The Educational Scene

My 3rd interview and counting
I got a call from Dennis and clinched my 3rd interview for the year. There were some conversational exchange of an offer of partnership and his chain of schools employed mostly ex-NIE trained teachers, some 90% of them on his payroll.

I told him I wasn't any NIE-trained teacher. But that if I do not measure up, I could always be fired or better still, I would fire myself (if anyone has a conscience, he/she would - speaking for myself that is).

I also told him that I wasn't particularly interested in any partnership as my educational vision may not be what his schools envision. If it happens, it happens. If it doesnt, I will just go on concentrating on teaching in the only way I know how - the edutaining way.

The interview
Just as I set off for the venue of the interview the next day, I got a last minute call to go to a different location. This place had a cafe fronting its premise. The interview turned interrogative and I wasn't exactly prepared for it.

He sounded like another egotistical He-Ape. He belonged to that same pioneering group who left in the late 80s and early 90s to embark on private education when they sniffed out the market potential back then.

The market potential was simply because there was this BIG plug to up the ante on exams and grades. Public schools can't handle that kind of pressure, what with schools' ranking , excellence awards in all fields of endeavours, competitions of all sorts, the number of credit passes in the major examinations and the string of distinctions they had to produce for their schools.

This private education group has since done very well. If He-Ape is a benchmark with his landed property and big Mercedes . In fact Dennis' chain boasts an impressive 10 odd schools in all. A decade is a long time for anyone to prosper.

The only way schools knew how to rid themselves of this HUGE LOOMING dire responsibility was to turn this over to the private sector. If a kid didn't do well in school and he also has the benefit of private tuition, nobody is to blame for his predicament. So there, we all wash our hands of him.

Never mind if academic studies may not be their cuppa. Technical and vocational training is. Or that some are late bloomers. Or not all are A-graders. Or some improvement of sorts isn't good enough.

Worse I think like He-Ape (who left because there wasnt much of a career prospect back then and he certainly hankered after wealth more), this same group hasn't kept in touch with much of what is happening in and around the schools. They are just shadowing the same system in schools, duplicating the exact numbers and feeding off the poor naive and undiscerning masses.

I told him that if I had my way, besides putting students together according to abilities, they could also be sub-grouped into the "passives" and the "actives" with lots of hands-on for the latter. The final crunch would be for very academically weak students and the disruptive personality sort to engage in a one-on-one private tuition. This would be so much more appropriate, not in a class of 10, 20, 30, 40 or even 50 people.

This job isn't what I really hanker after. It is a stop-gap . But I do need some money now and I can't be forever going on like how I am going on now.

The job I really covet
There are just a few, one of which is a full lectureship in a language centre at a local college. There is so much you can do with kids and I am keener on just focussing on the individual and the individual alone. Minus parents, nannies and what have you.

Younger kids need more behavioural direction and management to have them sit still and listen to you (unless of course it is some extra-curricular programs like drama, leadership, communication, etc and thus not so academically inclined) . With near tertiary level kids (the polys, the jcs and the unis), I only have to keep my mouth talking to get things moving.

School-going age charges, be it primary or tertiary-level, aren't so hung up on deliverables. It is mainly the adults. The parents, the administrators , the schools, the policy-makers and the future employers who are. The pre-occupation with reward points, with an alpha-numeric grade (why cant we just have comments and corrections for mistakes made) and a collection of certification.

It is like an 82 marks for a subject guarantees you your place at work or that you will be able to use the knowledge or that you are really competent in it or that you fully understand it even.

Training
I have always loved attending seminars, workshops and educational courses (of course only the ones I feel are of use). All of which I pay for out of my own pocket. Not a single grant in sight. Can you imagine the foreign workers getting a better deal in this? Or the ample opportunities thrown down the way of educators in schools but which aren't fully subscribed at most times?

Some of these are state-run courses and I can tell you they are atrocious. Two of which I attended are on "Supervision" and "Selling". Other private institutions fare no better. An early childhood program I attended had its lecture notes mostly photocopied from some books. It even had "Calculus" in its math module.

The same went with the computer studies course. It wasn't the technical jargon that kills. It was the bad English in all its handouts. I can't make any sense out of it. If it had been written in better English, I would. Like I did Andrew Parker's "In the Blink of An Eye" on Optical Physics. Prof Parker used optical physics to explain his interpretation of the Cambrian explosion.

I have many other blogs to write on but I can only manage a few today.