My thoughts on the Singaporean education system so far after 12 years of being mired in it
Tags: LGBTQ, Singapore, Meritocracy, Social, Education

Meritocracy, a foundational tenet of the education system, is severely flawed and contributes to the widening socio-economic inequity.

The education system clearly demonstrates utmost bias and proclivity in championing quality education only for the ‘elites’ or Singaporean citizens who belong to the upper socio-economic class. This is evident in distinction and bifurcation of schools into elite and neighborhood schools. The divide is seen everywhere, from the location of elite and neighborhood schools in districts where the price of land or the price of a housing unit is much higher and where wealthy people are perceived to live versus districts where the school is surrounded by neighboring HDB flats(which are basically a downgraded version of an apartment or a condominium(term that is used to refer to apartments in Singapore)). Another example would be the curated exam package papers that are released every year, consisting of the ‘top schools’ or otherwise, schools that are elitist in nature, whereby majority of the occupants are usually the children of rich parents that are able to afford higher school fees(it is a known fact that independent schools, which are the schools that are viewed as Elite schools such as Hwa Chong Institution, have higher school fees than its neighborhood school competitors, such as Anglo-Chinese Junior College, or Jurong West Secondary School). The fact that these exam packages contain only exam papers from ‘top schools’ sends a clear message to members of the society who participate in the education system that these schools are a notch above the rest of the hundred over primary and secondary schools, or the other junior colleges that exist in Singapore, simply because they were cherry picked from the garden and presented to the masses as the best harvest. Furthermore, wealthy parents have the financial means to send their children for tuition classes from a young age, thus giving them an edge or advantage over their peers who might be struggling to understand the concepts and lack the necessary resources to quicken or speed up their understanding of a subject matter, impairing such students as compared to their much more affluent competitors whom are bestowed with greater or more numerous opportunities to widen the academic and intellectual gap between them and their less fortunate classmates. As the tuition industry has now ballooned into a billion dollar industry, we see the evidences of “kiasu” or overzealous parents funneling economic resources into the education of their children in order to help their children score well and stand out amongst their peers and get into the top schools and to come out on top in this dog-eat-dog World. Sad to say, as the rat race for stellar grades pursues, it is the lower income families that are left behind to suffer the dire repercussions of meritocracy that the education system so heavily emphasizes and is proud of. Since Singapore is a country that heavily prides itself on reputation and the tangibility of a degree and prestige, the education system thus perpetuates a vicious cycle that evinces lower-income households being trapped and imprisoned in poverty as they barely scrap through paying the minimum school fees required and the purchase of textbooks for their children, apart from providing for basic necessities which are already a huge strain on their limited incomes. They lack the expediency of purchasing assessment books for their kids to revise and strengthen understanding of concepts in math, science and other subjects that are studied in schools. They lack the funds to send their children to tuition classes which could bridge the gap between their children’s academic prowess and that of their children’s peers. Thus, their children will be unable to match up to their peers who are of a more privileged economic background. Their grades will pale in comparison because they have already been displaced from the starting line that rich kids step on, forced to start from a much further distance behind the ‘elite’ kids thanks or no thanks to the ill-effects of meritocracy that states that a person’s worth or success depends on how hard they work(or more like how hard they are able to work with and achieve with the limited facilities offered to them). PSLE is the beginning of separating the ‘cream of the crop’ from the ‘riffraff’ or ‘sediments’ or ‘leftovers’ that are unable to make it to good schools. From there, different educational pathways are provided for to cater to students not academically inclined, providing more hands-on, practical courses. However, there is a hierarchy to the education system, as evident from elite schools versus neighborhood schools. This extends to degrees versus diplomas, or certificates from education institutions deemed or viewed by society as not academically proficient, in which a degree holder earns a higher base pay and is able to be promoted faster. This clear discrepancy in a pay gap showcases or highlights the discrimination between elitists and non-elitists or between the privileged and the rich versus the lower-income destitute citizens who may not be able to attain an equal educational certificate or graduate from an equally prestigious school, thus impairing future job prospectives. There definitely exists a huge difference in impact or impression when one declares that he is from “Raffles Institution” as opposed to let’s say a Junior College that might not be as renowned such as “Pioneer Junior College” or an institution that is not viewed by society as equivalent or of a lower or decreased reputation such as ITE(Institution of Technical Education). In conclusion, there are several factors as to why this education system, founded on meritocratic dogma, is essentially flawed in that it caters or serves the purposes of the rich and wealthy or the elite more so than it serves the purpose of acting as a social mobility ladder or a bridge to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Instead, the education system acts as a tool to further instigate and accentuate the gap between those belonging to the upper socio-economic strata and those who belong to the lower socio-economic strata, with those sandwiched in between the two distinctive diametrically opposite social classes, left to their own devices to navigate the rough waters of a system designed to favor those with the resources to exploit it and rise above the rest of their peers to attain academic excellence.

2) The Singaporean education system is virulent to creativity and innovation.

I think much of this notion stems from the fact that Singapore’s economy has largely focused on the engineering industry in the past and is now beginning to advance forward and shift her focus towards the computing and technological industry. In between the past and the present focuses, there is almost little to no space for the arts and humanities to thrive in this tiny island of ours. This focus is definitely pervasive and suffused through every strata, right down to the bone. In junior colleges, a majority of classes are catered to the sciences, with only a handful classes specialized to include students who selected a majority of art or humanities subjects to be tested on for their A’level examinations. In secondary school, though there are three science and three humanities subjects which are compulsory in lower secondary, when it comes to upper secondary levels, usually students either choose double humanities or triple sciences. In one case, a student takes three sciences and one humanities(Social studies is merged with an elective humanities subject to be regarded as one humanities subject). In the other, a student takes two humanities subjects(one combined humanities subject(Social studies merged with an elective humanities subject such as history, literature or geography) and a pure individual whole humanities subject to be studied in depth, alongside two other science subjects to be studied wholly. In both scenarios, there is never the case of a student taking more arts subjects than science subjects in secondary school. In the tertiary level, math is included or regarded as a ‘science subject’ that is able to fulfil the requirements of students that have to take a minimum amount of science subjects irregardless whether they belong to the science or arts stream. So if we were to apply the same principles or logic that we apply to tertiary education to secondary level education, math would be considered a ‘science subject’ and this constitutes a preponderance for the sciences in an average Singaporean student’s curriculum. There is even the term STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) used to describe the majority of students in universities that the government regularly caters to and funds and pours special attention as opposed to students from the arts. As Singapore is now in its 55th year of independence, how many people from this sunny island of ours can we claim to be proud of for inventing or achieving monumental, historical feats? At most, we appear as a collective, monolithic, sentient robot that manages to triumph over other countries internationally when it comes to clinching academic titles such as being the second country in the World in the PISA(Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings or attaning the coveted number one spot in the OECD 2015 global education report, etc. However, I have yet to observe or record a Singaporean person achieving a groundbreaking discovery or crafting or constructing something that has never seen before, which other countries have had the opportunity to revel and relish in their countrymen’s ability to manufacture or contrive something entirely out of the box. As science and mathematics are subjects that require rigorous amounts of practice, what schools usually do is that they make the students do the same mathematics and science questions over and over again, repeatedly, establishing a mundane routine, to achieve the effect of them being able to solve the exact same question if it were to be thrown at them during examinations in the blink of an eye. This sets the foundations of a system that spoon feeds its participants and renders them incapable of thinking of the answers on their own because the answers to mathematics and science questions are invariable and the methods used are always identical in solving the same type of questions that revolve around concepts such as fractions in mathematics or reproduction in plants in science, specifically biology. Whereas, the arts and language focuses more on drawing out the student’s innate creativity and potential to create a situation, through the employment of the taskings of students at lower educational levels and streams to do descriptive writing which challenges and evinces their mental acuity and innovative prowess in contriving a situation and adding elements to make it a story. In higher or upper educational streams or levels, descriptive writing is swapped with questions that are contentious, thought-provoking, piquant or tantalizing to intellectually stimulate and engender students to use their brains to perceive and precipitate arguments and display it in such a way that expresses or exhibits their stance with regards to whatever topic they are tackling in the essays that they are tasked or entreated to write. Whereas in science, a question thrown to you is able to resolved because you can link a particular theory towards it and immediately attain the marks attached to the key words you flawlessly input into the blank lines; in the arts, a prompt is ensued and you are left to fend for yourself with the limited archives you have in your brain that contain knowledge pertinent to the prompt you choose to determine your grades and perhaps your future with it. You can link an evidence, an anecdote, a statement, a speech, an adage to it, but it does not end there. You are further required to link whatever evidence you possess to your answer, to the prompt you chose and to expound on that. In instances of time constraint, students may struggle to find the link and this is where innovation and creativity comes in, to conjure a link, to bring forth a reasoning that is able to connect two seemingly incongruous, polarized evidence and statement, or two opinions, and make them seem to possess a similarity and therefore a converging or corroborating train of thought. Thus, there are crucial, quintessential skills that are required in the arts that might not necessarily be touched upon or applied in the sciences, especially when it comes to the Singaporean education system, which may impede or mitigate the growth or nurturement of the average Singaporean student’s ability or capacity to innovate or create in the future.

3)The education system is poisonous and detrimental to the wellbeing of the Singaporeans who deviate or do not conform to societal standards or norms.

It is of no surprise that Singapore, a country full of censorship(as a Singaporean who consistently denies this I implore you to get your head out of the clouds), refuses to discuss about several pertinent key issues that we should be discussing on a regular basis, to facilitate peaceful and benignant discussions revolving around these topics instead of shunning them for fear of inciting or invoking social unrest or revolt. The PAP loves and adores the usage of the term “religiously harmonious” but behind closed doors and hushed whispers and casual jokes the term is often twisted and acknowledged to be “religiously tolerant” instead. Race is a huge matter, a pervasive force that threatens to disrupt and upend society if mishandled or neglected or exploited upon to serve the motives and interests of despots or vile and corrupt people in power. As we glimpse of the history of America and how its nation came to be founded not on the enterprise of white men but on the blood, sweat and tears of black men toiling under the blistering sun to create the communities and give birth to unprecedented levels of economic growth in the West, we see the same situation happening on home grounds. The HDB flats, the landed properties, the condominiums that most of us live in, are all built from scratch by foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Philippines and more. The jobs that Singaporeans are refusing to do are the same jobs taken up by foreign immigrants to continue sustaining and supporting the growth of our nation’s economy and infrastructure, vital to Singapore’s posterity. However, like every country in the World, the Singaporean education system continues to select a handful of people to be viewed or worshipped as heroes in the establishment and erection of modern day Singapore. In history or social studies textbooks the names of “Sir Stamford Raffles” or “William Farquhar” are regularly forced down our throats with an uncomfortable aftertaste(after all, who can truly be happy about the presence of colonizers?). Even a group of people that were credited with the construction of modern day Singapore, the Samsui women, are of Chinese ethnicity. They are regularly celebrated in national events such as National Day for their contributions to Singapore. What about the minority races that have done so much to build up our country? What about the natives of Singapore who were here before the Chinese began to arrive en masse and a demographic hegemony in the country? Even when the social studies textbook includes historical events that center around race such as the Maria Hertogh riots in the 1950s or the racial riots in Singapore in 1969, it is very briefly described. The details of what happened, the chronological order of it and a bit of the aftermath. Instead, social studies textbooks tend to focus on forging national identity by relying solely on positive narratives to boost a faux sense of cohesiveness. They also add in stories of how race has led to chaotic, disruptive societies in other countries, possibly to instill fear and to reinforce the understanding and acceptance of “religiously tolerant” Singapore to prevent her from descending into the same chaos that afflicts other countries such as India or the United Kingdom in the past(Sri Lankan civil war, Northern Ireland conflict). However, they do not address the root cause or fear to provide other platforms or avenues to further discuss or elucidate the topic of race in society. Most of what students learn about race is from their own interactions and their own observations with the people around them, through their parents feeding them either negative or positive narratives about minority races or the majority race, to schoolmates or neighbors acting in a certain way to solidify harmful social stigmas because in the first place, they have been confined and caged to act in a certain way, whatever they say or do to be misconstrued and misinterpreted to fit a certain narrative that would prove to align with the ideas, concepts and notions that Singaporeans from each individual race have towards one another. Thus, if Singapore were to continue on towards her 100th year of independence, the education system has serious restructuring and recalibration to do if it wants to ensure Singapore can have an optimistic prospective of remaining “religiously harmonious” in the coming years. Lastly, I would like to explain why I believe this particular warranted yet lack of exposure to racial discourse is harmful to the wellbeing of the people living in Singapore, especially minority races. In most schools where Chinese children outnumber the Indian and Malay students three is to one, five is to one, maybe even seven is to one, the rule of numbers relegates minorities to unconsciously be dominated or subjugated, by the schoolmates around them, by classmates, by teachers or even the authorities who are mostly of chinese heritage. When a Chinese student pokes fun at his or her classmate who belongs to the minority races, not only do the fellow Chinese students around the perpetrator lack the experience of being made fun of in that particular way and thus the feelings of inferiority and insignificance and dismissal all compounded into one is absent, they too join in to encourage and aggravate the mocking or teasing, which then involves into bullying as the one or two minority race students are unable to fight back. This leads to the fostering or fomenting of an outsider identity, characterized by feelings of alienation and disparity. The “We are all one group and you are on your own” dynamic is put into effect and may force many students who experience this type of bullying to become reclusive and withdrawn. In other cases, this type of bullying forces the minority students to link up with other minority students who they feel a closer connection or relatability to, thus establishing social enclaves in schools, which further segregates the different races in schools and perpetuates racial enmity and isolation. The famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has disseminated ideas about power and how it is prominent and recurring in the lives of everyone from birth till death. At a young age, children are unaware of the need to be sensitive due to the lack of maturity and tend to mouth out their thoughts and say whatever they wish to say without filters, and this may appear in the form of derogatory remarks disguised as “racist jokes” to poke fun at, or by extension, exhibit and display power over the people they feel and observe to be different from them merely because of a divergence in skin color delegated to them since birth. Thus, the inevitable scenario where the mental well-beings of those students from minority races due to the feelings of inferiority that may have been engendered in some of them as their fellow chinese students who belong to the majority race, exert power over them through the usage of “racist jokes” that when challenged, are defended and sometimes, the user of these “racist jokes” would attack victims by saying they are too sensitive and easily hurt, which is a form of emotional manipulation not to be condoned and to be aware about so children do not give in to that perception and believe it is a fault of theirs to have feelings like everyone else when it is natural and not defective at all. If the tables were turned, would the chinese student not be “too sensitive, easily hurt” if he was in a country where he belonged to the minority races and three people of the majority race came up to him and made a joke about his skin color or his culture, thus making him feel insecure and helpless?

Secondly, the education system refuses to talk about LGBTQ+ in their curriculum. I have read many accounts of queer students being bullied and teachers defending the bully’s behavior by refusing to acknowledge the bullying takes place in the classroom or by endorsing the bullying and claiming that it is wrong to be queer. As teachers who are suppose to nurture and educate students, it is sad to witness or know of teachers out there who refuse to entertain the idea of comforting a bullied queer student or going to great lengths to victim blame by claiming that it is the victim’s fault that he or she is bullied because he or she chose to like students of the same gender and are now suffering the ramifications of their choices. It is sickening, revolting, disgusting, inhumane and a travesty that in the Singaporean education system there exists teachers that are blithely nonchalant to their student’s mental wellbeing or dismissive of their sexualities in favor of their own opinions and stances. Their profession and duty as a teacher should supersede whatever negative perceptions they have about the LGBTQ community. If they were to argue that they are humans too, then is it not the responsibility of humans to uplift one another and be pillars of strength for one another in times of difficulty and adversity, especially in the scenario of the relationship between a teacher and a student, for the teacher that possesses a higher level of maturity and World knowledge and emotional capacity and tenacity, to help his or her student, or to do his or her duty as a fellow human being to another human being who is confused, outcasted, bullied, distraught, despondent. Lost. It is also aggravating that the education system lacks the necessary materials to be included in sexuality education talks, that only show male and female body parts and talks about the harmful implications of premarital sex by screening videos of pictures of STDs(Sexually Transmitted Diseases)to scare students who are in their youths away from such “sacrilegious” acts. They fail to include the narrative in which it is possible for two guys to have sex and get STDs, or a scenario in which a girl finds herself falling in love with her female classmate in an all-girls school and decides to pursue it. Instead, sexuality education classes or talks are punctured and inundated with heteronormative innuendos. It is always a guy having feelings for a girl, or a girl having feelings for a guy and how to deal with it. It is never a guy realizing he likes his best guy friend, or a girl finding her female CCA(Co-curricular activities) friend attractive and starts to lust after her and how to deal with it. Since they encourage heterosexual feelings to not be suppressed and to be dealt with, why then do they lack the same approach to homosexual feelings? Famous psychologist and writer Walts Odetts who wrote the book “Out of the Shadows: A psychology of gay men lives” talks about society continues to assign stereotypes and labels onto queer people, to that of a pedophile, of a sexual deviant, a pervert that exists only for the sole purpose of pleasuring him or herself with sex. By relegating queer people to the idea of beings whose happiness is conditional and contingent on sex, it severely undermines the self-respect and self-confidence a queer person would have, especially in the pursuit of perceived heteronormative ideas exclusive only to heterosexual members of society or members of society who partake only in heterosexual norms and institutions such as relationships and marriage and more. If students in schools are not taught of or brought aware to the pressing dilemma of queer students who may be in their periphery, in their midst, or even beside them, it is severely damaging to the development of the queer student who grows up, realizing that society shuns people like them because there is little to no representation of them on the media, or little discussion about people who are like them in schools, in which lies the very institution expected of to impart and inculcate and educate the students that are attending it to prepare them for life outside of such institutions. Essentially, the education institution has failed to uphold its role or fulfil its obligations or responsibilities in teaching students, by refusing or acknowledging the existence and the need for education about homosexual narratives in schools all around the country. As Singapore trudges along the path of equality and democracy, we leave our own fellow countrymen who are born with divergent innate desires and emotions and sensibilities from what the state narrowly defines, accepts and boxes. This will continue to impair young queer students who are growing up, lost and confused, without a clear view or idea of their sexuality or orientation, forced to consume and digest a narrative that is clearly not for them, confined into feeling different and restricted and led to struggling with fitting in with the peers around them. As the young queer student reaches past adolescence and enters adulthood, he will continue to struggle and cope and come to terms with the deluge of denial, isolation, insincerity and falsehood(some will experience this as they cover up who they are in an attempt to deceive the people around them so as to fit in with their fellow peers and not be labelled anything; to escape from unnecessary ridicule and mockery and then as they grow old, begin to accept themselves and like the process of molting, shed the old layer of skin they no longer need to protect themselves when they were young, yet still realizing that there is a sense of loss as nothing would ever be the same)rampant and entrenched in his/her childhood due to the education system not providing enough of a support system and a clear path for him/her to take, leaving him to fend for him/herself among the pack of wolves. This must be why statistics and scientific research has shown that queer people have a higher rate of depression and anxiety disorders than heterosexual people, because of all the mental trauma that they had to endure unnecessarily because the education refuses to acknowledge, validate or give them a proper space to breath and find themselves, whereas it offers this opportunity to the heterosexual student the moment he or she enters the education system as a candidate since the first day of school.