Is More Good?

Before I start commenting about anything, I believe it is just right for me to say that my views are not representative of any organisation or individual, except those of my own. Well, it all started with a light-hearted chat with one of my part-time lecturers about the local education system. He commented that the local education system is giving us too much "support" and indirectly killing the need for independent learning. He recalled the experience of his overseas education when all he had for lectures was just a piece of paper with less than a hundred words. Compare that to those in local tertiary education, lecture notes are presented in Powerpoint format with summarized explainations. A similiar experience had also been recounted to me from a previous clinical educator who studied in UK, who told me that the "crappy" education system forced him to take action of his own learning.

This put me in deep thought. I always believed that we were faring well with the amount of information and resources we had access to, compared to those studying overseas. Seems like I could never been more wrong. We seem to be given alot of information to "study" but too little time to reflect upon what we are doing. We seem to be on a roller coaster ride, only able to go forward at a fast pace with little time to look back. This system has seemingly given students the impression that "everything" will be provided by the school and all we had to do was to follow it. A psychology lecturer once said during a lesson:" PRACTICE does not make PERFECT, it only makes PERMANENT." It means that it doesn't really matter how many times you do it, if you started out the wrong direction, chances are you are going to do it wrongly everytime and believe that you are going to do it correctly SOMEDAY. All this seems to be leading to a future which I do not even dare to imagine.

It seems that alot of us, including myself, have been taking granted our education and our future, into the hands of a system that claims to produce the best. If we do not question the very things that we are given, who else will? Great people were made from situations that placed them in dire straits, forcing them to take on the problems face-to-face. I certainly hope that I do not have to wait for a catastrophe to happen before I change the way I learn. So, the next time you get a skimpy note, put your hands together and THANK GOD that you have been given a chance to exert your learning power.