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I just graduated from a high school in Singapore and I'm heading to Stanford this fall. And I think the Singapore education system is extremely overrated. I fel

by abi 17y ago

I just graduated from a high school in Singapore and I'm heading to Stanford this fall. And I think the Singapore education system is extremely overrated. I felt like I learned nothing in high school. Of course, the math problems might be tough and Singaporean kids might do well in international competitions. But really, do you know a single great company that was founded in Singapore? There's a complete lack of creativity and critical thought here.

caffeine 17y ago
Sometimes it seems that Singapore is a single great company that was founded in Singapore. To address your point though - I'm surprised that you lump creativity and critical thought into the same bag? Also, judging from the admissions behavior of top PhD programs in quantitative subjects (and assuming they know what they're doing), high performance in math competitions is a good indicator of both critical thought and creativity. (Also, I hope it was clear that my list was being a bit ironic...)
- abi 17y ago
  High performance in math competitions is simply a result of a lot of training. There are only so many different kinds of problems and only so many different techniques that can be employed to solve such problems (the kind that come out in olympiads, etc). I'm not saying there's no creativity in math (absolutely, there is) but coming up with a new theorem is very different from simply knowing which theorem to apply where. I didn't really say critical thought and creativity are the same thing but yeah, I shouldn't have lumped them together. From my experience, critical thought is much more common here than creativity but even that is not applied to anything outside quantitative subjects, such as politics or philosophy. P.S. There are many creative, smart people here but they are creative because they are creative not because of the school system. What happens to these people later in life? Why don't they found companies? I suspect the answer here is because of the Singaporean mentality where entrepreneurship isn't valued as much as a stable job. But even more that, it's because these people are often given scholarships to study overseas. These scholarships have bonds where you have to work for the company (in most cases, the government) for 5/6 years. By the time they get out of their bond, there are already ~30 or older, have a family and can't bothered to switch/start companies.

by abi 17y ago

caffeine 17y ago

Sometimes it seems that Singapore is a single great company that was founded in Singapore. To address your point though - I'm surprised that you lump creativity and critical thought into the same bag? Also, judging from the admissions behavior of top PhD programs in quantitative subjects (and assuming they know what they're doing), high performance in math competitions is a good indicator of both critical thought and creativity. (Also, I hope it was clear that my list was being a bit ironic...)

abi 17y ago
High performance in math competitions is simply a result of a lot of training. There are only so many different kinds of problems and only so many different techniques that can be employed to solve such problems (the kind that come out in olympiads, etc). I'm not saying there's no creativity in math (absolutely, there is) but coming up with a new theorem is very different from simply knowing which theorem to apply where. I didn't really say critical thought and creativity are the same thing but yeah, I shouldn't have lumped them together. From my experience, critical thought is much more common here than creativity but even that is not applied to anything outside quantitative subjects, such as politics or philosophy. P.S. There are many creative, smart people here but they are creative because they are creative not because of the school system. What happens to these people later in life? Why don't they found companies? I suspect the answer here is because of the Singaporean mentality where entrepreneurship isn't valued as much as a stable job. But even more that, it's because these people are often given scholarships to study overseas. These scholarships have bonds where you have to work for the company (in most cases, the government) for 5/6 years. By the time they get out of their bond, there are already ~30 or older, have a family and can't bothered to switch/start companies.