End of the GEP

When the GEP ended, there was a lot of mourning for what it was, what it meant. I was at first quite critical of the fact that GEP people were shut off from the rest of the school and given our own special facilities. 

What is the meaning of the GEP? This is one of the biggest crucial questions, and a question that people avoid because answering it honestly might involve slaying a few sacred cows. There are two views of the GEP. First view is that it's to produce people of great talent and ability, and great geniuses. They are people who change the world, and the GEP is to leverage their strengths and not hold them back. The second view of the issue is that some of these guys are like Einstein - who is obviously a very capable human being, but in some other respects in his life, a complete mess who needs some help for his day to day life. 

And it was very strange that people who were gifted in one aspect of our lives were also considered handicapped in others. To add to the confusion, people in the GEP were as different from each other as they were from the people in the express, so you had to deal with 4 groups of people: people who are gifted, or people who got lucky in the entrance exam. (There won't be retarded people in there, but maybe one or two who may only have average IQ). There will be neurotypical people and neurodiverse people. 

The gifted program during my time worked because these 4 groups of people do not really have anything that will intrinsically put them in conflict with each other. You can put the smart and crazy people in the same room, and they will help each other, this is one kind of diversity that produces benefits for all kinds of people. 

So there was maybe a lack of honest discussion about which of these two things the GEP was really about. And that's because while people who are running the program are perfectly willing to do the things that are necessary to help the people who are maybe struggling and a bit behind, they aren't willing to make this facet of the GEP well known to everybody. And nobody really wants to discuss this angle, because when you are facing the public, you want to play up the angle that these guys are potential heroes, not potential losers. It's good for your ego, and it helps when you are trying to angle for more resources to be diverted into your program. Nobody wants to say, "this is for people who are already intelligent to navigate the more screwed up facets of their psyche", even though that is truly the case. 

The problem starts when the gifted program ends and people have to step into the wider society. Those first few post-gifted years were hard for me, in ways that I didn't anticipate, and my parents were ill-equipped to prepare me for. I think I'm only able to understand the true meaning of the gifted program many many years later when I make the adjustments I've had to make, and rue the opportunities that I didn't take. 

As you know, anybody who shut themselves away from a better social life when they're younger will regret it when they're older. This is one of the things which is almost always true. 

You will only know the answer to the question when you are put in a position to answer that question. There's a lot that we didn't know about life when we were schoolkids. And in many ways, some of us didn't grow up quickly enough. 

There are people who would argue that you should make the gifted program more exclusive because you should concentrate your resources more on producing the people who are truly elite. I think that is wrong. If you examine the theory of evolution closely, there's one aspect that people fail to understand. “Time and chance happen to them all”. People do not truly know how to select people for the gifted program, and you should not rely on people to have that ability. So in order to prepare for the eventuality that the wrong people are admitted into the gifted program, you should take in as many people as possible, and let them sort it out when they're in the gifted program. 

But one of the benefits was that you did put some of the smart people in the same room as each other, and that has its benefits, although it isn't an unalloyed benefit. You know what it means to grow up and live in a tight knit community. But then that community doesn't grow in a way that syncs up with what the larger Singaporean community is going to be like. So it actually handicaps students in one or two ways. I'm not going to lie. There is a temptation for the inmates to want to take over the asylum. I was one of the inmates who wanted to take over the asylum. And even for people who are less weird than myself, they talked about people outside as “the normies”. It's good to celebrate your quirks every once in a while. But when you can't tell the difference between what is normal and what is quirky, and when you start thinking that you can change the values of society just like that, then we have got a serious problem on our hands. 

It was very “Lord of the Flies”. We built a little mini-society that had rules that were slightly different from other people. But it was relatively good natured, there wasn't a lot of bullying, and it was definitely a safe space. We deserved a pat on the back for that. That said, every batch of gifted people are different, and I cannot speak for all the batches that came after us. 

My ability to integrate into the wider world was not terrible, but it's not fantastic either. After a few years, I was pretty OK. 

So the integration with the larger society is a big issue with the gifted program. The other issue is that you have a dual personality with the gifted people. There is a fundamental incoherence that you think that these guys are smart and tough on one hand, and are special people who need special help on the other hand. So does that mean you push them hard to succeed, or you coddle them? This is a very hard problem to deal with, and it may have led to one or two people remarking to me ruefully, “do you think that maybe we should have been working a bit harder?” 

But I do see the logic behind the gifted program, and it is a very similar logic to raising children in general: protect them when they're young, and hope that they'll grow stronger, so that when they become adults, they'll be ready to fend for themselves. I could moan and groan all I want about “why didn't I come our of this or that comfort zone a bit sooner” but is the gifted program really to be blame for this? You can give people opportunities, but you can't force people to grab them. 

And the big elephant in the room is the issue about privileges. And that's become something that ... it was already a big issue in the 80s and 90s, but today, I can imagine that it's even worse. A whole tuition industry has risen around getting students to game the system. Back then, we knew that we were the beneficiaries of an uneven playing field, but this was not something that was front and centre, not something that our entire existence revolved around. I can't imagine how crazy things are today, when you have Singaporean kids attending school side by side with new immigrants from other countries, or children of new immigrants. I can't imagine the level of bitchiness and resentment that could result from something like that. My own experience of the GEP is that we worked hard and played hard. But I can imagine that an elite student today will have to work hard without playing hard. And that's pretty sad.

So while I'm sufficiently distant from the GEP to have some good perspective of the general outline of what the GEP was about, I'm also too distant to know the finer details of what it's evolved into. I'm glad that more people can participate in elite education and get a leg up here or there. I certainly had a good time during my 7 years, and in some way, this is closing of a chapter. Years from now, when nobody even remembers that a GEP existed, nobody will really care about those 7 years of my life, other than the other people who went through some version of it. But at the same time, it's also quite remarkable that something like that has lasted as long as it has. So I guess there's the old cliche: don't be sad that it's over, just be glad that it happened to you. 

What was the death knell for the GEP? It has to do with Goodhart's law. The most controversial part of the GEP is that some are selected and most are not. Statistically speaking, it is basically impossible to get it right. First, the ideal was that the GEP selection test is totally objective and incorruptible. It was meant to be basically impossible to prepare for. Now we know that's not true. And therefore the original objective that we found the people with the most raw intelligence - that was compromised. There were issues raised that people in the GEP were mostly from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Well, they're not supposed to representative of the general population. This is a natural aristocracy. Smart kids tend to be kids of people who are also smart, and these guys tend to be wealthy. But is this skew even higher than what was caused by natural conditions? Are the people in the GEP there not because of their intelligence, but because they were given an extra push by their parents, at the expense of more suitable people? There is evidence to support this theory. And one important piece of evidence is that the GEP is almost entirely Chinese. At least, this is what it was like during my cohort, but it could be even worse. That's not supposed to happen, because naturally smart people exist in the same proportion across races. 

The second problem with the selection is the notion that raw intelligence is the criteria for sorting people into the GEP. There are a lot of other skill sets which are as important, if not more important. The ability to work with others, organisational ability, drive. The correlation between these factors and IQ is just not great, maybe it's even non-existent. And that's why the GEP is also about people who need help, because many of these guys are people who would excel in some way and not the other, and who may underachieve because they don't have those other capabilities. 

You'd have a double problem if you select the wrong people into the program. First, you'd put undue pressure on the people who aren't going to succeed in life. There are a lot of very intelligent people who are just content to coast through life, but there would be this lifelong pressure to succeed now, and that can be quite uncomfortable if not downright traumatising. (Although some people might argue that that's a fair price that you have to pay for all your childhood privileges). And the second problem is all the gifted people who didn't get selected for the GEP. I know quite a few of them, and I can tell you that most of them have a super large chip on their shoulders when it comes to us. And you know what, most of them are also going to be in the elite schools, in RI, RGS, Chinese High, ACS, in the "express stream". It's quite likely that you're going to have animosity between these two groups of people. Is that a price worth paying for there to be a GEP?  

There are a lot of enrichment programs that are on offer to Singapore students, and a lot of them are good. I just don't think that you should have a system where the GEP students have unequal access to them. It might be better if students had to compete for access to some of these facilities, although that that would bring with it its own share of problems. It's true that a lot of the GEP worked well because we were able to live in this garden that was walled off from a lot of the political bitchiness that accompanies people having privileged access. Things were collegial and friendly. What's the use of having enrichment programs if people are just going to be squabbling over them, if parents are just going to be squabbling with each other all day long?