Tough primary school education
The list included words such as Anemometer, Bedlam, Beguile, Buccaneer, Diurnal, Navvy, Osseous and Philately. Most parents we spoke to were clueless to the meaning of most of the words. Mum, Lisa Wee, housewife, said, “Out of the list of 24 – I only know 3! I scored a distinction for PSLE English, but that was 20 years ago – I guess if I did it now I would fail!”.
Even parents who were familiar with most of the words, were unsure of the relevance of studying such words. Dad, Kelvin Koo, CEO of Ineo Digital, shared, “Eh schools and MOE. We don’t need to produce mega scholars lah. What on earth. While I know 20 of the 24, at ten, I would have known only 5-6 at most. And I was an avid reader.”
Watch this video by The New Paper, interviewing educated adults in Raffles Place on how many of the 24 words they knew!
Here’s the entire list. How many do you know?
Anemometer
Bedlam
Beguile
Buccaneer
Diurnal
Domicile
Eminence
Implicit
Indict
Manslaughter
Navvy
Osseous
Philately
Piteous
Plaudits
Podgy
Pursuant
Scabbard
Suffuse
Supervening
Temperance
Tenable
Umbrage
Unequivocal
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