High School Education, Economics, and the Role of Science in Society
Ignore the title.
Ok fine it’s sort of relevant. By the way I’m listening my way through Ayako-sama’s album (right now it’s playing ‘空ノナマエ’)
I spent this morning at the apartment of arguably the bestest friend I’ve ever had (though we routinely fade in and out of each other’s lives, but for us MEN it’s perfectly fine - and don’t make me recall Hitohira and Ayako-sama’s voice…), watching 2 minutes of Mythbusters and more minutes watching a documentary on Hershey’s chocolates (don’t ask me why - we couldn’t leave because of the rain so we opted to watch TV), and soon after leaving the house had our umbrellas destroyed by the wind. We rather uneventfully reached Coffee Bean in Bishan, and over breakfast we gabbled about my pet topic - education.
A summary of what we discussed is as follows:
1. A levels still suck after all.
2. The contrasting subject idea is good, but it has serious problems.
3. Economics should be classified as a ’science’ subject due to its quantitative nature (at college level and up).
4. SPA sucks. Practicals shouldn’t be assessed in the form of an exam.
5. There should be two science streams: one for the people interested in science, one for those who have no idea what they want to do or have nothing better to do than to take science.
6. Everyone should study history or geography or some other humanities/social science subject in high school.
Most of the ideas were mine, but somehow I managed to convince him of the merits of some of my ideas (though we agree that my ideas are difficult, if not impossible to implement in practise.)
Anyway that’s not what I’m really trying to say. I’m just mildly amused that I would engage in intellectual debate on the morning of my birthday (on 07/07/07, no less - and coincidentally my favorite passenger plane is the Boeing-777, which I took from Shanghai to Singapore in June 1998).
(Note on the afternoon of July 8: I don’t have energy to finish a proper post, so I’m leaving this as it is. And oh I have pics of Lee Kuan Yew from the Cosfest on Saturday (7/7). But they’re bad quality so I’m not showing them.)