wanderingintofocus

          Flying cars. Space colonies. Immortality. Humanity has always attempted to predict the future, but is often grossly inaccurate. Even at a recent artificial intelligence conference held in China, futurist Elon Musk claimed that 99.99% of predictions that human beings had in the history about the future turned out to be false. Nonetheless, predicting the future is appealing because it allows us to prepare for it. However, it also brings with it dangers such as undermining public confidence, exacerbating the impacts of wrong predictions, and possibly even catalysing the occurrence of the sheer undesirable.            Predicting the future is appealing because it allows us to better prepare for it, especially giving us partial control over the outcomes of imminent events, from the level of abstraction of the individual to the society. Weather forecasts allow commuters to better plan their travel. Market predictions a...

According to an article published on 4 August 2020, the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) reports that suicide remains the leading cause of death among people aged 10-29 in Singapore, adding that the number of suicides among the 20-29 age cohort remain the highest compared to other age groups.  You know we live in a first world country when the leading cause of death for your youth is suicides and not preventable infectious diseases. Credit where due, every school in Singapore today has a full-time school counselor. In fact, our school had three counselors at the start of this year, two of whom were here on a contractual basis whose duration of commitment have since elapsed and they are no longer attached to our school.  Recently we had a mental health wellness seminar for a CCE (Character and Citizenship Education) lesson in school, wherein the speaker shared with us statistics and studies regarding the importance of sleep or having a balanced diet. In addition, we were introduce...

Why does it always seem like the students who are doing the best tell the rest that "grades are not the most important thing"? If it clearly isn't, then a rationally-planned curriculum will not centre around that fact. 2 or 6 years in, here we are in the final lap in the sprint to the finish line of the race that is our pre-university education.  Today I attempt to reconcile this by presenting my Preliminary Hypothesis on the Dynamically Changing Needs of the First-world Student .  For this model to be applicable, the student must first exist within what I would call an "individualistic-competitive" education system - where individual achievement is emphasized and students are benchmarked not by their individual progress and self-improvement, but by their relative proficiency to their peers in standardized assessments.  This model assumes that the basic physiological needs of the student are being met, where she has continual access to shelter and safety, health...