Stigmatisation and education.

Ong Ye Kung is asking for society to play a part in today’s papers.

He said that MOE has taken the initiative towards subject banding by 2024. Now, the mic or baton is handed over to society to rally up support towards a mindset shift. That about sums up his position.

However, he said “stigmatisation is not a government policy, but a societal response. Society also has the responsibility to now recognise that we all have different strengths and different skill sets.”

He defended the education system he is now helming by saying that “it caters to these strengths and not label students. Labels are everywhere, we are categorised in everything we do. Whether we want to create a wall between different people, it is really up to us as a society.”

Lesson? I like Ong. I think he’s smart and caring. He’s sincere too. But I found his remarks confounding. 

So, I’ll just deal with the issue, leaving the man aside. He is nevertheless still a man contending with his own environment like all of us contending with ours, with all its strictures and what not. 

First, let me just say that stigmatisation is predominantly a government policy, not just a societal response unlike Ong’s view earlier. 

But to be fair, I have not read his full speech and he did say that “to overcome the stigma that some parents remain concerned about, society will have to play a part too.” That “too” implies that it takes two to clap. 

Still, words are words and it is to me clear that stigmatisation is a government policy, not just a societal response. Let me explain with our goldfish culture.

We are admired throughout the world for achieving a certain competitive form of excellence in the academic field, especially mathematics, science and English. 

At most times, it felt like the marveling takes place in a goldfish culture where the high achievers are parading their stuff for all to see. 

This culture does not happen overnight. It takes 40 or more years to calibrate and manicure, tweak and nurture. If there is a name for it, it is called meritocracy with exactitude. 

Our little red dot was once compared to the Spartan republic as opposed to Athens with its “loose, less strict culture”.

Here is how Michele Gelfand in the book “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers” describes it and see whether it sounds a tad familiar: -

“Spartans abided by clear-cut mannerism taught in childhood. They were trained to wear solemn expressions and speak concisely. Children were disciplined to never cry, speak in public or express fear. Spartan appreciated laughter and humor, but had to adhere to strict rules on what was acceptable and unacceptable: jokes were to be refined and witty, never slapstick. It was also important for Spartan citizens, who considered themselves a superior race of warriors, to remain unpolluted by non-Spartan culture. Total uniformity in dress, hairstyle and behaviour was demanded.”

Although that was a bit extreme, the Spartan’s culture was deliberately engineered unlike the people in Athens who lived in a more permissive normative environment where there are frequent gorging and drinking, unbridled self-expression, and you might meet Diogenes of Sinope, “a philosopher who lived out of an abandoned tub in the streets of the agora, challenging the need for stultifying etiquette, which he believed prevented people from being their authentic selves.

My point is that our government, especially MOE, plays a vital role in entrenching a form of differentiation in schools, and I felt that Ong should just call a spade a spade, or call Normal not normal (for many students who have struggled with their self-esteem under that unnecessary labellistic tonnage). 

The Singapore Spartan I know and grew up in is the product of the deliberative and firm hands of our government who had faithfully and consistently with technocratic precision engineered, and this came with the good and the bad. For it is said that the house you buy is beautiful but it also comes with crows perching on the roof - so to speak. 

In our tight culture, we have eked our academically bright and disciplined students, but the streaming of 40 years have its costs and externalities too. The net result (whether positive or negative) is still something the government has to grapple with. 

The truth is still out there. 

So, when Ong said that “the education system caters to these strengths and not label students” and that “labels are everywhere, we are categorised in everything we do” and “whether we want to create a wall between different people, it is really up to us as a society,” I am confounded because as Michele puts it in her book, “class differences are deeply cultural, and the world urgently needs greater cultural empathy across class lines.” (p 136).

And as a side note, it sure didn’t help at all when a minister’s young daughter in 2016 labeled another (who expressed his views about class divide and elitism) as “the other class” and stated that Singapore is “a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement.” 

Alas, many things in society are man-made, and our tendency to stigmatise over the decades - in my view - was largely the result of unchecked meritocracy and a blindsided streaming policy that hastened to find the rare and few academic diamonds amongst the rough “the other class”.

Yes, people like Ong, Tharma and Chuan-Jin have done well for themselves through grit, determination and hard work (with a dash of genetic predisposition to boot), and they have demonstrated character, empathy and gumption too as ministers. 

But in a Spartan-like society, there are many leaders out there in our largely hierarchical society technocratically engineered as such who are less empathetic and more aristocratic in their views and conduct. That accounts for a divided and discriminatory society. 

That also accounts for the stigmatisation too thanks to the 40 years of feeding our sacred cows (drawing premium dairy for some and leaving the inferior milk to the other class). 

Do you agree? Cheerz.