Studying is become a mad issue...

The other day I started my tuition with my tutee, Jerel for this coming 2007. Haven't blogged about him before, so I shall give a short commentary about this guy. Primary 5, unmotivated to study, better than average brains but complete laziness equates poor grades. I can still remember last year when I taught him for the first time. He don't even know where his textbooks are the day before exams. Amazing isn't he? I'm surprised he even passed his exams...and thankfully still managed a 69 for his maths. Science was horrible though...my blood pressure was at a consistent high for 11 months.

This is the infamous Jerel during kindergarten days...found this photo lying around....so on my blog it comes...

Anyway, he's now in primary 5 and I was flipping through his science textbook the other day. I really got the shock of my life...look at the below photo to know why...

For bioscience students, it should be fine because we just did a revision of it last semester during Alex Law's module. But look at those names and their discoveries...I dare to say people outside, even graduates who doesn't take any biology modules know nuts about these people and their discoveries. How to even expect those science teachers teaching these poor kids science to even know? I believe when some of those stuff wasn't even in the teachers' syllabus when they studied university. Madness...life science shouldn't be brought in at such a young age. Genes?? They don't even realise they are made of cells yet...

When I was younger, I always hear the older generation say that studies nowadays are so simple, graduates are literally "littered" all over the place unlike the old days when graduates are worshipped like idols on an altar. But as I reach higher education and learning, I realised that their views were really greatly biased in the sense that they thought they had a hard time. This, I truly beg to differ.

Comparing textbooks for chemistry in secondary school, my aunt passed me some organic textbooks they used in the past for my reference...that book was everything...let's just compare it with ours nowadays:

I think it's quite obvious from view the difference in thickness and size, the font size is exactly the same as per our current books. Just as technology advances, the information, knowledge and content follows. And all these ended up as the new-age syllabus, every review makes the books thicker. So I really don't agree with the saying that graduates nowadays are getting life much easier. WE GOT MUCH MORE CONTENT TO STUDY AND APPRECIATE!! The olden days of memorising are fading away as it's really just madness to memorise the vast information available. For me, I try to do concept studying as I call it as far as possible. Nevertheless, some content still has to be memorised or the concept studying fails too. So in short, I believe that graduates back then had a "tougher" time in the aspect that people back then:

• Do not see education as an important part of life?
• Many do not have the financial ability to further their studies after college and lack of substantial assistance or scholarships etc?
• And how can we forget the scarcity of resources and university vacancies...unlike nowadays, where govt allocates much more resources to allow more people a chance at university, slots were rather limited and courses then were few.
  
  

  I found this interesting stuff in the old textbooks...dissection of frogs...we didn't get to do it though during my time...what cruelty to animals etc...I would love to open them up and check them in detail!
  

However, we must give credit to the pioneers who went on to do research and discovered what we now know as modern science. Technological advancements cannot happen if these pioneer researchers did not venture into the unknown zones. And ya, I do curse them at times for discovering new stuff that I have to study now! I'm guilty of it too...to me, anything that is examinable is no fun...Till then..