Tom Friedman, writing from Singapore, explains how that tiny island city-state is infusing right-brain thinking into its schools with something called the HeyMath program. Here’s the key graf from Friedman’s column:
“As Low-Sim Ay Nar, principal of Xinmin Secondary School, explained to me, Singapore has got rote learning down cold. No one is going to outdrill her students. What it is now focusing on is how to develop more of America’s strength: getting Singaporean students and teachers to be more innovative and creative. ‘Numerical skills are very important,’ she told me, but ‘I am now also encouraging my students to be creative — and empowering my teachers. … We have been loosening up and allowing people to grow their own ideas.'”