Of hmm... can't think up of a title leh
Dear TomHa,

Student's Sketchpad!
Haha, you guys, especially all you RV people should take a look at this! A rather funny and interesting webcomic that is posted online for quite sometime I guess but only just discovered it surfing around the net!Check out the Ms Ek picture! Arh.. reminiscence.. THE RV school song. Let me see if anybody has a mp3 version of it. Haha. 海云漫漫，碧波荡荡，立德立功，化愚化顽。Haha.

Realised that there is no one student that is happy with the education system in Singapore. Well, some might say that it is the education itself, is a service oriented industry and thus no one can be truly satisfied. Fine and well, but recently, after reading a book, Freakonomics by I forgot who, I realised that this might not even be due to the unlimited wants of human beings that is creating this scene of perverse distaste for a public good. For all we know, it might be due to the incentives and disincentives that had propelled this reality.

Confused? Try reading this with a pinch of salt or sugar or any flavoring (Alright, this is lame. But this why I prefer writing essays in blogosphere than in GP lessons!).

For a good long period of time, economists had been saying that to achieve productivity and good results, CEOs, bosses, Presidents, all the leaders should inject incentives (Monetary, off-days, discounts on company's products etc) or disincentives (sacking, punishments, jail, etc) to encourage their units of production to produce even more, and to discourage them from doing anything less. Fine and well. However, what the Freakonomics author contends is that this encourages cheating as a result, drawing upon examples from the education scene in America (Well, he is an American) and Sumo Wrestling (Well, Americans like everything big don't they?). Teachers cheat by artificially inflating their student's marks so that they won't be shown the door and also, to pave the way to opportunities in the upper echeleoons of the school's chain of command. Sumo, though, is harder to explain, but I will try.

If you research a little into sumo wrestling, you'll realise that the wrestlers are actually ranked, according to the number of matches that they win. And, to maintain this rank, they have to meet a certain quota of wins. Those ranked highly are paid ostensibly while those who are ranked lowly are paid ostensibly low(Maybe it is already very high, but sumo people had to EAT, you know...). So anyway, there is this hidden courtesy or maybe practise is a better word that everytime a Sumo wrestler had met his quota and he can be comfortable with the rest of his year, should he meet another wrestler that is about to meet his quota and is already in his last few matches, statistics are that the lowly ranked wrestler, who statistics tell from matches in the earlier season whereby everybody is fighting for their quota have less than zero chance of winning, will, actually win. Cheating and courtesy and being Mr Nice guy. What that incentives and disincentives had set out to do had actually made everything even more complicated. Increased productivity? I will say it just gives a false sense of optimism.

So, what has this got to do with the education system in Singapore. All I can say is that like what I had commented in the preceding paragraph, the incentives and disincentives to be the top school, the best student, the elites, the creme of the crop had marginalised the problems which students from the rest of the school or rather the problems which the rest of the schools actually face! Principals giving talks that always paint a rosy picture are actually, cheating. Minister giving talks that always talk about how programs will build up a base of excellent thinking pupils are just, cheating. We, the suppressed individuals are rarely interviewed and even if we do, the disincentives present (expulsion, marginalisation, a cut of fundings) will just give standard TYS book of HOW TO ANSWER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS answers. Pretty perverse. Yucks. No wonder the blogosphere had become a great venting ground for a lot of students. And now, disincentives are present to make sure that we don't speak the supposedly wrong things. Sigh. How to be creative like that? Only those who are really creative knows the answer I guess...

That's all for now!