The Hayat Shah Chronicles

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Wither Thy Exam Culture

For all of its orderliness, its straightness and staidness, there is something crazy about Singapore. It’s called “the exam culture”. Every now and then you’d find manifestations of this culture: students hunched over thick textbooks and wilting notes at fast food joints, teachers having to pencil in extra classes to ‘cover syllabus’, tutors laughing themselves silly all the way to the bank.

In Singapore this is the given of the education system. All other school activities shall be centred around the examination process. The careers of educators rise and fall on the back of a cohort’s examinations marks. We will pay good money to anyone who can help our children score their straight As, because there is no better investment, literally, than an excellent transcript. You’ve just finished your exams? How lucky, you can stop studying (for now).

In Singapore I can accept overcrowded trains. I can accept Chinese bus drivers who look (and speak) like they’ve been skipping one too many lessons at the British Council. Heck, I can even accept them men in white plastering their plastic smiles on huge banners all over my estate. What I can’t accept is some kid jumping down a block of flats because Maths is too tough, or because Mummy wants a report card filled with As. What I can’t accept is this idea that you study solely for the purpose of acing your mid-terms, so that you can someday be a yes-man government bureaucrat with a 30-year mortgage. It’s enough to make me want to get up and quit this place.

I think the biggest tragedy to happen to our nation is not that we’ve become overcrowded with foreigners. The biggest tragedy is that we’ve allowed comments like ““I think the spurs are not stuck on your hinds.” (LKY, 2010) to get to us. We now sleep very well with the idea that examinations are the best measure of a person’s intelligence. We want our children to be as competitive as the next Ah Tiong, morality be damned. In Imperial China, nationwide examinations were held to select the ‘best’ and ‘brightest’ for top positions in Government. In modern Singapore, nationwide examinations are held to select the ‘best’ and ‘brightest’ for top positions in Government.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not endorsing laziness. I think we should all be hardworking individuals, trying our best to improve ourselves, instead of lazing around smoking weed and getting high. I don’t think it’s particularly smart to be expecting handouts from our elected officials, then going apeshit when their populist measures result in global bankers calling in for their pound of flesh.

But I think we’ve forgotten that the examination is merely an assessment tool to gauge one’s learning. And like all tools, it has its deficiencies. What does it mean really, that you got an A on your Science test? Are you ready to solve the world’s problems now? I don’t think our educators get this, and at best they’ve become brilliant test administrators, ready and willing to quantify everything a child has put to memory, ready to scalpel away the fun and innate curiosity that comes with learning.

I’m sad that the same ‘best’ and ‘brightest’ are unable to solve many of the world’s pressing problems: environmental degradation, economic chaos, and all the -isms that continue to plague us (from consumerism to capitalism to fascism).

I’m sad that for all their fantastic results, for all their wonderful degrees, they can’t tell me why a seventy-year-old Singaporean woman has no choice but collect discarded cardboard, in a country with 200,000 millionaires (and growing). They can’t tell me why many children growing up here grow up tired and depressed, and live life thinking that the smartest man, is he who has the most toys.