Upcoming Events to look forward to:
1. Sports Day (thumbs down)
2. (Closed)Dialogue Session with Principal (thumbs down)
3. Institute Day
4. MI Carnival (thumbs down)
5. The first cross country ever! (thumbs down)
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Of particular interest is the Closed Dialogue Session with the Principal, which is announced shortly after the clamp down of a particularly undesirable, defamatory and derogatory post in various blogs with regards to the principal/teachers.
A dialogue session aims to clear up misunderstandings, get personal session with questions answered and to get everyone to understand each other better; in this case, the upper echelon of the school management and the student population. Possibly what the upper echelon might want to find out through this dialogue session is to see what possible unhappines there is within the student population.
However, why is the dialogue session only opened to the class chairpersons of each class? Is it to make it a smaller scale, more effective one? Possibly so much so that the message will be carried more effectively acrossed than if it was held in the auditorium against the full strength of the school student population, where rebukes are likely to come swifter.
Perhaps, one of the things which should be talked about is the "Cream of the Crop" theory. As this theory goes, every student that makes it to JC to take A levels is categorized by the Government as being one of the top 25% of their cohort in terms of academic results. More often though, they're called the top 25% intelligent people of their batch. Therefore to be put together in this group, you should preferably get below 20points for your Os, which is the cut off point for qualifying for a junior college. The people who got below 20 and yet chose the polytechnic are ignored, perhaps because they did not choose to go the elitist and academic way, which eventually nets you a degree.
The theory, has now been changed(apparently!) to make it apply to MI students as well. We are now part of the cream of the crop as we take A levels, and thus qualify as the top 25% of our respective cohorts. I would like to point out that almost everyone here(meaning, being in MI) is here simply because they failed maths, or some other crucial subject that prevents them from qualifying for a course in the polytechnic, and the other alternative would be to go to the ITE or to study in one of the many private schools available in Singapore.
The student population is not unaware of the fact that they're here because of that, and much less would not believe the repeated persuasions by the school to make them believe they're at the very top, for as we all know, anyone in poly can qualify for MI simply because the academic grades they received were good enough. This effectively places them at the top 25% of the cohort as well, except for the fact that they did not choose the A levels route. If everyone choose that and came to MI(or jc), then almost everyone would be in the top 25%, except that there wouldn't be a 25% anymore, since almost the whole cohort is here taking As in either JCs or MI correct? Lets change it to a top 80% of every cohort, and call them the Cream of the Crop then.
I could go on and on about some other issues that the students are experiencing, the timetable being a very good example, but except for the fact Im lazy to make this an extremely long(and not reader-friendly) post.
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The headache that Im experiencing right now just refuses to go away. Finally on those days when I thought I recovered proves to only be a lull in the proceedings before the pain returns with a vengeance. Although I've not been wanting to attribute this to stress, it might be time to give that area some considerable thought. Everybody's cracking hard down on me, offering (unwanted)lectures that I could deliver to myself if I wanted to.
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