I Detest Social Studies.

After silently grudging it for so long, I'll finally come out and say it: I absolutely hate SS.

(For non-Singapore-resident readers, Social Studies is abbreviated to SS ~95% of the time, so I'll refer to it that way throughout this post).



Now, it's actually a funny time for me to "come out and say it", because my recent score for this subject was my all-time best for a test or exam. I'm not going to reveal what it was - sorry, kiasu inquisitive readers - but the point is that if there was any time for me to start liking the subject, it would be now.

I should probably be clarify right now that I don't hate SS itself, as a subject taught internatioally. On the contrary; in my previous post I mentioned that one of my top interests was social science, and SS is definitely part of the profile.

What I detest is Singapore's Social Studies. (SSS? Anyone?)

The content in what I will term 'SSS' is, for the most part, unobjectionable; while it does show a few elements of bias here and there, it's quite balanced overall and covers essential parts of what any good Social Studies curriculum should cover. I could criticize it for being a little undeveloped in certain parts - especially of those relating to foreign issues - but that'll be nitpicking.

The true problem with SSS is its tests.

As far as I know, one of the true objectives of SS (for any nation) is to encourage critical thinking. Students are told to form their own reasoned opinions of issues highlighted in the curriculum, and use that form of thinking to apply onto any other issue.

SSS does the same...or so it claims. What happens instead is that you, the student, are given a narrow set of tools and formats to structure your writing, predefined sets of content to memorize, and a very limited way to answer. And god forbid if you have an opinion that doesn't gel well with the marker's.

It is, in a few words, absolutely hypocritical. It especially affects me: I am a person that is also interested in many of the issues SSS mentions, and thus would have already read up on the said issues and formed my own opinions on the issue. But those opinions, when written down on test papers, have been criticized as "too far out of the mainstream".

Well, so what if it's not a hive-mind idea? Isn't that what should be encouraged, in fact? Thinking out-of-the-box and all? Apparently not; failing my grade is much easier, as it seems.

It's not limited to that, either. Say you follow the hive-mind. You write your point, backed by evidence straight from the textbook with a memorized explanation, like a good, unquestioning student. All should go well, right? Nope, because the evidence for that particular point in the textbook contained four parts, and you only wrote three. Marks deducted, grade lowered. Rinse and repeat.

In the spirit of SS, I decided to check whether these claims of mine could be backed up. So, for this test, knowing the potential topics that could be used for the test, I memorized their respective points, evidence and explanations down to a T. No critical thinking, no opinion forming. Just pure memorization.

Result? A1. Point = proven.