Caste system in education?

Recently I've been hearing a lot of talk just by sitting at the coffeeshop eating my meal. Common topic of the day? The hawkers were lamenting that whatever that is being taught to their children is so advanced that even they have problems understanding it. Since then, I've been finding out more about this and even my colleagues have reservations about the current education system. What's the problem? It seems that there are certain questions being asked to a Primary 1 kid that even a grown adult with a degree couldn't answer.

Seriously... I remember my childhood and I do remember doing homework at home. However, I do not recall having a question that even my parents couldn't answer, and my parents are not very highly educated. How has the education evolved to its current state? I've seen some questions in the forums and seriously, since when did education become a place where they test your IQ? Some of the questions are obviously IQ questions. Subjects like maths test your command in english more than your command in maths.

To top it off, recently I heard that teachers have been giving homework to the parents so that they could teach their kids. This is to me, the icing on the cake. Regardless of the workload that is given to the current teachers, giving homework to the parents to teach their kids shows only 1 thing. Either the syllabus need a very serious review or the teacher is in need of a performance review. May I ask what's the use of going to school? If this is the case, the school might as well just give me a list of textbooks for that syllabus and I'll teach my kid myself.

Bring it back to the real world. This is equivalent to you telling your customer to do the work that you're suppose to do. Try to do that in your work and you'll  get a complaint letter directly to your boss, or even to your CEO depending on who is your customer.

When I heard of this case, immediately one word came to my mind. Caste. Definition of caste? I found one that describes the current education system I'm hearing.

Caste is an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, economic position, etc., and having mores distinguishing it from other such groups. 

How to relate this back to the education system I'm hearing? It means your child's growth is restricted to the level of the parents. Why is this so? It seems that the teachers are only in charge of teaching the basics and the rest is suppose to be covered by tuition or parents. Therefore if the parents are not well-off and not very educated, the child will definitely not do well in school, and deprive of chances to further their interests. Hence, the caste system.

What is happening to the education system? Or is this problem I'm hearing from the ground from a minority?

Interesting pink-noise systems

I was reading an article about Autodesk, a software company, moving into an open-plan building and the company installing a pink-noise system. Basically, this system emits a soft whooshing sound over loudspeakers that sounds similar to the ventilation system, but is specially formulated to match the frequencies of the human voices. The outcome? Unless you're quite near the person, you will not be able to hear their phone conversations or conversations with their colleague in the next cubicle.

A lot of companies are now moving into implementing an open concept and although it has its advantages, the fact is that many do not want to hear their colleagues conversation on the phone or with other colleagues. This pink-noise system will mask low level background noise and conversations, but still allow colleagues to have a normal conversation provided you're not too far apart. The problem is that all this noise is quite distracting and it distracts you from the work that you're doing.

Good idea, but a pity many companies do not put in as much effort as Autodesk to make the workplace environment more friendly.

Do not read too much into SMRT carrying 70 passengers per KM

Recently, an article has indicated that SMRT carry 70 passengers per KM, 10 more than Japan. Do not read more into it because the article did not say the whole story. The comparison was for average passenger-km per vehicle-km.

So what does this indicate? It just means that SMRT is squeezing too many passengers per vehicle compared with other more efficient metros such as Hong Kong and Japan. I'm not sure what's the whole point in bringing this up in the article.

Another look at the 37.9%

I find it disappointing that the emphasis of the hougang by-election was that the percentage of people choosing the PAP has risen from 35.2% to 37.9%. If you do not look at the percentage, only 145 more people voted for PAP in the Hougang by-election compared to the General election 2011. Whatever that Desmond is doing is clearly not what Hougang constituency is look for, and people at Hougang is clearly disappointed with WP in this by-election.

This by-election actually shows more of disappointment towards WP than support for PAP. Both sides need to re-evaluate their operations and strategy. Do not comfort yourself using other numbers or you'll be in for a surprise in the next election.

Strength is always specific

I quote from Peter Drucker:

The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! Nobody ever commented, for example, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz probably couldn't play the trumpet very well.

Jack of all trades, but master of none. Are we to be trained as such?

Inflation is up 5.4%

These are the Singapore inflation rates for 2012:
January: 4.8%
February: 4.6%
March: 5.2%
April: 5.4%


Housing and Transport are once again leading the pack, rising by 11.1% and 7.5% respectively year on year. Inflation rose almost across the board, in particular Housing. The inflation was surprisingly lesser than the 6% I've estimated. The drop might be due to the drop in inflation for recreation & others. However, I did notice the Singapore dollar strengthening so it may have contributed to the lower inflation.

This month's inflation may be slightly lower by 0.1%-0.2% compared to April due to the recent Europe crisis affecting prices across the board. In fact, inflation may trend lower until September. That will be a welcome relief.

Is Scrum really ideal for big systems?

I was recently looking at Scrum, otherwise known as agile software development, and it got me into thinking if Scrum is a right fit for development of big systems.

Reason for my worry? Instead of providing complete, detailed descriptions of how everything is to be done on the project, much is left up to the software development team. Therefore, there is a complete reliance on the software development team doing the right thing.

However so far with my experience in dealing with software development teams, it is quite difficult to totally rely on them in doing the right thing. Let me explain. Scrum relies on a self-organizing, cross-functional team and there is no overall team leader who decides which person will do which task or how a problem will be solved. The scrum team is cross-functional so that everyone necessary to take a feature from idea to implementation is involved.

That is where I think there is an issue for big systems. Software development is not a one time job. Look at Windows XP. Over 10 years have passed and people still use it, and as a result people will still need to maintain it. Just imagine. If you do not have someone controlling the overall architecture of the software development, how will someone come in to maintain the "spaghetti code"? Without a central person controlling this architecture, anyone who comes into the team maintaining this code will have to take time to understand the structure. The worst part is that you may be taking over codes that were previously handled by 2 or more people. Sounds like a recipe for creating bugs? You bet.

Scrum has been touted by some as an increase in productivity. However in the long run, you may be better off having someone controlling the overall architecture because you do not want to waste your engineers' time in understanding the different styles of coding in one single system. If you have a consistent software development architecture, anyone can just come in and hit the ground running. It will also be easier to spot bugs before the customers find them.

It also seems like software development has taken a back seat and the level of skills that I'm seeing now is not as before. This is especially dangerous if you're doing scrum development because you will never know if the software module is truly finish. You may spend even more time trying to find that bug due to the inconsistent style of coding.

Scrum is a good idea but it needs a very capable development team. Not very common nowadays. Pity.

Why all the ATMs seem to be only dispensing $50 notes??

This is ridiculous! Recently, DBS has started replacing all their ATM machines such that they only dispense $50 note. They are trying to make us spend more? I don't mind if they have 2 ATM machines and 1 of them only dispense $50 notes, but many times I've send only a single ATM machine that is only dispensing $50 notes.

I wonder if MAS has any rulings to prevent such cases. Grr.

Good to know that investors are not blinded

I find it reassuring that investors in the US are aware that the Facebook IPO is severely over-priced. In a business, it doesn't matter how much sales you make. It's the profit/earnings that matters. The fact is that Facebook was priced at 107 price earnings ratio. Why on earth did the underwriters price it as such even though GM has recently announced that they will not continue putting ads at Facebook? Well, the underwriters will pay the price. Good luck in them trying to hold the USD38 price.

107 PER? It smells like the dot com boom all over again. I hope that the results on Friday was not the result of overall market sentiment.

What Singapore can learn from Europe

Read this inspiring article here by Professor Tommy Koh. In essence, he identified almost everything that is wrong with the policies now. Personally, I will summarise it into one sentence.

The over emphasis on money

That is the problem.