The Problem With Streaming

In Singapore's educational system, "streaming" is the process by which students are sorted into different classes based on their academic results, with the more academically-inclined students put into more fast-paced classes (the "express" stream) while the others (the "normal" stream") take an extra year. This conceivably makes the teaching process more efficient, with the brighter students not being held back by the slower ones. The merits of this could be debated all day, and suffice to say, there are pros and cons to this approach.

This is probably just my opinion, but I've always felt that Singapore's educational system puts just a little too much emphasis on streaming. 

My recent stint at Singapore Polytechnic, studying for my third Diploma, gave me some pause around the second semester. The entire batch of students was divided into two classes, and we went through the first semester without much fuss. At the beginning of the second semester, we were sorted into different classes. Halfway through the second semester, the Course Administrator, for no apparent reason, took the trouble to pause the class I was in and inform us that this class was made up of those who had scored better during last semester's exams. She made it clear that this was meant as a compliment, that it was a good thing.

On my part, I had my reservations...

Apples and oranges.

Comparing apples and oranges

The other class, comprising of those who hadn't scored so well, was made up of network administrators, marketing managers and the like. Was I supposed to feel superior because I could apparently code better than people who hadn't written a single line of production code in years? With compliments like these, who needs insults?

Imagine for a moment that this is a swimming class and my class consists of penguins while the other class consists of rabbits. Of course the penguins will outswim the rabbits, the same way the rabbits are always going to outrun the penguins. How would a comparison like this be meaningful at all?

Academic results.

Academic results as a metric

So better academic results, according to the reasoning, meant that students who had scored better were faster learners and belonged in the same class, while those who had merely passed, needed to be in another class.

I understand that in the absence of all other data, academic results are the only thing that can be used to measure a student's capability. But consider this. Some people are undeniably better at writing code. Some are simply smarter. That's not elitist, just fact. Some, like me, have nothing better to do in their free time than write more code. And some are better at taking exams. Honestly, academic results tell you very little about a student's affinity for learning.

Same schedules.

Same timetable, same schedule

All said and done, this streaming exercise was pretty meaningless. Separating the "smarter" students from the others accomplished nothing because our classes started and ended at the same damn time. We all took our exams on the same damn day. "Slower" students weren't given an extra month to catch up, or something.

What's the point of separating faster students from slower students if we all have to stick to the same timetable anyway? It's like dividing a whole bunch of boxers by weight class, then telling them they still have to fight each other.

The dubious conclusion

I think this habit of streaming needs to be kept in check. It's getting ridiculous. Streaming has its merits, but it's all down to context. And in this case, the context was clearly missing.

Class dismissed,
T___T