What are "facts" "values" "right" "real" about life, about us being "humans" truly meant really living or really suffering?
Recently we met up with an "ex" colleague, she was gone before I was there, but the old and current gang hit it off so we continue to have lunches and "auntie" sessions complaining about work, life, husbands, wives, kids, school . . .
Last Thursday was the result day for the PSLE Primary School Leaving Examination, the 1st dreaded "elimination" round of any youths. At the tender age of 12, they fight tooth and nail to enter the best possible secondary school there can be in Singapore
***1st pressure test is in Primary 4, 10 years of age, where they are "streamed" or "sorted" based on academic level into EM1 EM2 and EM3, 1 being the best and then...
So, the eldest daughter of our dear friend was due to collect her result and boy did she score an awesome score of 259/300. That's an average of 85 marks upon 100 and pretty much guarantees you into the top 20 schools in Singapore. Secondary level is sorted into Express, Normal Academic and Normal Technical Stream, needless to say which is the best. AND the elites are sorted into SAP schools who had direct entry into their affiliated high school.
Mom wasn't pleased at all, I was flabbergasted... until I realized her average in her time was 27?... basically she was like the top 0.20% of her entire cohort. I totally understood why she had expectations but let's be honest here, education level has increased exponentially with ridiculous tuition schools and enrichment class AIMED at students who wish to SCORE. Let me reiterate, they do not teach kids to learn, but to simply ace the exams. #period. And her daughter isn't even on any one of those lessons, play games like mad and still manages to do so well, what more can any parent ask for?
I never ever understood why parents love to bestow their own dreams upon their children, they give birth to life, yes to replace humanity but not to replace them for their own selfish reasons. I am not saying she is, I am a person who had always been quick to judge and most of the time i am wrong but she sorta gave off some vibes... or because her daughter didn't do better than the other colleague's daughter.
FYI, my dad would've bought me a real car there and then if I scored that marks.
Results NEVER guarantee success, however they put your starting line ahead of others, and if you must know, life only begins when you start working, and for majority of non Singaporeans, that is at 23-24 years of age, you still have 3/4 of the way to go.
Of course Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Lance Armstrong, Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates would beg to differ. And I will gallantly accept defeat because had they been a slouch like me, we would probably be much backwards, lives would've been lost so are dreams.
But like any forces, when you apply a force in any direction, there will always be an equal and opposite force countering as well, there's no guarentee that life would be better or worst off for EVERYONE but in any paradigm shift, like any Financial Crisis, there are losers and then there are winners. . .
And if the above holds true, what do we do? What gives us the right to choose? TNT was initially created to move mountains, today TNT are used to cast fear into humans, threaten religion and the list goes . . .
Pardon me for my oxymoronic post, I am on the slightly extreme end of the unrealistic and fantasy driven of a Pisces, building sand castles and dream of the fairy tale ending.
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