1/14/2011
Straight A1s everywhere or is it inflation?
The recent O level results must have made many parents very happy. The students themselves no need to say, must also be very happy with the fruits of their labour. The teachers and schools too must be proud too that their efforts in educating the students were a scintillating success. And the MOE too can tell the world that our education system is the best in the world.
Maybe the students in Raffles, Hwa Chong and the other SAP schools would have a different kind of feeling. They have been robbed of a chance to own a piece of certificate that says, 10 A1s or 9 A1s. If they were to sit in the same exam, they may even get A1 stars. Being the crème ala crème of the cohorts, the MOE perhaps should devise something like an honorary certificate for them.
If the students of these top schools were also graded, we could literary throw a stone in a crowd students and hit a 10 A1s. There will be so many 10 A1s to the country proud. It will be another feather in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of 10 A1s and 9 A1s in an O level examination. And every year we can aspire for the record to be broken.
And we don’t have enough talents and need more foreign talents to improve our stocks. Aren’t our straight As students in the world’s best education system better than foreign talents from other countries? Maybe not. Many of the top students O level students are from foreign countries too.
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6 comments:
That picture in the Straights Times showing a group photo of PRC achievers in English from F9 to A1?
Look carefully. You are seeing faces of future perm secs., civil service administrators, lawyers, engineers, a judge or two and also some politicians.
Singapore, the land of opportunity. Just hope they'll be around after the taxpayers have finished footing their educational bill.
Hope too that they'll be like some who are breeding like hamsters otherwise our target of a 10 million, money spinning, GDP boosting population will not come to fruition.
Nowadays, inflation definitely has caught up even with examination results. Unlike money though which inflates because of a confluence of man made stupidities, straight As is not so tough, just mug and regurgitate and go to bed with the ten year series because the variety of exam. questions are limited.
The true test of their intelligence is when they are released into the world like little turtles released on the seashore. When the big waves come, then only will we be able to separate the chaff from the grain.
Hehe. :o)
"Education inflation" is not a recent phenomenon.
Here in a typical "western demo-Crazy" it has been going on for quite sometime. You can thank the lawyers, unions and big business interests - especially large education providers for their decades-long campaigns of combined political lobbying.
This is part of the reason/ strategy Australia (to use an example) has a minimum wage of AUD 570 per week by "protecting" it's workforce and as a result considers anything above around 5% unemployment as "full employment".
At one time to get a university degree was a big deal. Nowadays you can get bullshit degrees from any number of degree mills on the internet. (I am willing to bet many of the tertiary-educated "imports" in S'pore have bullshit degrees)
Anyway, we live in interesting time. Phd's work in the financial industry. In fact finance attract some of the most "highly educated". Just ask former employees, investors and customers of Bear Stearns, Long Term Capital, Enron, Aurthur Andersen, WorldCom.
Oh yeah. Very smart. Top of the class.
It has become a crutch to our lateral thinking and creativity. With so many scholars and 10 A1s students, we should be highly sought after for top positions. Yet companies in Singapore still continue to hire top executives from Western countries. Foreign talents, we call them.
Boggling, isn't it?
Kaffein
We are only book smart.
The imported talents are very street smart.
So smart that they're taking Singapore for a ride by pretending to pledge allegiance and once they're ready, it's the fastest plane out of here to their new found home in Canada, the US, Australia and other more congenial places.
Sometimes I think that those scholars who put up policies for approval and then implements them are a bunch of muggers, regurgitators and good for nothing bookworms.
Kenna con left, right and centre and still dreaming they're the creme de la creme and very "brainy".
Hehe. ;o)
The wonderful thing about capitalism is that whether your previous decisions (in this case to hire or fire) was "right" is reflected in your bottom line: your increase in profits, growth of business and improvement in free cash flow.
Somebody has got to do the job. Doesn't matter if they are foreign, local, or what the “extremal” perception is. The person paying the pay check calls the shots.
And he/ she alone profits or loses from his decision.
Private enterprise -- I really does rock!
The worst part, and it is common knowledge, that quite a number have degrees bought from degree mills and bossing around our local talents, and being paid more.
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