Introduction
Those of us who’ve already graduated from school might remember the good ol’ days of e-learning with Marshall Cavendish Online. On a few select days each year, we’d be given the privilege of staying at home and completing some pretty simple assignments on MC Online.
Essentially, e-learning was pretty much a school holiday for most of us. I fondly remember breezing through the assignments and then playing K-Raider on MC Online.
Every time my parents asked why I was playing online games, I would smugly show them that I was in fact on the e-learning portal and declare that I was doing e-learning.
I don’t think I’m alone in doing this. Anyone here also guilty of what I did?
For some of us, our parents might also have been on flexi-work arrangements. While they certainly weren’t able to slack as much as us, I believe many of them relished not having to wake up early in the morning and fight rush-hour traffic to reach their workplace on time
Like many other students (and perhaps parents), I once wished that e-learning would happen more often. I lived pretty far from my primary school, and I thought that I certainly would not miss waking up at 6am every morning and being screamed at to hurry up when I snoozed my alarm.
But sometimes we get more than what we wish for ...
Blog Post Contents
COVID-19
When the pandemic first struck, I think most of us didn’t expect the drastic changes that would come next. I certainly didn’t expect that I’ll still be writing about COVID-19 one year later.
Some of my juniors initially cheered the prolonged return of e-learning. But their joy was short-lived.
Many of them frequently mentioned their struggle to pay attention to hours of lectures delivered over Zoom and Microsoft Teams. One even described how she would simply open up Zoom, turn off her video, and proceed to lie on her bed.
My former GP tutor also felt delivering online lessons was stressful, and shared how she was worried about her Y6s being unprepared for the upcoming A Levels.
Digital Myths
If you have a similar experience of struggling with e-learning, you can only imagine how much more less privileged students struggled during the prolonged home-based learning period. Their limited access to technology, namely the lack of a stable internet connection and quality laptops, was certainly exacerbated by the closure of schools and public libraries.
Just last month, The Straits Times published an opinion piece titled “Home-Based Learning: Three Digital Myths”. The online article is only accessible to subscribers, but you can read the print version here instead.
This piece was written by three NIE researchers who hope to “ensure blended learning works for all students, who are not homogeneous and have different levels of digital literacy skills”
[The Myth of Digital Natives]
The NIE researchers contend that “children and adolescents are digital natives in some aspects of their lives, but not others”.
Based on their NIE study, they found that the Primary 4 and 5 pupils surveyed and interviewed “reported that they were more likely to use their mobile phones and electronic devices for gaming, watching YouTube videos and using social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, than for reading”.
Perhaps most worryingly, the researchers highlighted how “during the circuit breaker period, time spent on devices was negatively correlated to time spent on reading and an increased enjoyment of reading”.
[The Myth of Equal Access]
Like many other Singaporeans, I was very impressed by the amazing efforts of government agencies and non-profits to equip primary and secondary school students with the required technology.
But interestingly, the researchers introduce a concept of Digital Divide 2.0 and opine that closing this divide “cannot stop with just the provision of access to devices and the Internet” because of the difference in digital literacy skills.
Notably, the researchers focus a lot on literacy because of its relevance to digital literacy and the ability to find and make sense of data and resources online. Their research found that “children who enjoyed reading before the circuit breaker period read even more during the period”, but “pupils who were already disengaged readers were less likely to read or enjoy reading”.
[The Myth of Online Engagement]
The researchers also highlight the key distinction that “widespread consumption of technology does not necessarily mean that students embrace technology for learning”.
Having found that parents and teenagers interviewed “lamented the abundance of worksheets and lack of the human touch", they argue that “we need to beware the tendency for wholesale translation of physical lessons into online lessons without considering how the digital medium can offer different possibilities for the learning experience.”
To truly achieve MOE’s goals of creating a “culture of inquiry”, the researchers emphasize that “learning by inquiry requires good lesson design” because “to ask interesting questions and pursue them requires a set of skills different from filling out a worksheet”.
The researchers powerfully conclude that “to truly ensure that blended learning will work for all students in Singapore, we need to ... debunk the digital myths and put the child, not technology, at the heart of our teaching and learning initiatives.”
Inequality in STEM Education
When we first founded Operation Einstein in early 2017, the STEM Education movement in Singapore was just beginning.
There was a lot of talk about the importance of STEM, and the importance of teaching "STEM Skills" in schools, but no one really had any idea on how it was going to be implemented.
For those of us who've been with Einstein from the beginning, one key question was that of inequality. A running joke is that "every school is a good school, but some schools are better than others".
It was rather obvious to us that a pivot towards STEM would simply further disadvantage less-privileged kids who often lack access to many learning resources.
Children from stable and wealthy families could easily rely on their parents to share about STEM with them. But children from low-income families whose parents are too busy working multiple jobs to try and keep their household afloat will probably be left behind by the STEM revolution.
With COVID-19, our worst fears came through. Even when the majority of children were provided with the necessary technological resources to do home-based learning, or HBL, many were now deprived of the physical presence of a teacher/mentor to guide them in their learning.
For underprivileged children, their parents might now be able to work from home and supervise their learning. But they’ll still be at a disadvantage if their parents lack the requisite digital literacy skills to not only aid their children’s learning via Zoom but also encourage their children to make use of the vast learning resources online which we highlighted in part 1 of this mini-series on adapting to COVID-19.
Even when we have tried to collate the best available resources such as Camp KiwiCo and Dyson Challenge Cards, many primary school kids still need someone to guide them. They'll need their parents to troubleshoot when things go awry, and explain to them how things work.
It was thus a huge relief for us, and probably for many teachers and parents, when MOE ended this semi-disastrous e-learning experiment and pushed forward the June School Holidays by a month to coincide with Phase 1 of Singapore’s Circuit Breaker.
Beyond Direct Service
You might be wondering why Operation Einstein has suddenly joined the heated discussion about inequality in Singapore. After all, as a STEM non-profit, we’re already implicitly acknowledging that there’s inequality in the educational landscape and so we’re trying to do our part to bridge the gap.
Like everything else in this blog post, the answer can be summed up in one word. COVID-19.
While some of our partners have been emailing us to ask when we can resume physical sessions, our school management remains rather adverse to the idea that volunteer activities can be carried out safely.
Even with our COVID-19 advisory and safe distancing plans, we were recently informed that we’re not allowed to carry out any official Einstein sessions for the rest of 2021. This instruction does not only apply to Einstein, but also other student-run projects that have a physical component, as well as service CCAs, such as Raffles Interact and Community Advocates.
So with the suspension of direct service, our team has decided to begin contemplating the future of Einstein.
Should we wait out the pandemic to resume sessions? Isn’t that being socially responsible by
making sure we don’t become an Einstein cluster?
Should we try to digitalize beyond creating a website and shift our sessions online? But if home-
based learning isn’t really working, what will make our approach successful and engaging?
Or should we incorporate ourselves as a VWO? Then we don’t need to be bound by RI’s guidelines
anymore and we can resume physical sessions!
But then where will our volunteers come from? And how do we ensure that we can remain effective
and focused on our beneficiaries when there’s so much red tape and bureaucratic processes that
we need to implement when we become a VWO?
These are all good questions, but many of them cannot be answered simply. And beneath all these questions and answers lie an even bigger guiding question: how do we make sure the path we eventually choose is actually the right way forward?
Perhaps the best answer is like the best GP topic sentence. It’s time to look at the root causes ...
A Lack of Interest
In 2018, one of our founders, Bryan Sow, wrote a short essay to summarize the mission of Operation Einstein. Given that one of Einstein's key objectives is to encourage a love for learning beyond the classroom, it wasn’t surprising that Bryan started out by describing a common dislike for studying
Here's what Bryan had to say:
"Many students today have a strong dislike for studying, particularly in primary school. When I had the opportunity to participate in community service projects involving children from underprivileged backgrounds during my time in JC, this was a sentiment that was too common amongst the children I interacted with. I realized that one of the reasons for their hatred of science and learning is because they feel that they learn just for the sake of taking exams.
And this is where we must distinguish the difference between studying and learning - that we can pursue knowledge out of interest and passion, something that 8 letters of the alphabet cannot reflect on our test scores. Ultimately it is not the content but the passion and interest in learning that should be inculcated in students as it is what will drive them to learn throughout their life and pick up skills on their own.”
But Bryan also recognized that Singapore's education system cannot be solely to blame. After all, all of us are products of the same education system, and many of us did not come from so-called elite schools when we were younger. So he proceeded to highlight the critical but often ignored aspect of Nurture:
"I came to realize that many of these children do not have the same opportunities as those in the GEP, who are exposed to science beyond the classroom. That's why their view of science is limited to their exam curriculum.
I remember how the difference became too apparent when we played the ice-breaker "never had I ever" in one of our small-group sessions. Some of the children shared about how their parents are always so busy and never with them often, with trips beyond school/home a rarity. The children always beat us at the game simply by saying “Never had I ever been to the zoo”.
Individual vs Structural
In debates about inequality both offline and online, you can roughly observe two distinct camps.
The first group often comprises activists who use rather strong language to condemn what they perceive as the PAP government's lack of empathy for the marginalized and underprivileged.
While those who fall into this group are certainly not a homogenous bunch, what many of them are essentially saying is that the Government is not doing enough to ensure equality of opportunity, and perhaps even equality of outcomes.
On the other hand, members of the second group appear to like positioning themselves as a more pragmatic bunch. They often argue that the government is already doing so much and giving so much money for free. And they often go on to question if those receiving a disproportionate amount of social services and financial aid are simply incapable of succeeding.
Some more extreme comments even cross established OB markers and question if certain races and religions who are stereotypically dependent on subsidies have some sort of cultural and cognitive deficiencies.
Surprisingly, many social workers who best understand both sides of the story often do not comment on which camp they are in. These social workers are both familiar with government policies and subsidies, as well as the nature of the clients that they serve.
In their testimonials that you can easily find out the websites of various social service agencies and NGOs, as well as in media articles, social workers and researchers frequently highlight structural factors that arise from money.
Yet these same social workers often mention the importance of being patient with their clients. Such as when the kids they are tutoring are really playful and rebellious and have no interest in completing their homework or paying attention in class. Or when parents don't seem to be making an effort to manage their family's finances properly despite having so many kids.
So is poverty and its related ailments caused by individual factors or structural factors? Or is it a chicken-and-egg problem here?
This Is What Inequality Looks Like
In her ethnography of inequality, Prof Teo You Yenn observes the lack of resources and access to opportunity in the routine daily movements that women in poorer households tend to take:
travelling to work
to the market (for groceries, done daily because they lack the finances to buy excess groceries at the start of the week)
to school (to pick up their children)
and to the bank weekly (to pay bills and top-up pre-paid cash-cards for utilities, for they are unable to pay at the end of the month due to their accumulated arrears)
The sphere of experience for the less privileged is severely limited. Poorer households are limited by their resources and are unable to provide the same conducive kind of environment for work and play that more affluent families can through entertainment (such as visits to the Science Centre or trampoline park) and enrichment.
Teo also notes the dearth of work (with the lack of formal and substantive privileges for blue-collar workers) and care support (care gaps still exist because child-care is still not comprehensive enough for low-income mothers who lack proper work-leave benefits and work flexibility) for lower-income women.
False Dichotomy
Similar to Teo's ethnographic observations, Bryan's own story about "Never Have I Ever" during Operation Einstein sessions brings out the false dichotomy between structural unfairness and individual/cultural/moral failings.
Is it the fault of the parents that they aren't able to find high-paying jobs and as such are condemned to menial labor which leave them with little time for their children?
Is it the fault of these children that that they don't like learning because their parents have given them little exposure to learning for fun, such as going to the zoo?
Is it the fault of the state for not helping to cover these gaps and support these families?
Is it anyone's fault at all?
Structural Inequality and Individual Struggles often come hand-in-hand. And they are often exacerbated by the added factor of place.
Inequality in Place
Upon first glance, COVID-19 seems to have reduced the importance of place. With the need to stay-at-home, we’ve seen the proliferation of work-from-home, study-from-home, and even exercise-from-home.
Some commentators overseas have even controversially argue that COVID-19 might bring about the death of the city as we know it. With the reduced need to commute to the city center, there is no longer any reason to be stuck in the crowded city, and families might as well relocate to the American Dream of single-family prairie houses in the agrarian suburbs.
This trend might appear to be true in Singapore too. During Phase 1 and 2 of the Circuit Breaker, Orchard Road and the CBD area was often a ghost town. It doesn't matter whether you stay in Boon Lay, Boon Keng, or Bishan anymore. Because COVID-19 has diluted the importance of being in close proximity to good schools and the CBD.
But this perspective, while it has some merits, ultimately ignores the inherent value of neighborhoods. In fact, the expert consensus is pointing towards the renewed importance of place.
In an op-ed piece for The Guardian, leading British architect Sir Norman Foster contends that the pandemic will not fundamentally change our cities, but merely accelerate their evolution, especially with regard to the importance of neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods have seen a resurgence in appeal with the tag of “the 15-minute city”. The ideal of being able to live, work, sleep, shop, dine, be educated, entertain and be entertained – with all the venues for as many of those activities to be within walking distance of each other. The attraction of neighborhood living is not new, but it has been given a timely and welcome boost by the pandemic.
Here in Singapore, we can applaud our urban planners for turning Singapore's small land area and high population density into an advantage by creating what URA calls "satellite towns".
In each neighborhood, there are a mixture of HDB shops and shopping malls, restaurants and hawker centers, schools and recreation facilities, and even places of worship. Each neighborhood perhaps deserves the tag of "the 15-minute city".
But within some neighborhoods lie a more complicated reality than what meets the eye. While each neighborhood may provide equal access to amenities and thus opportunity, it will be a stretch to say that the rental blocks in some estates have the same amount of opportunity as owner-occupied HDB Blocks.
We often think of inequality in terms of economic rather than spatial terms. We view inequality through the lens of class, rather than through the lens of place.
But perhaps all of us need to get some glasses to correct our myopic view of poverty and inequality, as these often lie at the intersection of class, race, and place.
Rental Flats
I first learnt that rental flats in Singapore even existed when I idealistically signed up for a session of Central CDC's Stop BedBugs initiative in secondary school.
When I told my mother what I had signed up for, she initially thought I was joking and tried to convince me that bedbugs only existed in Singapore decades ago when she was growing up in Bukit Ho Swee.
But Bedbugs do exist in Singapore. They aren't found in most places where we live; rather, they are disproportionately concentrated in rental flats. And rental flats in Chinatown were where I was headed.
Initially, I thought rental blocks were just like normal HDB blocks, just maybe a bit older and smaller. I soon realized that there were in fact a lot older, and a lot smaller.
I remember that as my friends and I walked along the long, dark, and stuffy corridor towards the rental flat we had been assigned to clean, the putrid smell of stale urine hit our nostrils. Plucking up our courage, we squeezed into the cramped one-room flat, only to see a huge insect scurry past.
“Cockroach!” my friend screamed and kicked over the paint tray on the floor, sending wet blue paint flying onto my white school shirt. “Bedbug,” another friend corrected. “Whatever,” I muttered to myself as I headed for the tiny window in the corner.
Hastily gulping down some fresh air, I wondered, “is this really part of Singapore?”
I don't think that the rental flats in Chinatown I visited were an exception. Ask anyone who's volunteered to clean up rental flats with Habitat For Humanity, and they'll probably be able to tell you at least one horror story about the conditions of rental flats.
From a more macro and less emotional perspective, we can look at statistics and realize that rental flats are far more common than we think. Singapore proudly points to our 90% homeownership rate as evidence of our shared success.
And for most of us, owning our own HDB flat is often taken for granted. In fact, HDB ownership is so ingrained in the Singapore identity that when the series Icons of SG was published for SG50, one of the most memorable icons was a HDB engagement ring. After all, one of the first things that couples do when they get engaged is to apply for a BTO flat together.
But if we think critically about the 90% homeownership rate, we soon realize that the remaining 10% amounts to 300,000 Singaporeans stuck in rental flats. This is my personal estimation, but a recent Straits Times article about rental flats cites figures from MND and HDB to show that there are still around 50,000 households living in rental flats.
I mentioned earlier that structural inequality and individual struggles are often exacerbated by the added factor of place. What exactly does this bold claim mean?
One of the best examples comes from Teo You Yenn's ethnography of rental flats. Notably, she highlights how the lack of space and privacy in one-room rental flats is a particular trouble when raising children. Teenagers who desire and require their own personal space and privacy often stay out of their home for long periods of time, and become easily susceptible to external influences.
Furthermore, while there are little official statistics about the demographics of families living in rental flats, it is somewhat apparent from interacting firsthand with kids from rental flats as well as reading volunteer testimonials that many of these families are unstable.
Some degree of this instability perhaps has to do with the constant struggle for money, but in many cases, these parents are separated, incarcerated, and/or violent. And as the article from Rice Media below poignantly shows, the overcrowding and concentration of poverty in rental flats merely exacerbates both structural inequality and individual failings.
As harsh as this may sound, if we truly want to make a difference through our individual actions and Operation Einstein, and if we truly want to address the inequality that evinces itself as we look beyond direct service, we ought to start looking at how we can reach the children and families in rental flats.
And we need to recognize that when we plan our programs and initiatives, we must bear in mind that rental communities are often broke and their families broken.
Should We Do More?
In his book "The Idea of Justice", Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen poses an interesting thought experiment known as One Flute, Three Kids. Here's a summarized version of his fictional scenario:
I first came across this scenario in a Straits Times commentary on the Singapore Budget 2018, and I thought it'll be relevant to discuss this scenario again in light of the recent publication of the record Budget 2021.
In the commentary, Adrian Kuah from the Lee Kuan School of Public Policy questions if we are "accustomed to always assigning the flute in a particular way", and goes on to list the merit of each choice.
Child A: "Are we in Singapore accustomed to always assigning the flute in a particular way? I can imagine that we would be compelled by utilitarian logic to match the flute (resources) to the flutist (talent). We might even justify this on the grounds of efficiency, and by saying that social welfare is maximized because everyone, including Child B and C, gets to enjoy the music."
Child B: "I can also imagine many of us giving the flute to Child B, because it resonates with our dominant narrative of meritocracy and deserved reward."
Child C: "The majority of participants in outreach and public policy workshops do not give the flute to Child C. The reasons typically given are the utilitarian argument, the meritocracy argument, or that it creates moral hazard and a culture of dependency."
But there was one particular paragraph in Kuah's piece that stood out to me instantly:
As one teacher put it: "As an educator, I should give the flute to either A or B. But as a human being, I would rather C have it." As if public policy enterprise, or even the Singaporean Condition generally, requires that we suspend our humanity and compassion.
Relooking our Biases
As Kuah puts it, the ultimate point of Sen's experiment is to make explicit our moral and ethical biases and ask us: if we ourselves turn out to be disadvantaged by our default choice, would we still make that choice?
Or perhaps more specifically, with regard to the context that we've discussed earlier, would we want to live in rental flats given the current state they are in today?
Like many other Singaporeans, I would instinctively choose to give the flute to Child B because I believe in meritocracy. But this same dominant narrative also means that each Singaporean should be staying in the kind of housing he/she can afford.
Essentially, believing fervently and whole-heartedly in meritocracy means that we're telling families in rental flats that they are getting what they deserve in a market economy, and they should be grateful because at least they have a safe roof over their heads.
But if we ask ourselves how we would react if we end up in a rental flat, we might start considering giving the flute to either Child A or Child C, and look into doing more for families in these rental flats.
Out of humanity and compassion, we might give the flute to Child C because every Singaporean should have the right to a decent living environment. Each family should at least be allowed to afford a sparse but functional 3-Room HDB flat.
And from a utilitarian standpoint, helping the families in these rental flats can eventually uplift entire communities, which is evidently beneficial for society as a whole.
A Place-Based Vision for Operation Einstein
The whole point of this mini-series on adapting to COVID-19 is to move beyond just direct service, and question if our current approach and vision is suitable and sustainable.
During this period, we've also been asking ourselves why the concerted efforts of so many individuals, groups, and the Government in trying to uplift underprivileged families has seen limited results.
One reason could be that most of these efforts need more time to bear fruit, and perhaps some of these results may be more intangible than tangible.
But perhaps another reason is that many of these efforts ignore the role of place and neighborhoods, and overlook the fact that poverty and inequality is ultimately about the intersection of class, race, and place.
Many of us have volunteered at after-school tutoring programs across Singapore, whether or not we've been part of service CCAs such as Interact and CommAd.
And frankly, I don't know how many of us can say that we've actually seen tangible improvements in these children's lives.
Personally, I can say that I've tried to be a good friend to the kids I've tutored. But at the back of my mind, the cynic in me will also question the effectiveness of these tutoring programs. I often ask myself, if these kids don't pay attention in school in the first place, what will make them focus after school when everyone is already so tired after school?
Recently, I came across an article about the controversy over home-based learning in the United States.
A primary school teacher in Baltimore who was interviewed for the piece mentioned that she supported the reopening of schools despite the pandemic because she was especially worried about students who need the "type of stability which school provides".
But on a reflective note, she also questioned whether the problem was about the medium or about the place. She argued:
"The fundamental problem for him isn't if the school is open or not, it's that adults around him are supporting his education. It doesn't matter if school is virtual or in real life, he's going to have the same issues."
Here at Einstein, we've always recognized the importance of the family in the area of education. In our carnivals with CDAC, our booths are open to the public, and we not only interact with kids but also their parents and grandparents.
Often, many parents are very interested in how they can get their kids interested in STEM, and will ask tons of questions about our demos and where we find these resources. But we never really had any sustained engagement with any families because our initial vision was for Einstein to be a "mobile demo lab".
However, given our awareness about the importance of place and families, it might be time for us to expand our vision for Einstein. To not just be a mobile demo-lab, but also to settle down in a couple of rental communities, and focus on mentorship.
This is a very ambitious and challenging vision, especially since many organizations in Singapore often overlook the role of the home environment. But there still excellent models such as the Harlem Children's Zone in the US and ReadAble in Singapore that we can look to for inspiration in Part 3 of this series.
Stay Tuned and Stay Safe!
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