Life after exams

Random Thoughts III

It's been about 1.5 weeks after exams, somehow the inertia to blog and change the blog layout is still there.

DHS level 2 camp @ Sarimbun: My intial thought was that I be a camp facilitator, boy i was quite wrong. being a relief teacher during the camp then meant that I do not have to use the dirty toilets over at Sarimbun, sleeping in air-conditioned bunks with pillows and most importantlt Polar puffs for tea brought by the principal himself. Teachers are indeed a privileged lot. Spoke to come teachers about certain issues. Basically 2 thoughts summarized:
1) There is no such thing such as equal opportunity for everyone in the education system. Many a time, there is no perfect allocation of resources and when the school actually has a fund to subsidise deserving students for enrichment activities, . So now who defines who are the deserving students? Meritocracy seems to be the answer and this reminds me of a phrase which Mr Kiw said “ 机会是留给做好充分准备的人。”My trip to US back in 2000 did open my horizons and guess I really benefited from the subsidy back then.
2) Always thought that the integrated programmes at TJ and VJ will somehow be more 'superior' to that offered by DHS and they will prob attract the best brains and cause a brain drain in the school. I even asked myself what choice I will make if all the hype about integrated programmes was during my era. The promise to go to an institution with supposedly less rules, more freedom and better track record for A levels? Or is the friendship bonds, CCA and caring teachers that will keep me in DHS? Though DHS has no track record for A levels, it does have an excellent one for Os, and the teachers actiually reasoned out that these colleges do well because they absorb good students from DHS in the first place.
Well, this education system has become so commercialized that there are advertisements outside 158 busstop depicting a group of Vi pupils lying on a patch of green grass with the caption 'The grass is greener on the other side'. One wonders where VJ gets this advertising budget from, somehow i do not see how the money spent on advertising will have a direct impact or value-add a student currently studying in VJ. This is probably how some ministries spend taxpayers' money?