Every year this time, voices on the internet would grow ferociously loud and letters about an all-important issue would find their way onto The Straits Times' forum page.
Yes, it's about the 'imperfect' system of Primary One registration.
But what I find disgusting and intolerable is these voices would screech, repetitively, about how 'unfair' and 'elitist' a particular phase is - yes, you guessed it. It's phase 2A, the alumni phase.
These are the allegations against the phase:
- It is elitist as the children of the alumni get to enter the school through nil merit, and the alumni who had benefitted from the school continue to benefit from it by having their children studying in the same school as themselves.
- It is unfair as the takeup rate at this phase is the greatest and it leaves very few vacancies to the remaining phases.
- It is elitist because those schools are popular schools and incidentally, top schools, and children whose parents without connections to the schools have little chance to enter the schools.
- It is unfair because the majority of the alumni do nothing for the their alma maters for so many years and only turn up during P1 registration to enrol their children into the schools.
- It is elitist as it cuts the majority of the population away from these schools and only the alumni get to enjoy the schools.
- Children who live far away from the schools are the cause of air pollution and do a lot of harm to the environment because most of the alumni live more than 2km outside the schools and parents send their offsprings to schools in - heaven forbid, cars!
- The alumni's children are deprived of sleep because their parents make them wake up at 5am to go to their alma maters.
- It is elitist. Period.
- It is unfair. Full-stop.
In truth, the most elitist people are these people who voice incessantly, untiringly to champion for a change in the system, to oust the alumni who do not live within the schools' radius from the phase.
They sound as if they are championing for the good of the majority. The fact is, they are the minority who seethe with utter jealousy at the juicy grapes that are out of their reach.
Their argument is that distance priority is the most logical and fairest way to allocate seats in a school. But we all know what kind of financial standing it takes for one to buy houses or flats near popular schools. I shudder to think that the seats in popular schools get taken up by just the rich and the very rich simply because they can afford to live near those schools.
By emphasising 'logical' and 'fairest' reasons (read: distance, distance and distance), I can't help but feel that these people are the typical product of the Singapore education system who only look at statistics and logic and nothing else.
They dismiss the values and sentimental reasons quoted by the many alumni. They scoff,"You mean your warm fuzzy feeling at seeing your child going to the same school as you did entitles your child a place at these (popular) schools?"
They don't understand that there are things that can't be bought by money. They have to put a number or monetary value to everything in life. They don't understand what memories can offer you. They think that the whole world revolves around money and anything and everything that doesn't have economic value should go.
I stopped arguing with these people because I realised that these people don't even have principles.
One speaks against the alumni phase when he has the intention of sending his son, if he has any in the future, to his 'very popular alma mater in Bishan', via the alumni phase. The other speaks against the parent volunteer phase when he himself got his children into his school of choice through the very mean he is now against.
I am disgusted.
If you hate this phase's guts, at least have some backbone and don't join in the evildoing (if that's how you perceive it).
And the lame reason such people would give would be,"Well, what can we do? This is how the system works."
Pui!
These will be the same people who will champion for the alumni phase when their grandchildren need it, since their children are now in these popular schools. And they will cook up some cock-and-bull to rationalise why the alumni phase should stay in such a way that it benefits them, like giving the alumni who live within the school radius priority (because they themselves live within the school radius).
These people live in their own world and imagine that the alumni are meek, timid people who allow them to push over. I would like to see if there really is a tweak to the alumni phase, what kind of people would speak up against it. And how many of the alumni would rise up and beat these noise-making machines to a pulp.
However, honestly, I doubt these noise would be taken seriously. I used to be worried, until I also looked at the statistics: every year, the popular schools produce at least 250 alumni each. You are talking about generations of alumni here. A 70-year-old school would have at least 12, 000 to 17, 500 alumni. And most popular schools have at least 70 years of history.
I haven't even started to rebuttal the points listed in the quest for outright elitism that's perpetuated by distance priority.
Besides, the schools are popular now because of the alumni. It's due to the stellar results of the alumni that these schools become choice schools for the non-alumni. Oh, these people would argue that it is the teachers that make the difference. Yeah, the same teachers teach for 50 years in these schools and continue to produce students who in turn produce stellar results.
What I find ludicrous is: they call the noise they make on a forum 'furore'.
If you look at the ones making the noise, they are the same few people repeating, repackaging, rephrasing their age-old argument of 'distance is the most logical and fairest way to allocate priority' over and over again.
Yes, my child benefitted from the alumni phase. And I dare say that even if she did not, I would still support this phase which does not have a cap on the number of alumni who register, because this phase is just about the only phase that does not look at how much money you have, what kind of flat or house you live in, what job you hold and what social status you have. And it is by the virtue of the alumni that these schools gain country-wide recognition on their excellence. Such history is built up over many years and generations. No amount of money can buy that.
The parents who view the alumni phase as 'unfair', 'unjust', 'elitist' and so on are parents who did parent-volunteer work. Some got in, a few did not.
Apparently, they must have been disgruntled at the fact that they needed to put in 40 hours of free labour even though they live within 1km or 2km of the schools, just so that they could have a chance at getting into the schools, so they wanted revenge.
Just because you have the money to buy expensive flats or houses near those schools entitles your child to have a place in the school?
That's elitism at its worst.
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2 comments:
Hi Rain,
P1 registration can never satisfy everyone. It's every man for himself, they will criticize to oust out certain phase for their own benefit.
My girls' school stopped taking PVs for Phase 2B for 3 years or maybe more and I applaud the decision. Many a times the parents just disappear the moment the kids are in the school. It's the current school going PVs that take their work with more pride and genuinely helping out in school.
Hi Lily Ann,
You're right. The pvs who actively helped out at my kid's school were also the existing pupils' parents. The post was written in July last year and the policy of 40 seats came in August. The very person who claimed that the people on the internet were a small minority during the election was also the same person who said he heard the voice of many who expressed dissatisfaction over the alumni phase. So are the people who write on online forums the 'minority' or 'majority'?
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