Raffles Programme
Actually there seems to be a minifuror from some of my classmates to my previous entry. This time, i would like to talk about the Raffles Program that i am in, known as RP. I must say that these are truly my heartfelt feelings on it.
You see, i think RP has a very noble objective, to develop thinkers, leaders, pioneers etc. but maybe it's becos of the students, maybe becos they don't have experience, but they are simply going about it in a very retarded way.
I mean i do appreciate a lot of the work that they give us. Like somme science experimnts or what, these actually enhance learning and promotes enquiry into the topic. But the problem? They do not account for our CA, so nobody gives a damn about them.
This is again due to a lot of reasons.
First, spamming by the school. We are spammed with a hell lot of project works, assignments, tests etc. These range from sciences, humantities, languages, and other crap like CLE. Not that we don't want to, but where do we find the effort to handle these crap
Second, it's stupid emphasis on tests. Although the school want to eliminate exams, but aren't common tests and cct their equivalent? Or even worse, they are more frequent. So there's this ultra-mugger spirit that imbues us, and influence our attitude towards learning, to a large extent.
In the end, we are not really provided with a superior education, as the school often proclaims. We don't learn much extra stuff, or we don't bother to learn since it's extra and we are struggling with the basics. And for other stuff, we just learn the same as "o", so it doens't really make a difference.
Then there's other factors too. Like teachers. On one hand, there's teachers like AL, whose teaching is completely confined within the boundaries of the o system. On the other hand, there's teachers like efoo who just assume that we have been truly blessed with the essence of RP, so we can just discuss idly in class. And there's other bad examples of teachers slacking too much, teaching crappily etc etc
Basically i feel kinda sad. In such a good school, we are treading towards retrogression. The ideologies are not flawed. But we simply aren't making them click. Actually ycm is right, RI is losing in every aspect. And instead of revamping the structural aspects of the school which give rise to these problems, we are just getting complacent.
Pupils burning brooms, pupils stealing, pupils vandalising, pupils cheating, pupils hacking... this is RP , believe it or not
You see, i think RP has a very noble objective, to develop thinkers, leaders, pioneers etc. but maybe it's becos of the students, maybe becos they don't have experience, but they are simply going about it in a very retarded way.
I mean i do appreciate a lot of the work that they give us. Like somme science experimnts or what, these actually enhance learning and promotes enquiry into the topic. But the problem? They do not account for our CA, so nobody gives a damn about them.
This is again due to a lot of reasons.
First, spamming by the school. We are spammed with a hell lot of project works, assignments, tests etc. These range from sciences, humantities, languages, and other crap like CLE. Not that we don't want to, but where do we find the effort to handle these crap
Second, it's stupid emphasis on tests. Although the school want to eliminate exams, but aren't common tests and cct their equivalent? Or even worse, they are more frequent. So there's this ultra-mugger spirit that imbues us, and influence our attitude towards learning, to a large extent.
In the end, we are not really provided with a superior education, as the school often proclaims. We don't learn much extra stuff, or we don't bother to learn since it's extra and we are struggling with the basics. And for other stuff, we just learn the same as "o", so it doens't really make a difference.
Then there's other factors too. Like teachers. On one hand, there's teachers like AL, whose teaching is completely confined within the boundaries of the o system. On the other hand, there's teachers like efoo who just assume that we have been truly blessed with the essence of RP, so we can just discuss idly in class. And there's other bad examples of teachers slacking too much, teaching crappily etc etc
Basically i feel kinda sad. In such a good school, we are treading towards retrogression. The ideologies are not flawed. But we simply aren't making them click. Actually ycm is right, RI is losing in every aspect. And instead of revamping the structural aspects of the school which give rise to these problems, we are just getting complacent.
Pupils burning brooms, pupils stealing, pupils vandalising, pupils cheating, pupils hacking... this is RP , believe it or not
posted by VITALISM at 10:14 PM
11 Comments:
Yep, this is the sad truth about RP, students cheating, vandalising etc. What YCM said is true to a certain extent, while we are losing our grip in terms of sport, it will still be a few more years before we lose our grip on academics, possibly to HCI and NUS. But the problem is that these academic achievements, are they truly our own achievements, or are they the achievement of one student, while the rest of them copy his outstanding work? About the point that we are getting spammed by the school, that is very true, I think that the school does not work cross-departmental, they just each handle their own dept and set their own work for us. That is why it is so screwed up, they should coordinate and like this semester these and these subjects give project, then next semester the rest give project, and they should try and avoid situations such as being forced to participate in Greenwave, I mean whether we want to participate should be up to us right and not the school, as if having one RE is not enough work. The problem of work not counting for CA so no one cares about these pieces of work such as geog CDs is quite rampant. The school has inadvertently while trying to achieve their goal of inculcating the love for learning in us, done quite the opposite, through this spam, we all do the work until dam sian already, how ironical. Secondly, would you rather have SA 1 and SA 2 just these two tests in whole year, or would you rather have constant spam of quizzes, assignments, etc, looking back now I wouldve preferred the former. About the point that we learn more/less, I think we are actually learning more, one reason for why the teachers seem to be going at a breakneck pace for certain subjects, is because they are trying to cram o + some a lv stuff into one year, but the problem is that not all the students can take this cramming without suffering some deficiency in their results, do not forget that some ppl are late developers and they only bloom late in life, like JC and uni, if they are considered lousy students because of their poor performance in pri and sec sch, then it is quite unfair to these ppl as they do not get the chance to enroll in better schools and thus you might actually snuff out a light that will soon illuminate the darkness. Of course, teachers play a role as well, they should try and understand that we are just as tired of this constant routine of lessons, homework, tests as they are, we all just wish we could take a long holiday. We should work together, to try and achieve a better learning environment, rather than listening to soloist teachers like AL, ap teachers like chiong and just plain lousy teachers like yifu. They should accept our criticism of them, and we should accept theirs in return, so that both teachers and students can improve together. That is how a school should be run, after all teachers should not only be teachers, a good teacher is both your teacher and your friend.
hmm.. janky
u noe what? u can actually go and start a blog. after all, a blog is suppsoed to describe ur feelings
lol I like reading blogs, but I do not think I like blogging. But who knows, Ill consider it.
This year's open house was lame.I can actally count the attendance rate with my hands(cross reference==> last year i needed to use a sharp cal with advanced d.a.l to count). we are losing the plot, man.
it makes me sad to see that people no longer give us a damn. But i think that the problem is not with r(i)p, and not with the teachers, but with some losers we have amongst us.
we have some products of egestion hidden in us. let's admit it, some ppl are just not fit to be in this school, to don the famous all white attire, to wear the famous badge.
it's these ppl who will kill the rp. let's not make references, shall we?
Although greenwave has brought us alot of sianness, i still think that greenwave, though more hardcore than other projects, is still a little more meaningful. At least there is a goal.
Consider the other performance tasks like maths challenge, biography, chinese cultural performance task, these are all supposed to bring us deeper into the subject, but 1. we don't go deeper into the subject. 2. reverse psychology we hate it.
I agree to a certain extent that the school still does not go beyond the O level. It depends on the subject. English, doesn't even teach anything, though precis is useful for A, Chinese, we're just preparing for O so we can ditch it in JC. Maths, a little beyond. Chemistry, quite a lot of advanced chemistry. Bio, not really. Geog, who takes geog in A anyway. SS, dunno also.
But the point is, so what the syllabus extends beyond the O' level? Take an A level textbook and flip through it, and I assure you that only 1% of it is taught as part of the "Raffles Programme". Going beyond the O level is thus not a goal, nor an achievement of RP.
However, what it does is to try to build other abilities, ESPECIALLY thinking creatively and critically.
In terms of creativity, I think it's quite stupid, especially when they spam us with performance tasks. For example, in secondary 2 we had to make a ramp for a ball to row down, to demonstrate the conversion of gravitational to kinetic energy. that project is like: wtf? a total waste of time. Creativity? I'll go for innovation anytime.
At this point of time, we must ponder about whether there is a difference between creativity and innovation. I think creativity is being able to think out of box, to think of something new that someone else didn't think of. But innovation however, is being able to think out of the box like creativity, but to think of out of the box in a USEFUL way. Which is why innovation is a term often used in R&D. For example, coming up with a product to clean your floor automatically is innovative, but (i took 10 minutes to think of something this stupid) making a 1kg mobile phone, though packed with say lots of features, and saying bigger is better, that is not creativity, that is stupidity.
Which is also why i say, abstract art is creative, not innovative. Get it?
So back to the point. The school is trying to inculcate skills, and not really knowledge. Presentation skills, speech skills, for example. But these can be done in RE, why extend these to school work?
Look at the JC way of studying. I doubt they have performance tasks. But, they take part in competitions and mentorships. These are what gives them true skills, and not performance tasks that they find lame.
So, is RI screwed? Not for now. We still own academically, i doubt we will lose to HCI and NUS anytime soon. Sports-wise, not for me to comment, but it seems we are losing. Musical groups, it's quite a fair fight.
But still, how we judge a school is not just by these results, nor by their future A' level. We depend upon successful Rafflesians out there to bring the name of the school up. Yet do you see many of them now? RI has a reputation of good leaders, but any good ones recently? Lee Hsien Loong was from Catholic High.
There are 2 parts to a person: His nature, and his nurture. Schools serve to nurture. Is RI doing it? In a very screwed way, but is it still doing it better than other schools? About the same way.
Still i must complement differentiated modules. I think they're quite a good idea.
But as for curriculum, seriously, reduce CLE to 1 lesson in two weeks at least. And for RE, there is this problem: we have 2-3 hours, but most of the time after meeting the teachers we just slack the rest of the time, simply because for most of us, there's nothing that we can do in school! The computers will be packed, you can't do field work in school, the school internet is UBER laggy, and some people are doing mentorship in research institutes. So it's a waste of my time (unless u say slacking!
Hi Annoymous,
First, are you clement?? Pls update me.
Second, i really agree to you post. Why are there nobody coming for our open houses. Like many have realised, we are losing our superiority in many fields. In sports, aesthetics, languages, sciences etc. Face it, we are no longer that elite school dominant in everything.
Our superiority is slowly being chipped away. Teachers must take responsibilities. I simply do not want to raise exampeles of lousy teachers who are simply atrocious. Our students are becoming more corrupted, as i have mentioned before.
So when a P6 child now chooses a school, we can't assure that his first choice is RI. Long time ago, a person chooses RI becos it's the only school. Later, people choose RI becos of its heritage and illustrious history, and the superior education it provides. Now, based on quality alone, can we compete? If less top students come, we will just become lousier and lousier.
As for the losers, i think there are many. But i do not think just having poor results can be deemed loser. I know of a friend in Sec 2 this yr. He got in throuh DSA with only PSLE 200. he's now failing his math and chinese. Who's at fault? Does the school help him? No. It's cruel really. The school is making use of him. He wins swimming titles, and the school benefits in terms of fame. Yet when he fails academically, hes left to fend for himself.
On the other hand, there's many people who are simply corrupting the system. People who only wants to disrupt, to kill the learning environment. That's why i kinda support the streaming system, where pupils go to classes based on reseults. I know it's kinda elitist, but with the current state in RI, i think it will benefit both the school and the students.
Hi Kwok,
I support your views to a large extent.
Ironically, the school hopes to promote creativity and innovation by spamming us with performance tasks. But it's working the wrong way. I can safely assure anyone, all these PTs are so rigid and retarded that they are simply useless. Even worse, you have to have a mugger mentality to score in them, so it's really a stupid idea isn't it?
Let me give you an example. Last year we have to make a model for Bio. The purpose of it is to design and enhance learning. i respect it's true objective. But when people like andy make an elaborate (but with no real purpose) model on bacteriophage, they can get 24/24 from joylim. Bala and i made a very creative model on the eye. Although we din put in that much effort, it was a creative masterpiece, and we even considered marketing it as a teaching material. IN fact, joylim commented that it was creative and borrowed it to show her students. But becos of its un-muggerness, we got 22/24. It's these cases that make me wonder, is RP promoting creativity?
Which is precisely RP doesn't realy benefit us. It's supposed to be a practical curriculum that prepares us for the future. But when our bosses give us some tasks in the future, can we really do something good? Take note that if we have to solve something, we cannot refer to some textbooks to mug. If we have to make a product, we cannot just buy some book that teaches us to make it.
This new age requires us to create, whether it's technology or standards. A chinese official once said to a us officer. "3rd class countries produce products. 2nd class countries create techonology. 1st clss countries set standards". Creative invented the Nomad Jukebox in 2000. But when iPod came out in 2001, it totally owned the former, and set the standards for MP3 players, despite losing out initially on technology.
I agree that the curriculum has to be revamped simply becos it's not realistic. CLE, RE etc have a good purpose, but we find it hard to take advantage of them. I propose merging Philo with English, so that we can do in-depth thinking and put them into ideas more efficiently. As for CLE, i propose to scrap them. To be honest, if you have a good character, lessons won't make it better. If you have a bad character, lessons will be futile anyway. As for assemblies, i propose putting them on last period on friday. If there's really a good program, put it there. But if it's pretty lame, just give us early dismissal.
As for RE, i actually think it's a great idea. But instead of forcing it between lessons and cca on monday, i propose it to be FFA on friday afternoons. No cca or what on friday afternoons. If you are interested in your project, you can do it (long afternoon). But if you are not, miht as well go home to slack instead of stoning in sch.
Maybe it's just 3-4 lessosn saved a week. But take a year, and it's precious school time which we can really utilize.
RP... better not be RIP
it's me hahaha...just think who i am. ps i am in your ss documentary group. and you approached me for the eng book club thing.
btw, i also feel that the eng bk club is another typical product of rp.
oooh icic
annoymous is a true blue rafflesian who will bleed for the school.
yar, back to the topic. the book club idea is lame
I AM NOT ANONYMOUS... GO CHECK IP... and i didnt even know tehre was a comments section until today... and i dun get why u ask me to read ur blog... it doesnt give me answers...
Then come to other sch lah duh... NJ IP program will spoil u into a little brat.(oh ask junyang to come alone)
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