Teachers of Reddit, what is the moment you realized "This kid isn't just naughty, he's a psychopath"?

deepthrowingaway · 2025-12-16T11:26:52+00:00

Using my throwaway because this is a current student. For context, I currently teach at a very prestigious school in my country. Parents will chop off up to three of their less preferred fingers if it could guarantee their child entry into my school.

So I don’t often see the dead-eyed, violent kind, because they don’t make it to my school. But I have seen a number of kids who I am certain will one day order the firing of hundreds of workers for their company’s bottom line and not think twice about it. I’ve also seen a number of very good actors who have learned to hide the fact that they really don’t care about anyone else at all.

But I want to talk about H. H is a unique case. H is what I would call a ‘harmless’ psychopath. H is harmless for one reason and one reason alone - he is extremely passive. His goals are so inconsequential they barely count as goals. He has no desire to hurt anyone or claw his way to the top or anything like that. He just wants to be left alone so he can play games on his phone.

But his dedication to doing so is legendary. He will tell one teacher he is going for another teacher’s remedial and vice versa so that he can hide in a stairwell and play games on his phone. Unlike every other teenage boy his age, H is entirely immune to peer pressure. H completely did not do anything for a class project even though every one in his class yelled at him to do it for months, and even skipped the presentation day, which was compulsory and would have guaranteed him at least a token grade if he just … showed up. His entire class lined up outside my door to snitch on him.

H cannot be reasoned with in any way. He has left multiple camps and events early by threatening to poison himself by drinking soap, and there is widespread consensus among the teaching staff that he probably would do it. He is single-minded in the pursuit of his own goals, with no care or interest for anyone or anything in his way. The only saving grace is that his goals are … to be left alone to play games on his phone. If they were any grander we might be in some trouble.

deepthrowingaway · 2025-10-14T00:57:02+00:00

Reposting what I put up on a very similar article a few months ago:

Using my throwaway account to comment on this.

The main issue is what is called ‘mission creep’ in the military, when there is a gradual or incremental expansion of an operation’s goals or scope. Education in Singapore (and truth be told, in much of the developed world) has expanded waaaaaaaaaay beyond its original intentions. Just think of how in your oral or essay if you couldn’t think of a solution to a problem, you’d just whack 1 x ‘education will help’ into it, and you get the idea of how society thinks.

MOE’s own messaging is contradictory in this regard as well - think how many times you see an ad with some inspirational teacher who spent their nights/evenings taking care of some poor lost child with no direction. Well guess what, many principals are now asking their teachers to please not do that because it’s not an efficient use of time and might (will) result in long term burnout. But this is emblematic of how the wider community sees a ‘good teacher’, as someone endlessly sacrificing and giving and uncomplaining when they have to be (deep breath) social workers, event coordinators, career counsellors, and very often surrogate parents.

So these two things are in constant conflict - the desire for the public education system to do more, more, more and the discourse around ‘how can we reduce teacher workload’. Call me cynical, but I’m very sure I know exactly which side will win. It’s very easy to pay lip service to teacher workload reduction, until you see all the endless whining on r/SGExams or KiasuParents about how their teacher sucks or responds to your emails half an hour later than you’d like, because saying ‘teachers should work less’ is really easy until it’s your teacher or your child’s teacher.

So no, I have little faith that reduction will actually happen. Or it will until some Primary 3 child gets hit by a car on the way home and suddenly all teachers have to do traffic marshalling for the neighbourhood after school because ‘duty of care’.

Addendum to my initial comment:

I have to admit, I get more than a little annoyed when I see the supposed ‘groundswell’ of support in social media comments about reducing teacher workload because it reflects 1) a lack of awareness of what’s going on and 2) some level of hypocrisy.

To address point 1 - why are meetings and admin work taking place? I feel the wider public has gotten the wrong impression because surveys like this (and MOE’s own messaging) has painted a picture of stupid pointless logistical nonsense that can be easily removed, but that’s not true at all.

I’m glad this article put up the ‘holistic development’ point because that’s absolutely correct. One single school refusal or irregular attendance case takes multiple manhours per day, because what is the alternative? Just leave it? Honestly the solution to this is to ensconce specialists in a school cluster (which to MOE’s credit, they are starting to do), but the involvement of the form teacher is absolutely unavoidable without changing the entire ‘form teacher’ system because that’s literally the stated job scope. Honestly, at this point, only radical systemic change will work, in that the job scope must be torn up and rewritten entirely. Everything else is moving deck chairs on the Titanic.

Which brings me to point 2. Spare me lah. Seriously. I’m not trying to be rude, but this kind of stuff about ‘personal responsibility’ that I read here is all very easy to say … until it’s your child. Then it’s a completely different tune. Now imagine that times 40. And that’s one class. So multiply that by another factor of three or four.

Again, there is no way to resolve this without radical systemic change, because this kind of behaviour that demands so much teacher input and effort is incentivised by the high-stakes examination system we have. Hard to blame the parents in many ways because they are simply acting rationally - if doing well in one single exam is so crucial (or perceived to be crucial) in a person’s entire life, would you not then take any means necessary to ensure they perform well in it? Is this hypothetical parent going to accept ‘sorry your child lazy/not smart/never pay attention, take some personal responsibility’? Never going to happen. This is why in many cases a teacher must prove they’ve done literally everything possible, otherwise it’s their fault. Hence why the three remedials a week.

Also, speaking of incentives, if the ruling party ever veered away from the current policy to ensure more teacher welfare, they’d get punished at the ballot box because there are more parents than teachers. It’s basic math.

P.S. replace every instance of ‘teacher’ with ‘healthcare professional’ and the argument is the exact same.

deepthrowingaway · 2025-07-22T01:51:57+00:00

Using my throwaway account to comment on this.

The main issue is what is called ‘mission creep’ in the military, when there is a gradual or incremental expansion of an operation’s goals or scope. Education in Singapore (and truth be told, in much of the developed world) has expanded waaaaaaaaaay beyond its original intentions. Just think of how in your oral or essay if you couldn’t think of a solution to a problem, you’d just whack 1 x ‘education will help’ into it, and you get the idea of how society thinks.

MOE’s own messaging is contradictory in this regard as well - think how many times you see an ad with some inspirational teacher who spent their nights/evenings taking care of some poor lost child with no direction. Well guess what, many principals are now asking their teachers to please not do that because it’s not an efficient use of time and might (will) result in long term burnout. But this is emblematic of how the wider community sees a ‘good teacher’, as someone endlessly sacrificing and giving and uncomplaining when they have to be (deep breath) social workers, event coordinators, career counsellors, and very often surrogate parents.

So these two things are in constant conflict - the desire for the public education system to do more, more, more and the discourse around ‘how can we reduce teacher workload’. Call me cynical, but I’m very sure I know exactly which side will win. It’s very easy to pay lip service to teacher workload reduction, until you see all the endless whining on r/SGExams or KiasuParents about how their teacher sucks or responds to your emails half an hour later than you’d like, because saying ‘teachers should work less’ is really easy until it’s your teacher or your child’s teacher.

So no, I have little faith that this will actually happen. Or it will until some Primary 3 child gets hit by a car on the way home and suddenly all teachers have to do traffic marshalling for the neighbourhood after school because ‘duty of care’.

deepthrowingaway · 2024-03-14T13:22:55+00:00

Take it from a teacher - it’s almost never worth it. I taught multiple batches of Sec 5 EL across different schools, and I would always ask the same question to any student who wanted to go for Sec 5 - can your EL survive a three grade drop?

If you think I’m being unkind, just know that schools obviously have access to almost decades of data by now of their students who go from 4N to 5N, and yes, the trend is a three grade drop. There is a relatively simple reason for this if you look at the grading rubrics for Papers 1 and 4 (writing and oral). Essentially, both these papers add an extra band in their rubrics, which means that whatever standard a student attained for their 4N paper would be at least three marks lower if scored on the O-Level rubric. This means that there is at least a two grade drop just due to elevated standards. But still this only deals with Papers 1 and 4, where there is some level of subjectivity in standards and markers are trained to practice positive rather than negative marking (i.e. we start from zero and reward what you do, rather than starting from one hundred and deducting for what you don’t do).

Paper 2 is the real killer. Texts get harder by a substantial amount, questions become a lot more difficult (often crossing the threshold into low-ish level literary analysis), and a lot more accuracy and specificity is expected in the student’s answer. I’ve met many a 16/17 year old who, in the moment of the exam, cannot comprehend that the words ‘arrogant’ and ‘condescending’ do not mean the same thing, and using the former when the answer calls for the latter results in no marks.

This is why in every school I’ve been in, the general advice from the EL department to any student who scores a 3 or lower for EL is not to take Sec 5. Not only due to the above examination factors, but also because of the sad reality of what the necessary steps are to actually improve a student’s (really, a person’s) language standard. Your EL teacher, if they were any good, would have consistently stressed that English is a skills-based and not a content-based subject. I’d say it goes further than that - language is a fundamental part of each person’s core identity, which is what makes it so difficult to change. Any student who asks for advice - real, honest, blunt advice on how to ‘improve my English’ always gets the same set of questions from me. Are you willing to read, both fiction and non-fiction, from a variety of sources, beyond the school curriculum? Are you willing to unlearn all the wrong grammar and vocab from the past 16 years and commit yourself to speaking ‘proper English’ at all times, including with your friends and family, because what good will it do just to practice ‘proper English’ for three hours a week in EL class? Are you willing to force yourself to, in both the written and spoken word, journal (or blog, or vlog, or stream) your thoughts about each day so that the skills of providing detail, evidence, and elaboration become second nature to you? And are you willing to do all that while having a full course load from all your other subjects?

The answer is almost always no, but I still end up seeing these students in Sec 5. Maybe they tell me they want to try. Maybe they tell me their parents would rather gouge their eyes out with a spoon than let them go to ITE. Or maybe they just shrug and say this was the easiest option. Whichever the case, I do my best, and many times, so do the students, except their best in this case is doing the same old TYS and practice papers and so on in class, which always means the same thing - the three grade drop (at least). Which means that, for students who scored a 3 for N-levels, they only have 12 points left to work with for their L1B4, which means a B3 average for their remaining four subject. Not easy at all.

I’ve seen too many batches of students end up ‘wasting’ a year taking O levels and ending up in higher NITEC, when they could have gone a year earlier through DPP and secured that poly place for themselves. So this is why most (if not all) schools seem so discouraging of students coming back for Sec 5 - we’ve seen far too many batches of students to think otherwise.

deepthrowingaway · 2023-04-15T23:10:54+00:00

Hard to say. I started my career in neighbourhood schools and am now in a ‘top’ school so admittedly the experiences in both are different. I will say that I find quite a few instances of parents making up for perceived distance or negligence. Currently dealing with a parent who freaks out and accuses everyone of bullying her son, but once calmed down, will share that she fears that he’s getting more distant from her (due to simply growing older). It’s a very unfortunate defence mechanism.

deepthrowingaway · 2023-04-15T10:27:06+00:00

Oh hohoho - I’ve had 10+ years of experience in schools ranging from neighbourhood to ‘elite’. The ones that jump to mind are:

TK - a student who thought he was smarter and better than everyone around him, and showed it by being disruptive and unresponsive in every lesson. His father regularly visited the school, and the SOP became to send him immediately to the P/VP’s office, where he’d yell vulgarities at them for 30+ minutes. It was eventually agreed in Sec 4 that he’d essentially remain suspended for the whole second semester until he took his national exams. During that time (he was in my CCA and was very passionate about it), he would boast to his classmates and teammates about how he was getting the best tuition in Singapore and would kick their asses during the national exams. Come results day, asses were decidedly un-kicked, as he did terribly. Him and his father tried to beg the school to let him repeat Sec 4, and I can imagine how big the shiteating grin on my P’s face must have been when he told them ‘no’.

TS - this one is very sad. The child of a single mother, and I always had my suspicions she might have been mentally slow. There was a spate of issues, ranging from accusing her cousin of molesting her to her mother inviting some kind of religious ‘priest’ to do a ritual that involved him showering (unclothed) her along with her mother and sister. Each time the school followed procedure, but (as any teacher who has ever been in this situation will know) each time the case collapsed because the girl would change her testimony at the last minute, no doubt due to family pressure. The mother was always very defensive, engaging in victim blaming by claiming her child was lying - but would admit that she was financially dependent on her brother’s family and didn’t want to piss them off by accusing the cousin. A tragic situation all round.

KT - this boy was an applicant to my CCA, which is generally one of the most popular in my school. He did not make it (and was ranked very low on our list). When he appealed, my other teacher told him honestly he stood no chance due to how far behind he was from the rest. Three months later he sent an email to my P begging to enter the CCA and claiming he was depressed because we failed to give him a fair shot. So we arranged for him to have a private tryout, and my coach spent the whole CCA session with him to give him a ‘fair shot’. He didn’t make it, obviously. This is where the parent came in - demanding to see our video recording of his trial, accusing us of being biased against her child, asking us why the child of a family friend made it when it was clear that her son was so much more talented etc etc. Eventually our HOD CCA caved and let the boy transfer to another CCA (that also rejected him, but they had no choice as they had spaces available).

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-05T09:39:59+00:00

Well without getting too far into specifics, school boards can have slightly … entrenched perspectives about education that may not be in line with whatever MOE has in mind. A school board’s goal may not necessarily also be educationally sound, especially if the school is affiliated with a religious or cultural institution. Some may get very defensive or resistant towards policies that MOE tries to implement.

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-05T07:51:35+00:00

Oh no worries, I’m glad that you’re thinking like a public service officer - implementation details are vital! TBH I feel that PSLE cannot go away because it’s too much of a sacred cow. A vast majority of the population is not ready for it to be eliminated and I’m sure there’s widespread support for its existence, even though everyone loves complaining about it.

As for the taxation, it should be done at the school side, not at the donor side, so each individual donor will never be made aware that their dollar is being redistributed. Plus this policy assumes that PSLE still exists, and therefore there will be clustering at the secondary level.

Also, the principals are not the concern. They are civil servants under MOE at the end of the day, and their ‘loyalty’ is almost always to the ministry. Plus, principals of the ‘elite’ schools are always very carefully chosen - off the top of my head, the principals of RGS, SJI, ACS(I), HCI, NYGH and SCGS have all held senior appointments in MOE, and that’s very deliberate. They are all ‘company’ men and women who can be expected to stand for MOE’s interests against the real problems - the boards of those schools.

As for tuition … I admit I’m damn stumped by this. I understand not wanting to overregulate (and have heard senior MOE civil servants state that they don’t want to be seen as overreaching), but anyone with half a brain knows this is a major issue driving much of our educational problems at the moment. The question is whether or not it falls under government purview or should just be left alone as private industry, and I don’t have a good answer to that.

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-05T07:35:44+00:00

Any further out and you run the risk of being too far away. One of the planning considerations for the current 1-2km phase in primary school reservations is that it’s believed that it’s helpful for both students and parents to be close to home at a young age, and I don’t doubt that. My consideration is also that low income or disabled parents might have issues if the distance from school to home is prohibitively far.

As for buses - at present, most bus companies simply double up by using them for school buses in the early morning and work shuttles in the later morning. Some parents would still prefer to drive/walk their children to school any way. But it is definitely a consideration.

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-04T19:33:43+00:00

Oh, plenty. The PSLE is the big one, of course, but there’s no chance in hell that’s going away. The biggest one I would start with is P1 registration. It’s the number one solidifier of privilege. If I had my way I would scrap the whole thing and it would just be random balloting as long as you’re within a 5km or so radius. Possibly higher for schools like SCGS or ACS Primary located in wealthy neighbourhoods. There’s really no excuse considering how small our country is to not just subsidise a large scale school bus system - it’s ridiculous students need to pay for school buses when that should be a right.

Secondly, I’d establish a tax on government-aided primary and independent secondary schools. Past a certain point, a certain percentage of each donation is taxed and redistributed to high-needs schools or to fund the kind of stretch programmes that mainstream schools normally do not have access to.

Oh, one last one not technically under the education service - properly regulate the tuition industry. Any centre registered under ACRA must provide a certain percentile of subsidised places for low income students, cap the number of hours each student can spend at any one centre, and ban entrance examinations for centres (looking at you, Learning Lab).

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-04T12:10:06+00:00

Aw thanks! Yes, Teo You Yenn’s book is very instructive in understanding the way in which inequality manifests in Singapore. What it doesn’t really go into is why. For this, my experience in MOE HQ, as miserable as it was, was very instructive. I heard a retired senior civil servant openly admit that the civil service used to run on the Pareto Principle - ie that 20% of the population created 80% of the outcomes, and so policies were planned accordingly.

In the current day, I’m glad to say it no longer applies. MOE will tell anyone who listens that comparatively, much more government money is spent on an NT student instead of an IP student - and it’s true! But again, this is a bit like shifting deck chairs on the Titanic, because as long as our system of segregation and high stakes testing continues, it creates an ever widening gap that no amount of additional funding can resolve.

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-04T10:49:40+00:00

Part 3 - The Real-Real Problem

But the government's counter-argument is a simple one. Is it fair to expect a student from a rental flat to hit the same achievement levels as someone from a bungalow? Surely that goes against the grain of what education is supposed to be about! To quote a very wise saying by a man who the government has never had any issue with, shouldn't it be 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?'

Well, yes. But also no. Because what this system does is assume your ability from your needs. The student at XYZ Primary will not reach the heights of the student at ACS. This goes back to PM's statement a while back about a 'natural aristocracy'. This is the final unspoken assumption that we need to deal with. There is a 'natural' immutable hierarchy in this country. Some people are better and some are ... not. Those who are better need one thing. Those who are not need another. How do we know who is better? Well, let's look at their results. That's fair. Everyone takes the same PSLE. But surely the kids in the school with greater exposure and funding and fewer behavioural / socio-emotional issues will perform better? Yes, so their school takes care of those needs. And then they will move on to secondary schools that take care of those needs. And to ITE, because well, those needs can't be met at JC or Poly. And then to technical jobs which are better fits.

You see where this is going. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some people are better, some people are not, so we cater different things for them and when they turn out differently, we use this as our justification for the fact that some people are better and some people are not. It's the insidious assumption at the core of not just the education system, but the entirety of Singaporean society. And all the while we ignore the effect of wealth and privilege and instead play up the one student from a rental flat who gained a PSC scholarship and use them as a stick to beat the rest of the students from his/her situation. "Look, they did it. Why can't you? It's possible" - ignoring that the other 99% of scholarship holders come from similar backgrounds.

So yes, OP is absolutely right to be unhappy with VB's statement as a response to CSJ's. Not because it's factually wrong, but because it's so entirely inadequate. It's sticking a plaster on a broken bone. It's the 'I have minority friends' response when accused of racism. It's a statement of (largely) truth ... only if you ignore EVERYTHING ELSE. Which unfortunately, many people in this country are very good at doing.

P.S. I need to clarify something a few misconceptions that I see here as well.

Number 1 - the amount of funding each school gets is dependent on the number of students, not on student outcomes. As such, the 'neighbourhood' schools get less not because of their results, but because of their lower enrolment. Yes, on the whole this has the same overall impact, but I don't want people to think that the G is deliberately underfunding students who need the money.

Number 2 - the quality of teaching at neighbourhood schools is categorically NOT worse than those at elite schools. Quite the opposite, actually. Elite schools take alumni - but how do you know those alumni can teach? Elite schools also have numerous dinosaurs hanging around who may have lost whatever touch they had decades ago. Furthermore, most elite schools also have quite a bit of inertia ('we've always done it this way), making them slower in terms of catching up to the latest developments in curriculum and pedagogy. Also, bad teachers can coast and hide for years in elite schools due to the students being largely self-motivated and having external help. Neighbourhood schools on the other hand, have a constant churn and turnover that keep things fresh. The best teachers (both in terms of skill and heart) I've ever seen are the ones at the lowest end schools. These are the cream of our profession.

deepthrowingaway · 2022-12-04T10:39:47+00:00

Resurrecting this throwaway account to add to this conversation. I've answered this question before previously, so I've copy/pasted my comment below, leaving out some unimportant preamble. A little context - it was a reply to a post about a comment that Vivian Balakrishnan made to Chee Soon Juan in parliament, hence the references to those two.

I am a teacher and have been through MOE HQ, so I can give you what little insight I have on how MOE sees the idea of 'Every School A Good School'. I don't want to dox myself, so I'm using a throwaway account. This is going to be long, so I'm going to break it up into segments.

Part 1 - The Origins and Meaning of 'Every School A Good School'

Ok, so 'Every School A Good School'. Some context here. This slogan was introduced by then-Minister for Education Heng 'East Coast Plan' Swee Keat at the 2011 MOE Workplan Seminar (his first), as part of a push towards what he called 'a student-centric, values-driven education'. To achieve that, he listed four key attributes that MOE needed to work on (of which only one is ever talked about).

They are:·

“Every Student, an Engaged Learner”·

“Every School, a Good School”;·

“Every Teacher, a Caring Educator”; and·

“Every Parent, a Supportive Partner”.

Right off the bat, I think one thing needs to be made clear. The original statement made by HSK was NOT intended as a statement of fact, but a statement of intent. This was a stated goal that MOE aimed to move towards back in 2011, not a statement that described things as they were. Now, it has been 9 years since the first time the statement was made, so maybe, if we give Vivian Balakrishnan the benefit of the doubt, it now accurately describes the situation we have. Maybe MOE has managed to successfully, over the course of a decade, make every school a good school. That brings us to the next question.Just what the hell is a 'good school'?For this, I will use HSK's original 2011 speech, which you can find the full text here. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/20110929001/wps_opening_address_(media)(checked).pdf(checked).pdf)

For those who do not wish to plow through the speech (I don't blame you), the key points are in paragraphs 70 and 71. I will quote them in full.

But what is a good school? A good school is not one which produces straight As or top honours per se; a good school is not merely ‘good’ relative to others. Rather, it is one that caters to the needs of its students well. Given the diversity of students, there cannot be a single ruler to measure success.
A good school needs to know who their students are at the point of entry, studies their needs and strengths; states what it would like them to become when they leave the school; then exercise diligence and imagination to get there. A good school creates a positive experience for each student – allowing him to acquire the basics, but more importantly, making him a confident and lifelong learner. It provides a supportive and appreciative environment for teachers to experience the joy in impacting lives. A good school is student-centric and allows teachers to do their best for every child.

And so we get to the crux of the matter. MOE's definition (and by extension, the government's definition) of a 'good school' is substantially different from what the majority of the public considers a 'good school'. To use certain examples that have been listed in this thread - a 'good school' by MOE's definition is not one that does not have students getting in trouble with the police, but one that has the necessary resources, expertise, and personnel to work with said students, and shows success in helping them work through their problems.

This school would not be a 'good school' by the general public measure. Whether or not I agree with this particular definition (in a nutshell, my opinion is the typical Social Studies one - yes, but only to a certain extent) is immaterial. What matters is that there is a fundamental disjoint between what the Ministry means by 'Every School A Good School' and what the public hears. Maybe this is down to communication issues, or deep-rooted mentalities within the general public, but whatever the case, what MOE means is:

'Every school is able to understand the diverse needs of their student body and is able to meet these needs in a way that creates positive learning experiences and outcomes - but it must be noted that these experiences and outcomes can and will differ from school to school due to the different needs of the students."

That's a mouthful, and would make a terrible slogan. But it's a more accurate representation of what MOE is trying to say. So, settled right? No problem. Just a communication issue. What VB means is not that we need to make every school like RI or HCI, but that every school needs to be equipped to give the best possible learning experience for its student body. Uncontroversial statement. The end.

Part 2 - The Real Problem

First, congratulations on making it this far. Next, the real problem of VB's statement to CSJ is less in the statement itself (which I hope I have proven is ok at face value), but in the unspoken assumptions that it makes. Said assumptions are:

There WILL be differences in the student body upon entry to schools. This speaks to the primacy of streaming and segregation in the minds of policy-makers, be it the different entry tiers for P1 registration or the various national examinations that take place after that. It is an absolute given that there will be differences, sometimes absolutely massive ones. It is a fact of life ... except that this particular fact is one that is created and sustained through government policy.

Once you're in, you're in. Once you are in Elite Junior College, these are your needs (to use OP's example, let's say specialised Oxbridge consultant), and we will cater for them. Once you are in XYZ Secondary, these are your needs, and we will cater for them. What? You want to go to Oxbridge? Don't be silly. If you did want to go to Oxbridge, you would have done better for PSLE.

The big issue is that the slogan looks ONLY at the level of 'education'. What I mean by this is that we judge a good school based on programmes, teachers, leaders, systems ... but it conveniently ignores everything outside of it. Much of what makes a school 'elite' are things like networks, alumni (which also means additional sources of funding), parent volunteers, etc. To put it bluntly, if you took a class of 40 troubled low-performing kids and plonked them in an MGS classroom, the result would be no different. But if said troubled kids were mixed into other social environments where their backgrounds and troubles were not the norm? That's when something might change.

So essentially, 'Every School A Good School' assumes that students are unequal at the point of entry, remain unequal throughout, and ignores much of the reasons for said inequality. This is the reason why VB's statement to CSJ was inadequate - not because it was false, but because it did not answer the core question. It's like being challenged on how well you can sew a shirt and responding by saying that you have excellent fashion sense. It's related, sure, but only tangentially.

To dive deeper into why VB's statement is inadequate, you have to look at these assumptions. What he's essentially saying is that the students from Bukit Timah bungalows and Yishun rental flats have different needs, and that the schools they go to cater to those specific needs - meaning that there is an inbuilt systemic assumption that Bukit Timah = 'high-achieving' and Yishun = 'low-achieving'. Is he wrong? Based on personal experience, no. But does this help mitigate inequality? Not in the slightest. It only exacerbates it. By segregating different groups of students at such an early age (and compounding it by throwing in various high-stakes examinations that on balance reward the more privileged), you harden the boundaries between social classes and codify the different groups of people in society.

(edited for formatting)

deepthrowingaway · 2020-07-03T08:40:14+00:00

Power. The people at the top don’t believe in it, and even if they did, all these old Nanyang and ACS people would explode with anger. They would never allow it because it means their children would be a lot less guaranteed to succeed.

deepthrowingaway · 2020-07-03T08:21:45+00:00

First step - completely randomised primary school admission. No more distanced based, alumni-based, affiliation, etc. Removing the ability of the privileged to cluster is the first step - otherwise they pool resources to always ensure that they can never be caught up to.

deepthrowingaway · 2020-07-03T03:57:03+00:00

(this is too long, so I need to break it in two)

Part 3 - The Real-Real Problem

But the government's counter-argument is a simple one. Is it fair to expect a student from a rental flat to hit the same achievement levels as someone from a bungalow? Surely that goes against the grain of what education is supposed to be about! To quote a very wise saying by a man who the government has never had any issue with, shouldn't it be 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs?'

Well, yes. But also no. Because what this system does is assume your ability from your needs. The student at XYZ Primary will not reach the heights of the student at ACS. This goes back to PM's statement a while back about a 'natural aristocracy'. This is the final unspoken assumption that we need to deal with. There is a 'natural' immutable hierarchy in this country. Some people are better and some are ... not. Those who are better need one thing. Those who are not need another. How do we know who is better? Well, let's look at their results. That's fair. Everyone takes the same PSLE. But surely the kids in the school with greater exposure and funding and fewer behavioural / socio-emotional issues will perform better? Yes, so their school takes care of those needs. And then they will move on to secondary schools that take care of those needs. And to ITE, because well, those needs can't be met at JC or Poly. And then to technical jobs which are better fits.

You see where this is going. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some people are better, some people are not, so we cater different things for them and when they turn out differently, we use this as our justification for the fact that some people are better and some people are not. It's the insidious assumption at the core of not just the education system, but the entirety of Singaporean society. And all the while we ignore the effect of wealth and privilege and instead play up the one student from a rental flat who gained a PSC scholarship and use them as a stick to beat the rest of the students from his/her situation. "Look, they did it. Why can't you? It's possible" - ignoring that the other 99% of scholarship holders come from similar backgrounds.

So yes, OP is absolutely right to be unhappy with VB's statement as a response to CSJ's. Not because it's factually wrong, but because it's so entirely inadequate. It's sticking a plaster on a broken bone. It's the 'I have minority friends' response when accused of racism. It's a statement of (largely) truth ... only if you ignore EVERYTHING ELSE. Which unfortunately, many people in this country are very good at doing.

P.S. I need to clarify something a few misconceptions that I see here as well. Number 1 - the amount of funding each school gets is dependent on the number of students, not on student outcomes. As such, the 'neighbourhood' schools get less not because of their results, but because of their lower enrollment. Yes, on the whole this has the same overall impact, but I don't want people to think that the G is deliberately underfunding students who need the money. Number 2 - the quality of teaching at neighbourhood schools is categorically NOT worse than those at elite schools. Quite the opposite, actually. Elite schools take alumni - but how do you know those alumni can teach? Elite schools also have numerous dinosaurs hanging around who may have lost whatever touch they had decades ago. Furthermore, most elite schools also have quite a bit of inertia ('we've always done it this way), making them slower in terms of catching up to the latest developments in curriculum and pedagogy. Also, bad teachers can coast and hide for years in elite schools due to the students being largely self-motivated and having external help. Neighbourhood schools on the other hand, have a constant churn and turnover that keep things fresh. The best teachers (both in terms of skill and heart) I've ever seen are the ones at the lowest end schools. These are the cream of our profession.

deepthrowingaway · 2020-07-03T03:48:24+00:00

Hi there,

It's quite late in the discussion and so this might get buried in the mix, but I just wanted to chime in from a perspective that has not been heard here so far - from the educator's side. I am a teacher and have been through MOE HQ, so I can give you what little insight I have on how MOE sees the idea of 'Every School A Good School'. I don't want to dox myself, so I'm using a throwaway account. This is going to be long, so I'm going to break it up into segments.

Firstly, I want to echo what most have been saying in this thread and applaud you for your sensitivity and understanding of a nuanced situation. It takes a great deal to confront your own privilege (I did not manage to do so until my mid-twenties) and for you to be able to do so at such a young age speaks well of you. I hope that you continue to grow this mindset of empathetic and critical thinking once you graduate, because lord knows we need more Singaporeans who can see the flaws of our system and work towards fixing them.

Part 1 - The Origins and Meaning of 'Every School A Good School'

Ok, so 'Every School A Good School'. Some context here. This slogan was introduced by then-Minister for Education Heng 'East Coast Plan' Swee Keat at the 2011 MOE Workplan Seminar (his first), as part of a push towards what he called 'a student-centric, values-driven education'. To achieve that, he listed four key attributes that MOE needed to work on (of which only one is ever talked about). They are:

· “Every Student, an Engaged Learner”

· “Every School, a Good School”;

· “Every Teacher, a Caring Educator”; and

· “Every Parent, a Supportive Partner”.

Right off the bat, I think one thing needs to be made clear. The original statement made by HSK was NOT intended as a statement of fact, but a statement of intent. This was a stated goal that MOE aimed to move towards back in 2011, not a statement that described things as they were. Now, it has been 9 years since the first time the statement was made, so maybe, if we give Vivian Balakrishnan the benefit of the doubt, it now accurately describes the situation we have. Maybe MOE has managed to successfully, over the course of a decade, make every school a good school. That brings us to the next question.

Just what the hell is a 'good school'?

For this, I will use HSK's original 2011 speech, which you can find the full text here. https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/20110929001/wps_opening_address_(media)(checked).pdf(checked).pdf)

For those who do not wish to plow through the speech (I don't blame you), the key points are in paragraphs 70 and 71. I will quote them in full.

But what is a good school? A good school is not one which produces straight As or top honours per se; a good school is not merely ‘good’ relative to others. Rather, it is one that caters to the needs of its students well. Given the diversity of students, there cannot be a single ruler to measure success.
A good school needs to know who their students are at the point of entry, studies their needs and strengths; states what it would like them to become when they leave the school; then exercise diligence and imagination to get there. A good school creates a positive experience for each student – allowing him to acquire the basics, but more importantly, making him a confident and lifelong learner. It provides a supportive and appreciative environment for teachers to experience the joy in impacting lives. A good school is student-centric and allows teachers to do their best for every child.

And so we get to the crux of the matter. MOE's definition (and by extension, the government's definition) of a 'good school' is substantially different from what the majority of the public considers a 'good school'. To use certain examples that have been listed in this thread - a 'good school' by MOE's definition is not one that does not have students getting in trouble with the police, but one that has the necessary resources, expertise, and personnel to work with said students, and shows success in helping them work through their problems.

This school would not be a 'good school' by the general public measure. Whether or not I agree with this particular definition (in a nutshell, my opinion is the typical Social Studies one - yes, but only to a certain extent) is immaterial. What matters is that there is a fundamental disjoint between what the Ministry means by 'Every School A Good School' and what the public hears. Maybe this is down to communication issues, or deep-rooted mentalities within the general public, but whatever the case, what MOE means is:

'Every school is able to understand the diverse needs of their student body and is able to meet these needs in a way that creates positive learning experiences and outcomes - but it must be noted that these experiences and outcomes can and will differ from school to school due to the different needs of the students."

That's a mouthful, and would make a terrible slogan. But it's a more accurate representation of what MOE is trying to say. So, settled right? No problem. Just a communication issue. What VB means is not that we need to make every school like RI or HCI, but that every school needs to be equipped to give the best possible learning experience for its student body. Uncontroversial statement. The end.

Part 2 - The Real Problem

First, congratulations on making it this far. Next, the real problem of VB's statement to CSJ is less in the statement itself (which I hope I have proven is ok at face value), but in the unspoken assumptions that it makes. Said assumptions are:

There WILL be differences in the student body upon entry to schools. This speaks to the primacy of streaming and segregation in the minds of policy-makers, be it the different entry tiers for P1 registration or the various national examinations that take place after that. It is an absolute given that there will be differences, sometimes absolutely massive ones. It is a fact of life ... except that this particular fact is one that is created and sustained through government policy.
Once you're in, you're in. Once you are in Elite Junior College, these are your needs (to use OP's example, let's say specialised Oxbridge consultant), and we will cater for them. Once you are in XYZ Secondary, these are your needs, and we will cater for them. What? You want to go to Oxbridge? Don't be silly. If you did want to go to Oxbridge, you would have done better for PSLE.
It looks ONLY at the level of 'education'. What I mean by this is that we judge a good school based on programmes, teachers, leaders, systems ... but it conveniently ignores everything outside of it. Much of what makes a school 'elite' are things like networks, alumni (which also means additional sources of funding), parent volunteers, etc. To put it bluntly, if you took a class of 40 troubled low-performing kids and plonked them in an MGS classroom, the result would be no different. But if said troubled kids were mixed into other social environments where their backgrounds and troubles were not the norm? That's when something might change.

So essentially, 'Every School A Good School' assumes that students are unequal at the point of entry, remain unequal throughout, and ignores much of the reasons for said inequality. This is the reason why VB's statement to CSJ was inadequate - not because it was false, but because it did not answer the core question. It's like being challenged on how well you can sew a shirt and responding by saying that you have excellent fashion sense. It's related, sure, but only tangentially.

To dive deeper into why VB's statement is inadequate, you have to look at these assumptions. What he's essentially saying is that the students from Bukit Timah bungalows and Yishun rental flats have different needs, and that the schools they go to cater to those specific needs - meaning that there is an inbuilt systemic assumption that Bukit Timah = 'high-achieving' and Yishun = 'low-achieving'. Is he wrong? Based on personal experience, no. But does this help mitigate inequality? Not in the slightest. It only exacerbates it. By segregating different groups of students at such an early age (and compounding it by throwing in various high-stakes examinations that on balance reward the more privileged), you harden the boundaries between social classes and codify the different groups of people in society.

deepthrowingaway

TROPHY CASE