There is the education system minefield that keeps changing every now and then. Even teachers themselves have lost their expertise trying to keep up and needed upgrading to do so. And parents could no longer act as tutors to their kids unlike my generation.
Then there is the cost involved in bring up a child. A tin of baby milk powder costs an arm and a leg for low-income families, on top of shrinking contents. A kilogram tin has now shrunk to 800 grams; a half kilogram is now 400 grams. This is just based on my outdated quotation, as my children and grandchildren have all grown up. I still remember paying S$15 for a kilogram tin of baby milk powder in early 1980s, if I remember correctly. Now this is what the Chinese used to say - paying more money for less ingredients.
The milk powder manufacturers keep telling consumers that this and that has been added just to justify the price gorging. Some even claim that their milk powder improves intellectual competence. Can I just ask, what intellectual competence if the child is born without the brain capacity to study? Can just drinking the milk do the job? The generation of LKY and GKS did not have to rely on such baby milk powders to nurture them into such outstanding thinkers. They probably grew up on condensed milk, nothing fanciful.
This same argument can be applied to the elite schools chalking up accolades for stellar performances over decades. How can that not be so when they have the choice of the cream of the crop, leaving other normal schools to try their best with mediocre students. If students from such elite schools cannot produce stellar results based on their cream of the crop intake, something is seriously wrong somewhere.
On top of that parents have to contend with after school tuition fees in order not to land in ITE, although that route is becoming more conducive rather than a university education that is losing traction in the jobs market with AI doing the thinking. I am amaze at the number of young graduates doing hawking today, which is unthinkable in the past. However, it is quite apparent that tuition centers are a lucrative business, with even students from the elite schools needing to go for tuition and giving tuition centers the opportunity to boasts about having such elite students in their midst.
Another factor is that nowadays both parents need to work to make ends meet due to the high cost of living, thereby leaving the kids to the maids and that is another added cost that poor parents can ill afford. Not all maids are reliable and may impart different upbringing mindsets in kids. Complaints about maids can be heard more frequently than praises.
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