Introducing P-Level: An Educere Initiative
“(Insert subject) is useless.”
A common phrase amongst my peers from Raffles Institution (RI). Despite RI being a top junior college in Singapore, filled with academically inclined students, it’s such a widespread belief that many have accepted it. This sounds weird, doesn’t it? Some of the best students in Singapore are disillusioned with their academics — believing they are useless.
Here’s a breakdown of the problem and how P-Level solves it.
A Quick Survey
I conducted a small-scale survey with 15+ students from Raffles Institution. To start on a positive note, 4 in 5 students responded they care to know how the subjects they learn are used in the real world. But how much do they really know?
Math is almost universally acknowledged to be important, which is why nearly every RI student takes Math. Yet a surprising 43% of respondents state that they are unfamiliar with the practical applications of Math.
The other subjects are a mixed bag. Encouragingly, 70% and 85% of students state they understand how physics and economics are used in the real world respectively. But on the flip side, only 36% understand chemistry’s practical applications.
But why is this a problem?
From a practical standpoint, students who understand why they learn what they learn tend to remember content better. Humans unconsciously choose to remember concepts that are useful to us. Similarly, we forget concepts that we find useless [1]. And tangentially related, contextual learning is a teaching method where students learn by connecting new concepts to their experiences and their surroundings. Contextual learning is effective because it optimizes for our tendency to remember useful information.
This makes our survey results worrying. Beyond scoring well in exams, a large portion of students don’t see how the subjects they learn are useful. As such, much of the content learnt will be forgotten once A-Level exams are over. If we can barely remember the topics we learn, then what do we really get out of JC education? Is it worth 2 years of effort and the accompanying stress?
To summarize, students who don’t understand how they can apply subject content taught outside of exams will gain little out of their JC education.
And from a mental health standpoint, students who believe their work is purposeful tend to be happier, are less likely to engage in harmful activities (e.g. smoking), and perform better academically [2]. Conversely, purposelessness leads to a whole host of issues — ranging from boredom, anger to depression [3].
Related: Developing Life Purpose in Singapore’s Education System
Intuitively, if one believes what they’re studying has no practical applications, it is inevitable that they find their education purposeless and unfulfilling. The predominant view amongst my peers is that JC education is a necessary evil — the content I learn is irrelevant to my future, but I need the grades as an entry ticket to a good adult life. As such, many students drag their feet to school everyday and “can’t wait to get out of here”.
Whether this perspective is accurate or not is beyond the scope of this article. This point is — many JC students find their schoolwork purposeless beyond this “meaningless” paper chase, which certainly does not help their mental health.
Why is this happening?
The content taught in JC education is useful. It teaches the basics of various disciplines — Mathematics, Chemistry, Literature, etc. And these foundations pave the way for specialization in university and beyond. For example, linear algebra is the bedrock of data science. So a data scientist without a strong math background has little hope of advancing his/her discipline. The content itself has practical applications, yet many students are unaware of them.
The problem lies with the way in which some subjects are taught. In subjects like Math, much emphasis is placed on teaching what the concepts are, but unfortunately neglect why these concepts need to be learnt. In school-provided learning materials, the practical applications of these subjects are reduced to mere footnotes. Back to the previous example, every data scientist understands the importance of vectors in their discipline. Yet the disdain towards vectors amongst RI students can partly be attributed to the perception that this topic is purposeless.
…much emphasis is placed on teaching what the concepts are, but unfortunately neglect why these concepts need to be learnt.
However, it would be unreasonable to blame this on teachers.
After all, JC education is modeled after the A-Level exams. As such, educators are restricted by the boundaries set by this national exam. Should the A-level exam focus on the what and not the why, then educators are often forced to omit the latter in their curriculum.
Moreover, teachers are adapting to the needs of students. Despite being limited by the scope of A-Levels, some Math teachers from RI introduce formulas by describing its history and real world use cases. And since vectors is a notoriously difficult topic, RI’s Math department introduced webAR to help students visualize concepts— an innovation which I credit to saving my grades.
Evidently, the learning of certain subjects’ practical applications is omitted due to systemic reasons. As teachers work tirelessly to improve JC education, what can we do as students to alleviate this difficult problem?
Introducing P-Level
P-Level is an initiative by Educere — an independent education publication founded by myself and Sanjaay Babu. There is a learning gap in JC education whereby students don’t know why they study what they study for certain subjects. P-Level’s goal is to plug this gap by exposing the practical applications of various A-Level subjects to JC students via blog posts and videos.
How are vectors from Math used in data science? How is Le Chatalier’s Principle from Chemistry used in industrial processes? How are thermodynamic laws from Physics used in household appliances? These intriguing questions are a sample of P-Level’s content in the future.
But this initiative is more than just churning out content. Our content can only create impact if it is publicized to students, and the best way of doing so is by integrating it into the JC curriculum. Therefore, a big element of P-Level’s work is advocacy — to work with educators to incorporate P-Level’s content into JC curriculum, by showing that the why of learning is important, regardless of whether it is directly tested in A-Level.
If you are a student who is deeply interested in a subject, a working professional who wants to help JC students with your industry knowledge, or an educator who is passionate about improving the learning experience of JC students, join P-Level on our mission to take JC education forward!
References
[2] Hill, Patrick L., Anthony L. Burrow, and Rachel Sumner. “Addressing important questions in the field of adolescent purpose.” Child Development Perspectives 7.4 (2013): 232–236.
[3] https://ggie.berkeley.edu/student-well-being/purpose-for-students/#tab__2
