Release of O level Results!

Nothing much to complain about the first week. 3 day work week. What more to ask for? Hopefully, tutorial bidding will turn up what I have wished for.

Readings and more readings. This , I am not complaining about. Somehow, it feels kind of funny and yet happy at the same time. All those thoughts I had since I was in Secondary school is all surfacing now in these readings. It makes me somehow feel as if I am connected to them in a certain level. I am delighted to have "met" them right now, but kind of worrying if it is kind of too late. No matter how much people are saying that University is an educational institution that you can excel in what you are really interested in, there are deeper underlying traps that one has to be careful of. Yes, you can deepen your interest in a particular subject, but to excel, it is a whole new ball game. The playing field has raised up to the top 18% of the cohort, or so the census says,.( I was merely just copied the findings that 18% of Singaporeans are holding a degree. I am wrong here... but , nvm), in addition to the never ending stream of foreign students seeking for a globally recognized degree, the education landscape in Singapore has evolved.

The recent O levels has once again proved that the local kids are facing immense pressure. I was scouring through STOMP( the best gossip website by a local press) , and of course, it is not surprising to see Singaporeans complaining how our local boys and girls are losing out again. A typical Singaporean response to such controversial issue. Complain, and not constructive solution. So what is my purpose of mentioning this issue. I'm not complaining about the increasing trend of foreign students dominating the local examinations, I will just highlight 2 issues that Singaporeans are not looking deeper into.

First, many of our top students are now in the through train programmes. To say that our local kids are not up to the mark , is really somewhat unfair. I say , wait for the A-level results, then make another judgement again. The top 15% are still our nation's best are probably mugging real hard for the A levels, while the remaining 85% of their cohort has to take the blame for underperforming. In a nutshell, the comparison is just short of the word, fair.

Secndly, the batch of students who took the O level last year had to compete with the foreign students who had already, back in their home ground, completed the syllabus for Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue. What is left for them to "conquer" is English and Humanities. I have a gut feeling that they had already completed much of humanities, and what is left is Social Studies.In comparison, we can definitely see that the local students are already on the disadvantaged end as they have to juggle more subjects in the same amount of time, as compared to their foreign peers whom only need to clear fewer subjects. Hence, it is unfair to put the blame on the kids, and rather, we should shift our attention to who allowed such culpable competition to exist in the first place?

In this age where the wave of globalisation, it is hard for Singapore, a small country so vulnerable to the vagaries of external events to resist it. It is time for the people to accept the fact that we need to accept people not from our mother land. We recieve them in open arms, making sure they are the right ones that can contribute to our economy. While both parties continue to exploit each other for mutual benefits, Singaporeans have to always think ahead, making sure that what we can tap is more than what they can extract from us.

A dog-eat-dog world, but a cruel fact of life.

Time to sleep. More readings to clear. And more blogging to continue =D