my sympathy to my fellow countrymen, always have to bend over for PAP and 3rd world countries FTs..
Seriously guys...is anyone here going to say being good in study is a bad thing now?
There is two different type of elitism in the world. One is due to you born in a rich family, the second type of elite, is the elite because of one education.
Elite as in a person who has better education , and is able to use that education well enough.
Do you want your country to be a nation where stupidity is celebrated?
Please, first of all, no one is equal in this world. And if we become a society who believe that having good education isn't important, we might as well say bye to our society
Take science for example, if a student dare to challenge a teacher with his scientific belief, that student should be shouted down simply when that student did not even finish his secondary school education.
Hell, then there is the issue with neighbour schools and etc. Please, first of all, it is possible for you to climb up the social ladder if you bother to study hard enough and get a degree...and all the way till a Ph.D
Sure, you can whin about the fact that you come from a harsher background, being unable to afford tuition and etc.
Guess what? The world isn't fair! Stop using the world being unfair as an excuse to say why can't I be better than the RI people.
And if you work hard enough in primary school, you will not be margainsed easily.
While I disagree with those elitist in certain top schools, who believe that a person intellect or social status can be judged at a secondary school level, I believe that everyone should strive for a good education.
Then mindset of most neighbour school students don't help either. Hell, when was the last time where you can see a majority of neighbourhood students being even concerned about politics and economy?
The mindset of the majority of the people in neighbourhood secondary schools NEEDS to be changed.
And this is from a person studying in a neighbourhood school.
Most of those people who is concerned about those issues belong to those elite schools.
When the majority of people in secondary schools don't even bother about political issues, do you want them to vote and decide how singapore is ran?
If a person is good in maths and science, what does that mean? It means his logical reasoning is stronger.
And let me ask you this question. Do you want a person with more logical reasoning or less logical reasoning running the country?
Gosh...I can believe what tons of you is saying on this forum. It is a nice thing to be dumb now? Allow people who is less educated to make judgement?
People who only care about how they only about everything in the short term? People without proper education can only see things in the short term and can't see anything bad in the long term.
In a democratic society, it is even MORE important to have a well educated and learned society. After all, this is how democracy should be.
A nation of people able to make SMART choice when they are voting for a government.
Knowledge should be the key to sucess, not simply hardwork.
Please, if simple hardwork is the viewed as success, then those construction workers should be managing the company or country...
When you guys starts to say how bad it is to be an elitist, and being good in academic results should not be celebrated, the difference between what you guys want, and what the chinese during the cultural revolution want in no different.
So stop complaining about being treated as inferior in regards to academic standing.
If you guys are not good enough, don't expect to be treated equally as a person with good result. Or else, meritocracy might as well be ignored in singapore.
A person from a wealither family usually can study better because he has better access to help, either from his family, or through a good tution teacher. However, determination is up to you personally. A person born rich might not be in RI or those top schools, if he lacks the motivation to study.
After all, everyone should be treated equally right? Even though nothing can be equal in the real world.
Anyway, this is an article that address the issue of elitism in the US...and say why we should tolerate elitism, academic elitisim.
Best Is the New Worst
By SUSAN JACOBY
Published: May 30, 2008
PITY the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.
Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “elite opinion” to dismiss the near unanimous opposition of economists to her proposal for a gas tax holiday was a landmark in the use of elite to attack expertise supposedly beyond the comprehension of average Americans. One might as well say that there is no point in consulting musicians about music or ichthyologists about fish.
The assault on “elite” did not begin with politicians, although it does have political antecedents in sneers directed at “eggheads” during the anti-Communist crusades of the 1950s. The broader cultural perversion of its meaning dates from the late 1960s, when the academic left pinned the label on faculty members who resisted the establishment of separate departments for what were then called “minority studies.” In this case, two distinct faculty groups were tarred with elitism — those who wanted to incorporate black and women’s studies into the core curriculum, and those who thought that blacks and women had produced nothing worthy of study. Instead of elitist, the former group should have been described as “inclusionary” and the latter as “bigoted.”
The second stage of elite-bashing was conceived by the cultural and political right. Conservative intellectuals who rose to prominence during the Reagan administration managed the neat trick of reversing the ’60s usage of “elite” by applying it as a slur to the left alone. “Elite,” often rendered in the plural, became synonymous with “limousine liberals” who opposed supposedly normative American values. That the right-wing intellectual establishment also constituted a powerful elite was somehow obscured.
“Elite” and “elitist” do not, in a dictionary sense, mean the same thing. An elitist is someone who does believe in government by an elite few — an anti-democratic philosophy that has nothing to do with elite achievement. But the terms have become so conflated that Americans have come to consider both elite and elitist synonyms for snobbish.
All the older forms of elite-bashing have now devolved into a kind of aggressive denial of the threat to American democracy posed by public ignorance.
During the past few months, I have received hundreds of e-mail messages calling me an elitist for drawing attention to America’s knowledge deficit. One of the most memorable came from a man who objected to my citation of a statistic, from a 2006 National Geographic-Roper survey, indicating that nearly two-thirds of Americans age 18 to 24 cannot find Iraq on a map. “Why should I care whether my mechanic knows where Iraq is, as long as he knows how to fix my car?” the man asked.
But what could be more elitist than the idea that a mechanic cannot be expected to know the location of a country where thousands of Americans of his own generation are fighting and dying?
Another peculiar new use of “elitist” (often coupled with “Luddite”) is its application to any caveats about the Internet as a source of knowledge. After listening to one of my lectures, a college student told me that it was elitist to express alarm that one in four Americans, according to the National Constitution Center, cannot name any First Amendment rights or that 62 percent cannot name the three branches of government. “You don’t need to have that in your head,” the student said, “because you can just look it up on the Web.”
True, but how can an information-seeker know what to look for if he or she does not know that the Bill of Rights exists? There is no point-and-click formula for accumulating a body of knowledge needed to make sense of isolated facts.
It is past time to retire the sliming of elite knowledge and education from public discourse. Do we want mediocre schools or the best education for our children? If we need an operation, do we want an ordinary surgeon or the best, most elite surgeon available?
America was never imagined as a democracy of dumbness. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by an elite group of leaders, and although their dream was limited to white men, it held the seeds of a future in which anyone might aspire to the highest — let us say it out loud, elite — level of achievement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/opinion/30jacoby.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
There is two different type of elitism in the world. One is due to you born in a rich family, the second type of elite, is the elite because of one education.
I think people are unhappy that the 3rd PM of Sg is the son of the 1st PM of Sg
Well, no one can help it... cuz the success of a son usually get overshadowed by the success of his father... This is not only the case for politics here; it is also probably the case for financial successes as well, especially if the father was extremely successful
People just dun like seeing another successful persons familiy member take over the business. Its just how it is. Many will wish u go bankrupt , die or suffer some form of humiliation or tragedy in thier lifetime.
Originally posted by eagle:I think people are unhappy that the 3rd PM of Sg is the son of the 1st PM of Sg
Well, no one can help it... cuz the success of a son usually get overshadowed by the success of his father... This is not only the case for politics here; it is also probably the case for financial successes as well, especially if the father was extremely successful
What happened to David Marshall?
Originally posted by BadzMaro:People just dun like seeing another successful persons familiy member take over the business. Its just how it is. Many will wish u go bankrupt , die or suffer some form of humiliation or tragedy in thier lifetime.
aiya, all cocksters. the people i know who call XXX elitist all carry LV. ask them why? they say, "oh i like design", "oh good quality". nb all full of shit.
once and for all, if you can't keep up because of your failings/lackings, don't be sour.
Originally posted by Sleepy Mosquito:What happened to David Marshall?
we got marshal meh
Originally posted by fishbuff1:my sympathy to my fellow countrymen, always have to bend over for PAP and 3rd world countries FTs..
ya, really sympathy to those sg men, always bend over for PAP, really gay stuff.
Thanks to Ms Wee.. the word Elite has become a dirty word.
Originally posted by jojobeach:Thanks to Ms Wee.. the word Elite has become a dirty word.
that's what bring me to create a cocktail called Elite at my Underground dirty ba.
Originally posted by angel7030:
that's what bring me to create a cocktail called Elite at my Underground dirty ba.
Is it any good?