Category Archives: Issues & Ideas

Surprisingly, I have been reading news. Yes, and I came across Soon Sze Meng’s article on our local school’s contribution towards social mobility. As a typical student myself, I shall leave readers to find out for themselves what exactly is social mobility. In any case, the article revolves around the discussion of meritocracy in Singapore and who exactly does our education system benefit.

For ages, we, belonging to the lower band of the society, lived with the idea that education is our key to penetrating the social ‘classes’, allowing us to attain ‘greater heights’. We believe, that wealth do not last more than 3 generations, with the second (in some cases) and third squandering away all the first generation have worked to build. We once thoughts, that as long as we slog and work, we will outshine the ‘rich’ students, who are characterised by their lazy, and apathetic traits. Unfortunately (or should I say fortunately), our society is not so ideal, and so is many others.

A nation founded upon the principles of meritocracy is successful because everyone starts off at the same point, the identical starting line. Whoever runs fast enough, have the perseverence to last till the end, emerges as the victor, and not forgetting those who have accompanied the victor all the way, whom themselves earn the rest of the honour. Others are left scattered around the track – some gave up halfway, some sink into some kind of crisis purely by chance, while others who may have tried the shortcuts got lost. For this point, I am also suggesting that people do win with shortcuts.

That was then. The second generation don’t differ much from the first except that they had a more stable life, and were able to enjoy what the previous generation know as luxury. They are able to enjoy in their late 50s or so. But as we step into the third generation, the disparity is getting wider. We see that everyone has a different starting point; you have a guy from a tycoon’s family, another is the son of an official (this kind of people are known as white horse in Singapore context), and who knows, you get a peer who has just migrated to Singapore from Australia and he’s an excellent speaker. You get different competitors, and so on the other hand, there are the sons and daughters of hawkers – the mini rich class; finally, there is the lower income group, supposedly characterised by the fact that they qualify for financial aid. I have to stress this point that there is no discrimination intended.

What I am trying to say here is that you now need to introduce ‘Selective Meritocracy’. This has been in practice and this is not something new at all. It involves the addition of filters to prevent ‘well-fed’ people who has the ability to fund their own studies from obtaining scholarships or monetary rewards for academic achievements, thereby robbing the deserving, and in a way, less fortunate of the opportunity to ‘move up’ (to quote from Sze Meng’s words). Paradoxically, this system of selective meritocracy is only used in scholarships or cash grants involving money that usually does not exceed SGD$1000. The scholarships that goes up to hundreds of thousands do not work with this system.

The vicious cycle is turning, in fact spining. The rich get the appropriate help, the right contacts, and the resources required to do whatever known as ‘projects’. The poor, with less exposure to the academics, and having a need for extra income, would rather address to the immediate problem by working part-time, than to work on his ‘project’. The system, acknowledges the efforts of the rich boy, praising his efforts to contact a renown professor to aid in his ‘project’ while dismissing the poor student as a rebellious, undisciplined and ‘good-for-nothing’. This is getting fearful. Well, the situation is not as extreme as the analogy I have drawn, but the actual is very close. Extremely close indeed.

There are, in fact, presence of students who have excel academically and present himself as being an outstanding and ‘high-class’ student despite his humble background and manages to obtain the scholarship that they are pursuing at the end of their ‘learning journey’. But they are rare. Let’s put this fact aside and imagine, for Einstein has mentioned how imagination is more important than knowledge: If the ‘rich’ guys who have obtained scholarships are erased from the big picture completely, how many ‘poor’ others would have been able to ‘move up’? And in turn, they would be able to aid how many others ‘move up’? This would eventually close up the income gap that we seem to have now.

Think about how the small gap between obtaining the scholarship and not for both the rich and the poor would alter from cases to cases. A ‘rich’ who grasped it feels happy, go on the study, come back to adhere to his bond (alternatively, he might decide to break the bond and even compensate with his own money if he is really rich enough), and then live on. The ‘poor’ who missed it would have spent his slogging on his studies seemingly useless. Well, he can continue with his academic career and alter his future a little, but will never be able to make the difference that he would have if he manages to obtain the chance to pursue what he initially wanted.

This is getting long and I probably would continue with this talk in the next few posts.

I was thinking of getting into education politics again by creating a category, ‘School’ and posting anti-school articles. A pity I didn’t really have the time to maintain such a log about the progress of democractisation in our school. Nevertheless, I shall let the head of the cat out of the bag for a little basking in the sun.

It is yet another SBC today and it is interesting to note how the absence of teachers can trigger extremely stimulating responses from the audience. The students are finally willing to talk. Like what some other SU member said in Mandarin, “Secondary 4 students are hard to handle.” I think so too. Of course, this time, there are much changes to the SU organisation and they way the spend money.

The most glaring part of the whole SBC is definitely the presentation by the finance controller. Firstly, I would like to point out that we did not vote for a cute, young boy to be the finance controller; we thought he’d better off being a Welfare Secretary. Secondly, the proposed budget is a crazy $10 050. I am not sure about the $50 that seems so extra that I thought our dear Fat Brother should have donated it out of his pocket. Overall, it is just, too big a figure to swallow. But perspective does help, each student contributes only $5 – enjoying nothing at all. The rich guys out there can treat it as money for feeding some dogs or donated to some organisation for the disabled, but not for people like us. We cannot afford to pay such a huge sum of money, only for it to be wasted. Yes, Master Rasputin, the money that is removed quietly, and without our consent from the CDS is like a form of investment. It is like a one of the bets we are laying down in the great HCI Casino that is going through some ‘Integrated Programme’, to integrate all forms of entertainment with education – without forgetting to forget about Confucian’s teachings (or any other Chinese moral teachings) and go gamble. Investment for the better good of the whole school. Yeah, right. Oh, and according to a ex-member of the SU functioning body, the projected amount is usually only 75% of the actually amount they are going to spent. This time, the pocketting of our money ‘for the sake of greater good’ is a result of the school being stingy with their money because they want to pound the soil beside the canteen, and insert some piles there. That reminds us of the announcement last year that the building of the SALT centre and the science building would commence in October/November 2004. It appears otherwise. The whole place is rounded up but I don’t see work going on. Good job guys!

Of course, there is a welfare initiative to stuff the mouths of dissidents about this sum of money that we all have to fork out. And it is the conversion of a shabby, tiny corner of the canteen into a Meeting Room, which the students are allowed to use for their meetings, or study sessions. The irony is that the room is said to be wired with wireless LAN for surfing the net. Anyone with a sense would know the room is going to be our LAN gaming centre soon. Nevertheless, we must trust our students. The dissidents are probably the only ones who are going to use the room properly – to discuss about revolution plans. Of course, they probably would decide that it is impossible to overthrow the damn regime halfway through the meeting and start taking out their laptops from their bags…

That dumb thing aside, the SBC included a touching speech about the school culture and how our school environment contrast with other schools’. Admit it, this school is not ready. A culture is something built over the years and if the traditional and most important culture about teamwork and all the nonsense are already questioned, I wonder why we are talking about having a new vibrant culture that embraces any possible trace of diversity we have among our students. Sometimes, we just don’t have the right person at the right position to do the right thing that will benefit the right group of people. Such alignment is almost an impossibility in the history of man. It is as though the planets of our solar system, they hardly align, but once they do, they would create something supposedly power. Even so, it takes millions of centuries to occur.

The boy guarding the beanstalk now have to hold this pillar to the giant’s castle carefully and prevent it from collapsing. The beanstalk is now more and more fragile with the internal conflicts within the giant’s castle. Now that the giant is dead, Rasputin and his gang is plotting about how they can collect as much of the giant’s wealth as possible and keep it for themselves. Everywhere, there are dissidents waiting to chop down this beanstalk, especially when this boy is not alert. Personally, I regret not climbing up the beanstalk and searching for some gold coins for myself after the giant’s death. Now I am waiting, for this beanstalk to collapse with all the castle’s wealth falling down for all to share. That will be the most glorious day of our revolution.

Historical textbooks and perhaps even books by professional historians have never been accurate throughout the course of history. Many put up with such inaccuracy or biasness that may be caused by double interpretations of the text or implied meanings. It is alright because it does not distort history directly and make any serious impact in the current generation about the knowledge of the happenings of the past. However, to have information in the history textbooks that has absolutely distorted facts about the war and stuff would be ridiculous and even a little too much.

I can, therefore, understand the feelings of those protesting in Beijing and South Korea. Why is it so that despite Japan’s denial of their actions in the war and their assertion that their intention was for the better good of mankind, they want to alter the history textbooks to misled the younger generation about the past? If they are a strong nation, why must they do so? From such action by the Japanese government, we can see that their country is falling apart, the youths may no longer have trust in their (grand)parents’ generation – these old guys need to put up a facade to tell their young how great they have been.

In my opinion, to strengthen the ties of the country, they should openly admit their evil actions while maintaining the stand that their intention is good. Print the most accurate possible historical account in their youths textbook so as to tell their young that no man is perfect, and that if their nation were to do something wrong, they probably do it together to show their unity. It is also reasonable that they do evil and bad things out of goodwill and kind intentions – especially in this world where weird stuff appears now and then.

But of course, every country hopes that their citizens have something about their history to be proud of. While this is true, it may not be always possible. An example would be Singapore. A typical secondary school student, when asked about the merits of being a Singaporean and told to name something in Singapore he is proud of and he will say that the merits of being a Singaporean has already been listed in his Social Studies textbook (he then removes it from his bag and branish it to the surveyor), while the thing he is proud is is definitely the government. The reason given – it was simply told to him.

Japan probably has something better to show off about after they admit to all their sins. They can say, “I am proud of my country because they are extremely united – when they sin, they sin together, and previously, when they want to fake that they didn’t sin, they also do it together.” As for the parts about merits, that will be their longevity.

By the way, I do support the idea of protesting to Japanese ridiculous move in an attempt to brainwash their people and alter the knowledge of history. However, violence such as burning of flags is not encouraged. I believe it would be better if those guys each chip in a little and pool enough money to send some of those protestors over to Japan so that they make a greater impact. Shouting and rioting in your own country probably only brings a little confusion and chaos to your country – and stir some news.