Alma Mater & Sour Grapes

There have been arguments and articles on whether it is fair to allow Phase 2A to take up vacancies at Primary 1 Registration.

I understand the stress and angst of registering your little ones at Primary 1 Registration. For someone who tracked and fret over the possibility of balloting at Phase 2A2, I totally could understand and could project my fears further on to Phase 2C, which invariably and inevitably experiences heightened fears and insecurities about not being able to get into choice schools.

Personally, I think, like what some forummers the whole argument is about being able to get enrolled into popular schools, and not about getting into schools near home.

People have been attacking Phase 2A, especially 2A2, citing that these old boys and girls are 'sleeping alumni' and 'do not deserve' to get the automated places. To me, that's plain sour grapes mentality.

It seems to me that people who have no worthy alma mater to be proud about are the people who don't understand the sentiment of having one. Whenever the worth of sentiment for an alma mater is brought up, they quickly brush it aside saying 'some people's alma maters are closed down due to mergers'. Doesn't that say something about the alma maters already?

I get really upset that these people are out to attack others for their selfish interest. They literally shout,"Hey, you have it long enough! Let me have it!" and list down reason why you shouldn't have it when it belongs to you in the first place. It reminds me of the time when the 'native' Indonesians screamed 'unfair' over the Chinese Indonesians who were doing better in life - the native Indonesians stated that the Chinese Indonesians had an unfair advantage as they dominated the business arena. I read later on in another article that the ancestors of the native Indonesians and Chinese Indonesians had agreed and set it in stone that the natives would possess the land for cultivation and agriculture while the Chinese Indonesians would own businesses. It happened that the businesses took off and the Chinese Indonesians fared better, generations after that agreement, and the latter natives became jealous and began attacking the Chinese Indonesians' entitlement.

I have one word for it: disgusting.

I can understand how these people hanker after the places. I can understand their angst when they don't get it. But can traces of humanity remain despite the angst and jealousy?

What I don't understand is why grassroots leaders get to be in the earlier phase. They have no business in the school, so what if they 'serve the community'? And for what is it that they are 'serving the community'? The only reason I can think of is that the policy makers were designing the policy to serve their own interest.

If we want everything to go by distance, then by all means, abolish Phase 1 as well, since it takes up the most number of places.

Just because the alumni is the quietest lot doesn't mean that it deserves to be vetoed. Abolish Phase 2B - parent volunteer phase then. If it is not about popular schools, then there should not be any parent 'trying to find out more about the school by being involved'. And you will get more places at Phase 2C. Why should volunteering to help at a school entitle you a place there? Yeah, I know it is not guaranteed but it is a phase that takes up half the remaining places, and it bears no sentiment except 40 or 80 hours of service to the school for an exchange for a place. Isn't that tantamount to 'buying a place' except that it is with your service? So abolish it.

There are a lot of ridiculous suggestions to making changes in the policy eg. make it compulsory that the family must live at the same place for the next 6 years to show that you did not move to that place to get enrolled into the school. Hello! Doesn't that smack of stupidity redefined? Or disperse the schools along Bukit Timah belt all over Singapore. Oh my goodness! I laughed at the suggestion. How silly can people get? When will they realise that it is not the school structure itself or even the teachers that maketh the school? It is the demographics of the children. It is the very children themselves. A teacher is only as good as her students. A teacher teaches to the level of the students. The teacher does not teach independently of her students. I can teach creative writing with bombastic vocabulary for all I want, but do the students get it when they are struggling with forming grammatical sentence structures? I am sure none of the teachers would teach them ungrammatical structures but why are they still struggling with them at Primary 6? Does that not boil down to attitudes of students?

There are two more years before Baby can be registered for Primary One and by then Coco would have graduated from her school. We would have to register under Phase 2A so naturally, I am for this phase. I have never shared an alma mater with any of my 6 siblings. Neither have any one of us, because of the foreigner policy. I would like Coco and Baby to share the same alma mater. Perhaps this is the only common ground that they can share despite the big age gap.

I might be accused for writing about this in my selfish interest. Whether it is for my selfish interest is beside the point. The fact is, it is my entitlement. I am certainly not in favour of capping vacancies for Phase 2A or scrapping the alumni phase. I hope MOE will not entertain such ludicrous requests supported by warped arguments.