Nationwide Mugging?

Look at this article from the Straits Times 19th March!

Jessica Lim has written that Singapore is becoming a mugging hub.

The reporter states that many students are mugging textbooks all day long, and are so bothered by formal assessment in schools that they find anything other than schoolwork unimportant. Besides, it is reported that a many students go for tuitions to improve their school grades. She implies that our students middy hr point about the true essence of education and merely want to do well in tests.

Jessica Lim has included several of her opinions in the article. She has backed them up with evidence—interviewing one 17-year-old student, seeing students at Changi Airport studying and a small scale survey.

However, these are anecdotal evidence do not convince me that Singapore is almost becoming a mugging hub. These anecdotal evidence only provide a small view of the situation and cannot portray the whole picture, unlike statistics. Thus I find it rather unconvincing that Singapore is a mugging hub.

Therefore I believe that the situation is not as bad as she has painted it to be. For instance, all the students in RI have to take part in CCAs and there are several CCA practices a week. Many students take pride in their CCAs and devote much of their time to CCA. As such, Singapore cannot possibly be only cultivating students who can only memorize textbooks.

In my school, classes often hold class gatherings and outings over the holidays. These social activities include playing sports, trekking, camping, all of which teach skills other than those in school textbooks. Besides, there are many community involvement projects throughout the year that students choose from and these further enchance their learning from outside curriculum. With so many skills learnt outside the textbook, Singapore cannot be having a system which “leaves no room for learning that does not beget a gold star”.

I think that she is over-generalizing the situation in Singapore just because of a few examples. A mere number of such cases is not representative of the several thousand students in Singapore. The article has become rather exaggerated, and her imaginary scenario where “factories churn out straight-A students.”

Maybe due to the fact that I am from Raffles Institution, I have a personal opinion that she is wrong, as when I compare the situation she has painted to the one in RI, it does not match. Being a student from RI may naturally affect my thinking, as RI students have often been labeled as mugging students. As such, my opinion may be swayed and I may have a biased perspective. However, I still believe that Singapore is not a mugging hub.