From ‘Unkept Promises’ to ‘Irresponsible Stereotypes’
So the saga goes that a few weeks back, my 3rd sis said she could come to my room after work to pick some stuff up. I thought, why not? You offered. And I decided to make use of the ‘coupon offer’ today.
Turned out the fact that I was mugging in school was an inconvenience, since they just called to say they would be arriving in 30 min, which means I won’t reach room in time since I was waiting for the tutorial files to finish downloading and print.
Whatever.
I suggested they come pick me up in Central Library instead. 15 min later, she called and said to call it off today. She’ll try to make it on Sunday. Reason? She don’t know where Central Library is, and she made it sound as if Central Library is somewhere in Kota Tinggi (or some weird place in the world).
So much for all the promises.
She conveniently pushed the blame to Central Library being hard to find.
Frankly speaking, I don’t really know how anyone out there can relate to this, since I seem to be the only one in my world to ever honour promises. Yes, I don’t usually agree to help out, that was because I weighed the consequences and decided I could not honour any promises made thereof. But I made sure I carried out whatever I promised to anybody.
Whatever.
They think getting a full-time degree is as easy as getting one part time anyways.
Then I read this letter written to ST, where this writer (I assumed is a woman, cos she sound like a woman) complained how her family sent her brother to a pre-U but ended up with the brother coming home every other day to ‘demand’ for money for enrichment programmes in the school.
She was complaining and grumbling that she and her older brother ‘also went through JCs but never wanted as much money’ in the past.
Well, this scenario seems familiar.
Why? Cos I believe the brother in case was in the same predicament as I was in.
Most of the responses to the letter condemned the brother, calling him a liar, finding a way to get his hands on money the easy way. One even criticized that ‘these are the people who went on to become scholars, so much for the integrity of our future leaders’.
I don’t know why, but there has been so much stigma against the better performers in the society. When I was a secondary school kid, till now.
I remember once after school, that I was minding my own business when someone came up to me and started blaming me for whatever badness that happened, all because I was from a good school.
Every now and then, my sisters would focus on some fault, whether committed by me or not, just as long as I was involved, and push the blame for the ‘elitist’ in me. ‘People like you, from all those good schools, just think you are the best’.
When I was in NS, the 1st day I was posted to a unit, my supervisor interviewed me and upon knowing I came from HJC, said, ‘I hate people from HJC and RJC and what-nots. You guys are so full of yourselves and think you can do everything better than other people.’
Thing is, what did I do to warrant those comments in the 1st place? I wouldn’t mind taking responsibilities for wrongs that I created, but for those I didn’t?
There was a reason why I stopped doing well in studies.
I tried to be reasonable and conclude that those people could not understand the world we live in, which in actual fact, isn’t that different from them. I understand that when people were confronted with others from a different backgrounds and beliefs, they attributed the difference as something more detrimental than what they experienced; People who are not C********s are sinners, people who don’t go Zouk are muggers, people who don’t drive a car are losers etc.
Know what? Amidst all these stereotyping made on students from the elite schools, we the ‘elitists’ never attempted to play-down or discriminate the goods of people who came from polytechnics or ITEs.
My social circle would agree that to each his own. ITE graduates fulfill a part of the society where some other members could not fit in. There are people more suited to do another’s hair or to do paperwork and handle the shoutings from the customers etc. We never saw people with lower education in a lesser light than others did upon ‘elites’ like us.
Back to the original topic, there is a reason why a good school is a good school and why a not-good school is one. The good schools aim to have programs to help stretch the potentials of their students, while the others are contented to keep deliquents off the streets and impart them with useful knowledge they would not regret having later on in lives.
If all parents wanted is for their kids to just get a certificate and scoot off, they should not have enrolled their children in such good schools and then complain about the increased investment thereof. Scholars don’t just wake up one day to be one. They were trained.
My family was this kind, who always wondered why I had to ask for money when my sisters didn’t require that much of money. They believed that paying the minimum school fees is all it takes for one to get a good degree in the future.
Yes, paying the minimum does enable one get a good degree.
But these people usually end up having tunnel-visions, culturally apathetic and intolerent to other people of the society.
And yes, what the parents should do is to get more engaged with the school, to know the objectives of each program and decide what is the best program suited for their children, because yes, their children can’t possibly get involved in all activities.
But they should not have casually brushed it off as unreasonable demands or even attempts by their children to get more money to spend cos SCHOLARS ARE MADE, NOT BORN.
A lot of times, I just hope that people will stop judging others before they even attempted to do some proper communications.
In fact, one of the other reasons why such imbalanced way of judging another person was due to the fact that the accuser was judging the accusee based on the set of values that the accuser held.
My sisters compared their education with mine. But theirs were at least 5 years apart from me. Their school wasn’t even in the top 100 in the ranking. No one comes telling us to stop spending $5 a day food cos there are people in India who lived on less than $1 a day, do they? There is no way one set of rules held by one individual can be used to judge another’s wholly.
And guess what? My sis had all the Edusave what nots to buffer all the extra expenses incurred in school, but I never got a single cent from the government all cos I was the 4th child. Perhaps the real question to ask when casting doubt upon my education in a good school was:
Why in the 1st place was I brought to this Earth if you knew you could not afford the extra costs of education/living I would incur? Especially when the government made it clear that members of the society like me are going to be cast aside from all sorts of aid-systems all my life?
For their one mistaken decision, they pushed the blame on me throughout my life. I sure bet such narrow-minded, self-deceiving mindsets still exist in Singapore.
One zenov is one person too much to grow up among such stereotypes and unfair accusations in this society. So STOP ALL THE POINTLESS FINGER-POINTINGS and do your best to help your kids excel if you want them to be a person with a good degree AND a good character. If not, some neighbourhood school is good enough for him/her (or in actual fact, for you, the parent, cos all you think about is yourself).
