Minister of Education Chan Chun Sing has been busy visiting schools and documenting his learning journey on TikTok.
The last we checked (less than a month ago on January 4), he had two videos up.
He’s got 13 now, and you might have seen the mace-twirling one he did two weeks back on January 16. That one reached 212,000 views, and features the impressive skills of drum major Azlan from Deyi Secondary School. #chefskiss.
“Received a refresher course from him on twirling the mace, with Gabriel on the drums,” posted Minister Chan afterwards. “Our students are so talented!”
“Follow me as I pick up more skills from the students I meet in our schools.”
Challenge. Accepted.
Singapore Institute of Technology: the sciencing
Stop One: the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), where students learn pharmacy science and physiotherapy, among many other subjects.
There, Minister Chan gamely tried his hand at taking out a live cell culture from a bioreactor.
“That’s my SkillsFuture for today,” he quipped, alongside SIT students Gary and Gerard.
Then he strapped himself onto a physiotherapy machine to learn what exactly Physiotherapy students do.
“Vern put my cycling muscles to the test,” posted Minister Chan afterwards.
Temasek Polytechnic: the lasering
Stop Two: Temasek Polytechnic’s Makerspace, is our favourite. There’s laser-cutting, you see, which makes for ultra-accurate patterns and designs.
“Jonathan, Yue Yi and Jia Hao from @Temasek Polytechnic guided me to make a pencil case stand — hope I wasn’t too bad a student 😄,” posted Minister Chan one shiny yellow-green stand later.
“Really like how Makerspace is such a great space for our young innovators!” he added.
Nanyang Technological University: the guessing
And just this week, Nanyang Technological University’s film students gave Minister Chan a behind-the-scenes look at how a film’s sounds come together.
“There’s a specific process to recreating the sounds you hear in TV and in films! It’s called Foley, and I learnt more about it from the film students at NTU. Even got to try my hand at it 😊,” wrote Minister Chan.
Watch the video below and try guessing the sounds that Minister Chan and the students tried recreating:
(We at Petir.sg almost got both right.)
Different routes to success
There are heaps of ways to learn and all sorts of skills to pick up in Singapore, as #LearnwithCCS shows.
And as Minister Chan’s videos show, gone are the days of rote learning and dry memorisation. Students today are encouraged to embrace different definitions of success and the relevant skills that are important for their futures.
“Everyone’s strengths are different, so the definition of success for us would be to cultivate the individual strengths and talents of our students, to give them the opportunities they need to develop them,” said Minister Chan last April.
“We can define success as doing justice to our blessings. Our children are gifted differently and we can help them develop to their fullest potential,” he also wrote this month about the My Buona Vista Edusave Awards in his GRC.
In this light, it’s no wonder the PAP Government is continually and incrementally making Singapore’s education system more flexible and diverse.
Skills, not grades, are the point of education after all.
So follow Minister Chan here on TikTok, and #skillup with him along the way.
Images via chanchunsingsg/TikTok