Now I am surprised. A pleasant surprise on the day of my birthday(which is today). An American reader has just tagged me claiming that entry on my previous blog on the education system in Singapore is changing his opinion about the government policies here. Not to be to over my head here, I decided that, well, my entries must be good if not I will not be recieving so many hits and comments regarding my previous blog which I have officially declared it close.
Honestly speaking, my entry on the Education in Singapore(if you have not seen it, click herewas written in a fit of anger. I was just stressed up by the pressure and wanted to look for an avenue to release my feelings. I was quite surprised with the reaction it got. Some of them wrote long arguments on it, mostly standing by my stand on the issue. My blog turned out to be a platform for further debate and frankly I did not know when it stopped.
I set up kengloon.blog-city.com with the intention on saying my two cents worth on the issues concerning a JC student in Singapore and I am quite glad that people actually bothered to read the crap I put there and even use it's material for their lectures and whatever not. I have recieved mail from folks in China, Australia, America and most recently Canada. At least this is all the nationalities I know. There may be others based it other countries. Most were supportive of my views and sympathetic with what Singaporean students are going through just to come out tops in the paper chase.
But, this is a fact of life here in our little country where our only resource is the people. We strive to turn this country into a education hub for the region and so we have to remain competitive and constantly revamp our education system. It is based purely on a meritocracy where the elites of the education system will have simply no problems in adapting to the constant and swift changes in the education system. The people who suffer are the average students and the poorer ones.
They cannot catch up and grasp the syllabus fully when it is implemented and when they finally settle down on it, out goes that syllabus and new changes are implemented again. I understand that government policies are often thought out with the intention of fufilling the welfare of the state as a whole but in this case of education, it mostly only benefits the creme of the crop.
Even the smartest alecs that I know are suffering. Take the case of my brother. He is from a top secondary school and was one of the country's top scorers in his primary school examinations. But the stress and pressure only begins when he starts his life in the secondary school. There the students are under tremendous pressure to succeed. Failure is not an option as the students are squeezed like an orange by the teachers and parents. Failure to enter a JC would be deemed as a disaster.
Then again there is not much yours truly can do to change this environment we are in except writing critical blogs on the education system. The average and poor students have to adapt if not they lose out but these students sometimes take too long to adapt and are unable to catch up thus they are left behind. Well, I can comment till the cows come home on the pressures that we are facing but this is the the fact of life in Singapore. Every citizen in any country faces their own set of problems be it big or small like crime and unemployment and our problem here is the stressful education system which no doubt, is a big one.