As a current adjunct Math teacher in a secondary school, let me tell you what is happening in schools:
1. Your students need tuition because most teachers are too busy with their ‘holistic education’ crap to care about teaching.
2. ‘Holistic education’ is crap because in most schools, there is tons of office politics and boot-licking. The system rewards teachers for backstabbing and carrying-tales. They act righteous in front of students and parents, and back-stab like crazy when people are not watching.
3. Many principals and school leaders are incompetent. Some principals are notorious in their clusters for victimizing teachers, bullying their staff and overworking their staff. Yet, they continue to stay despite being formally investigated by MOE after numerous complaints from their staff.
4. Enough incompetent school leaders aspire to be principals and vice-principals because they know once they reach up there, they cannot be removed on grounds of incompetency. At worst, they would be deployed to be director of some special projects group at HQ or stat board and continue to draw their fat salary.
5. Your kids would need tuition because despite what some principals say, teaching well is not important. Nor it is rewarded. Most teachers get their promotion and bonuses based on their non-teaching contributions – CCAs, committee work. Very few teachers get their promotions based on teaching well, or staying back extra hours to help weaker students. Those are not considered valuable contribution in the annual ranking.
6. In case you still don’t get it, your kids need tuition because your the average teachers are too busy or not interested to teach well. Neither is your school’s principal interested to be a good principal because if he or she is incompetent or tyrannical, he or she will still remain a principal for many years to come.
7. Primary school math model method is downright stupid. All primary school kids, when they transition into secondary school and junior college/poly/ITE, use algebra. Primary school math insist on using model method, treats algebra with great disdain, and only reluctantly teach it and penalizes students for using algebra even when it is correct.
8. Secondary school teachers have to waste time to get primary school students to unlearn all the modeling nonsense and relearn their math for higher education. Model method is not considered an integral part of math thinking for modern mathematics. Can’t imagine why so many countries think so highly of it, when most secondary school and JC math teachers think model method is out of sync with most post-primary math topics from algebra, calculus and everyday application math.
Get tuition for your kids.
Adjunctteacher
*Comment appeared on TREmeritus: A worrying situation in Singapore primary schools