Scholarship, meritocracy and equality.

162 students received their scholarships yesterday, and some of them are those who have worked their way up from Normal stream to ITE and Poly. Their stories are inspiring. 

Steven, 19, comes from a family of 10 and his mother is the sole breadwinner. His father had to stop working due to health reasons. Steven was an active member of the student council at ITE Graduation 2021 ceremony yesterday. Steven received the Tay Eng Soon Scholarship.

Fiqri Nur Haziq Abu Bakar is another. He was a nurse during Covid-19 pandemic. The 21-year-old graduated from Ngee Ann Poly last year and “spent six months caring for migrant workers infected by Covid-19.” Fiqri was from the normal stream and he hopes this inspires other students from the normal stream too. 

Another ITE student, Koh Yan Xi, 19, also received a scholarship, the Ngee Ann Kongsi Gold Medal in recognition of her achievements. She had “to juggle a part-time job at McDonald’s with co-leading a class entrepreneurship project to sell vacuum-packed soup and using the proceeds to purchase food for school cleaners.” 

There are many more, and I guess that is the trampoline effect where, regardless of which station in life you are from, you stand an equal chance to bounce your way up just as long as you work towards it and don’t give up.

Let me share that I once had a conversation with a young adult and he told me that if one doesn’t work hard in Singapore, he will end up in ITE or Poly. I shook my head and told him that education ought to build character first and foremost before knowledge. For without character, your knowledge is all puffed up and it serves no purpose in society except to divide it further. 

We as a society suffer the consequences of our own pride, and a prideful mindset alienates humanity. It is not just self-serving, it is self-destroying. 

Ultimately, we can choose either to look at society from a one-track, chronologically challenged mindset, or look at it from a wide lens when the sun shines on everyone, regardless of schools, status or stream. 

But, what is chronologically challenged Mike? Well, it is a clock preset by the meritocratic discipline master with a deadline or quota to meet. Each child is thus put through the grind, that same and uniform grind, even when each child is gifted differently. One indiscriminate ruler is therefore used to measure all heights, even though each child grows at their own pace. 

And then that child is forced to compete with the others, while he carries loads of expectations on his back, all the time hoping to make his parents proud, and trying in vain to find acceptance and a sense of identity and belonging in a society that is wound up by a less than kinder development clock. 

This brings me to what Minister Chan said the day before. He invited all parents to take stock. He asked us to have “more frank conversations with our children and families on the definition of success.”

He took himself as an example. “As a parent myself, I have come to realise that success must be defined by helping my children realise their own potential, developing their own strengths and helping them to be confident in themselves.”

He said: “The greatest assurance parents can give their children is to provide them with confidence to find their own way.”

Those words are power words. They are a good reminder for parents with children, and a timely comfort for children yearning for understanding. 

Let me just say that I have always thought LKY was right to say that a rising economic tide raises all boats. He is still right about that now, for what good is democracy if you can’t even feed your family. 

But, like meritocracy, if it goes unchecked, or on autopilot, it risks crossing a threshold where the society is divided, between the haves and have-nots, the rich and the poor. It is just a matter of time. 

And the spillover effect of that is a progressive downward slide, which yields another risk, that is, a society in crisis. We are in fact leading the trend here as our inequality gap is one of the widest, compounded by a high cost of living. 

While Minister Chan made good sense when he said that “the greatest assurance parents can give their children is to provide them with confidence to find their own way,” yet if the landscape that the child is supposed to navigate has not changed, or has changed little, with a gaping income/social hole, then isn’t the child embarking on an impossible journey which may just bring him back to square one?

And that is why I highlighted the scholarships awarded to students of different backgrounds, and that is one of the crucial steps (amongst many) to taking a wide lens view of things where the sun truly shines on all, on each and every child, regardless. 

For the wide lens’ view sees the whole journey of a child’s potential, while the microscopic one sees only a particular point in time, and on that narrow/rigid basis, it judges a life that has yet to bloom for a lifetime.