process of teaching or learning in a school or college, or the knowledge that you get from this. The key word here is LEARN.
What is to learn? Why is there a need to learn? How do we learn? And most importantly, what do we learn?
'Learn' is defined, by the Cambridge dictionary, as: to get KNOWLEDGE or SKILL in a new subject or activity. Dictionary.com defined it as :to acquire KNOWLEDGE of or SKILL in by study, instruction, or experience.
I experienced the education system before (and is still experiencing it) and there are countless examples on my education till now, many of which are similar to the ones she raised.
I remembered, for one of the science tests, there was a question: Why can't carbon form an ionic bond with oxygen (or something along those lines)? The answer (absurd-sounding to me) was that carbon is a group 4 element and that oxygen is one from group 6 in the periodic table. It made me ponder: Why can't the group 4 elements form an ionic bond with the group 6 elements? Is there some sort of qualities related to bonding of chemicals that classify elements into groups? Of course, school never thought me that, otherwise I would never have been asking myself that question. All we were told to do was to memorise, to cram the information into our poor minds.
Of course, though, I can raise some counterexamples. One would be that the when we ask 'why?' during the lessons, they would either give us an answer or (most probably) encourage us to research on that topic if we are interested. This shows that the teachers still do believe in satisfying the students' curiousity, by giving a logically valid answer, unlike the point she brought on the teachers only having a "Cambridge wants this, so we will give them this" attitude of teaching.
Till now, you must have realised that there are still 2 questions on learning that are yet to be answered.
I believe, that if there were to be a question in any sort of test paper that asks "Why is there a need to learn?", the model answer would probably be: Because we are students. But if you were to think deeply, you would come to the answer that: Because we are the future of the world.
Future of the world, so what do we need? Apart from knowledge, we need skills. Lots of skills. Analytical skills, critical thinking skill, etc. We also need good morals. How do we learn to have a good character? By watching acts of the morally upright, in this case teachers, parents and seniors must set good examples, and emulating them, which brings us to another point that I agreed with her: The flaw of the Civics and Moral Education in the timetable.
Which leaves us with one last question: How do we learn? And the answer should be: Through our education system.
2)I believe that it is a fairly well crafted letter, though there are still flaws in my opinion.
The structure of the letter is rather flawed. She should, in my humble opinion, place the example of how the education is placing the importance of factual memorisation over the usage of skills and creative thinking in the foremost part of the letter. The she can go on with explaining how important curiousity is. Also, i think that she did not explain how curiousity (or any other skills that she did not mention) is important in the development of a first world country. She should also give some examples on the education of technologically advanced first world countries like Japan and Korea. As for her second point, I feel that she did not state the right way to teach students to be morally upright people in the future.
Next, regarding the tone of the letter, though the way she put it is rather rude considering that the receiver of her letter is an education minister, I ind it fairly acceptable.
3)I will raise the issues she did.