lisieux

^Bond-free scholarships??

galoisien

What hundreds of metres away? I was like 5 feet away from their open fire cooking pots. Featured on TV before? Really? Show title, channel and date please. (So I can look up on Youtube one.)

It does a pretty good job at making sure that the poor have no public outlet.

Several cases -- cannot recall off the top of my head, must research, but aiyah also talk to some taxi drivers (and you a Singaporean have the most immediate access to one) and they sure to know...

The fact that Singapore is ranked 147 out of 167 for press freedom?

Outdated ideas on race, held by both LKY's faction and the old Chinese gerontocracy? (The Chinese elderly are the worst racists.)

Deeply entrenched vicious cycles within the streaming system?

And if students are thinking ahead -- do they want to raise a family here?

There are many students who would be capable of going overseas if the question of privilege (including the privilege that correlates with the students in the "top" colleges in the first place) wasn't an issue.

Though I'm not really the general type of international student, since I applied to US colleges as a domestic student, the question of Singaporeans who find academic success overseas and have a choice of staying must be common.

And of course ask what your parents would do lah. Ask people who emigrate. Last time, I wondered why people would be so disloyal. After all, if all the people who recognise the problem leave, how can there be any hope of reform?

Now I understand...

galoisien

bridgehead, feel free to bring up more points in support of the "stay in Singapore" side, because I need CC to play devil's advocate for me, and maybe others facing the same question.

But I hope that people understand that there is much in favour of the "do not stay in Singapore" side. I love my country tearingly, and you must realise that for a person to consider forever leaving the country of his birth there must be something significantly motivating the uneasiness. (NS is the 'last straw' -- my main hesitation is serving a country that may never reform itself.)

Anyway, there should be more general need-based financial aid for students. Mind you, the government really only accounts for a tiny fraction of student financial aid in the US; my accessUVA grants probably ultimately came from private alumni, my remaining merit and need-based local scholarships came from the estates of the graduates of the high school of the small city in Maine I live in.

What I hope to see built is some sort of private network of scholarship funds Singaporeans will build for other Singaporeans just like it is commonly done in the US.

fiona_

Well, you must concede that your point on breaking up HDB estates isn't well-substantiated and hence not very believable then.

Galoisien, what I asked for is proof that students who want to go overseas feel bitter, not possible causes of why they'd feel that way. If you can't furnish solid evidence, then don't jump to conclusions.

And btw Galoisien, the streaming system has been changed quite a bit since our time. For example, subjects are independent of each other so you could be doing Foundation level in English but normal level in everything else.

Nadash

I am bitter because the Singapore education system doesn't aim for "Education", but is constructed to churn out nice little cogs for the economy. I am bitter because in Singapore, I have no right to criticize my government openly, the ambiguity of free speech laws make it so that I can get sued anytime. I am bitter because in Singapore, I am forced to serve 2 years, as all my foreign friends progress in their lives (Yeah, it may be "necessary", but it still sucks). I am bitter because in Singapore, I'm just a number, in a country where the economy matters more than its people (Arguably, the economy is FOR the people, but as policies, such as discouraging non-graduate mothers from having children, show, the PAP aren't reaaally that people oriented). I am bitter because in Singapore, the government directs the media. I am bitter because in Singapore, the opposition gets happily stomped on. I am bitter because, well, Singapore is just not a very happy place to live in.

D.T.

To be perfectly honest, the world in general is not a very good place to live in. lol

bridgehead

we could at least manage a bare survival before Bush came along

clichedanomaly

woah woah woah I just found my way to this discussion and why is everybody so cynical and anti-govt and anti-raffles and anti-gep

galoisien

It's not about being bitter. I am thankful I was born in Singapore and had I not been, I would not be the person I am today.

The decision is not regretting one's previous citizenship, but wondering whether it is wise to continue citizenship.

GEP would be less of a scam if 1) entrance was not merely based on an tutorable exam 2) it identified kids with actual aptitude (and who, having their gifts bloom late, might become victim of a 'vicious cycle') as opposed to kids who are merely doing well in their previous non-GEP environment 3) relied (like the college application system) on teacher recommendations that actually looked at real intellectual passion and a drive for learning.

Maybe the secondary school entrance process should also make kids write "why school X" essays, just to give them a small taste of college applications. That would help weed out the kids who go to elite secondary school X simply because their parents have been pushing them to do so. PSLE Common App, anyone?

screwitlah

in the first place, is GEP even a system that we should keep and perpetuate?

and how do you suppose we identify those kids? uniformly excellent teacher recommendations cannot weed out the good and bad. i hope you don't believe that teachers would actually write bad recommendations. behavior in classroom is also tutorable. wow, wouldn't it be great if parents begin sending their kids for acting classes?

do you suppose that if essays became a requirement for getting into top schools, parents would keep themselves away from the essays? essays are equally tutorable, and in the end, you perpetuate the educated upper class because educated parents tend to write better essays. please stop treating the flawed American college application process like some kind of godsend. every single thing is coachable and can be faked.

also, who cares if kids aim for top schools of their own volition or their parents'? to anyone who believes in true meritocracy, these kids have every right to enter the top schools if they're qualified, regardless of how.

galoisien

"Uniformly excellent" == average

There will be recommendations that will stand out because they will display the candidate's intellectual passion (as opposed to mugging and doing well because society told them to).

Such actions would destroy the "voice" of those essays ... just as parent intervention also tends to backfire in college essays.

Ah, but what is qualified? The very idea of "gifted" is about aptitude and talent, not just current performance or mere grades. Current performance is the y, not the y'; I should believe that the student whose mugging-based performance has been egged on by society, as opposed to a student who takes charge of his/her learning, is not qualified.

screwitlah

and how do you suppose teachers would know the difference? how would teachers know if "society" didn't whisper to them outside the classroom, in the middle of the night, to mug hard enough to stay ahead in the rat race? short of a polygraph test or a mind-reader, any screening process you ask for would depend on measuring ostensible and coachable attributes.

and are you actually serious about trying to find "intellectual passion" in a 12 year-old?

an extremely outstanding essay would backfire, but an extremely outstanding teacher recommendation wouldn't? how do you control for the teacher's favoritism if that personal bias has nothing to do with the student's aptitude? anyway, the child you're looking for - someone with "intellectual passion" and a maturity beyond his years - would probably write an essay that backfires.

don't talk in ambiguous terms like "destroying the voice of the essay" - in the first place, when is a "voice" valid, genuine or acceptable, and when is it not? a consistent and clear "voice" could easily be achieved by a parent who writes the entire essay. successful examples of essays with a "genuine voice" could be emulated. they will definitely happen in Singapore.

seriously, what do you have against mugging and coaching? results are results, whatever the motives behind the accomplishment. why should the accomplishments of good students be diminished even if they were mostly pressured to do so? if you have shown yourself to be just as capable as some other naturally-gifted kid, why would you deserve the rewards less than him?

everybody has been coached throughout childhood, one way or another. as long as you've stepped into school, read textbooks and novels on your own, you HAVE been coached, knowingly or not, by some segment of society. while no examination is perfect or "uncoachable", it is ridiculous to suppose that there's an alternative process available today that is.

galoisien

A parent-written essay would not be an "extremely outstanding" essay. On the contrary, it would be ill-fitting with the style of the rest of the application and be quite poor. Even if it was written in the most lucid prose, the voice wouldn't match that of the student in the rest of the application, or even if the voice were consistent, a parent will inevitably fail to express (or will express them cheesily) the passion and drive in the essays that a real applicant would exhibit.


A considerably mature applicant will write an essay with voice.

Parents cannot write essays for their children with any sort of real voice. The kind of real voice where the applicant not only employs a variety of rhetorical techniques, but does so to the heart of the adcoms, regularly switching between maturity and intimacy ("Well it all began in primary three...") Using parent-written essays is sort of like trying to feed essays through a translator. You can tell right away.

That is when it tends to be developed, isn't it?

Because not being coached means that, when you step out, you will actually make some sort of intellectual contribution to society as you grow up, rather than parroting what society has told you.

galoisien

Anecdotes are the most vivid.

Maybe interviews would work too.

screwitlah

simple: let the parent take charge of the entire application. you can bet that'll happen here.
is that failure you speak of something that students are incapable of? on the contrary, a wide-eyed 12 year-old neophyte to the English language may tend to overuse cliched phrases and expressions and use big and bombastic words in the most awkward fashions.

a considerably mature person could do the same - say, a parent?
why do you regularly suppose that parents are incapable of that? it's equally valid to say that smart parents know how to pretend to be a primary school student. or they could hire people who know.

and what if you were wrong? what if you mistook a genuine voice for an artificial, coached one? you're asking for a perfect admission process that probably requires private investigators, polygraph tests, psychic mind-reading and 24-hour surveillance throughout the essay-writing process to achieve perfect candidate selection. but everything can be coached. you just have to face it.