046 Seasonal Blogger, I am... (The PW special)

Oklah, if you people actually take the time to check this blog quite often, you'll find that I usually blog furiously at one point's of time, and at other times you gte static. Well, I would like to tell you that the probability of me publishing something in my blog at any given time is given by a wavefunction defined by the Schrodinger's equation which concerns a lot of calculus and I will now proceed to explain the mathematics involved... Yeah, right!

Silly equations aside, the issue of blogs have once again cropped up in the Singapore scene, this time concerning PW results. Now, the inclusion of the word PW in my blog will now make it a source of information for reporters who would wish to know the current sentiments of the students in SAJC about their results, and so I would expect the traffic on this page to increase exponentially, and the situation will end like something like the Ultraviolet Catastrophe. Of course, anyone will end up finding the obvious facts like less than 1% of students got A, and the school has submitted an appeal, and the Deputy Principal is reading students' blogs to see what is going on in the college, wait, that's today's news, oh dear, now they're going to report this in the news.

Disclaimer: If you wish to exract any opinions from this person about his result, I shall save you the trouble of reading between the lines, because I have every reason not to complain. Only read between the lines in this paragraph.

I do not want an in-depth analysis on my blog entry regarding any inference on how good/bad the teachers are, or my stand on the claims that teachers are marking the students down etc. If you really want my honest opinion, here it is, but just ignore the condescending tone i'm going to say it in. It's simply this, the students' attitude. As a person who, well, took PW far too seriously much to chagrin of some of my group members, looking back in reflection (I&R, ooh the memories), I tell myself, you know, after going through all that pain and putting my group members through all that pain, it must have finally paid of because the average grade in my group is 1.8 if you take A to be 1 and B to be 2. I'm not revealing my results here, but I believe you should have gotten the hint by now. So right back to main point, I really am trying to argue here that the students' attitude towards the subject that it is a factor, if not a reason, for the great disparities in the As in the various JCs across Singapore.

If we assume that the differences in standards throughout the JCs in Singapore is not significant enough to form a justified correlation to the disparities (the good, the bad and the ugly, which can be used to descibe the percentage As, does not actually describe the JC landscape in Singapore, does it?), then what other factors are there? Teachers? Let's look at some of the claims that have been put forward by the various parties, which are mainly bloggers like me, with nothing better to do than to argue about an overly flogged horse.

1. The teachers have marked the students down and other similiar arguments
This is ridiculous, I'm telling you. Why would teachers want to kill their own students. It just isn't right that a teacher wants to fail an entire cohort. We are not the school admin's or MOE's guinea pigs, we are not test subjects, but students of equal rights. It is a level playing field, if you don't play the game right, please don't throw the ball at the coaches or the organisers and blame them for manipulating the game. Even IF,big IF, the game is being manipulated, why would the teachers play it against us, and/or allow the MOE to play it to our disfavour. It all just doesn't add up. And please don't tell me that the teachers are hiding something, please have some faith with the teachers, they have made it their life's work to help us in times of need. they have helped surely, perhaps not enough you might say, but please don't bite the hand that fed you, it simply isn't justified, so leave them out of the equation, they've gone through enough already, training, meetings, moderation and yet we say they are not doing enough, so have some emphathy, I plead you, and accept what they have done on good faith, no matter how dissatisfied we all are, don't let it flow over. I've been reading a teacher's blog, and do you know how heart-whenching it is to put yourself in the shoes of a teacher and see her own students fail. She said she was almost in tears, and I believe her. Perhaps, Mrs. Lim was right, we should learn how to blame ourselves, and get over it.

2. Teachers in other JCs guided their students too much or were too lenient
Ok, I'm not in the right position to comment about this point which includes issues such as templates, too many drafts, overguidance. Yes, the MOE does not set any limitations to the amount of help that can be given but this is one thing I'm sure about, teachers are subject to professional ethics to not overhelp their students. OK,ok some might point out that there are Machiavellian teachers out there, we'll never know, but how much difference would that make, and this point will bring up the contention that I'm arguing in the first place...

But it's getting late, so I will have to stop now, or I'll be so drowsy that I'll hurt myself tomorrow morning for sure, that aside, I read somewhere that if you google "SAJC PW results" or "PW results" or "SAJC PW", well, you'll get blogs like this one, but perhaps this will stand out as one that doesn't try to complain about the results, but rather trying to make sense of it all. My last words for this entry: "This PW hype is causing more drama than the College Play, Miss K won't be too happy, the newspapers sold better than the tickets."