e pur si muove

I am pleasantly surprised that in the thirty hours or so since i posted the first three parts, news seems to have spread again, with comments hither and thither. anyway i’ve finally figured out how i want to phrase the last half of my rant, which is now rapidly losing emotional steam and degenerating into an opinion/editorial-like pseudoessay. and no, i am not still in that biochemistry class right now. so here are the next few installments. (whether or not there are any more depends on how much residual rant still lives on.) this part expounds on the various uses (and abuses) of examinations, and what they are trying to measure.

- part iv -

organizations have long given their own examinations as a means for differentiating the large numbers of candidates for open spots, and to aid their selection of successful candidates. this began with the chinese civil service examination system way back when, and was an institution that survived the dynastic cycle intact and kicking. i remember reading in some history textbook that some historians even claim that even in times of inter-dynastic anarchy, people still faithfully registered and took the entrance examinations! astounding!

of course, our dear mm claimed that he decided that gee, since this worked so well for imperial china, it must therefore work well for singapore as well and therefore instituted mass examinations and (by induction) created the entire scholarship system as well, to have the best and brightest steer the future of the country. (on a side note, this claim is not quite complete since reliable historical evidence exists that the british colonial system also did place emphasis on examinations, and did administer examinations, such as the qualifier for the venerable rhodes scholarship. and what do you think the ‘c’ in gce ‘o’/'a’ levels means? it certainly doesn’t refer to some synonymous city in massachusetts, usa.)

it is arguable that in the years before and immediately after singapore’s independence, such a system was need for lubricating the engine of modernization that supposedly propelled singapore from its third world, ok-so-i’m-independent-now-what state to the ultra-modern economic miracle it is today. whether it has indeed attained its targets is of course an entirely different story, since quantifiable metrics, i.e. economic indicators, paint a picture that jars with the anecdotal experiences of the lay singaporean. and consider this: merely a generation ago, the concept of mass literacy of one that was just sinking in to the populace. our grandparents’ generation was one huge collection of hardworking illiterates, punctuated by the occasional person who stayed in school long enough to pick up an alphabet, a handwriting style and perhaps some knowledge of the world. i bet if you administered any gce examination to them, the vast majority of our grandparents would have ended up being labeled as blithering idiots. maybe someone should travel back in time and sell them ten-year-series first.

let’s make it painfully obvious why the preceding situation is ludicrous. any examination system, by definition, differentiates good candidates from bad candidates, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ being defined as the score obtained on some examination script taken by the candidate, as graded by some rubric. the examination therefore picks out a select group of ‘good’ students, which are a subset of the entire candidate body and are therefore a set with restricted diversity in characteristics. this discrimination is based solely on some imperfect measure of the candidates’ knowledge of some specific canon of facts and/or skills deemed to be important. that is why it makes no sense to administer a written test to illiterates. many other examples abound in the educational psychology literature, particularly with regard to cultural settings. an example in point: a tribesman from the depths of the borneo jungle would fail a popular culture test miserably, and we would fail to survive in the borneo jungle just as miserably. what is considered ‘important’ is a highly culture-specific thing.

so the chinese civil service examination made sense in its time. simply by requiring that candidates be able to read and write, a vast majority of the unwashed populace was thus excluded from a system where record-keeping is of paramount importance. academic examinations, of course, work well in their academic settings: assessments for coursework play an integral part in modern education; the french and chinese universities still give their own proprietary entrance examinations to this day to select promising undergraduates to groom. but since the advent of the industrialized age, the need for mass education to promote mass literacy had precipitated the need of standardized testing, in the form of gce/gcse certificates and sat/act/gre scores. a recent development in the field of educational testing, standardized testing is seen by relieved bureaucrats as a convenient measure for deciding who to admit to college and who to condemn to working as roadsweepers for life. (the occasional drop-out-turned-billionaire is to be forgetton as merely “one of those flukes”).

examining agencies, however, readily admit the limitations of standardized examinations. the educational testing service, administrator of the infamous scholastic aptitude test (sat), used to have this disclaimer on its website that its examinations should never be used as the sole judge of a students’ worth, and stressed the importance of the considering entire application package. (i have been unable to find this disclaimer again when i checked just now, so this could be just a figment of my imagination.) independent research studies by many educational psychologists have concluded that the sat scores are a reasonably good predictor for scholastic success in college, but is useless for predicting anything else outside its
intended scope, such as future salaries.

a telling foreshadowing for the abuse of examinations now turn our attention back to our little red dot (or in modern political parlace, our little piece of snot). the idea of using standardized examinations has been carried to an overly rational, and hence illogical, extreme: instead of using such examinations for what it was intended for (for which it is by no means perfect), it has become a determinant for one’s social status and hence place an explicit (albeit well camouflaged) cap on the net value of one’s worth. while maternal pride at studious progeny is undoubtedly a chinese tradition dating back to mencius (or before?), presumably a predication of future riches and/or social status and a rich source of proud maternal stories and dreams of eternally bright futures, studiousness no longer has any intrinsic meaning in determining one’s future success (or lack thereof) in society.

this misguided assumption is reflected in our education system: we have the slow ‘normal stream’ track, the intermediate ‘express stream’ track, and the various highfalutin’ ’special’ tracks like the gifted education program (recently scrapped in favor of integration into the curricula of top schools), special assistance program schools (a relic of the bribe made to the chinese intelligentsia to shut up while lky anglicized singapore), and now the special schools. no i don’t mean special education for the mentally retarded, bless their souls. i meant the nus science school and the singapore sports school. and tellingly, few people remember the mentally slow, a significant fraction of our population rapidly being left behind by the accelerating pace of change in our modern globalized society. but back to the other special tracks, the impression that the civil service gives us is that if you’re not one of their scholars, you’ll forever be second-class to them, and forever suffer less experienced (and possibly less competent) scholars promoted over your heads while you continue to slog away toward that glass ceiling? (ok, enough scholar rants here. i suppose i’ve made my point already.)

a particularly interesting aspect of our education system pertains to scholars-to-be: the gce a’ level papers 0, the so-called ’s’ papers. presumably meaning ’special’ papers, but more accurately termed ’scholarship’ papers, the anecdotal history of papers 0 indicate its creation by the ucles to as to fulfill the need of a scholarship agency to refine its pick of candidates, who have been picked up more and more perfect-looking grades from institutions that used to be schools, but had degenerated at some point in its history into diploma mills. now ’s’ papers were meant for the exceptionally bright to strut their worth by pitting their intellects against problems of higher difficulty as compared to the typical ‘a’ level question. now we have the usual trappings and paraphernalia that surround every other subject: lectures on ’s’ paper topics, ten-year-series for ’s’ papers, and horror-of-horrors, model answers for ’s’ paper questions!

drawing from local scholarship history, this scholarship agency must be none other than the public service commission, at one time the only such agency based in singapore, and still the issuer of the most prestigious scholarships today. but consider this, my dear civil servants: what the hell does a background in electrical engineering have to do with the civil service? if you claim that such backgrounds promote the development of skills such as critical thinking, why not just test that outright? why insist that scholars maintain their “standards of excellence” by consistently scoring high grades, groom them to become useful engineers/scientists (and precious few humanists), then grab them back home and mire them in administrative trivia for the rest of their lives? is this not the clearest example yet of a complete mismatch between what academic scores say and what these people will eventually end up doing? are the best students necessarily the best leaders? and are lousy students necessarily lousy leaders?

ok, i have to stop now, or i’ll never be done picking on scholarship agencies. it is a sad reflection of the times when even the best and brightest among us have to stoop to rote memorization to keep ahead in an ever-changing rat race, and have to jump through higher and higher hoops just to succeed. and sadder still, when those in charge insist that academic merit is a critical feature of a promising leader of tomorrow’s society.

- end of part iv -

This article does a real nice job of introducing the problem. I’ve annotated it here and there with updates.

March 1, 1997 In Japan, Even Tots Must Make the Grade
By Keiko Katsumata, Mother Wired Tokyo Reporter

TOKYO BUREAU - Here in Tokyo, twice a week, Ko goes to cram school to prepare for the crucial entrance exam he will have to take next year. He arrives for class with a tiny knapsack packed with his crayons, lunch box and a diaper. He is, after all, only 2 years old.

Japan’s super-competitive system of ‘examination hell’ is engulfing ever-younger children, spawning a new industry of cram schools to help the baby boomers’ babies pass entrance exams for elite private kindergartens and elementary schools.

About 150 cram schools in Tokyo now cater to preschoolers, who are drilled in the test-taking strategies they need to beat the 10-to-1 odds for a slot on the kiddie fast track.

Among the lessons: Know your colors, shapes and nursery rhymes. Don’t cry or whine. Sit with your hands politely resting on your thighs. And never take more than one cookie when offered the cookie jar.

Meanwhile, the cram schools also coach the babies’ mothers on how to ace the equally vital parental interview.

Among the tips: Wear a conservative, navy blue suit, a white blouse, low heels and no flashy jewelry. A Chanel handbag is OK at ‘liberal’ kindergartens such as the famous Aoyama Gakuin, but a quiet, non-designer black bag is de rigueur at venerable institutions such as Denenchofu Futaba, whose alumni include Crown Princess Masako, wife of the future Japanese emperor.

Working mothers are frowned upon, and their children are less likely to be accepted by elite schools. Even stay-at-home moms are told to come across as homey during the interview by mentioning how much they enjoy baking special treats for their children.

‘It’s very difficult, but because of the way Japan is now, it cannot be helped,’ said Toshiko Hayashi, whose daughter Risa, 3, was rejected by the kindergarten of her choice and will have to try again next fall.

Risa has been attending one of Tokyo’s better cram schools since she was 18 months old. Tuition is $730 a month for two mornings a week.

How long will she keep attending?

‘Until she passes,’ her mother said firmly.

Like most Japanese trends, the baby cram schools originated in Tokyo but have spread to Osaka and smaller cities. A Tokai Bank survey conducted last year in Tokyo and Nagoya found that 26% of preschoolers were either attending cram schools or following correspondence courses at home. Their families paid an average of $124 per month.

Parents who once attended cram schools to help get into good high schools or colleges are enrolling their toddlers despite warnings from educators that intensive tutoring is unnecessary and possibly harmful for them. Some of the elite kindergartens and elementary schools also protest the advent of baby cram schools even while admitting their young alumni.

Parents call the cram schools a ‘necessary evil’ in Japan’s ‘education society,’ where graduates of a handful of elite universities have for decades been seen as monopolizing the nation’s best jobs, highest salaries and deepest respect.

The rigid system has loosened, with prominent educators arguing that a degree from Tokyo University, known as ‘Todai,’ will no longer guarantee success in the 21st century. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has targeted education as one of six areas urgently in need of structural reform. But even Education Ministry officials think change will be slow in coming, and millions of anxious parents remain convinced that a degree from Todai is the best possible ticket to a bright future for their children.

Although dreadfully Darwinian, Japan’s educational system has long been praised as a true meritocracy. Poor boys from the provinces could rise above the sons of tycoons if only they could pass the Todai entrance exam.

But now critics say the proliferation of cram schools is making it much more difficult for the children of lower-income families to break into the educational elite.

‘Japan appears to be one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, but it is not,’ said Todai education professor Toshiyuki Shiomi.

According to a study by Keio University professor Yoshio Higuchi, only 26% of students entering Todai in 1975 were graduates of private high schools. But by 1992, 52% came from private schools.

The wealthier the parents, the more likely they are to invest in cram schools that help their children win admission to these pricey private schools that in turn make it easier to get into the best universities.

‘Parental income has a huge effect on a child’s education, and through the employment system, it has a huge effect on the child’s lifelong income,’ Higuchi said.

Mothers of the cram-school kids said they are eager to get their kids into private schools not least because they believe those schools put a quick stop to children’s bullying, the bane of the Japanese public school system.

Moreover, by getting their children into the elite private kindergartens and elementary schools that are linked to prestigious universities, the mothers hope to spare their offspring the worst of examination hell.

For example, Miki Shimamura attended the Keio schools, whose university is the Japanese equivalent of Yale. Once admitted to the Keio Yochisa elementary school, Shimamura zipped through the Keio high school and was accepted at Keio University without having to take the notoriously tough entrance exam. All that was required of him was to keep up his grades; 90% of his elementary school classmates also made it.

Now Shimamura has taken over his father’s business, heading Keishinkai, an exclusive prep school for the 2- to 6-year-old set. Many of the Keishinkai parents have their hearts set on Keio.

Competition for the best kindergartens is so fierce that some parents are asked not only about their own backgrounds but about the educational and professional achievements of their parents, Shimamura said.

To pass the status sniff test, both parents must be college graduates; the father must be an executive at a large company, run his own company or be a medical doctor; and the mother must stay home to devote herself to educating her children. Although the parents must be able to pay the tuition–more than $11,000 a year for some kindergartens–nouveaux riches’ kids are not welcome. ‘It’s a re-creation of the elite in this country,’ Shimamura said.

Keishinkai offered ordinary preschool education from its founding in 1964 until about 10 years ago, when the first kindergartens began holding entrance exams. Now it specializes in helping children pass the tests, though Shimamura says that more than half his job is teaching parents to do a better job of child rearing.

Some of Shimamura’s little wards are children who have been so smothered by their parents that the school’s first task is to teach them how to get along with other children and how to have fun.

“Half of what the kindergarten testers look at is whether the kid can play,” he said.

Reading and writing are not part of the kindergarten tests, but cognitive skills and good manners matter. Shimamura’s children are taught to say “good morning” brightly and bow to their teacher, to carry tissues in their pockets and cover their noses when they sneeze.

Most of the kindergarten and elementary school testers offer the children juice and a snack and scrutinize their table manners. So Shimamura too has a bear-shaped jar of snacks. At first, the toddlers tend to stick their fists in and grab a handful, but the well-bred Japanese child is expected to take one or two and place them on a plate before eating them.

Coordination also counts in Japanese society, where clumsiness is equated with stupidity. One elementary school test required the applicant to move a pile of beans from one plate to another with chopsticks. At Shimamura’s school, even the 2-year-olds are taught to use scissors (under one-to-one adult supervision), and older children are taught to fold their clothing and tie their shoelaces.

‘Lately, if we leave it up to the parents, some of the kids never learn,’ he said.

At Ko’s cram school in a posh Tokyo suburb, one little girl spends her first day howling inconsolably over the departure of her mother. After a period of free play, the other children sit behind a tiny desk while the teacher teaches them to sing songs, draw and identify pictures of a snowman, blocks, cake, a banana and rice balls.

Ko, the son of a department store magnate, is hard at work trying to move peanuts from one bowl to another with a spoon. “No, no, no!” says the teacher as he tries to shove one intractable nut onto his spoon using his free hand.

It doesn’t look like cram school, except that the teacher is grading each child on how smoothly he or she performs the peanut trick.

‘The 2-year-olds don’t understand they are being graded. It’s the parents who feel the pressure, and so they start drilling their kids at home,’ said Chizuko Nihira, a Kyoto mother of two. ‘And when the kids can’t do it, they [the parents] become scared at the thought of not sending their kids to cram school–even though it was the cram school that made them scared! It’s a vicious cycle.’

Nihira decided against sending her son Hiroshi to one of three neighborhood cram schools, and he got into a good private school anyway. But she soon discovered that Hiroshi was the only first-grader who had not been to cram school. While he could write his name, his classmates could all write sentences. Nevertheless, he caught up within one term.

‘There are some parents who send their kids to cram school because their friends all go, and there’s nobody around for them to play with if they don’t go,’ she said.’It’s sad.’

The scary part is how this is catching on in Singapore. Think of PAP kindergartens with their homework for pre-primary children, toddlers being dragged to enrichment classes, and babies who can hardly walk being marked on how well they can count. *shudder* And think about the rich kids who each have their cadres of tuition teachers. Looks like korea is hardly immune either [pdf]. and the parellels with singapore are just as revealing:

Originally, private tuition is (sic) supposed to help students in keeping up with the school curriculum. In this respect, private tutoring is auxiliary to the learning in schools. However, things have been reversed in Korea. There is a tendency to rely more on private tutors than teachers at school, particularly in order to prepare for the entrance exams. It is presumed wither because the level of learning for the tests is too much (sic) high or the level of teaching is mediocre, of both. Consequently, schools are losing the trust of parents and students who find the alternative in private tutoring.

What’s sad that even in singapore’s so-called good schools, teachers expect their students to have tuition teachers, and more scarily, have started to shift their responsibilities to their tuition teachers! My brother went to one such school where the most common thing my mother and I heard from his teachers were: “go ask your tuition teacher, I don’t have time to teach all this.” It’s just shocking. And his teachers were equally shocked to discover that he did not have any tuition teachers. Remember what i said about meritocracy giving rise to social pressure? Guess what my mother did? Yeah. The tutor didn’t last too long though; it was obvious even to my brother that he was just BS-ing his way through. And if this doesn’t convince you that meritocracy-linked education systems are bad, nothing will:

Sociologists point out the status attainment competition as the prime reason of (sic) private tutoring. Education is almost identified with social upward mobility in Korea. Therefore, the competition to get an opportunity for better and higher schooling becomes intense.

It’s telling, though, that the South Korean Ministry of Finance is not afraid of telling off the Ministry of Education for turning a blind eye to the increasingly widespread trend of private tuition and its increasing burden on household budgets. It’s just something that will never ever catch on in the whitewashed Singapore Government. At least the Japanese seem to have a serious intent to reform their system [pdf]. It took the Japanese until the cram schools started ranking universities (a complete reversal of power here: the private dictating the public!) before they started to figure out something is seriously wrong with their system. (This is implied in page 7 of this paper [pdf]) How much worse must our education system get before we admit that it needs an overhaul?

A straits times article, archived for reference:

A testing experience for pupils
Straits Times, October 13, 2004

TEACH less, so that students can learn more, so the Prime Minister urges us. I believe that the objective of doing so is to give students more time to synthesise information, think creatively and hone processes in problem solving. It augers well for us that our leaders see the need for a broad-based education for our young. However, I
think this will not happen if we do not re-think the testing system.
After preparing my eldest son for the recent Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), I am even more convinced of this.

Firstly, little creativity and real learning take place in the preparation process. The past year was spent drilling him in skills
related to tackling test papers and handling exam conditions. We did a lot of work but he did not do much learning outside the test papers and made little progress in honing lateral-thinking abilities, much less develop creativity.

Secondly, the exam is not age appropriate - making 12-year-olds concentrate for more than two hours is not an age-appropriate
expectation. Learning experts the world over concur that even for adults, our concentration and ability to learn or focus drops after the first hour. When a task is not age appropriate, children will not be in ‘Flow’ (which is when they learn best). Anyone who has prepared children for the Maths paper knows that the first step to success involves practising to concentrate for 2hrs 15mins, during which they do 50 sums (15 problem sums) under exam conditions.

Thirdly, it has become an increasingly unfair test in recent years. The Maths and Science papers have more and more questions that are out of syllabus. The Maths paper has an increasing portion of non-routine questions that require skills not taught in the textbook. For weaker students just trying to get by, these questions terrify them.

While preparing for the PSLE, my son’s teachers made him buy and do the PSLE Examination Questions 1999-2003 (sample questions reproduced with the permission of the Education Ministry) for all subjects and used them to test the pupils. We got hold of the top schools’ past prelim papers which were a lot more difficult than the sample PSLE questions and he practised until he could consistently score in the mid-80s for English, Maths and Science.

I wanted him to be well prepared for the PSLE. We had heard many a horror story. Four years ago, pupils came out of the Maths exam crying, floored by a non-routine question. In the last few years, Science papers have been getting ridiculously difficult. Last year many children cried after the Chinese paper.

Unfortunately, our worst nightmares came true. The Maths paper (Section C) was rated by even the A* students as being difficult and the Science paper (Section B), absolutely impossible. My son came out crying after the Science paper (Science is his favourite subject and he has been a consistent A student). Most children said the Maths paper was two or three times more difficult than the PSLE sample questions and the Science paper, three to four times more difficult.

By doing this, the ministry is making the exam very unfair to both the teachers and the students, especially when it had published sample questions from past years which students and teachers would take as the standard. The children said that a lot of the questions in the Science paper consisted of experiments and equipment they had never seen before. Parts of it were also out of syllabus.

For example, there was a question in which a rod - half of which is made of iron and the other half, of wood - is balanced in the middle. Pupils were asked if the iron part would go up or down when heated. The pupils learnt that matter expands when heated and contracts when cooled but there was nothing in the syllabus about the effect of heat on the weight of materials.

Putting children through this kind of testing experience demoralises them. If the content to be tested becomes a moving target, then preparing for the test is like catching the wind. My son said that if he does well for Science, it would be by fluke.

I wonder if this is the type of message we want our children to grow up with. While I am willing to live with the fact that we had to put creativity on the back burner for the past year and drill him for the PSLE, I had hoped that by putting in the hard and incredibly boring work to prepare for the exams, my son would be encouraged to see that hard work does pay off in the form of reasonably good results and a positive major-exam experience.

After what he has gone through, even if he gets A grades for Maths and Science, they have become meaningless. The bad experience will shape his views towards work, the system and learning, more than the grades can make up for. The damage is done.

GRACE YONGFUI HAN (MS)

This is just screaming for attention, isn’t it.

And here’s a forum thread started by an expatriate about to come to Singapore, on whether a local school would be suitable to send their child to. The comments are quite illuminating with regard to what non-singaporeans think about our school systems.

i am glad that my posts are having the desired effect, of stirring people to sit up and think about these issues, or at least provoke some kind of response. but of the discussions that i have stumbled upon (through referral data, icq comments, and email) i have noticed a discrepancy between my concept of meritocracy and the concept that other people seem to be using, which probably accounts for large gobs of misunderstanding.

to quote darius from the spug discussion:

I may be missing something here, but I feel the ranter is talking more about the education system and the examination culture rather than meritocracy.

The author seems to think that rising in the ranks in private and public sector jobs seems solely reliant on what grades they got in school. Good academic grades may get you into middle management in private sectors, or a higher scale in the civil service, but promotion after that is no longer looking at your exam results.

The only sacred cow which has yet to be slaughtered is the ceiling of promotion for none grads in the civil service. If you are a dip holder or lower, you need to work twice as hard and long to keep up with a grad.

in retrospect, i should have discussed this right at the beginning. oh well. let’s see if i can redress this here.

so when in doubt, let’s look up an encyclopedia. Wikipedia states: “Meritocracy is a system of government based on rule by ability rather than by wealth or social position.” a trite definition accepted by most people as the ‘correct’ definition. however i believe this statement is so vague as to be useless. here’s my logic: meritocracy says that the able should rule. that’s all well and good, and painfully tautological, really.

so let’s go implement this. immediately we run into a snafu: how does one measure ability? therein lies the rub. all forms of government face the same challenge: who would make the most able ruler? if one takes the broadest possible definition of meritocracy, as rule of the best, then all forms of government (excepting anarchy, possibly) practice meritocracy. the only differences are then in their operational definitions of what constitutes merit: noble birth, in an aristocracy; representativeness, in a democracy; royal birthright, in a monarchy; force of personality, in a dictatorship; or even some ‘mandate of heaven’, in a theocracy. ludicrous as it may seem at first blush, it’s not too difficult to convince yourself that all these, in their respective contexts, do indeed form some measure of ‘merit’. whether these are the ‘correct’ ones then boils down to a matter of taste, and more specifically the tastes of those in power.

therefore, we should discard this definition as being too broad and return to the original youngian definition of meritocracy, with ability defined by some academic metric. oh and before i get dragged into the same quagmire with metric, i shall state my operational definition here: a metric is a quantity measured with the intent of predicting ability. ability here is a generic filler to be specialized later: e.g. academic metrics predict academic ability, etc. it is critical to note that a metric is not a quantity that directly measures ability, it is a predictor of ability.

mind you! this distinction is important! ability as it stands is this vague woolly thing that we all agree is something a ‘good’ person has, in the sense of saying “this guy is really good at juggling!”, for example. well now that i’ve brought up juggling as a test case, let’s consider how one predicts ‘ability to juggle’. not knowing much about the subject, i can only hypothesize that the best ‘metric’ is to see how many objects a person can sustainably juggle simultaneously. the obvious hole in the definition of this metric is what constitutes ‘jugglable objects’, which then spews forth real, measurable metrics, such as the abilities to sustainably juggle N cue balls, N balloons, N flaming batons, N satay sticks, N alligators, etc. now what? do we take
some kind of average over all such objects to arrive at a definitive metric? should we bias it more strongly toward cue balls or flaming batons? or alligators? is this metric even useful? i hope it’s obvious that it’s so impractical! (not to mention that most people won’t even get past N = 1, or even N = 0.)

the situation then gets worse if one wants to measure something more abstract like ‘musical ability’. which characteristics should go into the metric? singing ability? pitch discrimination? ability to play an instrument? ability to play many instruments? quality of? and how should these even be quantified in the first place? jack up the abstraction level even higher, and i hope this gives everyone an inkling of how incredibly difficult it is to even conceive of a metric of just plain ‘ability’. and how the rafflesian ideal of all-roundedness - an athlete, scholar and leader - is woefully inadequate and ill-defined. (’all-roundedness’ is yet another loathsome meaningless Singlish buzzword - all-roundedness should mean rotundness and corpulence!)

that has not stopped people for trying to develop metrics for ability. in fact, one of the most controversial psychometric tests ever developed was designed with intention of measuring ability, by definining it as intelligence. this test is none other than the stanford-binet iq test, and has spawned huge misgiving in the united states over its supposed utility, or even predictive ability of (correlation with) the woolly notion of ‘intelligence’. today we have competing theories, such as that of multiple intelligences by howard gardner, and that elusive psychometric g factor that no psychologist has yet to nail a good definition for.

that’s why i say, meritocracy is meaningful only when defined as rule of the most academically inclined. to generalize any further is to be too broad. look at how merit is implied to be academic merit in this sociological study, for example. that’s why it’s premise is flawed, because psychometric
studies have shown that academic metrics are useless for predicting real-world success. that’s why many commenters have missed the point entirely - those who have left comments somewhere out there agree that academic metrics such as exams and gpas are poor indicators of ‘ability’ at best, but instead of drawing the logical conclusion, they attack my premise as mixing up meritocracy and metrics, that these two issues should be discussed separately.

nay, gentle readers. while metrics can exist without meritocracy, meritocracy cannot exist without metrics. that’s where the connection between meritocracy and the education system lies, because meritocracy is defined in terms of academic metrics. the challenge to define ability is the same logical challenge that recruitment staffers face: how do you pick the most able people for the job short of trying out every single candidate in that job? (assume for the moment that they are all fresh graduates and have no work experience, i.e. track records, to go by.) since the latter is blatantly impractical at best, one therefore have to resort to metrics to predict, based on available information, who is most suited for the job. the public sector has already chosen a meritocratic definition, predicting ability based on academic achievement. that’s the entire rationale underpinning the three different tracks for civil servants: the graduates, the non-graduates, and the scholars. the civil service’s faith in meritocracy is so unshakeable that a hypothetical 4.0 scholar who screws up again and again can nonetheless be promoted on schedule because he is destined to, by design.

many times this breeds resentment because such behavior is interpreted as high-handedness and/or favoritism by those in the non-scholar tracks who get passed over for promotion time and time again. happily, those in the private sector say that grades open the door for employment, but it is current performance in the job that dictates future career prospects. it is arguable from this point of view that it is the private sector, not the public sector, that is practicing the ‘idealized’ meritocracy, of truly giving the most important posts to
the most able, who have proven their abilities by their track records. i stand corrected on that one front. but the private sector cannot avoid interaction with the monolithic government that permeates every aspect of life in singapore. therefore, it too is not immune from the ravages of meritocracy.

and check out this bbc transcript exerpt:

Andrew Marr: Moving on from the education side when people arrive in the world of business, is it again the sort of perfectly graded rat race with every kind of rat of different sizes and abilities coming in and every little rat expected to have, you know, their degree their awards etc., is that how it seems to you?

Richard Scase: Indeed, large corporations are organised very much on that basis they recruit people on the basis of their academic qualifications and, often, this leads to a disappointing performance. Recruitment selection, intelligence tests, measurements, appraisals, assessments, organisations pride themselves on being very meritocratic but of course the reality is that they’re not. And the dream of becoming the meritocratic society hasn’t been fulfilled. A recent survey just published, for example, looks at Chief Executive Officers of the fifty largest companies in the UK and more the fifty per cent come from Public Schools, private schools, which educates something like, seven per cent of all pupils and, of course, entrepreneurs demonstrate how really large organisations in trying to be meritocratic, really do miss lots and lots of talent because what happens is that people who don’t fit in, the Richard Bransons of this world, the people who don’t have the qualifications, who are not seen to be attracted by large corporations they go off and set up their own very successful businesses.

a singaporean must have contributed to that Wikipedia article, by the way. note how it goes on and on about how singapore is the world’s closest thing to a meritocracy. i completely agree with that premise, because it shows up unintentionally in many aspects of singaporean culture. a social dimension of meritocracy which i have omitted from my previous
rant entirely (due to lack of data) is the agony felt by new parents, when deciding to subject their precious children to the pressure-cooker education system. witness the dilemma of this poor soul who tried valiantly to resist the social pressure to pack in ‘enrichment’ classes and homework for her then kindergarten-attending daughter. from kelvintan73, who archived this letter to the ST Forum:

Don’t kill love for learning<.p>

I REFER to the article, ‘Through-train option may pile on the pressure’ (ST, Jan 30), concerning the growing amount of stress that children face in Singapore’s education system.

I am particularly saddened by the case of the mentally fatigued Primary 3 boy from a top school who attends nine enrichment classes.

I have a daughter in Primary 3 this year. From the outset, I was determined that she should be allowed to develop at her own pace and have fun learning through daily experiences and play. Friends were surprised that she was not even attending a single enrichment class in her preschool days.

I had a hard time explaining to them why I would not be thrilled to have her read at two and count to a thousand by three. Of what use is the mastery of these skills at such tender ages except to inflate our egos when we compare our children’s achievements, as parents are wont to do? We should examine our motives before sending our kids to yet another enrichment class. Are we doing it for their benefit or ours?

We parents are sometimes guilty of trying to live vicariously through our children, hoping to bask in the reflected glory of their achievements. I was made to feel as if I was somewhat lacking as a parent for not preparing my child for academic life. Sometimes, the pressure to conform is so great that it takes superhuman effort just to resist the plethora of enrichment classes on offer.

Not surprisingly, my daughter was woefully unprepared for Primary 1. She was put in the Learning Support Programme (LSP) for English. According to the Ministry of Education (MOE) website, this programme caters to ‘pupils who lack the necessary language and literacy skills to cope with the English curriculum’.

My husband and I are both university graduates and ours is an English-speaking home. I am sure we are a statistical anomaly in MOE’s records for having a child in the LSP

.

We had wanted to spare her the drudgery of doing endless assessment papers during her kindergarten days in preparation for Primary 1. But we finally had to face reality and bought her assessment papers to practise.

In three months, she was out of the LSP programme and has been scoring mainly Band 1s in English since.

I have a nagging suspicion that she got into the programme because she was unfamiliar with doing assessment papers, rather than a lack of grasp of the language.

Do I regret not having forced her to rote-learn the language earlier? Absolutely not. She had a relatively carefree childhood, free from any extraneous structured lessons. She is still nowhere near the top in class, but I would rather have a happy and well-adjusted kid than a miserable one who scores high marks only by dint of sheer hard work.

Friends who are overseas say that their children love school now. Schools in Belgium do not even have formal exams for the first two or three years of primary school. My friend’s son spent one term studying and researching dinosaurs and mushrooms and he enjoyed it thoroughly. How many Singapore kids can say the same?

Children are now being taught concepts that were previously introduced only in secondary school. Is it really necessary to cram them with
facts and drill them endlessly, without any regard for their natural ability and inclinations? We may be causing them irreparable harm.

We advocate a passion for lifelong learning. Our children have a whole lifetime to acquire knowledge. Please don’t kill their love for learning by subjecting them to interminable rounds of mind-numbing tuition and enrichment classes.

MARIA LOH MUN FOONG (MS)

admittedly the last paragraph is ambiguous, but it is deliciously oxymoronic to think of “mind-numbing enrichment”.

the other thing i must stress is that i’m targeting the system, not its products. felumpfus has said it all. please don’t sink to the level of ad hominem arguments. (i have already been implicated in more than one argumentatum ad hominem tu quoque.) far too many rabid scholar-bashing singaporeans are already guilty of that; must you add your name to the ledger of the illogical?

no doubt the system exerts its pressure on indoctrinates, but it is each inductee’s choice whether to yield one way or another, or resist and face the consequences. there’s a wide spread in characteristics for graduates of the singapore education system.

thankfully, not all our individualities got rubber-stamped out. for me, i guess i was far too stubborn to yield. it has cost me time and time again, but i don’t care. i like to think that i escaped without too many brainwashed influences. if anything, i have been actively unlearning all that brainwashing (think national education, haha. no of course not, i mean temptations to chow mug and all that) since jc, possibly even since secondary school.