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LA Education - Coggle Diagram

- - - - 4.1: By 2030, all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary (aka 10 years) education.
      - 4.3: By 2030, all women and men have equal access to affordable and quality technical, vocational (job training) and tertiary (incl. uni) education.
      - 4.4: Substantially increase the number of youths and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship by 2030.
      - 4.5: Eliminate gender disparities in education, and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations (eg wars) by 2030.
- - - - EX: Business Insider Analysis (2019)
        
        In every US state, earnings for college graduates exceed the earnings for those with less than a bachelor's degree.
        
        Washington, D.C. has the highest pay disparity, with a 167% difference in earnings. The lowest is in Dakota, with a 38% difference.
        
        Over the course of a lifetime, a degree holder earns up to an extra US$700k than a person without a degree.
    - - EX: New York City
        
        The 2 best specialised high schools in New York City (Stuyvesant High and Bronx High School of Science) are known for their disproportionately large intake of meritorious Asian students of humble origins (who form >60% of the cohort in both schools).
        
        These students are often first- or second-generations immigrants for whom education is the only way to enter the professional class.
      - EX: PSC Scholarship
        
        60% of students holding the highly prestigious PSC scholarship from 2015-2020 have come from "elite" schools such as Raffles Institution and Hwa Chong Instituition.
        
        ~50% of recipients come from households living in HDB public housing, however 80% of Singapore's population live in HDB public housing, showing that most of those who won the scholarship are from richer families.
    - - ELAB: Signalling Theory
        
        SUMMARY: While a degree itself isn't worth a lot, it acts as a signal for employers since they assume/know that graduating is good.
        
        It means that students attend university not because the degree is useful, but because from the employers' perspectives, they do not care about what the degree can do for the students, but they care about the fact that you attained a degree. This is because employers associate degree holders with positive traits (eg greater motivation, lower risk of drug abuse, hardworking etc).
    - - EX: Post O-Levels
        
        After the O-Levels, students would receive booklets that include roadmaps illustrating the different paths they can take.
        
        Students can pick up the necessary skills to gain employment depending on the field they intend to pursue in the future their unique aptitudes (eg Specialised Art Schools like SOTA/NAFA, JC, Poly, ITE etc)
    - - EX: Lee Kuan Yew famously said, "My definition of an educated man is a man who never stops learning and wants to learn."
  - - - ELAB: College and University education is expensive (esp. US), to the point where many students take out a bank loan to finance their studies.
      - EX: Former President Barrack Obama only finished paying his tuition loan at the age of 40.
      - EX: Student loan debt in the US was $1.6 trillion (2019), amounting to ~ 7.5% of the US's GDP. In June 2019, Bernie Sanders (a democrat politician) offered a new proposal that would cancel this debt for 45m Americans, and the proposal "completely eliminates student debt in [the US] and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation... to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing - and that is going out and getting quality education".
    - - EX: In China, the "Gaokao" is an extremely high-stakes university entrance examination (analogous to 'A-levels'). It is a make-or-break examination especially for students from impoverished backgrounds as they see this as the only opportunity to escape the poverty cycle. A secondary school in Hebei province had to install cage-like "anti-suicide" barriers to prevent stressed students from jumping to their deaths.
      - EX: In a 2019 survey of 43k US students from high-performing schools by Challenge Success, 3/4 of high school students reported "often/always feeling stressed" by their schoolwork. More than 2/3 of high-schoolers reported being "often/always worried" about getting into the college of their choice.
    - - EX: Liberal Arts
        
        Equip students with no specific skillsets.
        
        Students learn about laws, history, philosophy, literature and a mixture of electives from other faculties.
        
        A Liberal Arts degree and a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degree cost about the same. However in 2019, a study found that Liberal Arts graduates earn significantly lower compared to STEM graduates.
        
        However, Liberal Arts graduates catch up with STEM graduates later in life.
      - EX: YouGov survey (2019)
        
        53% of Singaporean graduates work in fields unrelated to what they studies.
        
        57% of respondents said their degrees were still "very useful".
        
        ~2/5 said their degrees were only "somewhat useful".
        
        Nevertheless, 99% of all graduates surveyed said that having a university degree is important.
    - - ELAB: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. One can learn anything at no cost/upgrade to receive certification. The courses are offered by prestigious universities (eg Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], Stanford etc)
      - EX: A course titled "Machine Learning: Master the Fundamentals" by Stanford University had over 1m enrolments since October 2011.
      - EX: Salman Khan (founder of Khan Academy) was named one of "100 Most Influential People in the World" by TIME Magazine in 2012. Khan Academy is a free online learning tool that shows up in classrooms and homes worldwide. Today, Khan Academy is home to >8000 lessons that allow students to learn, explore and get help at their own pace.
    - - EX: One survey of around 10k developers by HackerRank found that even though 76% of technology students are pursuing a degree in computer science, 65% of all student developers say they are at least partially self-taught, and nearly 1/3 say they are completely self-taught.
- - - - EX: Barefoot College
        
        The college engages in knowledge-sharing between skilled professionals and the poorest of the poor in rural India.
        
        Students are taught solar power, water, education, healthcare, crafts and communication. Each programme eventually becomes a source of employment.
        
        Single mothers, divorced women, differently-abled and illiterate people are prioritised for training as they are most in need of support and employment oppotunities.
    - - EX: Social Scientists' Posit
        
        EX: Social Scientists posit that for every US$1 spent on education, between US$10-15 could be generated in economic growth. This growth includes benefits such as lower crime rates, better physiological and psychological health, nutrition etc.
        
        ELAB: This makes governments want to invest in education given the very high returns (around 1000%-1500%) it provides.
    - - ELAB: Education can go beyond knowledge, theories and literacy. Sometimes, simple but life-changing skills can be imparted to improve one's livelihood.
      - EX: In war-torn regions like Sudan, NGOs have prioritised health education over lessons in literacy and are educating young children and teenagers in areas of basic hygiene to lower their infant mortality rate as well as reduce the spread of diseases.
  - - - EX: Pakistan education crisis
        
        Despite pay raises and improved access to education, many Pakistani teachers do not show up for work. (i.e. Teacher Absenteeism)
        
        50% drop out of school within the first 5 years.
        
        Pakistan has "a deeply-flawed national curriculum that promotes xenophobia and religious violence". Thus few children from minority backgrounds attempt to enroll in government schools.
    - - EX: The Grammar School (UK)
        
        The Grammar School was introduced to improve social mobility for bright kids with poor backgrounds who couldn't afford private schools. However, very few disadvantaged kids get into this school as parents who can afford private tutoring can help their kids pass their exams, do so. 70% of entrants had some form of private tutoring (really expensive), however only 3% of grammar school pupils are entitled to free school meals, which is an indication of deprivation.
      - ELAB: Some schools still have very high proportions of high-income families and a lower proportion of lower-income families, which shows that the discrepancy in terms of income still lies.
      - EX: According to a Elitist Britain study, 7% of British students went to private school. However in the parliament (powerful positions), 35% of the Cabinet, 65% of Senior Judges and 52% of foreign office diplomats went to private school.
    - - ELAB: Youth unemployment is high, employers complain that they cannot hire candidates with relevant skills, and the world has a surplus of graduates.
      - EX: 75m young people are unemployed due to job shortages and skill mismatch. World universities produce 5m graduates, and in Singapore, ~23% pursuing workforce have a degree.
- - - - EX: In 1968, late Mr Lee Kuan Yew called poetry "a luxury we cannot afford". Instead, he led the country down the road of scientific and industrial progress.
      - Counter: This was true to some extent in 1968, when Singapore was still a poor nation. Now that we are more developed, we can now afford this "luxury".
  - - - ELAB: Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that they believe are of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. The emphasis should be on principles and not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, rather than machines or techniques, and liberal rather than vocational skills.
    - - EX: Singapore introduced CCE in 2014 to students to ensure that they learn values through 3 overarching ideas: Identity, Relationships and Choices, in 6 domains, starting with self and extending to family, school, community, nation and world.
    - - ELAB: Studying Arts imparts soft skills like critical thinking, communication, creativity and empathy. These soft skills are now highly sought after many employers as a 2019 study found.
      - EX: Literary works like "1984" by George Orwell serve as a reminder to us that without wisdom and morality, science and technology can lead us to destruction.