I remember junior college with some measure of clarity, fogged as it was with late nights and studying. I remembered how the richer students were able to afford good tuition. Some of their tutors were so expensive the total fee went up to about a thousand dollars per month. When the A level results were released and some students received grades that could not enroll them into local universities, the wealthier ones were able to enroll themselves into universities overseas. This privilege was not available to those who could not afford an overseas education. They settled for private universities (which unfortunately carry a stigma), enrolled into polytechnics, or wallowed in a depressed stasis, unsure of what they could do next in life, feeling suffocated by a lack of options.
In a system where only merits are taken into account, getting ahead through non-meritocratic means is amplified. On a socio-spatial level, the high concentration of prestigious schools and expensive enrichment centres in wealthy neighbourhoods makes it easier for children of the affluent to access a better education and past-time. They are generally more confident and are able to learn how to communicate and interact in an acceptable way in the top strata of society.
Having a wealthy background can give you the upper edge from the very beginning through an expensive, private kindergarten education, and later on through expensive tuition, enrichment programs that will benefit you when applying for schools, or even connections for good internships and jobs. This is also played out when children of alumni get preferential access to schools. These measures, however, not only give better mobility to the rich, but their implementation also actively pushes out the poorer class, contributing to inequality and lower social mobility for the very people that meritocracy is supposed to help.
This has unfortunately been statistically proven very early, with an intergenerational income mobility study by The Ministry of Finance which measured 38,500 father-son pairs for sons born between 1968 and 1978, showing evidence of lessening mobility among the poor.
The cold truth is that meritocracy assumes everyone to be human units with no fundamental differences other than their intellectual capabilities. In a system where only merit is important, like race, gender, class, or geographic location are ignored. At this point, I feel like I should tell you a story:
http://poskod.sg/Posts/2014/4/4/Meritocracy-as-Myth
In a system where only merits are taken into account, getting ahead through non-meritocratic means is amplified. On a socio-spatial level, the high concentration of prestigious schools and expensive enrichment centres in wealthy neighbourhoods makes it easier for children of the affluent to access a better education and past-time. They are generally more confident and are able to learn how to communicate and interact in an acceptable way in the top strata of society.
Having a wealthy background can give you the upper edge from the very beginning through an expensive, private kindergarten education, and later on through expensive tuition, enrichment programs that will benefit you when applying for schools, or even connections for good internships and jobs. This is also played out when children of alumni get preferential access to schools. These measures, however, not only give better mobility to the rich, but their implementation also actively pushes out the poorer class, contributing to inequality and lower social mobility for the very people that meritocracy is supposed to help.
This has unfortunately been statistically proven very early, with an intergenerational income mobility study by The Ministry of Finance which measured 38,500 father-son pairs for sons born between 1968 and 1978, showing evidence of lessening mobility among the poor.
The cold truth is that meritocracy assumes everyone to be human units with no fundamental differences other than their intellectual capabilities. In a system where only merit is important, like race, gender, class, or geographic location are ignored. At this point, I feel like I should tell you a story:
http://poskod.sg/Posts/2014/4/4/Meritocracy-as-Myth
