27 Hapless Girls And One Unhappy Principal

First, the background:

ST Jan 12, 2008
Sec 5 class advised: Go to ITE instead
Principal tells students that they are unlikely to do well at O levels
By Sandra Davie

CALL it a disheartening start to the new school year.

A group of 27 girls in a Secondary 5 class in a mission school - which shall remain unnamed - were advised by their principal on the first day of school last week to seek transfers to the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), since they were unlikely to do well in the O levels this year.

To back her point, she even flashed the girls' detailed N-level grades on the board in class using an overhead projector; she also stressed that she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school.

The result: teens with punctured self-confidence and some fuming parents.

This article does not surprise me. The principal's attitude - which I deplore - is common among educators in Singapore. The selfish motivation shows clearly here:

".... she also stressed that she wanted 100 per cent passes in her school."

In other words, the principal is concerned that the weaker students will lower her school's overall pass score. She would prefer that they get out of her school as soon as possible. After all, the size of her annual bonus could be affected by the school's pass score.

This kind of thinking happens in better schools as well. I was previously a student at one of Singapore's top junior colleges. I remember one group session where the Head of the Maths Department badgered the "weaker" students to stop taking Further Maths (one of the A-level subjects). Why? She didn't think that they had a good chance of scoring an A or B. They were at no real risk of actually failing, but they might conceivably score a C or D. Her fine record of top grades would be ruined! What a disaster.

Into the fray jumps our PAP man, Lui Tuck Yew. I'll declare my bias upfront - I don't like him. I have not liked Lui ever since the Straits Times reported that he was heading this kind of PAP committee. Sneaky, sneaky. Anyway:

ST Jan 16, 2008
Principal's 'wake-up call' to Sec 5 students had to be 'conveyed'
By Jane Ng

PARENTS and students may disagree with the tone a principal used when she told some Secondary 5 students to apply for the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) instead of doing the O levels, but the message was one that had to be delivered, said Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew on Wednesday.

Past data shows that 40 per cent of students will not do well enough to qualify for polytechnic, and students need to know this from the start, he said.

Speaking to reporters after a teachers' investiture at the National Institute of Education, Rear-Admiral (NS) Lui said it was important to separate the 'tone' from the 'substance' of the message.

'We can calibrate the tone, we can soften it, improve on the presentation, but there is a lot of work to be done between Secondary 4 and Secondary 5.'

'Principals need to do their job to convey this message to the students and teachers to do their part to challenge them, set high goals and to help them achieve these goals,' he said.

What's my take? 40% of Secondary 5 students don't make it to polytechnic. That means 60% of them do. If the odds are in your favour, why not try?

What's the worst that could happen? One year later, you find that you can't make it to the poly. You can still go to the ITE then. Where's the damage? None that I can see. (And no, the size of your principal's annual bonus is not relevant).

Yes, you would have "wasted" one extra year in secondary school, studying subjects like Maths, Science and English. But you would have a few GCE O-level passes and a N-level certificate, rather than just a N-level certificate. Surely that counts for something.

And that extra year of education - is that really such a waste? Is studying Maths, Science and English in secondary school really so useless? I don't think so. But Lui seems to think so. I do wonder why he seems to have such a poor opinion of our education system. After all, he's responsible for it. Oops, did I just answer my own question.

It Will Become Quite Common To Die Alone & Unnoticed

ST Jan 10, 2008
Man's death goes unnoticed for a year in Sydney

SYDNEY - AN ELDERLY pensioner lay dead in his apartment in Australia's largest city for a year before anyone noticed, officials and news reports said on Thursday.

The body of Jorge Chambe, 64, was found on Tuesday in his single bedroom, government-owned flat in the Sydney suburb of Yagoona when police and firefighters broke in, after concerns about his welfare were finally raised.

Decomposition of the body was advanced and bank records indicated Chambe died about a year earlier, officials said.

'It's amazing,' Detective-Inspector Ian Prye told reporters. 'This guy lives in the suburbs and he dies and no one notices for a year.'

The circumstances of Chambe's death triggered calls for a national strategy to better check on elderly people living alone, and worry that Australians were losing their sense of community.

'How can it happen that a person can die in such a lonely way and no one know?' New South Wales state Housing Minister Matt Brown told the Macquarie Radio network on Thursday.

In news reports, neighbors at the apartment block described Chambe as a quiet man who was friendly but who kept mostly to himself. He had received federal government welfare payments and his rent was paid automatically by direct debit from his bank account.

His mailbox had filled to overflowing, but no one had noticed a smell or other clues that he had died, the reports said. A worried neighbour finally called housing officials on Monday, and authorities broke in when Chambe did not respond.

The above event may seem sad and shocking. However as the years go, we may safely expect such incidents to become increasingly common in developed countries with an aging population. Oh yes, that includes Singapore.

This is the simple consequence of having smaller families, or not having children. The older you grow, the likelier it becomes that you have no relatives at all. You just outlive those who used to be around. This isn’t that difficult, because there weren’t many of them to begin with.

In the 1960s, the average 30-something adult would have, say, one spouse, four children, six siblings, eighteen cousins and too many nephews, nieces and in-laws to easily count.

In 2008, the average 30-something adult would have, say, one or no spouse; one, two or no children; and maybe one or two siblings, each likely to have one, two or no children.

So nowadays, the probability of outliving all your relatives (or all relatives who care about you) is much higher.

During the working years, loneliness is not an issue because working life itself provides a human community comprising bosses, peers, subordinates, clients etc.

Senior citizens, while healthy, can also maintain a social network. They move around on their own, pursue their interests and meet other people (mahjong kaki; qigong group; community club etc).

But over the years, the individual gradually grows older and weaker, and becomes less and less able to participate. He therefore slowly withdraws himself from society. Eventually, he becomes so disconnected from other human beings that he could die (as Jorge Chambe did), and for a whole year, no one would even notice.

To me, Jorge’s story is sad not because he died and his death went unnoticed for a year. The sad part is really more how he must have lived, in the years before he died.

Why I Do Not Let My Heart Beat Too Fast

As a follow-up to my previous post, I thought I would blog about heart rate monitors. I use one myself, when I go trotting around the neighbourhood.

The model I use has three parts - a wrist watch, a chest strap and a little shoe pod. As you run, the chest strap device and the shoe pod will continuously capture information and transmit it to the watch.

By looking at your watch, you can find out your heart rate, your average running speed and the distance you’ve covered. Depending on the model, you can also check how many calories you’ve burned, how much running you did in the aerobic/anaerobic range, and so on.

For me, what’s the most useful function of a heart rate monitor? Well, the watch automatically starts beeping when my heart rate rises or falls below certain thresholds. If my heart rate falls below the lower threshold, it means that I’m not pushing myself hard enough and therefore not really getting any cardiovascular benefits – I should run faster. But if my heart rate rises above the upper threshold, it means that I could be pushing myself too hard and should stop or slow down.

Monitoring the upper threshold is important to me because I was born with certain heart defects. According to medical science, those heart defects are not a good reason for me to refrain from physical exercise. However, also according to medical science, those heart defects make me a better candidate for sudden cardiac arrest than a completely normal person.

Since medical science can be such a contradictory pain in the neck, I take the middle ground, by exercising, but not too hard. And my heart rate monitor helps me to do that.

(For those of you who are wondering, yes, there are ways to roughly calculate how fast or slow your heart should beat during exercise, depending on your fitness goals. Click here for more information about training heart ranges).

Just in case I gave anyone the wrong impression, the heart rate monitor is not a medical device. In other words, it wasn’t invented to help heart patients exercise safely. It was invented to help serious athletes and fitness enthusiasts to train for optimal performance.

Thus there is no scientific study (as far as I know) proving that the use of a heart rate monitor can help to reduce the risk of sudden cardiac arrest (whether in serious athletes, ordinary folks or heart patients). Nevertheless it seems logical to me that this should be the case.

This post comes too late, of course, to help the Unfortunate Major.

The Unfortunate Major

A letter to the Straits Times Forum:

ST Jan 7, 2008
Modify 2.4km IPPT run to ease strain on heart

I REFER to the report, 'SAF officer dies after 1.2km run' (ST, Jan 3).

There has been a spate of deaths recently with the victims collapsing while running. Most national servicemen have to complete a 2.4km run in order to fulfil their annual Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT), so I think it is high time the Ministry of Defence looked into revamping this segment of IPPT.

On average, in order to obtain a Gold standard in the IPPT, a national serviceman has to obtain a minimum of four points (out of a maximum of five points) for each of the four stationary fitness stations and then run 2.4km in about 10 minutes, plus or minus half a minute.

Anyone who has ever achieved a sub-10 for a 2.4km run can attest to the power of endurance needed, and the pain and fatigue undergone. Of course, the excitement and sense of achievement are what push one through.

However, it is unrealistic to expect the majority of national servicemen to reach that level of fitness. Many have unintentionally injured themselves trying to break the 10-minute barrier by overtaxing their bodies.

Hence, it is not advisable to set such a short time limit for a 2.4km run.

Fitness experts recommend that we engage in a cardiovascular exercise continuously for at least 20 minutes in order to maximise its benefits. Running a sub-10 does not seem to serve that purpose.

My suggestion is to extend the distance of the run to 4km or 5km, with a time limit of 30 to 40 minutes, thereby focusing more on the endurance and general fitness than speed. This should put less strain on the heart and body, while giving the runners some time to warm up and ready their bodies for the run in a less gruelling manner.

We cannot delude ourselves that these 'running deaths', which have led to the demise of healthy men in their 20s to 50s, are coincidences. Neither can we attribute the concerns expressed over these occurrences to 'sensationalised news' by the press.

Instead of a sudden burst of energy to complete a run in a short time, a longer run may be all it takes to prevent a cardiac arrest.

Rick Lim Say Kiong

Rick Lim was referring to the recent death of Major Tan Yit Guan. It was probably the TODAY newspaper which reported this incident most thoroughly.

TODAY tells us that Major Tan did not even manage to jog the full distance of 1.2 km. He ran only about 600 metres and then walked the rest of the distance back to the finish. This suggests that Major Tan was already unwell that day.

Rick Lim says that it is unrealistic to expect the majority of servicemen to achieve the Gold standard time. However, I don't think that the majority of servicemen are expected, or expect themselves, to achieve the Gold standard time (barring servicemen in certain elite vocations like the Commandos or the Guards).

Rick also says that the standard recommendation for cardiovascular exercise is to do it continuously for at least 20 minutes in order to maximise its benefits. Of course it is always possible to relook the way the IPPT is done. However, at the same time, I would say that the IPPT in the SAF isn't done for the sake of your cardiovascular fitness or personal health goals. It's done for the purpose of ensuring a certain level of fitness in the soldiers, for military purposes.

Also, it's not clear to me that extending the IPPT distance and increasing the time limit would help reduce incidences of sudden cardiac arrest. The real point is how hard you are pushed to exert. Is it really any safer for your heart, to complete 4 or 5 km as fast as you can, than to complete 2.4 km as fast as you can? For that matter, are people less likely to die from a 100-metre sprint, than they are from a 42-km marathon?

Conspicuous Consumption And The Growth of Human Beings

An interesting ST Forum letter:

ST Jan 2, 2008
Flashy yuppies paint themselves into a corner

MANY young Singaporeans, gainfully employed in a booming economy, have expressed anxiety about building a large enough nest egg for a comfortable retirement. This is rather disturbing.

The reasons are not hard to trace, though, if one steps back and observes the lifestyles of these so-called 'yuppies' who hold lucrative jobs that promise much.

Today, Singaporeans' consumption habits more or less mirror those of Americans who have traditionally been consummate spenders. And like Americans, many Singaporeans discount the future in order to consume today. They are hooked on what sociologist Thorstein Veblen termed 'conspicuous consumption', which used to be the affliction of the rich.

To be sure, they get a lot of help in this respect. Crowded malls for drop-dead shopping with foodcourts to give respite to continue shopping; colourful full-page ads that tell you how good you look in that suit, how macho it would be behind the wheel of that new BMW, or hey, wouldn't that DaVinci sofa look great in our living room?

...... Keeping up with the Joneses has given way to keener appetites: affordable luxury; living well with a vengeance; we have it, let's flaunt it; you can't take it with you; and the rest. All of which keeps the cash register ringing and, of course, an unhealthy growth in credit card debt.

One can argue that consumption is normal desire made possible by a successful economy. But if you think about it, how much do you really need?

........ What one sees is an ethos of consumption that really did not exist a couple of generations ago, when the norms of the lower class and middle class dictated thrift and austerity, living within one's means, saving for the future and for one's children, and not being conspicuous, really, about anything.

The picture looks different now and it's not pretty. Overindulging Singaporeans are in a predicament of their own making and they must, for the sake of their retirement, find a way out unaided - and the sooner the better.

New year resolution, anyone?

Philip Lee Seck Kay

The term "conspicuous consumption" was first coined in a book entitled The Theory of the Leisure Class. It refers to the expenditure of money or other resources for the sake of displaying a higher status than others. A simple example would be the purchase of an expensive branded watch, when one could have purchased a cheaper alternative that works just as well.

Leaving aside economics for a moment, it's interesting to turn to psychology and consider Abraham Maslow's triangle of needs. In brief, Maslow says that human motivations are hierarchical. It's only when an individual has satisfied his lower needs that his attention turns towards his higher needs:

In a developed, highly consumerist society, we might say that a large proportion of individuals are getting stuck at Level 4. At this stage, they are driven by their need for social status and their desire for respect. In turn, their lifestyle develops into one of conspicuous consumption, whereby they constantly seek to acquire more material items so as to display their wealth to others.

Level 5, of course, is where life gets really interesting. Here, individuals start flowering into their uniquely best selves. It is at this self-actualisation stage that a person becomes filled with a desire to realize all of his potential to become an effective, creative, mature human being. "What a man can be, he must be", is one way Maslow expressed it. He also described self-actualisation as follows:

"an episode or spurt in which the powers of the person come together in a particularly and intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more integrated and less split, more open for experience, more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spontaneous, or fully functioning, more creative, more humorous more ego-transcending, more independent of his lower needs, etc. He becomes in these episodes more truly himself, more perfectly actualising his potentialities, closer to the core of his being, more fully human. Not only are these his happiest and most thrilling moments, but they are also moments of greatest maturity, individuation, fulfilment - in a word, his healthiest moments."

Maslow predicts that the large majority of human beings will never get past Level 4. In other words, few people are truly self-actualising. If your focus in life is still on conspicuous consumption, then you are not a self-actualiser and you are a lesser being than you could be - and you aren't even heading in the right direction.

One day, you might still become more than your car, your condo, your clothes and your credit cards. But first you will have to climb past Level 4. Good luck.