Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Day 2
We visited Shanghai High School, an elite school on par with Singapore Raffles Insititution. However the students we interact with were humble and nice. One boy told us that he had visited Singapore in 2005 and like Singapore. The SHS students bombarded us with questions pertaining to our country and school. We were quite taken aback (I guess). They had obviously done research about Singapore and SRJC and prepared questions to ask us. The questions they asked shown that they had put in thought to be able to came up with the questions. We managed to answered their questions. Next we spilt up into 4 different groups and the interaction begins. We found out that to get into university, chinese students had to take an entry exam which will determine their future. University was divided into 3 levels. 1st level : Univeristy , 2nd: Something similar to Polytechnics in Singapore ,3rd: Something like ITE in Singapore. The 1st level was what the chinese students were striving for. Competition was intense as everyone work hard to achieve their goal. This was similar to us, SRJcians. Next year we would be striving hard, competing with top notch JCs in Singapore to get into the 3 universities in Singapore, especially NUS. At that point of time, I felt that SHS students and SRJcians were the same. We had to work hard to get into the university of our choice.
The SHS students also shared with us that Chemisty, English and Chinese were compulsory subjects to be taken. The rest of the subjects were sometimes not what they want but had no choice but to take it, for the sake of the entrance exam to univeristy.
we sit in for 2 lessons namely math and english lesson. FOr maths lessons, functions were taught. We observe that the SHS students do not have lecture noted but a notebook instead for them to take down notes. Moreover the teacher explain to them how the formula was derived. In Singapore, we were lucky to have good and passionate teachers who were willing to go the extra mile for our sake. LEcture notes were well prepared with solutions. IN SHS, the scene was different. The students were fully enganged as they do not want to miss important points the lecturer had said. No one was sleeping, chatting nor looking out of the window.
This was something that Singapore Students could learned from them. Subjects were taught not with the aim of achieving good results but also the aim of deveoping interest and passion for the subject itself. In singapore, we were brought up to view academinc to be extremely important than all other factors such as our interest in the subject. All we know was to do well in the subject. Who cares whether you like it or not.
SHS has a conducive environment for the sutdents to sutdy with the huge garden they had. Imagine studying there as each season changes.
( taken from yahoo )
For dinner, we had interaction with NUS students who were studying and working at the same time in shanghai. For my table, we had joyce. She was a 3rd year student from NUS who is working and studying at Fudan University.She told us her experience and what she had learned in Shanghai. We also displayed the 'HABITS'valuse which is to ask questions.
Dreams ended @ --*11:23 AM*--
