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It Ends

It's my 95th post and it also signifies the post in which I am (unofficially) unrestrained by education in my life. Not to say that I totally abhor school, but there are indeed days in my 15 or so years of education that I feel sick, sick of studying in a pre-determined system in which only the strongest survive, and the weak fade away. It's the same with all levels, be it from the primary, secondary, college all the way up to tertiary education.

Admit it. In Singapore's education system, failure is not an option. Hopefully, it doesn't even cross your mind before. We were taught from young to only consider 100 marks (upon 100 marks) to be the acceptable, even normal benchmark that we have to hit. When we get 90 instead, we (and our parents of course) question ourselves (and themselves) what happen to the rest of the 10 marks. We never, seldom or hardly ever consider ourselves successful until we hit the benchmark of perfection.

Thus, the idea of perfection gets ingrained in the brains of bespectacled kids nowadays.


When the same kids grow up, they face stronger competition as they streamed into their respective groups. "Only those worthy of that group gets into it," they were reminded by their parents, most of whom would pride at having their kids sent into renowned instead of notorious neighborhood schools. Within their schools, the students compete among themselves, constantly reminding themselves that failure is not an option. A wrong move, a miscalculation, an error here and there, a misread could lead to severe consequences; they knew and they were all scared. If you slip and fall, don't expect people to help you out. Expect them to trample on your head in their position to overtake you instead.

Yeah, it is sad. But well, life is not exactly a bed of roses for kids who have their educational blueprints ready for them even before they are born. They have their expectations, and expectations are almost always double-edged, judging from where you see them from. I was just chatting with a friend who was on his way to a friend's wake yesterday and he nonchalantly (and irritably as well) said that it was his 4th or 5th wake for these past months. The people who passed away were all people of our age, even younger, and most of them had just popped pills or superman-ed their way off buildings for reasons we would never know. But I suspect pressure might be the final shove on their way down thirteen stories; pressure from academic work.

I watched "Meet the Robinsons" yesterday (yeah it was a kid's show afterall), but I thought it was really educational. In the movie, the protagonist failed to repair some device and the people around him actually cheered and applauded in light of his failure. Then, they explained that "they were happier with failures because you learn from them, unlike success, from which nothing is truly learned or appreciated". Secretly, I marveled at the "parents" in the cartoon and wondered how many parents in Singapore would really laugh and pat their kid on the back for screwing up their radio instead of fixing it. If you stub them there and then, there goes a little of their creativity and innovativeness. And they would be wary, even afraid, of making mistakes in this kind of harsh environment. They would grow up with the idea that mistakes are unacceptable, and only stupid people make mistakes. Hardly anyone would admit that they are stupid then.

The inability of the education system to create a stimulated, all-rounded and responsive child of the future is not the problem of the government only. The root of the situation lies with our idea of perfection, and the idea of unacceptable failures in the society. Such thoughts were so deeply etched in our minds and hearts that they were thought to be positive for one's success. Wrong! We must learn to accept failures and defeats in our face, before rising from the dust to clear the mess again. If we never fail, we will never learn how to win.

Teach that to the children now, before it's too late.

Mr Black is a current undergraduate who resides in Singapore. This blog is a non-whimsical reflection of his life and the society in which he lives in at large.

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