The Raffles degree
http://www.zaobao.com/edu/pages4/edunews090107.shtml
Well.. I haven't been through the Raffles experience in its entirety and can't verify 1st-person whether or not its inner workings are truly qualified to generate highly effective individuals for the society. Still the idea of further segregating the name from the grassroot population doesn't sound quite right. It's like people are already calling you "Elitist!" and you go "Most certainly I am". Even I could tell. It's time the education produces more warm and less smug people. Limited resources, need for efficiency, alright. But the "right education track" is suffocatingly over-glorified. The only way for an individual to make the right decisions in his/her life would be to go to the correct schools. If things go right, out at the other end you get people who'd make the right decisions for the country, or people who just don't care. Except for an apartment, a wedding, kids' education, new shopping centeres and tour packages. Could be I've just not met enough non-right-track Singaporeans, being a weird sort of right-tracker myself.
The grassrooters/heartlanders vs elitists battle is certainly at risk of stereotyping and over-generalization. Then again anti-intellectualism (generalized philosophy), the modern sentiment, isn't new on the Chinternet (the Chinese internet) as well. Will the PAP (am I confusing politics with education? But since when those two have been separate and Singapore's small anyway) ever anticipate the anti-intellectualism sentiment to develop into an actual threat to civil security? Or will they sort of "sink" further in self-righteousness (as much as I don't like to use the word used by over-zealous youths in opposition)?
(I realize it takes longer to get off the fence in the intellectual aspects than in the emotional ones of personal development. The latter molds the former but it takes time.)
Well.. I haven't been through the Raffles experience in its entirety and can't verify 1st-person whether or not its inner workings are truly qualified to generate highly effective individuals for the society. Still the idea of further segregating the name from the grassroot population doesn't sound quite right. It's like people are already calling you "Elitist!" and you go "Most certainly I am". Even I could tell. It's time the education produces more warm and less smug people. Limited resources, need for efficiency, alright. But the "right education track" is suffocatingly over-glorified. The only way for an individual to make the right decisions in his/her life would be to go to the correct schools. If things go right, out at the other end you get people who'd make the right decisions for the country, or people who just don't care. Except for an apartment, a wedding, kids' education, new shopping centeres and tour packages. Could be I've just not met enough non-right-track Singaporeans, being a weird sort of right-tracker myself.
The grassrooters/heartlanders vs elitists battle is certainly at risk of stereotyping and over-generalization. Then again anti-intellectualism (generalized philosophy), the modern sentiment, isn't new on the Chinternet (the Chinese internet) as well. Will the PAP (am I confusing politics with education? But since when those two have been separate and Singapore's small anyway) ever anticipate the anti-intellectualism sentiment to develop into an actual threat to civil security? Or will they sort of "sink" further in self-righteousness (as much as I don't like to use the word used by over-zealous youths in opposition)?
(I realize it takes longer to get off the fence in the intellectual aspects than in the emotional ones of personal development. The latter molds the former but it takes time.)
posted by Azzurra | 4:19 PM
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