Something interesting caught my eye the
other day. Somebody from RI, my alma mater put up a petition calling
for the removal of the principal. I think it only made the news
because of the sheer outrageousness of the whole thing.
Let me state that in the RI I went to,
there was a high degree of tomfoolery. It was a place that was much
like a looney tunes cartoon: violent but forgiving. People were up to
all sorts of hi-jinks. People threw toilet paper against the ceiling
to make paper mache. Somebody left his footprint on the ceiling.
Teachers had limericks written about them. People got locked inside
the toilet for laughs. Played squash against the blackboard.
But there were other incidents that
took a darker hue. There are plenty of memories that give me a warm
fuzzy feeling of nostalgia when I think about them. RI was a place
where I was challenged for the first time, and I had to do things to
prove that I had character, for example I had to go on a 20km route
march. I had to write a school play, represent the school in
competitions, master a musical instrument. Take pride in my own
achievements.
But there were things about RI even
back before it became a very competitive and unwelcoming place.
People could be a little self-centred and only respected you if you
did something that impressed them. They weren't very helpful to each
other, and would look past you if you didn't have enough social
status.
By and large, I was OK with the people
who were there. Whether or not they were my good friends, I could
always count on them to behave with honour and act according to the
bro code. There were sufficient examples of people sticking up for me
that I would have confidence in them as human beings.
There were a few things where I wasn't
proud of RI. They didn't protect my mental health very well when
things weren't going well for me. (Thank goodness I found a way to
get back on my feet and in a way earned back my mental health). I
didn't feel that somebody reached out to me to help, although to be
fair, in retrospect people were concerned about me and I would have
received more help if I were more receptive to help. There were
bullies and I did get my things thrown around on the school bus,
although it stopped once he got the message that he would be
physically deprived of oxygen if he were to do that again.
There were certain things that
disappointed me, although many of those things took place when I
left. I was in one of the batches which moved from Grange Road to
Bishan. RI had been in Grange Road since before I was born, so I
barely understood that it was very much a temporary premises, RI was
there for less than 20 years, which is basically a blink of an eye.
But it felt that Bras Basah and Grange Road's RI was a very “old
school” RI, which still retained a very working class and
conservative mentality of the world. It was an RI which was still
good at football. The RI of Bishan was the first place where we had
computer labs, where people bought cassettes and CDs. It was a more
internationalist, tech-savvy, cosmopolitan and worldly RI that took
its place. Football was no longer an ECA in RI, quite possibly
because the kids of my generation would get thrashed at it.
Perhaps when bad things happened to the
old RI, things were kept under wraps. The RI of Bishan seemed to be a
version which became more like what it is today – a bastion of the
privileged elite. In fact, I was quite oblivious to the fact that a
few of my classmates were children of civil servant royalty – maybe
a minister of parliament or a permanent secretary or a superscale
grade.
I was very disappointed when I heard
about some of the scandals that made the news. I used to be
embarrassed at some of the hi-jinks that I detailed earlier, but I
don't think any of it was outrageously bad enough to go viral. The
first one that really disappointed me was the “Elite Girl”
scandal, where one of the RJC kids (who was the daughter of an MP)
basically rubbished the idea about the growing divide between the
haves and have nots. I think it got bad enough that she would be
persona non grata if she comes back to this country.
Perhaps I wanted to believe that RI was
some kind of a classless society. It was easy to believe, especially
in RI's Grange Road era, where the economic advances were very
broad-based, that we had finally transcended there being an economic
divide in society. RI was that wonderful paradox: it was a symbol of
Singapore. On one hand, it was an academically elite school and yet,
it was supposed to be have students from all backgrounds. At least,
that was the fantasy, that we were unlike the other traditional
colonial elite schools who were the exclusive scion of the moneyed
class.
Then there were a few other blackface
incidents. One of my schoolmates was a playwright who – I respected
his talent, but I thought he may have been a little thin-skinned
about being a minority in RI. And make no mistake, RI is not a great
place for a minority, and minority races are underrepresented in the
school.
This petition felt different. For the
first time, it felt that this institution was under attack itself.
Perhaps I attended the school in a different era. I thought of the
school first, and then secondly I thought about the school as a
stepping stone to bigger and better things. I'm wondering about the
guy who wrote the petition.
There is this thing about foreign
students. I was a foreign student in Snowy Hill, and while I will
always be proud of Snowy Hill, I also know that it's not my home. I
could have attended many other universities, and there's nothing
special about that university. Well, it's special, but it's not like
a country that I would die for.
I'm starting to wonder if the guy who
wrote it is either a foreign national or the son of a new immigrant,
given that he did make a few English mistakes in his writing. Of
course, every one of us at school has slagged off our teachers behind
their bags for laughs. But we were careful not to do it in front of
them, and while we weren't always very concerned about the reputation
of the school (I can't imagine the number of crazy things I did while
in school uniform) it's another thing entirely to want to decapitate
the school's leadership.
So I actually went and signed the
peittion and slagged off the kid for good measure. It's one thing to
be disciplined by the school authorities for something as outrageous
as this, but quite another thing to have to face up to a playground
taunt, having to deal with a rebel within the ranks of the rebels.
As a former alumnus of RI, attended
during the 90s when most of you were nothing more than a by product
of your father's horny imaginations. I am here to tell you young
punks that your conduct is nothing short of a disgrace.
During my time, we had to wear slacks
every day and sweat as much as a horny female. The teachers made the
rules and we had to live with them, whether we liked it or not. We
had to sit in sullen silence as somebody threatened to slap our faces
every 5 minutes.
While it is alright to want to aspire
to independent thinking, what most appalls me is that such a flimsy
and shoddy case is being built. You are asking him to be fired
because he's turning off your air con and asking you to get a proper
haircut? Many people have gone through RI and found it a character
building experience. Are these pussies going to be our heirs and
successors?
Teaching is not a popularity contest.
You have to do the right thing whether the kids like it or not. It is
OK to bargain against some restrictions that may be overly excessive.
Reasonable to petition against the scrapping of an ECA (after having
actually discussed this with a real person instead of hiding on the
internet like a craven coward) But calling for the head of your
principal is beyond the pale, especially on grounds that are as
flimsy as the ones that are stated in the writeup.
People rebel against authority because
of injustice. Like Lim Bo Seng against the Japanese, Lee Kuan Yew
against the British, maybe even a few opposition party members. None
of you are fit to be in that category. The frivolity with which you
conduct your business, and the flimsiness of your stand make this
whole affair a complete sham.
I was in sec 1 more than 30 years ago.
I've seen a few things I didn't like – the shameless wayanging, the
“elite girl” incident, people throwing away other peoples'
lecture notes, a few blackface incidents, but never have I seen
anything exposing the rot in the soul of RI more than a bunch of
whinging brats offering to throw their leader under the bus over a
few petty grievances.
I personally feel saddened that in this
day and age, people who think that it's "personal correlation to
judo" instead of "personal connection to judo" are
allowed to wander the hallowed walls of our august institution. I am
also disappointed in the people of my generation who have raised
brats like the ones I see over here. Raffles Institution has fallen
so far in standards as to be as bereft of character, like the
graveyard that used to occupy the Bishan plot.
I am petitioning the board of directors
for authorisation to allow the people who run the school to find the
person responsible for this petition, and have him banished from
Raffles Institution forever I am calling for people who sign this
trash to have this on their permanent record If believe your
generation calls this "cancellation")
If you think that calling for the head
of your school principal is A-OK, I assume that this would also not
be rough justice.
PS: Just because I'm an anonymous
coward and a hypocrite, it doesn't mean that you guys aren't thin
skinned cowards who can't face somebody calling you out for being
unworthy Rafflesians and thin skinned narcissistic pricks who do not
have the balls to face criticism.
One of the things is that the guy
instigated quite a few people in RI to rise up against the principal.
This is something more serious than blackface people embarrassing
themselves. You actually got at least 100 people to join in the
mutiny with you. You've made the principal's job more difficult. And
if the school board feels that they have to fire the principal, then
it sets a very unpleasant precedent that students in the school can
remove the principal just by staging an uprising.
The principal, on the other hand (who
may even be a younger person than me) has also done himself no
favours. There was a blackface incident last year, where somebody
turned up as a minority blackfaced Foodpanda delivery man. It was
something very insensitive, possibly in breach of the religious
harmony act, and he should have been punished. But the principal
stopped short of doing something courageous and punished him. The
principal, I felt, owed him at least a mock execution.
Quite possibly there were a few
cutbacks to school programs. I'm starting to wonder if they were
pushed down from the board, or from the Ministry of Education. Some
of the CCAs, some of which had a pedigree in RI, had their plugs
pulled. But the petition seemed so cheerfully nihilistic that I
somehow doubt that it was truly about these weighty concerns. The guy
just seemed more pissed off that the principal was withdrawing a few
privileges.
There are quite a few question marks
about the principal. He may have been unlucky enough to have had to
implement quite a few unpopular changes to the school. Maybe RI was
supposed to no longer have a monopoly on many of the special
enrichment programs, and they were more broad based. This would be in
line with making the Singapore school system less elitist. And there
were criticisms of his style.
Somehow, though, this seemed to wind me
up. The guy seemed to be doing something malicious as an insider. He
was a traitor to the Rafflesian community. Maybe he was a spoilt brat
who thought he could get away with anything. It's unfortunate that
there are a few other people who have genuine reasons to feel upset
at the principal and are being instigated to turn on him in a public
forum. But this has made RI into some kind of a laughing stock, and
highlighted the internal division between people in the school.
