hm.

SHE believes that dreams can come true despite the many setbacks faced, aconviction that clinched a model student award for late bloomer Christina OngLing Yee yesterday.Ms Ong, 22, is the latest recipient of Singapore Polytechnic’s Model StudentAward.Given out since 1997, the award goes to the student who excels in both studiesand co-curricular activities (CCA), as well as embodies SP’s core values likepersonal integrity and responsibility.Ms Ong, now working in a quantity surveyor firm, fits the bill – to an S, and aP.She was “too playful” and kept failing examinations until Primary 5, when shewas channelled to the EM3 stream, which was for academically weaker pupils.It was then that she pulled herself up, and studied harder. She reflected onher poor grades and thought: “Other people are also human. If they can do it, Ican too.”Still, it was not an easy road. In Secondary 4, financial problems forced herto work part-time at McDonalds to pay her school fees. Her father works at acoffee shop while her mother is a cashier.Also, her English grade was not good, and as a Normal (Technical) student at StTheresa’s Convent, she recalls the stigma attached to students in that stream.She was advised against transferring to the Normal (Academic) stream despitedoing well enough to qualify in Secondary 2.So, she went to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).Call it serendipity, but it was at the ITE that she really blossomed. She feltthat, without the different streams, “everyone was equal” and stood an “equalchance of succeeding”.Her excellent ITE results led her to SP, where she studied property developmentand facilities management. She was also active in the Rotary Club and was theorganising secretary of the Built and Environmental Club, among other CCAs.Her achievements won praise from Mr Lim Cher Yam, 50, deputy director of SP’sSchool of the Built Environment. He said she “stood out in terms of maturityand academic achievement”.Although from ITE, she “rose above those from the O-level route” and wasconsistently among the “top few students” in her cohort.

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In every field, there is the elite, the average, and the bad.

And the way we all think is that when you’re bad, you’re bad. It is just as though gravity is too strong; once you’re at the bottom of the ladder, there’s no climbing back up.

Some of us, however, know this not to be the case.

The above article talks of how Ms Christina Ong, coming from the EM3 stream, was able to pull herself back up that “ladder” and obtain the Singapore Polytechnic’s Model Student Award. It is a blatant exception to what many of us Singaporeans think.

As I mentioned in my first ever blog entry “Teacher, do you think I am too stupid to do well” (below), the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) has been a joke because its acronym stands also for It’s The End. Being the institute that offers education for those who are chanelled to the Normal Academic stream from the beginning of secondary school, it is not surprising to see how skilled Singaporeans can twist acronyms to create such large differences in meaning.

How different people might interpret the story is that we either view it in a sardonic manner, especially if the reader himself is from the educated elite, or, we read the article and are able to understand how we are different but yet still can learn from those people who are both academically higher achieving or “more stupid” than us.

Why did I use the word “stupid”? The current education system in Singapore right now, I feel, encourages the growth of elitism. As I have mentioned quite a few times in my previous entries, I believe, I am one who studies in a more prestigious school. And I do have friends who look down on students from neighbourhood schools, calling them “stupid” or “gangsters” or “uncouth”. This is one way the growth of elitism is spurred; we can write essays (or even blog entries) about how it is bad and should be stopped, but there is no helping it-it is growing. And this elitism is a different breed; it makes students assume that people who do not do as well academically are stupid. Very clearly, academic results is not the sole criteria in determining one’s intelligence, but right now, to the “elite” students, it is.

What I feel now is that the Singapore education system is too restrictive. Currently, once students are sorted into the Normal Technical stream at the secondary school level, there is no going back. One is restricted to the same stream until completion of ITE. The only option is taking the O-Levels after doing well for the N-Levels.

This is the only reason why Ms Christina Ong is considered exceptional. I am quite sure that if students were able to break out of the technical stream halfway through, many of them would be much more motivated and we would have many more such examples.

Even then, we do have much to learn from her. Her spirit is admirable in that she does not want to give up, and is not satisfied with what she has. And of course, no one can or should ever be. You might be at the top of your league, but there’s always the larger picture. Just as Ms Christina Ong was always ranking at the top few students of her cohort and was never satisfied with just that, we should never be satisfied just as well. And so, are you satisfied with where you are, or do you want more?