Thoughts on starting the school day later

I was reading the Straits Times the other day about the positive benefits about starting the school day later.  Basically, students would perform better academically. However, as bus operators who ferry students to schools also ferry worker to offices/factories, they pick up the students on the same schedule as before, Schools that have pushed back their start times find some students still arriving at the same time and these students have to endure a longer wait. The articles suggests pushing back the starting time even further back (to say 9am) so that bus operators have enough time to ferry workers and students. Parents would also have some time for breakfast with their kids. Anyway, I saw this letter to the ST forums:

Teachers and other staff will also benefit from later start to school day

MANY parents like me are in full agreement with the article, 'Start school later and let children sleep longer' (Jan 9).

Finally, after so many years, we have an article that puts this matter in perspective. How is it that our children's well-being is determined by bus operators keen to make more money by operating two services instead of one? Since Singapore has no natural resources and depends on labour to sustain the economy, do the authorities not want to evaluate the ramifications of sleep deprivation on our children in their growing years?

 

Apart from that, will teachers and other school staff not also benefit from this positive change? I am certain that teachers and staff will welcome the change as this means aligning their working hours to those of their spouses and other family members. With positive changes like this, the Ministry of Education will see less attrition of good teachers too.

 

Furthermore, if school starts later at 8.30am or 9am, schoolchildren will also depend less on school buses as working parents can take them to school on the way to work. It is ridiculous to allow children's and school staff's well-being to be decided by bus operators. It is time the authorities looked into this and not continue this mindless trend.

 

With sufficient rest, children will not find school as tiring and tedious and will enjoy it more. Teachers will also be less sleep-deprived and able to deal with work stress better too.

 

Ginny Leow (Mdm)

Some thoughts.

First, can we fault the bus operators for wanting to make more money by operating two services instead of one? Of course not, these are private business entities and they provide a solution to the problem of getting kids to schools. How much of a rise in transportation fees are parents willing to bear so that bus operators can maintain their current profits by running one service instead of two? And since labour is indeed needed to sustain the economy, it is important as well to ferry workers to their workplaces as well and it should not be denigrated.

Second, what are the ramifications for other motorists, public commuters and transport operators? And not all students take school buses, quite a lot of them make use of public transport as well and starting school later would definitely add a significant amount of traffic during the morning rush hours. Feeder and intra-town bus services would be most severely affected as many primary and secondary schools are located near to student's homes. They would be jam-packed with students at a time when hordes of people are rushing to work. Train passengers would be affected as well but would not be as much since student traffic is usually localised (at least for primary and secondary students).

To add on, if parents drive and need to drop their kids off, traffic around the school might slow down as well. If they don't, they'll need to take the public transport to send their kids to school. Either way we're looking at a situation where almost everyone spends more time in their daily commute and a certain proportion of them needs to wake up earlier. And the reason for this is so that students can spend more time sleeping. How ironic is that?

If school is to start later.....make it a lot later

Starting school later is a good idea, but clashing with the peak hour traffic is not. 9.30 or 10am would be a better  time to start school as the crowd would have thinned out by then

Iljimae (一枝梅) - Great show, great music too

I know that currently most people are addicted to The Little Nonya, but for me, Iljimae wins hands down. The plot is pretty confusing at times (just ask my mom, she's still lost) because each of the two male leads has more than 1 father, and 2 of the fathers are common to both the leads, though they do not know it. The two half-brothers seem doomed to kill each other in some sort of a confrontation as one of them (Lee Geom) becomes the infamous thief Iljimae, while the other becomes a law-enforcer who's in hot pursuit of him. The tragedy that befalls Lee Geom really draws me in and it's really gratifying to see how he exacts revenge against the forces that slayed his family. I'm expecting lots of exciting fight scenes once he masters some thievery and martial arts skills.
Iljimae main cast
Besides there's also some eye candy to ogle at in the form of Han Hyo Joo, Lee Young Ah and Son Tae Young (too few of her appearances, really).

And to top it off, the music is really top-notch, I've got to say some of the tracks instill a sense of poignant melancholy. Like this, it seems to be called "Hwa Sin", or "Flower Letter"

花信-朴孝信.mp3 -

This is the opening theme, which I really like for it's pensive beginning and the subsequent kicking in of the percussion and strings to set the dramatic mood.

iljimae(Main Title) - Ryo Yoshimata

And this piece for a bit of soothing sentimentalism

iljimae - 03

I'm gonna get the OST :)

Isn't that misled minister also ......

the one that sang for the NKF charity show? Given the questions raised regarding the minister's involvment in NKF, you would have thought he would be more prudent and get his assistants to do background checks on organisations that he would become associated with. Totally agree with DK on the point that even though the minister would like to distance himself from the degree mill, the degree mill got him to make the speech exactly because they would appear to be on close relations with gvernment agencies. Few would expect the government would cheat them or be cheated by the degree mill.

 

 

Links to articles:

Worthless degrees

 

Trust private schools here?

Olympic Silver Dampener

While Singapore is in the midst ofcelebrating her first Olympic medal in 48 years, the mood has been dampened with the dismissal of team manager Antony Lee. While it may either be a case of poor management or genuine resource constraint that resulted in Gao Ning being left without a coach in his match, the subsequent comments by table tennis association president

 

Olympics: Paddler Gao Ning crashes out, lacking coach support during match

Move not to renew table tennis team manager's contract surprises many

STTA's decision not to renew team manager's contract made before Olympics

No coach present as Gao falls to unknown

Antoine Dufour - Song For Stephen

Usually we tune a guitar before or after a song. Watch Antoine Dufour tune it in while playing!

[youtube]VgsB_xA2G0I[/youtube]

Finally back online.....

after being disconnected when both my desktop and laptop conked out on me....when it rains, it pours....

Thoughts on Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech

Recently there's been a glut of articles in the Straits Times on the subject of engineering in Singapore.

Importance of technology

The first was when ST published a few articles based on an interview with Mr Ngiam Tong Dow on 22 May, 2008. It was pretty interesting to see what are the man's views on topics such as fighting inflation, the rapid promotion of scholars, and the tax structure. In particular, I was quite intrigued by the topic of Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech. In his view, "Singapore must ensure its best and brightest continue to become engineers and not just bankers". It is the only way to become a knowledge-based economy, he says.

So why are more Singaporeans shying away from science, tech and engineering? By that I mean two things:

1. A higher proportion of Singaporean students are picking up other disciplines like business or arts rather than science and engineering.


2. More Singaporean grads leaving/less grads taking up tech-related jobs.

That's what anecdotal evidence seems to be telling me. I guess it boils down to money and job prospects. Even though a fresh grad would earn a pretty decent salary as an engineer (this also depends on the kind of industry), it'll still pale in comparison to those in finance, banking, law and medicine. And the influx of foreign workers/students and exodus of jobs really paint a bleak future for engineers.

Engineering is still prized as a academic qualification even though not viewed favourably by students. In another ST interview on 26 May, 2008, Ms Lee Bee Wah notes that even though the median engineer salary trails that of the top eight earners for six professions used to compute the civil service pay, a third of the top executives were engineers by training. She adds that engineers often move out of engineering jobs and many are headhunted by banks and MNCs. Students are also increasing drawn to business and medicine.

Supply Issue

On 31 May, 2008, ST published an article about engineering in Yale and Harvard, with a snippet of text that mentions Mr Lim Hng Kiang saying local institutions are meeting domestic demand with "a steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year".

Finally, on 1 Jun, 2008, ST has this article foreign students in local universities. It brought up the phenomena that more foreign students are enrolled in engineering and computing compared to other courses. These are the courses that are shunned by local students.

Implications

So now we have this interesting situation:

• The top brass agree that tech and engineering is important for Singapore's development.


• The skills and training of an engineer makes him suitable for other roles like working in a bank or MNC, and this is recognized by headhunters.


• Lesser locals are studying entering tech and engineering and entering the field , while more foreigners are.

It appears likely that we are going to face a future where both the developers of technology and the people who manage them are going to be foreigners.

Links:

His worry: Is Singapore becoming high cost, low tech?

A steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year

Engineers have "role in community building"

Foreign students in varsities