By Khartini Khalid

WHILE visiting the ruins of St Paul’s Church in Malacca a year ago, my American friend got excited upon seeing the huge Dutch tombstones.

“Wow, these remind me of the time I was a student in the US,” she said.

Her excitement came from recalling what she had learnt in one of her General Knowledge modules in university – about tombstone inscriptions.

“I know it seems like a weird subject to take but I did learn some interesting things, like how the style of writing reflects a particular period of time. And that the type of information portrayed on tombstones shows the values cherished by the community at that point in history,” she said.

What Education Should Really Be About

This incident reminds me of what education should really be about – learning, developing minds, broadening horizons and developing a thirst for knowledge.

This can be easy to forget in Singapore, where economic consideration is a priority in life. It can easily be inferred from the oft-heard question from students:

‘If I choose this course, what job opportunities will it lead to later?’

Such a question suggests that students (and perhaps also parents) decide on educational courses only with expected economic returns in their minds.

The result is this – courses that offer the best job opportunities and the fattest bonuses generally take top spot, while ‘softer’ disciplines like the humanities are perceived as less important, not quite challenging, and less rewarding.

It would however be foolish to insist that education should never lead to career advancement or economic gains. It would also not be in Singapore’s interest to have an educated but jobless and uncompetitive population. The drive to create a knowledge-based economy is partly responsible for our success as a nation. The danger is when people start to see education ONLY as a means to an economic end.

As a developed nation, Singapore needs to keep broadening its definition of ‘knowledge’, especially that which is imparted in educational institutions. Already, there are changes in the making to encourage creativity and analytical skills in students. There is also more diversity, different paths to higher education and a broader definition of success – one that does not necessarily depend only on academic achievement.

Liberal Education

All these changes are encouraging. But for Singapore to make the leap to be a First World nation, it is imperative that the education system should encourage learning that follows a more liberal education framework rather than a mostly utilitarian one.

To make this happen, I believe a wide variety of general knowledge modules should be implemented at all levels in schools. There has to be more choices for students so that that their general knowledge base is expanded even if at a basic level. Currently, it seems that this is mostly done at the tertiary level, rather than throughout the education system.

If we start young, students are more likely to realise that education is more than what’s in books or what’s needed to get a job – it is about life and almost everything in the world.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic was the first to establish a formal school of Interdisciplinary Studies with a wide range of modules. In the longer term, we will hopefully see students who are more attuned to the need for broad-based learning and less likely to pose questions like:

‘How is this module relevant to me? It won’t get me a job after school.’

Knowledgeable, Mature and Inquisitive

The definition of ‘Interdisciplinary Studies’ should ideally also broaden over time. While modules with more tangible outcomes - like language and job preparation – are helpful for students, there is wider scope to incorporate more diversity in areas more general, such as, well, general knowledge.

For example, learning about the evolution of music, civic participation, ecology, gender issues, theology, philosophy, even the development of the movie industry – all these will enrich students’ minds and get them thinking beyond the core courses they are pursuing, be it business, engineering, media or science. This will spark off the development of thinking young men and women who are knowledgeable, mature, inquisitive and able to engage in discourse on a variety of topics.

A love affair with knowledge

After all, nothing is lost when knowledge is found. As Michael Garrett Marino once said, ‘A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.’

And as we’ve seen in the case of my American friend’s ability to apply her knowledge on tombstones, neither should it end in death.

Author

Khartini Khalid, School of Interdisciplinary Studies