A good completion takes a long time; a bad completion cannot be changed later. Can you afford to be careless?
– Zhuangzi, In the World of Men
Briefly stated, it means the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
– C. Northcote Parkinson
What is the difference between $10,000,000 and $10? According to Parkinson of Parkinson’s Law, not very much. He says in discussions or when thinking about issues, people tend to dismiss some matters because they are too small to warrant attention or too large to contemplate effectively within a limited time frame. He suggests that in a budget meeting, the time participants spend on “$10,000,000 and $10 may well prove to be the same” (Parkinson, 1957).
In English language classes, students are encouraged to express themselves and to take a stand on issues. A component which lends itself to discussion is open-ended comprehension. One pedagogical approach to teaching open-ended comprehensions, is to increase or activate schemata – “background information” (Umaroh, 2015). This is done by way of pre-reading activities such as, “brainstorming, class discussion, semantic mapping, cloze procedure…” and K-W-L charts, which “is an introductory strategy that provides a structure for recalling what students know about a topic” (Umaroh, 2015) among other things.
Students generally love discussions. They get to be spontaneous and so long as contributions are within the bounds of the subject under discussion, they can let their mind wander freely without being restrained too much by standards of precision and accuracy. When answering an open-ended comprehension question, their answer must be both precise – people walking to the nearest shelter, not simply, people and accurate – people walking to the nearest shelter and not shelter. In an open discussion, they are not so restrained.
Since the pre-reading discussion serves to spark curiosity and encourage expression, questions can be both wide ranging in scope and something much more relatable at a personal level. Consider the following questions:
a) How can we best conserve the ecosystem?
b) Should we cut down this tree where hornbills nest?
Which of these would you think might initiate an animated discussion? The second question is narrower in scope, appears open-and-shut and in this case, easier to visualise. Since they are well able to access concepts like ‘home’ and ‘kindness’, they would be able to make a stand conclusively, stating their reasons for their beliefs quite effortlessly, even passionately.
When students are able to respond in some length to a question, confidence is boosted and their identity and self-esteem are strengthened. For these reasons, the second question is what students want to answer and will answer.
The first question appears forbidding at once because of the word, ‘ecosystem’. To answer this question in a meaningful way, they would first have to understand what ecosystem means – a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by interaction of a community of organisms with their environment (dictionary.com).
Merely googling the definition or being otherwise informed of the definition would do little in the way of clarification. They would wonder what, ‘interconnected’, ‘elements’, ‘interaction’ and ‘community’ means. Each of these words are concepts in their own right and would require several lessons to explicate. It would take a mind uncluttered and in no particular hurry to respond, to process all these elements within a single mental frame.
When a response is required quickly, much would be spoken about a single tree than the forest in which this tree is situated and what should and ought to be done rather than what can or cannot be done. However, since what should be done is a function of what can be done, the answer to the first question would inform the understanding required to answer the second question.
How many times have we quarrelled or spent enormous amounts of time fretting over something only to realise that the import of said thing pales in comparison when viewed in the context of the larger scheme? We would then look back and say we had spent a disproportionate amount of time of intensive and draining involvement in what didn’t turn out to be decisive or even significant in how things eventually turned out.
Since an outcome turns on many factors and since the factors are variable over time, we may be expending too much effort on matters which do not require such battles. The metaphor of ‘battle’ presupposes the existence of two distinct sides with competing interests. A child may be battling parents for permission to do Activity A. The parents may insist on Activity B. The child throws a tantrum because of three assumptions:
1. There will be more enjoyment to be gained from Activity A
2. My parents are not prioritizing my enjoyment
3. I will need to fight to get my way
The child eventually agrees to try Activity B and finds it very enjoyable, wondering why so much fuss was deemed necessary in the first place. In this instance, the parents may indeed have known better and insisted on B precisely because they prioritized the child’s enjoyment. On hindsight, it may have been better to go with the flow than to take a stand on Activity A.
The philosopher Zhuangzi or Zhuang Zhou, espouses that we ought to “go along with things, to let our “mind move freely” and to “nourish what is within you” (Zhuangzi, Chapter 4). This is the principle of keeping a mind open to experience and ideas.
At first glance, taking a stand and going with the flow might appear to be pulling in opposite directions. There are times we must take a stand and avoid sitting on the fence. There are also times, taking a stand would be premature.
As the exams near, some tension is inevitable. Have I prepared enough? Will I be able to do well? What might my results be? Will I get to go to the school I want? Will my parents be happy? Will I? Will this exam define the course of my entire life?
In his closing remarks in a talk titled, ‘After the Pandemic, Reimagining Education’, the Minister for Education had this to say, “… this idea of learning for good, transcends every job, whatever job you’re doing – have that mindset of wanting to be a better person, wanting to be better in everything you do”. He added that education was really about being better human beings and leading more fulfilling lives.
It is certainly quite easy to see that one exam this early in a child’s life would not be determinative of such broad goals. Indeed, the previous Minister of Education advised this year’s PSLE candidates this way, “Just try your best. And ultimately, PSLE is still just the first gateway of a very long learning and education journey.”
Does this then mean that since the development of the whole person would take a lifetime, we offer no resistance to impulses to relax when we really should be working hard? Does this mean we no longer attempt to seek mastery? These questions are rhetorical and rightly so. We should and ought to take a definitive stand and commit wholeheartedly to a journey of bettering ourselves with whatever means possible and, in every way possible.
Developing thinking for example has consequences far beyond grades. This article, How Well You Define a Problem Determines How Well You Solve It opens with the following quote credited to Einstein, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”. The modals ‘should’ and ‘ought’ lie in the province of solutions. There is often a lopsided and frenzied focus on getting solutions. Thinking hard about and through every facet of a problem would take a long time to complete.
Only a carefree traveller would be able to dedicate the kind of care necessary for a good completion.
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