One of my professors was on leave for today and the last class because his wife just gave birth. His course is probably the slackest course I’ve ever taken in university and it’s so… awesome.
It’s a fourth year elective course, and rightly should be more grueling. It’s actually even easier than a first year NUS course – no exams, weekly quizzes testing memorization, and a 12% assignment that can be finished in one single class between 2 persons!
In NUS one got to work very hard to earn 12%! Probably a project spanning several weeks. I don’t understand why they have to be so demanding. In NUS they are not trying to nurture talent – they are just contributing to the gross national unhappiness index by stressing out students. Don’t they understand that pushing us so hard can have the opposite effect by making us disillusioned with education?
No related posts.
You know what?
Have you read the History of Singapore? Have you read the
Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew? If you have you will understand
why university undergrads have been and are being stressed out.
The whole idea is to keep you guys fully occupied so that you won’t
have much time left for leisure, let alone for political activism.
On another note, while foreigners are welcomed with open arms with
free tuition fees plus $500 to $600 pocket money per month, locals
true blue Singaporeans have to pay and pay. Some even have to
get education load from banks or their parents’ CPF money. Why?
So that you will have to work your guts out to return the loan after
your graduation. Therefore, when one has no money and no leisure
time, can he be able to participate in political activism?
Based on the past experiences, when students were the main force
that wrangled power from an unpopular govt, (and that was how
PAP came into power – by making use of the A-level and Uni
students and making use of trade unions to topple the then govt)
there is a need to make sure present day students are not able to
become a force to be reckon with.
Nowadays, all our all students are mere toothless sissies having
their balls squeezed good and proper, isn’t it? Also all our trade
unions are simply paper tigers without any backbone or muscles,
isn’t it?
Think about it.
Cheers!
Memoranda.
I haven’t read his memoirs – the last time I saw them was at the NUH bookstore going for a ‘clearance price’ of $14.99 or something!
But I do often hear of this theory – which does make some sense I suppose – just look at everyone around us — how many of us are free or have the energy to participate in political activism?
Most of my friends/schoolmates from China are indeed getting paid to study here – which makes us Singaporean students upset sometimes – not with them but with the policy.
Another issue worth considering are the laws governing political activism – it is simply not worth it to ‘risk it’ for most people I guess. While many students like myself have plenty of views wanting to be heard, we don’t want to get too much attention for fear of being blacklisted or singled out for ‘investigation’ just because we wanted to highlight some points that we feel strongly about…
Anyway, just for the record I’m apathetic about politics. That’s the last thing I want to be involved in. I blog only to voice my personal opinions on life, what I observe and believe in, and my occasional gripes on governance and policies.
Totally agreed with you. Our dearest MM always mentioned about the past trouble Sillypore has gone through…
The student protest in the 60s. To fix this make it very difficult for the student so that they have no time for other things besides their study. Make it expensive so that you will work hard in your study.
The worker protest (Hock Lee bus), The fix; create a workers union that is totally under the control of the ruling party, NTUC.
Make sure that the union agree with everything the ruling party come out with, even when it is clearly to the disadvantage of the workers.