“You won't improve schools by mixing the bad with the good” Following is an article from some UK newspaper (I can't remember which one exactly...). The bolded parts resonated greatly with me...ANY SUCCESSFUL school will know that a good reputation is hard won and easily lost. Such schools will thus be very wary of Schools Secretary Ed Balls's warning that good state schools face being marked down by Ofsted, the inspections watchdog, if they do not take part in mergers or federations with poor schools.According to Mr Balls, the “best education providers are to provide chains of schools run by a single overall leadership, with a shared brand, with some shared management and governance, with a shared ethos and identity”. This is why he is proposing that the cap on heads' salaries of £120,000 be lifted for heads who add neighbouring schools to their portfolios.A few years ago, in west London, it was suggested that the Church of England high school that I was running could establish an “annex” to help the local authority to increase its secondary school places. Places in a church school would have been easier to sell; it was a popular brand. I declined, for I had taught in a split-site school, which is what Mr Balls wants to create, and I would not impose this on my staff. It was pointed out that, with a larger “school” to run, my deputies and I would be entitled to larger salaries; but for my staff there would only have been the difficulties and frustrations of trying to work effectively in two separate communities.Mr Balls is proposing management by threat. That's all he can do, for, ambitious headteachers apart, few people will see the benefits of such proposals. But if he implements this madness, he will destroy what little trust remains in publicly funded education.He is also confused about the nature of education and its provision. He uses the language of edu-babble, condemned only last week for its ability to disguise and confuse. He assumes that a human institution can be run like a distribution centre, dispatching cereals and tins of beans, inanimate materials that, conveniently, will not react adversely when mishandled.Who are these educational providers of whom he speaks? Parents who teach their children to read and to listen and to treat their fellows as worthy of concern and consideration? Teachers in a classroom with real children doing their best when they aren't ticking boxes or trying to digest the latest government directives? Does he have in mind volunteers, who teach all manner of useful and constructive things in organisations for young people? Other adults, employers of young people at weekends and during holidays? Or does he mean some sort of business that would be as happy to “deliver” education as easily as they deliver self-assembly furniture? Talk of delivering education suggests that the stuff has simply to be packed up in the back of a truck and driven off to a lucky school somewhere near you.To put it bluntly, Mr Balls proposes an even larger burden of school management to be financed, motivated and rewarded. Teachers are easily rewarded and easily motivated. Just allow them to get on with teaching most kids without the need to provide tick-box support to the non-teaching managerial pyramid that needs constantly to justify its existence, and see that a few words of thanks and praise reach them from time to time. Balls says that his plans would ensure that “no pupil is abandoned”. Does he not realise that a considerable number of them are abandoned before they get anywhere near school?Turn it upside down, Mr Balls. Start at the bottom, in the homes into which children are born. Look to the parents for your leadership, your inspiration and sense of burden of responsibility. But you daren't, like most politicians. You find it much easier to play silly buggers at the top of the pile, with fewer individuals who can be more easily managed with money than with parents whose children are let down so badly - by them and by the rest of us.The trouble is that we believe that educational supply chains can be switched on from Whitehall by a directive from the Secretary of State and responsibility passed on to some NGO, like Edexel, for instance. In such a mad, mad world, who will children be able to sue if this plan fails them?Peter Inson is a former headteacher and the author of the novel 'dunno'. Perfectly imperfect i know this has been out for a while... but something today triggered a memory of it and i realised that i've not posted this before. i think this must be one of the more better govt adverts made. not sure whether it'll actually be successful in getting more people to set up families... but it's nonetheless a touching advert.sigh. Thanks received a message from someone today which made my day. and reaffirmed my desire to go back to my old job.one and a half more years left... Give me a Break i know i'm lagging behind... but i've only recently started to be hooked on Prison Break. the season that's being shown on tv now. and by that i mean the non-cable type.i think i'm drawn to how the motley crew of people come up with cunning schemes to outwit their advesaries, beating the odds to accomplish ludicrously difficult tasks. i guess i just like rooting for the davids in their fight against the goliaths.but one thing i cannot understand. why is it that Michael have to always be the one performing all the critical things? he has this big ass tumour in his head which causes him to have fits, making him not able to see clearly, walk properly etc. doesn't he know that he is a liability if he has to be in situations which is physically strenuous? sure. he's the genius, the one with all the ideas, the person with all the great plans. all the more he should plan it such that someone else gives Don the sucker punch and takes Scylla. not him.of course, one could say that it's all for plot development. if linc had been the one to take out Don, then that would be the end of the show. so Michael had to be the one. so that, just at the right moment, Michael has one of his attacks and Don takes back Scylla. i.e. more drama.but are there people who are really like that? who think themselves to be so indispensible that even when they acquire some deficiency, become somehow impaired because of injury or old age or disease or something, they still put themselves in a key position which requires them to operate as if there is nothing wrong with them and thereby jeopardizing the entire team and compromising the mission.i suppose there are probably people like that around... these people should learn to take a break. let someone else take over. move on to something else which is not affected by their acquired deficiencies and plan for other people to pick up the slack.heh... i just realised something... what started out as a very innocent post could be read to imply something rather politically sensitive. but... honestly, i swear. i really meant for this entry to refer to nothing else other than Prison Break...argh. better stop now... Random Thoughts Jeremy had this as his MSN nick thing: "Bangkok rocks".to which my comment was: "yes... bangkok rocks and that would be ok. but if rocks bangkok... now that would certainly hurt." REALLY MISS my previous job.the interaction, seeing the fruits of my labour, the growth, the positive changes after going through struggles and overcoming challenges... AFOB Too! strangely, the fact that i've not been blogging has resulted in my not reading other people's blogs as well. and while skimming through BOng's, XH's and Cheng's blogs, i remembered how much i enjoyed reading their blogs. for various different reasons. AFB away from blog. that's what i've been. it's not because i don't have things to write about. on the contrary, after the last few months, i have quite a lot to write about. but... over the last few months, i have felt immense inertia to write.i think it's partially because i sit in front of the computer at work a hell of a lot more, hacking away at the keyboard (sometimes i do wish that i was really hacking the keyboard... or at least hacking something...) that i've become averse to sitting in front of a computer for any length of time once i'm out of the office.well... in any case, i guess i'll try to blog more, but (not that i think that anyone would), don't hold your breath for it.for my dearest friends who still visit my blog once in a while, thanks. i'm fine. most of the time.till the next time... stay happy! History in the making. from the Lincoln Memorial to Capitol Hill, from one African American to the next. indeed our generation has been fortunate enough to have witnessed history in the making. You know it's Christmas when you turn on the tv and you see different adaptations of Dickens' A Christmas Carol showing. today... there were 2 different versions, one on Channel 5 and the other on OKTO. different flavour, the former darker, the latter more bright and kiddish.i wonder... if, without fail, you get A Christmas Carol showing on TV every Christmas, do the decendents Dickens' get compensated for the use of Dickens' intellectual property... Ideal back when i was still idealistic... i thought that this song described the essence of my perfect ideal of what love.  Plato and a Platypus Walked Into a Bar is the title of a book which i bought and finished reading today. anyone considering a course in philosophy would stand to benefit by starting on this book first. it is witty and funny, ergo interesting, informative, incisive and thought provoking.the book deftly uses jokes to elucidate and explain some of the key concepts in philosophy. while by no means conclusive, the concepts and ideas covered are some of the more major ones in the history of philosophy.a good read. Policy making it is important to have good pubic policy. neatly cropped, kept clean and dry whenever possible. Memories of the Southern Clouds... this song reminds me of my Yunnan trip last year. i think of the 3 times i went to Yunnan, i am closest to the group of people i went with last year. i will miss them... well... let's hope we really are able to keep in touch... ha... facebook certainly does help! In God We Trust no. i've not turned Christian.but i have been thinking much about the recent financial turmoil. and about the financial system as a whole.our modern financial system works, to a large extent, on trust. i give you something of value to you, trusting that you will give me back something of value in return, if not now, at least some time in the hopefully not so distant future. that is what paper money and credit essentially is. and because we trust that sometime, somewhere, somehow, someone is going to give us something of value, we continue to purchase, to buy, to acquire all that our hearts desire. all with the magic of a few pieces of paper (which have now been replaced by a few electronic pulses).now that the financial crisis is deepening further, nations scramble to ease the flow of credit, to keep the system going. i believe that this only means that the system is going to be artificially propped up, perhaps setting up for a harder fall. who, in the end, benefits? the rich. so that they can continue spending, continue consuming. but what is the basis of their consumption? who gave them the ability to go on consuming? have they really created that much value in our world, in our lives such as to warrant such astronomical ability to consume?trust. we trust that they have. but where has that trust led us? we borrow from banks, banks borrow from us, nations borrow from its people, banks borrow from nations. in the end, who is it that pays?Earth. Freedom!!! i can't remember the context... but KO was talking about free willy... and for some reason... that made me snappish. and snap i did...me: free willy free willy... you talk some more, i'll free your willy from you.unfortunately, that did not stop KO talking about willies. instead, that only encouraged him to tell us more about his willy cleaner...sigh... Dreaming... the previous entry was actually a question in this year's A-Level's General Paper. thinking about how i would go about writing an essay for the question greatly alleviated my boredom during invigilation. and the more i thought about it, the more i felt that i should actually sit down and write the essay.i don't think that what i've written would actually make a good GP Essay as such. for i do not know what makes a good GP Essay. but what i've written is what i truly think about dreams.important for people who aspire to greatness, who wish to make something of their lives. and important only if you do something about your dreams, if you put in the Herculean effort that is often needed to realise those dreams.so.to my dearest students. if you are reading this. some of you have shared your dreams with me. (and i thank you for that) i think you guys have fantastic dreams. be it to have your own boutique, to be a doctor, a lawyer, a chef, or to travel the world. but dreams don't become reality just like that. as you move on to your next stage in life, remember to keep your eyes fixed on your dreams and give your all to fulfilling those dreams. Importance of Dreams. *edited* We often hear people say things like: "I dream to be a pilot when I grow up", "I dream to go to the Carribean for my honeymoon" and "I dream of earning my first million by age thirty". Indeed, our dreams are synonymous with our aspirations. They are goals which, while at times far-fetched, we hope to achieve. However, far-fetched as dreams sometimes may be, there is still a place for dreams in our lives. Rudyard Kipling very succinctly sums up the importance and significance of dreams in this one line: “If you can dream and not make dreams your master”.A person’s dreams push him to work harder, to struggle and strive so that he can fulfill his dreams. It is then through this process of struggling and striving that they achieve greatness. A good example would be Li Ka-Shing. He is the richest person of Chinese descent and has been touted as Asia’s most powerful man. However, he started life with very little. Yet, even at a tender age, he dreamt of being rich and powerful. This dreamt sustained his drive even under adverse conditions and helped him through the toughest of times. His efforts culminated in him building a multi-billion dollar business empire.An individual’s dreams sometimes do not only affect himself. A single person’s dream can serve as a rallying point for a group of people, galvanizing them into action. This group of people thus inspired can often work miracles. Singapore is a product of such a process. Lee Kwan Yee had a dream of changing Singapore from an under-developed island into a bustling metropolis. This dream inspired people like Goh Keng Swee and Hon Sui Sen to join in his cause and brought people of different races, languages and religions together to build a developed city state in a short span of forty-three years.Dreams are not only limited to individuals. A group of people can have a collective dream. In fact, many nations were built on their own respective dreams. Indeed, many countries are still pursuing their dreams. China demonstrates this very well. It is the collective dream of the Chinese People that woke the Chinese Dragon. It was China’s dream to be a global superpower, to be on par, if not superceding, America which drove China’s inexorable growth, allowing them to achieve a decade’s worth of double digit annual economic growth. The pursuit of this dream saw China sending their own astronauts and space shuttles into orbit, holding the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and accumulating a sovereign wealth fund in excess of one trillion US dollars.Of course, dreams do not always lead to good things. When Hitler dreamt of creating a thousand year Reich, he inadvertently plunged the world into a living nightmare instead. Hundreds of millions of people died in humanity’s greatest tragedy simply because of the power of a single megalomaniacal person’s dream. This shows how much dreams can change the course of humanity and hence their importance.There is however one common trend in all the cases discussed thus far. All the dreams that have been mentioned were important only because those who dreamt those dreams were willing to put in extraordinary amounts of effort to fulfill their dreams. Woe is to the dreamer who gets lost in his reverie and does nothing. For such a person shall, instead of being inspired to greatness, languish in ignominy. We see this often in history. After the First World War, the world dreamt of a future without war. The League of Nations was set up as an attempt to realize this dream. However, without sufficient political will, all the best laid plans came to naught. After the Second World War, world leaders dreamt of a world where economic stability was ensured and financial catastrophes such as the Great Depression will not happen again. Thus was born the IMF and the World Bank. However, without concerted effort, these two institutions have been shown to be powerless in stopping the recent financial Tsunami from sweeping across the world, resulting in the greatest destruction of wealth since the Great Depression. Though the entirety of the damage has yet to be accounted for, some economists have predicted that it might even be greater than that of the Great Depression. Dreams are therefore important, but only if the dreamers are willing to grit their teeth and put their backs into turning their dreams into reality with the sweat on their brows.Finally, there are people who function perfectly well without dreams. These people are content with a stable, albeit staid, existence. Just like the Deltas and the Epsilons in Huxley's Brave New World, these people are fine having no ideals and big ambitions. They do not need dreams to spur them to greatness, in fact, they may eschew greatness. It is not surprising that we do not hear great examples of these people, because these people are happy with their mediocrity. But we must face the reality that these people do exists in great numbers and that dreams are of little importance to them.In conclusion, dreams are important as they can spur us to achieve greatness. They serve as beacons of light, beckoning us to excel. But dreams are only as important as we are willing to commit effort to realizing them. Without effort, dreams will remain as ethereal fantasies, insignificant and inconsequential. Fantastic Stuff let's all reward greed and stupidity of the very sharp and sophisticated people! huzzah! One Person One Half... while randomly youtubing... i found this song... and it brought back a flood of memories of last year. :(sigh... you know who you are... Differences i was just doing some work on MS Word. and i spelt defence as... well... 'defence'. MS word showed that it was wrong. and it reminded me of a joke i heard in the UK on the 'Bremner, Bird and Fortune Show'. it says that it is easy to know when you are in the US and not in the UK. because they spell the word defence differently. in the UK, it is spelt 'd-e-f-e-n-c-e'. in the US, it is spelt... 'a-t-t-a-c-k'. it was a sarcastic jibe at the second Iraq War which was supposed to be defending US interests and security. that,as we all know, is bullshit. and that is what the Bush administration will be remembered for. BULLSHIT. let's hope the American People chooses wisely. that the next President won't be as jingoistic and myopic. i.e. not the team with Sarah Palin in it... Discovered i've found some people's blogs. i wonder how they would react if they knew that i know of and have read their blogs... Being Poignant Again... 一切恩爱会皆由因缘合会合有别离无常难得久难得才可贵。但愿我们彼此之间的缘分不会就此为止。。。i think the people whom i'm addressing know who they are... that is if they are reading this... Having Fun... so V was sitting on J, as girls do... then i commented to KO and R that when girls do it, it's perfectly acceptable. but if guys do it, then you will have to wonder whether the guy being sat on is hard at play.at which point, KO started singing, "You raise me up..." Civil Society i think that the recent Highnotes Minibonds debacle has demonstrated that Singaporeans do have the ability to spontaneously organise themselves for a cause that they care passionately about. just that this cause has nothing to do with freedom of speech, freedom of expression, human rights, etc.this however, doesn't mean that civil society in Singapore is dead. it just reflects the priorities of the people, that Singaporeans, in general, is very pragmatic. i think the government would do well to recognise 2 things:safeguard our livelihoods. ensure that people's wealth is well taken care off. if not, Singaporeans can very quickly organise themselves to show their displeasure and take action. Horror... just watched this show on Okto's Sunday FilmArt called Pulau Hantu. i must admit... that the did give me the creeps. but i put it down mainly to the music and a few eerie scenes. other than that... the show was rubbish. theme was shallow, acting was bad, no character development. it's a far cry from the great horror shows of the Far East. i think that Japanese, Korea, Thai have a warped and perverse talent for shocking, scaring and traumatizing audiences with their film creations.i think what makes their shows so successful is that these shows leave most things up to your own imagination. so you don't really see the thing that is supposed to scare you. and the most frightening things are usually just at the periphery of your senses and yet suggesting the most horrible terrors, such that as you strain to see/hear them, you actually end up forming scenes of your own and hence scaring yourself. all these are taken to a whole new level because very often these shows very often make use of everyday objects, places, throw in masterfully chosen camera angles, mix it up with simple yet eerie sound effects, and what you get is a show that really toys with your mind. of course, there must be the mandatory little 'boo' effects (i.e. things dropping suddenly, abrupt changes of camera angles just to reveal freaky things combined with sudden loud music following relatively softer sound effects). and the worst part of these shows are that they leave a very deep impression in your mind (because you were the one who formed most of the scariest images). Lowering Standards in Singapore, teachers who are university graduates have to do a post-graduate diploma in education. the course name is very often shortened to "post-grad dip in education". and that's what the course is. after you come out of a degree course, for you to teach, you must lower your own standards. or more correctly, be able to bring yourself to the level of your target audience, i.e. the students. most of the time, this does indeed mean having to bring yourself down to their level.this is not because the students are not intelligent. but more because students lack the training and experience to analyse problems in the context of the academic subjects. a teacher therefore has to be able to explain concepts in ideas which the students are able to relate to and therefore find easier to comprehend. unfortunately, there are teachers who teach as if they expect the students to be just like them, which more often than not means that teachers expect students to be studious and bookish and able to grasp abstract concepts quickly.but that is not the case. especially with primary school children. which is why i think that demanding that all primary school teachers be graduates might not necessarily translate to a rise in education standards. i might be clever. i might know my stuff very well. but that might make me a horrible teacher because it is and has always been easy for me to do well academically. which therefore means that i might not be able to simplify concepts and to explain ideas in a manner that the students understand.i'm sure you know what i mean. you must have had a teacher who, when you ask him/her a question, looks at you and says "aiyoh... liddat so easy you also don't know ah?" then rattles off at the speed of light. and at the end, you walk away learning nothing and perhaps even feeling a little discouraged.it might make sense to have graduate teachers perhaps at a higher level, tertiary, JC or maybe even when dealing with high ability secondary school students. but for the majority of students, they need teachers who are amongst other things, patient, able to use various strategies and strict yet approachable. not all graduates have that. and many non-graduates have those qualities as well as sufficient academic knowledge and experience to teach at the primary school. what's more, many non-graduates are better placed, because of their personality, to shape the minds and behaviour of primary school children.what determines whether a person would make a good teacher is not what degree he/she has from which university/institution. rather, it is his/her attitude, personality and ability to simplify to use different methods and most importantly, to relate, intellectually and emotionally, to the students under his/her charge. Free Speech? to the proponents of free speech. take a look at Thailand. that's what freedom of speech without due responsibility brings you. it makes a complete mockery of the idea of a democratically elected government and utterly disrupts economic development, leaving the poor to continue languishing in poverty.no... i'm not saying that we shouldn't have freedom of speech and expression. but take it to its extreme and it becames a farce. Dumb and Dumber i was looking at some of my older entries. i.e. those written before i started work proper. i seemed to have a greater depth of analysis on a broader range of topics. it seems that i have lost much ground recently. i put it down to my having less time to sit down and ruminate about things, to hold flitting thoughts, delve deeper and expand on those ideas.in short, because of a more packed life, i think i have less time to reflect about many of the issues that bubble up but i do not give priority to.either that or i have become dumber. Misplaced Trust the current financial crisis is known, in Chinese as 信贷危机, which literally translates as: crisis of trustworthy debt. which i think sums up the cause of the mess we are in rather neatly.we trusted the bank executives, the fat cats of Wall Street, to know what they were doing. they trusted the people they lent money to, trusting that doing so will make money for their organisations. and on that trust, we bought shares. on that trust, they paid themselves handsome salaries. alas... it has now turned out that all that trust were ill-placed.on hindsight, it seems obvious that the banks shouldn't have made lent so much to people who clearly did not have the ability to service their loans. but at that moment, when the prospect of making money existed, which fat cat executive would turn away?the one thing which i think we all feel strongly against is the fact that these executives who are responsible for the crisis have made insane amounts of money and yet most probably are not going to suffer any form of reprisals. instead, it is the middle income group, the ordinary citizens, the 小市民, who have to bear the burden of this error in judgement.where in is the justice?this is one of the problems of our economic system. money can be made, wealth can be built, not by hardwork, not by really being productive, but by being cunning, being devious, being able to fiddle with numbers. while there has and will always exist a class of looters, our modern economic system allows these looters to operate completely within the boundaries of the law and hence making them legally irreproachable. yet these are the people are said to be working smart and thus are held up as models who many a young college student aspire to be. in light of this... is our world enroute to becoming the dystopia that Rand described in Atlas Shrugged?