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Following my “Back to School” item (110826) Sandy Oh wrote to me and, with her permission, I produce below what she said.

“On the subject of education, I heard a troubling story from a good friend last night.

MD of a large MNC’s Financial Services in Asia Pacific, she has been interviewing candidates from the Singapore Universities for a Management Associate position in her company.

All the candidates she saw were high-quality and ticked these boxes:

- good grades

- overseas work experience

- internship at a decent firm

- volunteered in non-profit work

- captain of whatever extra-curricular activity

But despite this “good CV”, she found they were all too similar, lacking in individuality. When she asked more reflective questions, for example ‘what was the toughest decision you’ve had to make’, she got answers that exposed what she regarded as a shocking level of immaturity among these candidates.

It is worrying that despite the investments in our education system and despite students having such an apparently well-rounded education, they still seem to be devoid of skills of meaningful contemplation and reflection.”

Thank you, Sandy, for your story. It is a widespread phenomenon and partly stems from lack of observation, a fundamental problem in our society and the cause of such poor leadership at every level from warehouse manager to politician. Poor observation leads to carelessness, bad quality and accident.

We have good teaching, possibly even good learning but do we have education? The definition of education is “the act of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life”.

Tick the boxes: general knowledge [_] reasoning [_] judgment [_] intellectual [_] mature [_]?

I am getting some students to write what I hope will be reflective pieces about the education they are receiving and I will put these on The Daily Paradox as further School Reports.

Hmm.