the one with People Like Us

Akikonomu had an interesting post on the recent brush that the civil society group PLU had with the monolithic machinery of the Gahmen. he has been criticised by quite a few people for his post. these people seem to have the opinion that Akikonomu is criticising PLU because he is not sympathetic with their cause and instead of criticising, should be more encouraging.

i, on the other hand, think that Akikonomu's intentions of bringing up this discussion is valuable. i believe that this discussion is about how PLU (and other civil society groups) can do better. which is all the more important precisely because of all the obstacles that civil society groups are facing. in order to navigate all the obstacles, you have got to be tough, get your act together and be watertight as possible. so if we are sympathetic to the cause, all the more we should criticise, bringing to light what went well, but more importantly, what went wrong and how can we do better. if not, how can we improve? if not, civil society groups would just turn into the civil service, full of people who keep patting themselves on the back but never quite improving because somewhere along the line, some one can't take criticisms.

besides, civil society groups are supposed to be critical of society, pushing boundaries and all. should they not apply the same principles to themselves and be critical of their own efforts, pushing their own boundaries of what they can do to be better, more efficacious and efficient? thus i feel the greatest value of Akikonomu's post is to bring up this discussion, where different views of how PLU does things are thrown up, and then for PLU to glean from it ways of how they can improve. that is the mark, in my opinion, of a foward looking, progressive organisation.

if only our Civil Service was like that. it would solve a lot of problems. alas, nonono... middle management kills everything. in what little i've seen of the Civil Service, i have seen visionary senior management whose ideas fizzle out because the middle management rather go with the safe, tried and tested way. i feel that this is all the more so with MOE.

Minister has set out a vision of quality education that prepares for life not just for exams. he admits that it is hardly possible to measure and quantify this sort of quality of education. however, we are in Singapore where everything has a number attached to it. we still attempt to measure how good our education is. which is fine. the numbers give a very rough indication of where we are. but to see getting a good set of numbers as the goal of education would be to miss the point completely.

alas, it seems that that is what some Principals are doing, still only going for all the awards, certificates, etc., turning students into award winning, medal producing machines, sacrificing those who cannot do so along the way.