A gift of a programme

Being in the Gifted Education Programme (GEP), I have realised the difference in the curriculum between the GEP and that of the mainstream. Many of the lessons are indeed a little harder and in secondary school the difference becomes much wider. However, knowing my friends, they wouldn't go up to a neighbourhood school guy and go "HAH! I'm in Hwa Chong leh!" In fact, on the contrary, I feel that many of us think that talking to a neighbourhood school student is difficult, being afraid that they would have the impression that we are being proud and cocky in any way. The problem of elitism is never a one-sided problem, not just that elites become elitist, also non-elites becomes anti-elites, and in addition this creates much stereotype resulting in miscommunication.

I do agree that it is a good programme but is intellectual elites what the students themselves want to be? Not only is the stress very high, the time left is extremely little. Sometimes in the shopping centre, I see groups of students hanging out together while I’m just going home alone. I do not think that I want to waste my youth not doing the things I will get even less time to do when I grow up. We only have such limited time to enjoy our youth. Moreover, our goal in the future also may not be to climb the career ladder, we could just be contented to be an employee in a well-to-do company. We must not always think about the future and look at the present and take time to enjoy it. If never now, then when? After retirement, there would be barely any youth in us left to do those kind of highly straining activities.

Do we have to sacrifice individual wants for the better of the community? It is difficult to find a balance, it would be best if what the individual wants is for the better of the community. Yet, this isn’t the realistic situation.