NOA Episode 6 Singapore’s School Blues
Karyn: Hello everyone! I am Karyn and I will be your main host for Narratives of Asia. I am a second year European Social and Political Studies student and I'm from Singapore. Today, I am joined with my co-host for this episode, Jia Xin, a second year Anthropology student from Malaysia who studied in Singapore. Our topic for this episode is Education in Singapore. Children's' Day is just around the corner in Singapore and Freshers Week at UCL has already started, so both of us thought it would be fun and insightful to look back on our education journeys and see what led us here. So Jia Xin, what do you remember from your schooling days?
Jia Xin: You know you introduced me as Malaysian who studied in Singapore right? And I did. For people who are not from here, I guess the image that most people will imagine hearing this is that my parents were travelling for business and that I was living in and attending school in Singapore. But actually, that's not the case. The twist here is, I wasn't living in Singapore. I was travelling from Malaysia across borders to get to school. Every single day from when I was 7 till I was 14. This is a very integral part of my schooling days when I was younger just because I know that I didn't have a lot of classmates who did the same thing as I did, because when you travel from Malaysia you have to wake up earlier than your peers, you have to spend a much longer time travelling to get back home and you would reach home later than everyone else basically. Yeah, that's what my childhood mostly looked like actually. A lot of travelling and then as with in Singapore, and lots of studying as well.
Karyn: Did you find it hard to balance that travelling time with studying as well?
Jia Xin: Actually it was fine during primary school because, I mean, the workload really isn't that much in primary school if we are really honest. I thankfully moved over to Singapore when I was in Secondary 2, but during Secondary 1, that was when it was really difficult. Let's not forget that, you know, from primary school to secondary school, there is the jump in the kind of content that you learn right? In primary school, it is the four basic subjects and then in secondary school, that is when you are first introduced to humanities subjects like Literature, Social Studies, History and Geography, you know? So I remember it being especially hard during the examination period because like I said I spent so much time travelling back home, I had less time to revise and I have to wake up earlier than everyone else. So it was really tough because exams, all the papers tend to be scheduled within a one to two weeks period, back to back, so you really have very very little time to revise in between. Do you think you could have done this, Karyn, like I did?
Karyn: I didn't stay as far away as Malaysia to Singapore? (laughter) But I definitely didn't stay around the vicinity of my primary school. I think it was even worse for my secondary school which was in the West and I stay in the East. So that's like - for driving it's like half an hour, but if it's by public transport, it's about an hour. So I definitely did have to wake up early and everything. But more than that, I think in the school day itself, there was a lot of workload to do, whether in class or homework that you had to bring back, so there was definitely a lot of studying, a lot of doing homework and you really have to be accountable for your homework and be responsible for it, because the teachers will definitely do a lot of checking up on how much your homework has been done and how well you progress in class as well.
Jia Xin: Mhm, I can definitely relate to the idea of being self-disciplined just because I know that I have less time compared to my peers and I really don't have a choice with this amount of time that I have, I just have to make sure that I make every second count. You know the point is that, my parents sent me over to Singapore because they wanted me to receive an English education and a better education, so that's a lot of planning on my parents' part from when I was in primary school and you know, most people would think that perhaps they're also very... um, they necessarily expect good grades from me just because they make all the effort to send me over to Singapore, but you know, to answer my own question, my parents really never explicitly demanded good grades from me actually. They never really asked how I was doing with my studies and neither do I ask them for help in my studies actually, and I think I can only safely claim that my parents wish for me to do well academically rather than expect that I must score well. But the thing is, I do remember a very stressful period when I was in Secondary 2. I remember having so much expectations on myself that I was breaking down, I was crying myself to sleep on certain nights. It was... It's really funny thinking back now because I have survived much crazier workloads as compared to Secondary 2. But yeah, that period of breaking down came from all of these self expectations I had on myself to do well, and it is really quite strange because I kind of just internalised this external pressure to do well and the question is, why do I even think that I have to do well right? What about your parents, Karyn?
Karyn: I think my parents were very similar in the sense that they wouldn't force me to do work or they wouldn't constantly scold me or criticise me for not having good grades, but it's more of their internal wish of them wanting me to get good grades so that I can do better in life and so, it was a wish on their part for me to do better and also for them, I think they didn't want to stress me out too much as well because they knew that if I get stressed out, I would get pressured and I wouldn't be able to think properly and everything. But they would definitely get worried if my grades started slipping. Actually it's not an "if" – when my grades started slipping. (laughter) So they would get worried and then they would ask "Is everything okay? Do you need more help?", and things like that. It's a bit different from the usual so-called tiger parenting that we hear in a lot of Asian countries so I'm very grateful for that. But one thing that you talked about was the self-imposed expectations, which I think is a pretty big issue for a lot of Singaporean kids and maybe in Asia as well, where we just think that I have to do better, everyone is expecting more of me so I expect more of myself too, and I don't want to disappoint other people, and I don't want to disappoint myself also, especially when you think that you can do better than you are doing right now.
Jia Xin: Ooh I definitely relate to that.
Karyn: Yeah so I definitely think expectations from parents is one thing, but your expectations on yourself is also a very crucial part. So I can't imagine how it must be like for those people who have parents who keep expecting so much of them and criticise them all the time, and also have that same expectations on themselves, like wow... And I definitely think that what matters in their education is how much of the teaching style matters too, and whether that kind of teaching style matches your own personality as well. So I think that matters a lot in terms of how much stress you have and how much interest you have in studying as well. What do you think about the teaching style that you had in your schools?
Image Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore on Facebook
Jia Xin: You know you mentioned that some parents can be really controlling and demanding of how well their children do academically right? I think that this just points to an importance being placed on outstanding grades and I think this emphasis is also kind of manifested in the teaching and learning model that we went through, or at least I went through with the O levels route, which is an equivalent of GCSE. The model that I went through is structured to help you score as many points as you can. There was a lot of spoon feeding every lesson, there is memorising and regurgitating whatever you remember during exams and this is really especially so during my O levels. There was really memorisation involved in every single subject that I was taking, maybe even languages I would say actually, because you would try to remember the points that you can write in your essays. And what I've described involves a lot of memorising and regurgitating and I was just wondering if you resonate with this, Karyn?
Karyn: I think in primary school there was definitely a lot of memorising and a lot of rote learning and our primary school is from age 7 to 12 so I think in that period of time definitely it was a lot of spoon feeding of information and then from there having to answer the questions, but afterwards I think in secondary school, so that's from 13 years old to 16 years old, it's lesser- slightly lesser of that memorisation but more of how you use that information to answer the question. So it's a lot more of your own intuitive thinking and your own critical thinking that matters especially in secondary school where you have a lot more essays to write especially for arts subjects, yeah.
Jia Xin: Mhm that sounds really different from what I remember in my secondary school days. It sounds like there was really a lot of opportunity for you to take charge of your own learning instead of being told that "Oh this is what you have to learn, this is what you should write in your exam". And I'm just wondering if you have any examples that you can raise of like, a particular.. Any kind of assignment or group project that you remember even till this day that really helped you with your learning?
Karyn: For me I went through the Integrated Programme route after primary school, so that means contrary to Jia Xin's O level route which is a 4 year programme in secondary school before you take the national O level examinations, for me it was .. it's a straight 6 year track to take A levels at the end of that 6 years, so in secondary school which is from age 13 to 16. For me the most memorable lesson I had was a philosophy class that we had to take which I think did definitely help cultivate a lot of critical thinking and a lot of reflecting on ourselves and that kind of critical training did help a lot in terms of writing argumentative essays which helps in the future as well. Also group projects that focused a lot on our teamwork and also, same thing, the critical thinking portion. So I had a group assignment on "What do you think a good school is in your mind?" and we were supposed to create a good school and we planned like what classes they would have, what kind of school motto they would have, the vision of the school and what kind of classes that the students could take. For example I think some of the students included things like more holistic kind of learning where you have specifically more philosophy classes because I think we felt like the philosophy classes really helped a lot and more drama classes, more performing arts kind of classes that would help to develop that side of things. But basically things that in our head made up a good school. So I think these things definitely helped in terms of building our presentation skills and building our public speaking skills.
Jia Xin: And also independent thinking.
Karyn: Yeah and a lot of independent thinking as well. So, I definitely think that going through the IP route made me be able to think more critically and less of the rote learning and memorisation type of teaching style.
Jia Xin: Yeah that sounds literally opposite of what I had to do in secondary school. Because I mean, in my school, it was just.. because we were taking the O levels which would determine the junior college we would go into, or rather not just junior college but also polytechnic or ITEs, it's very important that you get as high of a score as possible during O levels so that you can go for what is considered more prestigious, that is junior college. Whereas for you, your school really allowed you the opportunity to.. it helps you to develop your own independent thinking and that's really really nice. You know with every student, um, if you have been a student, you would have performed poorly during one exam, at least one exam in your life right. I have definitely experienced that, and I think you do too, Karyn?
Karyn: Yes, definitely. There were so many times where especially for math and science topics, where I got really really bad grades and I think everyone can relate to this. Before you get your results back, it's just this sinking feeling that you know you've done badly and you look at your teacher who's giving you the results and she looks at you with that face and you just know that something went wrong somewhere. I definitely think that for us, as students, we look at failure very seriously. To the extent that it might be a life and death thing at that point of time, but now when you look back at it, you're like "Why did I take it so seriously, that fail?" It doesn't really matter now, but I think at that point, definitely when I got bad grades, I felt like I was disappointing myself, I was disappointing my teachers and I didn't understand why I was getting such bad grades. I think a few things do matter when you get these poor grades and how you deal with it. First thing would definitely be from the teachers themselves, how they look at you getting the bad grades and then maybe secondly your parents and then also your peers, because I think we tend to compare a lot among a class between grades and you ask the person next to you, "How much did you get?" and then you feel really bad for saying out yours, so you ask the other person first then you'd be like "How much did you get?" and then the other person will tell you and if that person's grades are higher than yours, then you'd just be like "Umm I got to do something else now," and you'd just kind of like escape the conversation.
Jia Xin: Oh my god did you actually do that though?
Karyn: Umm... maybe? (laughter)
Jia Xin: Oh my god.. Mhm and I think what you described is actually.. because you know, at least in schools, students– they can only define success by a very narrow metric which is the grades that you get and that is problematic in itself, and you know for me, I mentioned briefly during the beginning of this podcast that there was a very stressful period for me during Secondary 2 and the reason was that it was actually my streaming year. So in secondary school, if you take the O level route, it is a 4 year track and in the initial two years, it is basically I guess like a foundation learning of all the subjects and then during the last two years when you're in Secondary 3 and 4, that's when you really start to prepare for your O levels. So during Secondary 2, that's when you choose what you do, what subjects you take for your O levels, and during then, I knew that I wanted to take triple science - that is biology, chemistry and physics. It was a very important year in my opinion. The strange thing is I actually ended up doing well for that year but I got stressed out because I was afraid of the prospect of poor grades. It's just really funny thinking back about that now, but that's just the reality for students here in Singapore. Some of us really define grades like their life.
Karyn: Yeah, I think similar to you, my Secondary 2 year was also a year where you could decide what you wanted to do in Secondary 3 and 4, so for me I knew for myself that I didn't like physics because as I said, my math and science just can't make it, so I ended up taking biology, chemistry and advanced literature, because I really really liked the humanities and it worked well for me in terms of the fact that I got good grades for advanced literature. I can't say the rest for the math and science part but for the subjects that I had a passion and an interest for, I definitely scored better in those areas. So I think it also was because of the teachers that helped me along the way. My language arts teacher and my advanced literature teachers were all extremely passionate about what they were teaching and they could impart that kind of passion to us as students, so it made us want to learn the subject more and want to do more in terms of work for that subject. So I definitely think that teachers in the education system carry a very heavy weight in terms of having to impart knowledge but also to motivate students at the same time.
Jia Xin: Mhm yeah I cannot agree with you more on this. Teachers really do play such an important role. If you don't like the teacher, it's just going to be hard to listen to what they are talking about - you just tune out anyway. And you know you describe that your teachers were very helpful, and in my school I was really lucky to be in a good secondary school. The teachers there were really really supportive of their students, um, you know, outside of class I could always reach out to them if I have certain struggles with a certain topic. Yeah, in my memory, most of my teachers were really nice and I can always reach out to them for whatever help I needed.
Karyn: I think I can't say the same for one of my primary school teachers. Ugh it was so bad. I just got my math grades back and they were so bad that I started crying. It was that kind of Singaporean mentality where if you get bad grades for one exam, you just think it's the end of the world, and everything is going to fail and everything is going to die around you. And I was crying, and she came up to me and asked – this was my science teacher – and she asked "Why are you crying?" and I told her "Oh it's because I got really bad grades for math," and she told me "Do you want to know your science grades too so that you can cry together?" Oh... and it broke my little 12 year old heart! It was so sad but I still told her, "Yeah..? I want to know my grades," and she told me and I started crying even more. (laughter) So I think it really does matter the kind of teachers that you get. It matters for how much you love the subject too. As much as you don't do well in the subject, if you go to class feeling happy, I think ultimately you still want to learn more.
Image Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore on Facebook
Jia Xin: This talk on having good grades has appeared many many times since we started this podcast right, and I think it's really not a surprise that here in Singapore, excelling academically is really quite important and you know, the question is, why is that so?
Karyn: Yeah.. Why are grades looked so highly upon in Singapore? I think it's because in Singapore, we always have that mentality of wanting to be better than other people, so that's one thing. You always want to be better than other people, you always want to get higher grades than other people. But another thing is that, not just our parents but also the schools and teachers always put this idea that if you don't get good grades, you can't excel in life, you can't get success in your future, you won't be able to get the jobs that you want to do or the high paying kind of jobs, which is so ridiculous because our grades don't define who we are on the inside. It's not a definition of our character, it just places a lot of unnecessary stress on the people who just don't do well in those kind of written exam formats, whereas they might do better in other kinds of, maybe like performing arts or sports and other things.
Jia Xin: Yeah having good grades is the most prestigious marker of success in Singapore, whatever success is supposed to mean in this context. And I agree with you that, it's very important to do good, as in to have good grades here, and this emphasis is manifested in hiring practices where university graduates are more likely to be employed or have higher starting salaries than someone who doesn't and I get why university graduates are more likely to be employed but you know sometimes I just feel like there's nothing more here in terms of.. we don't celebrate other qualities enough like you have said, and grades just should not be the sole marker of success.
Karyn: I completely agree with you, and it gets even more ridiculous because in Singapore at Primary 3 which is the age of 9, there is a programme called the Gifted Education Programme or short-form, GEP, in Singapore where children at 9 years old are so called "selected" to go through a few rounds of tests. So the first one would be a pattern recognition test and other tests that they do before they can choose to go to other primary schools which are considered "branded" or "better" primary schools. And the fact that this programme is even called "gifted" to me is just ridiculous, at a young age of 8 or 9 years old, that children are taught that "Oh I'm gifted" while people that are not in this programme are not considered gifted. Yeah! I think from a young age, when you inculcate this kind of idea into children's heads, it's even worse because they grow up thinking this way, sometimes - I'm not saying all of the time - but some children do grow up with this mentality in their head that "I am better than other people because my grades are better, because I got into this Gifted Education Programme". So I just find it so unnecessary that we sort kids out from such a young age based on this programme and we call it "gifted" too.. It's just..
Jia Xin: You know for this GEP.. So for children who pass the several tests, do they immediately get transferred to a different school, or...?
Karyn: If I'm not wrong, they get to choose which schools they want to go to, so it depends on the schools whether they offer this Gifted Education Programme. Yeah, these schools that offer the Gifted Education Programme are more often than not the schools that are considered better or the top primary schools in Singapore.
Jia Xin: Well I guess I'm kind of lucky that I wasn't even aware of this Gifted Education Programme until I was in junior college, because I heard from my... because in my primary school, it's a neighbourhood school and my secondary school is also a neighbourhood school, but a good one. And then I moved on to junior college where I was really able to meet a lot of people from different parts of Singapore and then that's where I was exposed to this Gifted Education Programme and when I first heard it, I was like "Wait there was such a thing?" and I was wondering "How come my school didn't offer that? How come my school didn't have that?" (laughter) For this Gifted Education Programme, schools are already pre-selected - schools that have traditionally produced students who score well have been selected to take part in this gifted education programme, which triggers a lot of red flags actually.
Karyn: Yeah, even the Ministry of Education website says that it aims to identify pupils with high intellectual potential. Like come on, how are you supposed to test that at the age of 8 or 9? It's just.. ugh.. and I think it just places so much unnecessary stress especially on the children of today where they still have to go through this and perhaps even worse because our world is growing so fast and developing so fast and things are changing all the time and they have to keep up with all these kinds of programmes that decide whether they are so called gifted or not. It's just ugh.. maybe that's the reason why tuition is so popular here in Singapore. Jia Xin, did you used to have tuition and how did you feel about going to tuition, or tuition in general?
Jia Xin: Yeah I definitely did go to tuition, especially when I was in primary school. I was having tuition for all of my subjects for quite a good reason actually, because you know my parents sent me over to Singapore to receive an English education right? But the thing is I didn't grow up in an English speaking family, so when I moved over, when I got sent over to Singapore, education here is delivered by the English language so they were worried that I wasn't able to catch up with the rest of the students, which is why they had tuition classes for me. But then this is my case. My case is kind of.. It's for a justifiable reason, but a lot of students here would seek help from tuition even when they don't actually need it. What do you think about this, Karyn?
Karyn: For me I had tuition in primary school, secondary school and also junior college, so it's been a long run for me with tuition! So many things to say about tuition! (laughter)
Jia Xin: Come, I'm ready to take it all in!
Karyn: Yeah! So the tuition industry in Singapore is a very very large and very booming and growing industry. Based on the Household Expenditure Survey conducted by the Department of Statistics in Singapore from October 2017 to September 2018, Singapore households spent S$1.4 billion dollars on tuition, and that's a crazy amount of money to be spending, especially on tuition. I think a lot of parents have this idea that they see other parents enrolling their children for tuition, and they think "Oh I should do the same too so my kids won't lose out." In Singapore terms, we call it Kiasi, which is like you're afraid to die, so it's that kind of attitude that makes a lot of parents very worried about their children, so they would send their children to tuition classes so that they can do better than other people, or at least not be worse off than others. I think this really places a lot of stress and pressure on children especially, because not only do they have to go to school in the day, afterwards they still have to go to tuition classes and it just builds on the kind of pressure that they face, but I also think that tuition centres are.. a kind of symbol of the kind of income that you earn as well and the economic position that you are in, because a lot of the time, the so-called higher grade tuitions centres or the best tuition centres are very pricey so they are often for those from higher income groups or those that are able to afford and it gives those children who go to those centres an advantage in academics, as compared to other students who don't have this financial ability to go for tuition centres or can only afford tutors at the lower end of the spectrum that may possibly impede or hinder their progress in studying. That's why I definitely think it contributes to a larger socio-economic problem that we have in Singapore, where the rich get richer because they get higher payer jobs from getting so-called better grades and the poor get poorer because they lack all these kinds of opportunities for them to move up the social ladder.
Jia Xin: Yeah, definitely tuition is a luxury especially when tuition can be really expensive. Not every parent can afford tuition for their child, and we can just see how children from less affluent backgrounds will lose out in this system because of the clear disparity in resources between children from more and less well off backgrounds. If your parents can't afford it, you don’t have the extra learning resources that other children might get and if you look at this from the lens of this Covid-19 pandemic, people are getting retrenched and learning is shifting online, but for children from less affluent backgrounds, they may not even have a laptop to access online learning with or their parents might not be able to pay for internet bills if they're struggling to even put food on the table. Children who are more privileged just move further in this race and children who are not.. They just struggle basically. Thankfully here in Singapore, there is this awareness of this particular issue which is why there is a push for every secondary school student to receive their own personal laptop by... I think 2021 and there are also ground-up movements supporting children from less privileged backgrounds. By the same logic between say elite and neighbourhood schools, or branded and non branded schools, children from different schools benefit from different levels of learning resources.
Karyn: For me, tuition comes very close to heart especially and this is because, I do think that I benefited from going to tuition at a young age in primary school and that's how my results did get better so for me, I definitely appreciate that I had the opportunity to go for tuition classes but it does make me think about the other children who don't get this opportunity to go to classes like this or currently now where they are unable to go online to have even school classes. For me, I currently work at a tuition centre which is the same tuition centre that I went to when I was in primary school so it was kind of giving back as well for the help that I received. But going there, I met a lot of different children from different backgrounds and different families and I can see their struggle with learning and experiencing their examinations especially for PSLE where it is so ingrained in their heads that this is a one time thing in your life and you have to do it well. So I really see the kind of stress that they face even when they are going for tuition classes. It just makes me feel that the education system needs to focus less on the grades themselves and more of what the students can do in terms of their potential in other areas other than just grades and academics. I think that that kind of emphasis on grades comes from employers in our country also. What grades that you get in your exams, it represents the kind of knowledge that you have in the subject content itself but I think to employers it also represents so-called how hardworking you are or conscientious you are in your work, and therefore that translates to good grades, but I just think that there are definitely other ways to measure this kind of potential for students.
Image Source: Lim Yao Hui on The Straits Times
Jia Xin: Yeah I definitely agree with that. It's just a shame that education is supposed to enable you to move up the social ladder like you have said, but on the ground it's just a tool that polarises chances of attaining "success", in open and closing air quotes, but between children from different backgrounds. Speaking of education and grades, there have been education reforms being pushed out over the years to de-emphasise grades and even move towards more holistic education. Have you noticed that?
Karyn: Yes definitely, they've just announced quite recently that they would be changing the Primary School Leaving Examinations that our students in Singapore take at 12 years old. So I think that's very similar to the exams in other countries where you leave the system, for example the SATs or the exams that you take at 11+. So I think that the kind of reforms that they are making focuses more on the achievements of the students themselves. So what they do is that, rather than the score that they get at the end which was usually based on what other students - so it's very similar to the bell curve kind of concept - right now they are concentrating more on Achievement Levels. Achievement Level 1 is the best score while Achievement Level 8 is the lowest score. So there's only 8 bands for each subject and that would reflect the student's level of achievement in the subject itself. Prior to this reform, there were about 200 different kinds of scores that you could get as a PSLE student or a Primary 6 student whereas now there will only be 29 possible scores, so this is supposed to reduce the differentiation of students at a young age.
Jia Xin: Yeah I get that, because in the old system, it was out of 300 points if I remember correctly, then out of 300 points versus out of 32 right? When you compare 300 with 32, in the old system you could be getting 180 versus someone who scores really well at 270. That is a really huge difference whereas in the new system, the range is much smaller from 4 to 32. So I definitely get where the de-emphasis on grades would be. But then the problem is, it's just a change in how you measure grades, there's not really a change in the value that people place on grades. But then another example of holistic education that I want to tie in together with this Achievement Level banding is the subject level banding in secondary school. In the old system that I went through, your primary school leaving examination score would determine the stream that you are in in your secondary school, so there are three streams which is Express stream which is the most rigorous one and the one that you take your O levels by the end of 4 years, and down the list is Normal Academics and Normal Technical stream, and the issue in the old system is that students from the Normal Academic and Normal Technical streams cannot take a certain subject at a more rigorous level even if they are particularly interested and show to be strong in, unless you convert your whole learning track to a higher level one and with this new system, there is more flexibility upon entering secondary school. Students can take subjects at different levels of difficulty according to how they scored in their primary school leaving examination, for example if you scored really well in Math but you scored poorly in your Science, you can take Math at a more rigorous level at secondary school and your Science at a less rigorous level. This new system is just a lot more accommodating of the different abilities that children have which I think is very important for students' self esteem actually, because imagine being kept at this certain level even though you actually have the aptitude to perform even better.
Karyn: I definitely think these reforms do help to allow students to feel less pressured and feel less as though they are compared to other people in their same year group. But I think that other than changing the system of how they grade their examinations, I think a lot more can be done in terms of how they support students in managing stress and managing their emotional wellbeing too. This is an area that is often very much under-looked especially in Asian countries where we are taught to keep our mental issues to ourselves and to not say it out because it's a very taboo kind of topic to talk about, which I don't think should be the case because everyone has stress and everyone has a different level of tolerance towards stress, so I think that our government should definitely be focusing a lot on teaching students how to manage this stress and opening up the conversation on mental health in Singapore and especially among the youth.
Jia Xin: I mentioned that I had a very stressful period in secondary 2, I keep on talking about this but basically in secondary 2 I was very stressed, but it never came to me that I should seek the school counsellor on this or even to tell my teachers about the stress and anxiety that I was experiencing. I kind of just bottled it up inside and it bottled up the point that i eventually just broke down in front of my mom and my sister, so I definitely agree with you on saying that there should be more support in terms of providing guidance on basically how to relieve stress but then at the end of the day, this is only a mitigating solution, we are not really talking about the real problem here, which is this whole competitive culture and this emphasis on grades that has really evolved into a obsession almost.
Karyn: Definitely agree, and I think a lot of things in students’ lives affect how well they do in school and their examinations, so the stress that they have may not necessarily be just academically, but it might be from other things like maybe, from problems in school with their classmates or problems at home or even their own self confidence and self esteem, and all these things have the potential to be affecting the way that they do in examinations or even in regular school homework and their schooling experience as a whole, so I definitely think a lot more help can be targeted towards helping these students understand that it's okay to talk about these topics because a lot of the time I feel like students don't necessarily tell their teachers because they are afraid that their teachers will tell their parents or they're afraid that their teachers might turn away certain opportunities from them because they share about these experiences. So I definitely think that more help can be given but there are different organisations in Singapore that provide help to people who suffer from mental health issues or stress and that can definitely help, for example there is an organisation called Samaritans of Singapores or SOS that people can contact if they are feeling any kind of emotional duress or they feel stressed out or just want to talk to someone, and there is also another programme called the Touch Youth Intervention which helps youths in terms of achieving their own emotional wellbeing. These are the organisations that can help you if you're in Singapore and if you're facing any kind of stress and you want someone to talk to.
Jia Xin: Yeah... Can I just touch on one last point?
Karyn: Of course!
Jia Xin: I just recalled that there's this part of the O levels that is called the LEAPS system. So it's spelled L, E, A, P, S which is basically a system that measures the kind of activities and achievements that you have achieved outside of academics. So here we look at the kind of leadership positions, what clubs and societies you have participated in, competitions that you have represented the school for etc. and this LEAPS system is supposed to provide holistic education for students and even recreation for them which is supposed to be a repose outside of academics and basically a stress reliever. But the loophole is that an impressive co-curricular activities track record gives you academic advantage, so you get up to 2 bonus deductions points for your O levels which is crucial for a lot of students actually because I wouldn't have been able to get into my junior college if I didn't have these two deduction points. Sometimes I'm just thinking that co-curricular activities are supposed to be where you can take a break from your academics, where you can explore your interests, but the tangible academic bonuses tied to it makes it very blur between whether you are really doing a certain thing for your academic advantage or whether you really just want to develop other areas of your character or to be out of your comfort zone. It's just very blur and this whole LEAPS system might even just become another thing that students will stress about. I know that I definitely stressed about it at a certain point during my secondary school years. There have been a lot of education reforms but definitely a lot more can still be done and the thing to tackle here is really a true de-emphasis on grades. We should really start celebrating more of other qualities and really just not define life so narrowly by your grades.
Karyn: I think what the government in Singapore has been pushing towards is a lot of holistic education but in pushing holistic education, it also drives people to want to excel in other areas as well. So as you said, how your co-curricular activities do matter when you are going to a junior college and it happened for my secondary school where your CCAs do matter in terms of what CCA Grade you get at the end of your year, so I think that that kind of push towards holistic education is supposed to make it more relaxing for the students where they have something to turn to that is non-academic but I think because of that kind of competitive nature in Singapore, people wants to do better at everything, and that includes your co-curricular activities too. The fact is people also look to your co-curricular activities to determine how so-called good of a student you are as well. So if you have things like leadership or you get trophies or you get awards, people look more highly on you because of that... which is so tragic to think about because if you aren't good at grades but you're great at your CCAs, it doesn't necessarily guarantee you a good career in terms of what employers look at. But if you get good grades but not necessarily good co-curricular activities, when you want to apply for things like scholarships, the people start wondering "Oh then what about your leadership skills? What about your teamwork skills?" because they can't see that from your grades. All in all, both of them matter a lot and just gives so much stress to students to want to excel in both of those areas.
Jia Xin: Yes, that is very true.
Karyn: I find it so hard to be a student these days. (laughter)
Jia Xin: Oh man, from our discussion it seems like there are really a lot of flaws in this system, and true enough there is, but it doesn't mean that we didn't enjoy our education, right?
Karyn: Yeah.
Jia Xin: I definitely enjoyed my secondary school.
Karyn: I enjoyed mine as well, definitely. It definitely gave me a lot of opportunities to find myself in terms of developing my personality, developing my social skills... Not sure how well that's going but it definitely gave me a chance to develop myself a lot more. So I'm grateful that I even have an education in the first place because a lot of people in other countries do not get the chance to have an education but I still think that it's important to talk about improving the education system that we have so that we make sure that students are able to manage the stress that they have and also learn to accept failure as the way of building themselves up and increasing their own self-confidence rather than getting demoralised and demotivated every time they meet a failure.
I think our entire conversation has definitely kind of summed up our schooling cultures and experiences that we faced for the both of us, but this is definitely only in a Singapore context that we've talked about. We would definitely love to hear a lot more about what our listeners have in terms of their own schooling cultures and experiences so do keep a look out for our facebook posts on other podcasts episodes that we will be coming out with on a regular basis. So that's it for our episode for today and thank you for listening.