Rat race

I recently saw this (read the posts for the first half of the month): a fascinating saga of how an education consultant was approached by 2 fairly well off Filipino Chinese and asked to go install their kids in good Singaporean schools. So far so good. Except that they forged some of the school documents, in order to allow their kids to skip grades. So this EastCoastLife goes on a mega crusade in order make sure that the authorities know that the system is being tampered with.

So I'm a little conflicted about her behaviour. Obviously I'm put off by those Filipinos who think they can come here and just mess around with the system, not giving it the due respect. And I think that the civil servants were being rather stupid (or at least biased) by telling those rich ppl who their whistle blower was. But I wonder why she chose to push the issue. If those kids were not good enough for Sec 1, then eventually they would be found out. Then they wouldn't make it through the "O" levels.

Be that as it may, I think that there is some merit about the issue of who gets into what school. Get into the right school, even if you are dumb, they will find some way to get you to get really good results at the exams. By this I don't mean that you cheat. I mean they will make you study until your backside opens up, a good school gives you the boot up the ass you need, either through peer pressure or from a self consciousness that comes about from being a member of that school. But if you're really not good enough, you might have to leave, or you don't get to the next good school.

Then again, I wonder why eastcoastlife said something like, "it's too late to stop her from entering the school through dishonest means, she would have been promoted to Primary 4". Shouldn't it be the case that if you pass the Pri 3 finals, you get into Primary 4, and this should override whether you got into Primary 3 legitimately or not?

There is always the tension between elitism and egalitarianism in schools. On one hand I'd want to say that regulation is silly. Like the time when my JC teacher said, "no more than 3 of you will be allowed to take 3 'S' papers." I thought that was silly, and I knew that it was an extremely political issue because people who took 3 'S' papers would be in good stead for the President's Scholarship. But then again, if you allow anybody to take 3 'S' papers then it becomes the norm, and eventually everybody would go crazy. I wasn't interested, I settled for 2.

And if you wanted to be strict about it, I shouldn't have taken those 2 'S' papers. You had to get an "A" in the JC1 finals, and I got a "C" for Physics. But my Physics teacher closed 1 eye, because we both knew I was capable of handling that, so she just gave me a bye, a decision that was later vindicated.

But I think that the Filipino parents shouldn't have cheated the system. Anyway, we'll see how this story pans out. Seems like it's on-going.

Actually I have a few former foreign students reading this. I'm fully trust that none of you screwed with the system. So hope we're fine with that.