“You can tell what is right, what is wrong. What is real and what is not, and what is right for your situation,” he said.
To this end, Mr Lee said it is important to prepare children for an AI-pervasive future, while also fostering in them curiosity and social-emotional skills.
This would first require the age-appropriate use of AI in classrooms and teaching children about what AI is and its limits.
With social and emotional skills becoming increasingly important – not just in school, but also in workplaces and the wider community – this is another area of focus for MOE.
Mr Lee said: “All these social-emotional skills can be more important than just your academic hard knowledge.”
These include compassion, expressing oneself appropriately, navigating challenging environments and being able to self-regulate and empathise with others.
At Oasis Primary School, Mr Lee observed Primary 4 English and art lessons that demonstrated how the school integrates social-emotional skills into these subjects.
During the English lesson, pupils used the popular young adult book Wonder – about a boy with facial deformities – as a springboard to share how they would feel if they faced discrimination.
For the art lesson, pupils worked in groups to come up with a superhero logo based on values.
Mr Lee said such approaches bring lessons to life.
“It doesn’t just give our children the foundation in the subject, but also uses the opportunity to get them to think critically, think thoughtfully, to engage with classmates and to think about how they relate to people who are different from themselves,” he said.
By including group work, these activities go beyond nurturing individual creativity, and encourages pupils to collaborate and share ideas with each other, he added.
“You can see leadership in action. You see collaboration in action, cooperation, give and take and also working towards a product that is bigger than the sum of the individual parts. So that was very encouraging,” the minister said.
On MOE’s efforts to shift away from an emphasis on competition around grades so that students can develop a lifelong passion for learning, he said: “It will take time, and we require three parties to play a part – our pre-schools, primary schools as well as our parents.”
Another key area is how schools can better partner with the community to support children from more challenging backgrounds, such as those whose families are beneficiaries of ComLink+, a scheme to support lower-income households.
Likening the approach to a triangle comprising housing, education and jobs and skills, Mr Lee said these areas are where these families need help.
“I think it will give them a better shot in achieving stability, self-reliance and, ultimately, social mobility.”