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Is this the Singapore that so many of you are dying to emulate?
"Birth rates in the 1960s were still perceived as high by the government; on average, a baby was born every 11 minutes in 1965. Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH) — which specialised in women's health and was the most popular hospital to have children — saw over 100 deliveries per day in 1962. In 1966, KKH delivered 39835 babies, earning it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for "largest number of births in a single maternity facility" for ten years. Because there was generally a massive shortage of beds in that era, mothers with routine deliveries were discharged from hospitals within 24 hours.[16]
In September 1965 the Minister for Health, Yong Nyuk Lin, submitted a white paper to Parliament, recommending a "Five-year Mass Family Planning programme" that would reduce the birth rate to 20.0 per thousand individuals by 1970. In 1966, the Family Planning and Population Board (FPPB) had been established based on the findings of the white paper, providing clinical services and public education on family planning.[17]
By 1970, the Stop at Two campaign was firmly established, implementing incentives, disincentives and public exhortation to discourage families from having more than two children. After 1975, the fertility rate declined below replacement level, in a sign that Singapore was undergoing the demographic transition. In 1983, the Graduate Mothers' Scheme was implemented in an attempt to get educated women, especially women with a university degree, to marry and procreate, while the government encouraged women without an O-level degree to get sterilised. This was done out of the Lee Kuan Yew government's belief that for the nation to best develop and avoid hardship, the educated classes should be encouraged to contribute to the nation's breeding pool, while the uneducated should not, sparking the Great Marriage Debate.
In 1986, the government reversed its population policy — except its stance on low-income, lowly-educated women — and initiated the Have Three or More (if you can afford it) campaign, offering cash and public administration incentives to have children. In 2001, the Singapore government started its Baby Bonus scheme."
(And don't give me crap about the source. If you don't believe it find a credible source to refute it)
Add to this the fact that Singapore has a completely urban population approximately equal to the population of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island combined, and a land area about 15% larger than those three boroughs together, and you might see how it may be difficult to scale their educational system to a far more diverse population numbering more than 50 times their size.
Come on, who cares about Singapore's politics.
This is an education forum. We are focusing on Singapore's math education. We don't even care about how they teach English or Chinese. Singapore educators have done a phenomenal job in teaching math. They have a lot for us to learn from. Take this example from their primary mathematics, I bet half of US students (regardless of grades) cannot solve it.
Bryan invited 20 more boys than girls to a party. 3/4 of the boys and 2/3 of the girls came. 19 kids didn't come. How many kids did he invite?
This is an education forum. We are focusing on Singapore's math education. We don't even care about how they teach English or Chinese. Singapore educators have done a phenomenal job in teaching math. They have a lot for us to learn from. Take this example from their primary mathematics, I bet half of US students (regardless of grades) cannot solve it.
Bryan invited 20 more boys than girls to a party. 3/4 of the boys and 2/3 of the girls came. 19 kids didn't come. How many kids did he invite?
Pretend you are 11 or younger, can you answer it?
Singapore's politics might have something to do with their education system. Certainly their demographics do. I don't take much to latching on to some other country and saying "if we just did 'it' like they do, everything would be great." I remember from 25 years ago, we were all ga-ga about Japan's educational system. Then, we started taking a hard look at it and found they have their problems, too.
Not going to take the time right now to solve the problem, but I recall problems like this when I was in elementary school, and when my kids were.
This is an education forum. We are focusing on Singapore's math education. We don't even care about how they teach English or Chinese. Singapore educators have done a phenomenal job in teaching math. They have a lot for us to learn from. Take this example from their primary mathematics, I bet half of US students (regardless of grades) cannot solve it.
Bryan invited 20 more boys than girls to a party. 3/4 of the boys and 2/3 of the girls came. 19 kids didn't come. How many kids did he invite?
Pretend you are 11 or younger, can you answer it?
I'm teaching my 7 year old the Singapore way to solve these. This one can be done with a bar graph and some guess and check. My 7 year old would need a bit of guidance setting up the bar chart, but once it was set up and I told her to guess and check for the rest of it she could do it. I imagine by 11 she'll be able to set up the bar chart herself.
I would not have been able to solve them by 11 because I moved from the DC suburbs (good schools) to the deep south (bad schools) in 4th grade and didn't learn any more math until the 7th grade when a math teacher took pity on me and gave me some advanced workbooks and let me sit in the back and do them instead of doing the work the rest of the class was doing. I would have been able to solve them by the end of that year though, because I taught myself algebra.
I think that actually doing word problems would help. Throughout my K-12 education, all of my teachers said to not do the word problems. We never did them, and it does cause serious issues with understanding math.
We should use H1B visas to get some Chinese or Indian teachers to teach math in public schools.
Finnish teachers! Those Finns are top-rated!
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