In a newspaper report about how China students in Singapore are super hardworking and managed to filled up 1/2 of the 25 students who managed to get 9A1s for Olevel, I was very disturbed by a phrase which kept repeating over and over again throughout the entire article, like zits on the ass of a guy who did not wash for ages. The phrase is, “hard working”.
A very obvious message that the article is trying to bring across is to ask Singapore students to work hard. I dislike that.
Being Singaporeans, we need to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of the Singaporean style of education. From an educator’s perspective, it is to equip students with the necessary knowledge for their work and adult life. From an average housewife’s perspective, it is about pushing the kid to premier institutions, top schools, secure high paying jobs and enjoying the rest of their life in this tiny boring island. You see, there is a mismatch of interest here. While an educator is interested in equipping students with knowledge and wisdom, what typical parents want from their kid are higher chance of getting into high paying job. That is two different matters altogether.
I shall dive into the second perspective more. How does an average housewife push her kid into things like EM1 and later Special Stream in Singapore? Send them for various tuition, lessen their play time, increase their workload by exchanging tonnes of sweat money for typo-filled enrichment exercise books in Popular, among others. They view their kid as an investment. Investing heavily on their kid now, can reap wonderful benefits for themselves in their old age. This kind of mindset that directly ties education and future salary slowly tickled down the generation, and we see more and more students around who are so called “muggers”. They study for the sake of studying. They are slaves to the paper chase. They are those people who work very hard to get the A1s and distinctions that everyone else envy. They get it through sheer hard work, not their intelligent.
Then we look at the examinations. Examinations are important gateway to the future. They decide what path you will take, and possibly what job you end up with. Examinations are supposed to bring out and recognize brighter students. But as I mentioned, working hard also warrants the same A1s and distinction that students of higher intellect are going to get. Examinations had become a test of how hardworking you can be while studying for the examinations, and your mental capacity for memorizing model answers and texts which can be used in examinations to guarantee good scores. So through examination filter, we get a bunch of highly hardworking kids with average intelligence. That shouldn’t be happening. Singapore is not interested in farmers.
Regardless, we continue to follow the path of these muggers. They score very well for their Olevels, and feel that they can handle more education. They just have to be more hardworking after all. So off to Junior Colleges they go.
Here is where they started encountering difficulties. They start being unable to kope. The workload, Fmaths, Spapers are just too much of them. They should have known JC is not made for people of their intelligence level. Those with a fraction higher intelligent managed to score well for Alevels, but not everyone. When the slightly weaker ones get their Alevel results, they cried. Their path ends here. It is the end for paper chasers if they did not get distinction for at least 1 or 2 of their Alevel subjects. We shall follow the path of muggers who made it to the university.
Courses offered in Universities are varied. Muggers are lost. They do not know what they are good in, since they are equally hardworking for every subjects, they get the same scores for all their subjects. As a result many chose those that they think will bring them high paying jobs. And because of this high demand, the scores required to enter those courses increased. Because of a huge bunch of passionless robots that are slave to the paper chased, a lot of less hardworking but more passionate individuals were unable to get into the course of their choice. And because of that, they have no choice but to join “lousier” courses, and became despised by kids who got into the more “popular” ones. In theory there shouldn’t be any distinction between courses, they are all equally valuable to individuals passionate about it. But in the sad reality, it isn’t true.
We follow the muggers through their university life, and assuming that they made it through university without turning into a peeping tom, they now have to pick their first job. After a bunch of job switching, many will discover that jobs pertaining to their course in university were in high demand and low availability. Even when they get those jobs, they may discover that they do not like them, or what they learnt in educational institutions were simply outdated and irrelevant. Those random few who chose things like Maths or Physics in University will most likely find themselves useless in Singapore’s workforce. There is simply no place for them. So they went back to MOE and seek refugee there. They became teachers, passing down their hard earnt knowledge to the next generation. This is also precisely why the standard of education is dropping. Teachers who were muggers, imparting muggers attitude overran the society. This is still a considerably ideal career choice for muggers. It pays well. There are many others who ended up with totally irrelevant jobs. What they got from their paper chase are, well.. literally papers.
This is not just some conjecture scenario I made up in my mind. It written from my first hand observations of my various schoolmates, in Zhenghua Primary School, The Chinese High School, and especially the aimless kids that Anderson Junior College is flooded with.
So what am I doing in places filled with muggers? Am I a mugger myself? Fear not, for I am not one. If I am one, I would be so blind to all these occurrences to even blog about it. But how did I get into The Chinese High School or Anderson Junior College then? I have no idea. Things just happened. I didn’t even bother to do my homework. But I have my goal in mind. I never lose track of it. I know what I must do in each stage of my life. Studying hard in primary school, slacking in Chinese High, and finding a girlfriend and launching my first successful IT project in junior college is all within my schedule.
To all those depressed by their Olevel or Alevel results, think of it as an early end to the meaningless paper chase, and an early start (however bitter) on a journey of self-discovery.
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Mmm, yes that article you mentioned was disturbing, but what disturbed me about it was the press’s unwillingness to take a realistic view of things. That we locals do noy like these Chinese students because we get enough shit from the government and the MOE due to their focus on “meritocracy” (which they pass off as a sign of democracy in this country when it is merely social Darwinism and cultivates elitism–if you don’t know what that means, go search Wee Shu Min, MP’s daughter). With these Chinese students around, we have even less of a chance to get scholarships or even the courses that we want. Worse of all, taxpayer’s money is being used on pompous, unappreciative foreigners and not in order to benefit the people who pay the taxes to keep PAP up and running and oppressing us.
That asides, Wei Kiat (that is your name I trust?) you cannot blame these “muggers”, as I see you are spitting on them here. This is what people who are not blessed with the intelligence to get into elite schools (Chinese High, hint hint) like you have to do to survive this system. I thought that a clever boy like you, who does not have to mug like all his other sad “aimless” Anderson JC classmates, would have the intelligence and sympathy and moral fibre to stand up for these people for they are PEOPLE like you and I. The not-so-smart parents of your dull schoolmates pay taxes to cultivate and provide scholarships and beautiful schools for you (although it is obviously not of their own volition) and all you do is look down on them. If you are among others who are not so fortunate as to be like you (or even YOU yourself, god knows, genetics are so much like a game of Russian Roulette aren’t they?) you should help them. Sympathy, kindness and ethics are what a good education should provide and after reading your blog, dear Wei Kiat, you don’t seem to have learnt much from all your years in school.
Go be a caveman. You don’t have to feel for others than yourself.
Oh sure you can carry on peaching on your views.
When I say aimless I am not saying they are dumb. When I say aimless they are really aimless. They work hard for things like going Uni and getting scholarship, which they viewed as a goal in their life but in actual fact should be nothing but stepping stones to their goals.
They parents can then follow them and support them and throw in good money, for some random course they picked. In the end its education wastage as most of such people didn’t make it very far or have job related to their course.
Shouldn’t all this time, effort and money be saved?
I am not talking about born stupidly or dumb, but studying stupidly and dumbly. You have definitely heard of the phrase “don’t work hard, but work smart.” I see people doing tutorials 2 times, doing concept maps for their maths, memorising newspapers for their General Paper. They have no clear aims of what they want other than something like “I want go uni” or “i want get scholarship”, and when you probe further and ask them why they want to go uni, they say “I want to get a good high paying job”. If you go even further and ask what job they want, they will look at you blankly and say “Errrrrr I donno leh, see got what job lor.”
That is my observation. Aimless students who worked hard but not smart.
It has nothing to do with intelligence you are born with. It has to do with intelligence on how you live your life knowing what you want.
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What makes you think there is no sympathy involved, after looking at all these people for 2 years. What makes you think I am spitting on these people? If I had done so the drain near AJC would have been flooded.
No, I am pointing out observations I’ve made, however harshly, up to my life at this point. Maybe 5 or 10 years down the road, I will come back and laugh at this entry. My blog is a life long thing. I intend to learn from my past mistakes.
However, the thing remains that at this point of time, I find that what they are doing is really brainless, and being so caught up in their aimless direction, many won’t wake up even after I’ve tried, although I had managed to convince and helped some ex-muggers.
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The thing about Wee Shu Min. You are the caveman here
Check out my old blog.
I’ve read your post. And I wrote a nice reply too but your blog ate it up. Hmm.
sorry, the spam filter isn’t exactly so smart.