Being branded a scholar comes with a moral responsibility to meet the expectations of the whole of Singapore. Karp Ace tried to debunk the myths about scholarships and was met with Weiyi's rebuttal. Apparently the authors themselves are either scholars themselves or mix around with scholars. But such myths exist because of the expectations and it is meaningless to shatter the myths with proof by counterexamples used by Karp Ace.
Wikipedia definition of scholar: "A scholar is either a student or someone who has achieved a "mastery" of some academic discipline." But in Singapore, anyone who obtained a scholarship, be it government or private, prestigious or not, can be called a scholar. And the type of scholarship that acquires the most attention and prestige locally will have to be the public service scholarships offered by government or its entities such as EDB & A*Star. Therefore the general public's expectation of a scholar is someone who excels academically and morally since they are chosen by the ever upright government. But is this the case?Myth 1: Scholars are smarter than everyone else
Just like there is a standard operating procedure in SAF, there have to be some basic citeria for selection of scholars-to-be and one of them would obviously be academic performances. However, even if the scholarship board set 4 As and 2 S paper distinctions as a basic requirement for their best scholarships, there will still be hundreds of students who qualify for it. So A levels result may not be a good gauge for the academic ability of the potential scholars. How do you know if student X who got 4A 2 distinction is better and smarter than student Y who obtained similar results? It is true that scholars wannabe are measured up in psychometric tests and SAT tests but like the A levels, those professional tests are also incapable of filtering out the best, so how can you expect the scholarship board to be able to get the best talents in a cohort? Perhaps that's why Singapore recruit hundreds of scholars to increase the chances of uncovering a true gem amongst them.
It is true that it is possible to get public service scholarship with 2As and 1B, without any S papers but such scholarships are usually local scholarships. Public service scholarships are divided in different classes, mainly overseas and local scholarships, science & engineering or arts & humanities. The selection citeria (in terms of academic performance) for overseas is stricter than local, for science & engineering is stricter than arts & humanities. Therefore we have scholars who score 10 distinctions and scholars who have only 2. This is partly a fault in Singapore's loose definition of a scholar.Myth 2: They all go to good universities
From the explanation for Myth 1, we can see why some scholars do not go into the top 6 universities claimed by Karp Ace, as not all scholars are equally bright or academically inclined. Besides, I see Karp Ace claim that only 1-5 scholars get into each of the top universities annually and 10-20 into Stanford as a poor example to proof his point. Singapore's population is only about 0.06% of the World's population, if the universities truly draws the best talent in the world and if the talents are evenly distributed (regardless of geography, race, skin colour etc), wouldn't 20 Singaporeans be over-represented in those universities where you can't just pay to get in?
Using the same statistical approach, given that Indians and PRC contribute to almost 1/3 of the living humans in the world, there is no shame to be inferior to some of them even if they may not be elites in their country.Myth 3: Scholars are pure/honest/good/saintlike/entrepreneurial/better than us
If it is already so difficult to measure their academic abilities, how could the scholarship board determine such non-quantifiable qualities in an 18 year old student from just a simple interview? Or how do you know if a student who did hundreds of hours volunteering did not do so because of the edge they gain for scholarships and university admission? Like some people who commented, scholars are also human. So I see no point in quoting examples like scholars nowadays are very liberal. Perhaps they became liberal because of an overseas education and not because they are scholars. A more relevant statement would have been scholars are more likely to be very liberal compared to non scholars. Do you have the ability to find pure/honest/good/saintlike/entrepreneurial scholars among lesser ones? If so the country needs you!
In short, the Myths above are Myths because it is very easy to prove that it is a Myth if you can
1.) Find a non-scholar who is smarter than one
2.) Find a scholar who don't go to a good university
3.) Find a scholar who show some character flaw
Of course, PSC and other scholarship boards are not perfect and I agree that there are plenty of room for improvements for both scholars and scholarship boards too. But if we adopt a more sensible approach in evaluating the scholarships and how the scholarship board handles scholar and the scholars themselves, we may get a deeper insight than just the kopi-tiam talk offered by Karp Ace and the academic style rebuttal offered by Weiyi. Who knows we may yield some constructive ideas on how to maintain this core pillar in Singapore rather than just attacking it.
Sometimes, it is more important to ask the right questions and have the wrong answers than to have the right answers to the wrong questions.
Tagged: singapore
2 comments:
- At 3:21 pm Anthony said...
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I disagree with the whole notion of Singapore scholars being required to potray moral leadership as well. It's only Singapore's policy of grooming scholars for political leadership that results in this ridiculous situation.
- At 9:46 pm Mastermind said...
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You can disagree with the notion but you can't deny that this is the situation in Singapore sadly. Scholars-wannabe better get themselve prepare to take up the moral responsibility when they put pen to paper for the deal as the public and media will readily condemn them if they shown otherwise.
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