How can meritocracy be favouritism?
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MP echoes calls for PSLE to be scrapped
- Thread starter BuiKia
- Start date
How can meritocracy be favouritism?
this is a recent trend and has to do with a shortage of empathy by our testosterone driven leaders. until the kids of any of the elites become affected/afflicted by current policy, there will be no impetus for change. the matter/policy is simply below their radar.
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it can be when meritocracy results in tipping the balance in favour of a particular class of people. just go check out the percentage of HDB dwellers in our top JCs and Secondary Schools. it is a disturbingly small percentage considering 80% of singaporeans live in HDBs.
Merit is judgmental. If the person like you, everything you do is a merit. If the person dun like you, even if you well, the merit will go to someone else or brush off as "it is part of your job".
Your boss can choose to highlight or "conveniently forget" your deed.
Your boss can choose to highlight or "conveniently forget" your deed.
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Whats wrong with that sir? All the kids are subjected the the same exam.
ionzu draws an unhealthy relationship between the high percentage of top JCs and Secondary Schools student staying in non HDB pigeon holes i.e. a high level of elitism.
"Whats wrong with that" is the answer.
Do you understand the feeling of the average Joe. Do you believe in egalitarianism?
And then proceeded to red herring the subject. You implying that the rich have smarter kids?
increasing social inequality. 1789.
we have already seen the rise of youth gangs from certain ethnicities engaging in vigilante action for perceived slights/injustices. how many more ferrari drivers need to be beaten up before you realize there is a problem?
Will this get more complex if the PSLE exam is scrapped? Will the "soft" criteria for admitting to secondary or JC becomes so subjective that where you go will depend on your teacher? Is that good for some and not good for many?
If you like to skew and push the argument to one end, you can argue that this tilt the balance toward the rich, because kids with better social economic background tend to have better "soft" skill such as social etiquette, grooming and better in public speaking if they attend the toastmaster course. More so, if you have soft criteria like "social service". If your parents, for financial reasons and limitation need your help to take care of younger siblings after your school, will you have less time to do social service compared to your peer may have 3 maids waiting for them to come back from school? Who win?
Whatever the decision is, one thing for sure, the efforts a person put in to consider or think through all the considerations before recommending a proposal or suggestion show how seriously or lightly the person see such proposal. This is going to affect cumulatively ten of thousands (even if you just experiment with one school for ten years, thousands of children future are affected and they live with the outcome, real human with flesh and blood, not guinea pig, not just numbers. You better pray that they praise instead of curse the experiment thereafter) of life or children. You can whack the entire life of these tens of thousands of life upside down, if your experiment goes wrong (whatever the motivation is). But you will likely not be around to answer to them. And if you really care for the future of these children and feel responsible for the future of these children, I bet you will think very carefully and not take it lightly, before any suggestion or recommendation.
Unless you are very sure that what you are pushing will not be eventually a poison pill for the future (unless that is the intention, which is quite common in hostile, competitive corporate M&A ), it is prudent to err on the safer end.
By the way, is this what the children want? Or is this what the parents want? Who is getting the education?
What if the children like to go to UK for the further study in the future? So in 10 or 15 years later, who should the children ask for an answer if he/she wonder why the UK system is so tough for them if they go there for further studies or find in challenging to get a place in the UK university?
Separately, UK is also revamping their education system after years of so call "soft" teaching as stated by Education secretary Michael Gove:
Gove told MPs: "Critical to reform is ending an exam system that has narrowed the curriculum, forced idealistic professionals to teach to the test and encouraged heads to offer children the softest possible options. It is time for the race to the bottom to end. It is time to tackle grade inflation and dumbing down. It is time to raise aspirations and restore rigour to our examinations."
Gove will move quickly to embed the reforms to ensure that it would be all but impossible for Labour to reverse the reforms if it wins the May 2015 general elections. As a first step, single subject exam boards will be appointed by the end of next year by Gove, who will have the final say after recommendations from the exams watchdog Ofqual.
Gove said: "Critically we will end the competition between exam boards which has led to a race to the bottom with different boards offering easier courses or assistance to teachers in a corrupt effort to massage up pass rates. We will invite exam boards to offer wholly new qualifications in the core subject areas - English, maths, the sciences, history, geography and languages."
GCSEs are dead: the EBacc is the future, says Michael Gove :
New qualification will put focus on end-of-year examinations and prevent 'dumbing down', according to education secretary
The new English baccalaureate – the EBacc – will eventually replace GCSEs, doing away with "modules" that allow students to retake parts of their course, cutting back heavily on the use of classroom assessment and coursework, and returning the emphasis to a traditional end-of-year exam. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that it would end "grade inflation and dumbing down".
The name GCSE will disappear, to be replaced with the EBacc, and the traditional grades of A* to C are likely give way to numeric marks or even percentages. Recording the percentage pass mark will allow universities to distinguish between top candidates, but it could penalise students for the slightest variation.
Gove is highly critical of the way around a third of pupils are awarded A to A* GCSE grades. He is keener on numeric grades that could see around 10% of pupils awarded the top grade 1.
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My point is it is usually a 180 degree swing not something in between. That means one is definitely wrong. And the fact that a lot of MPs suddenly start singing the same song while the night before no one was against the present situation makes one feels that it is a manifestation of a herd instinct rather than true rational thinking.
I dont think you have heard every MP yet sir.
no one mentioned affirmative action except for you. and i'm referring to the 20% bottom singaporean students, not just mats, chinks or thambis specifically. please re-think the racism that lurks in your heart.
assuming 40,000 students a year, and botton 20% is 8,000 per year. in 20-30 years time, you're going to have 200-300,000 citizens who are way below par in terms of education. the problem will be more expensive to fix later on. its cheaper to throw good teachers at the problem now, than to deal with the social fall out from 250,000 under-educated citizens.
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Two ways of looking at it. What you have described is one way that somehow meritocracy, the way we define it, favours the privileged group.
Another way to look at it is that the privileged group already is the favoured group no matter what you do, with or without an exam.
A rich set of parents can provide an average, or even below average, child quality one to one tuition, enrichment programmes, good books, on-line tools, high speed Internet, a good studying environment and reduction in commuting time in a chauffeur driven car that allow him to rise above the rest in academic achievement.
Even so, in a system where there is an exam to separate the genius from the mediocre (and that is the only grading that is required), some in the privileged group will fail and several from less advantaged background will still shine, allowing for some degree of social mobility. Without an objective system of examinations, I have even more doubt that those in the privileged group will not pull strings to put their offsprings among the best. And I believe it is this group of people that is making the most noise and why so much attention is now devoted to this.
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That is because some MPs have no opinion to express.
Bro Fook Seng, corrections.
It should be almost all MPs have no opinion to express. More than 90% are PAP MPs.
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I was actually coming to that. Thank you for saying it.
A sacred cow is one which cannot be slaughtered or is extremely difficult to be slaughtered and need a lot of courage to do so.
NS has been around for 40 odd years. It consumes annually a large part of our annual budget. It denies us of an annual workforce of 40,000 (i.e. 20,000 abled body young men for two years). Individually these NSmen loses 5% of his entire employable years and 5% of his career income which can go towards increasing his retirement savings by 5% of his life career earnings. Yet NS has survived 40+ years. If that is not a sacred cow, what is?
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