The Power of Ideas

Dear Christian

Something has happened recently andI felt this burning urge to tell you. I am afraid you are still a little too young to understand, and am thus addressing this to the 11 year old you I imagine reading this in future.

You see, your Daddy and I have lots of worries and concerns about your sister and you. How you two grow and develop, whether you will be given the opportunity to fulfill your God-given potential, whether we are doing the right thing for you in terms of schooling, family arrangement etc etc. We wonder if certain choices we make would have helped all of us lead a happier life, and occasionally we have ideas on how the system should be changed in order to reduce stress and unhappiness on poor children like you.

Your Daddy and I are particularly concerned about education, and he has written in to the newspapers to air his thoughts on what should be changed in the system to reduce elitism, and unnecessary stress on young uns. Getting into a good primary school has been one of the matters on our priority list, and is something we often had debates about. In fact, we sold our very first family home because there were no good schools within 1 km of our house. (There was a neighbourhood school, but it was definitely one of the poorer schools around; we often saw kids hanging around the playground, smoking cigarettes while still in their uniform.)

Worrying about the effects of streaming and PSLE on the young fragile ego, on heavy workload and stress of doing well in an exam that determines your life, your father decided to try and effect change in the only way that was open to him. By writing to the papers. And so he spent a few hours working on each submission to the papers, crafting and perfecting his language to be succinct and convincing, refining his ideas to be practical and easily implemented.

One of his ideas – to do away with excessive granulation of differentiating between pupils, by putting them in bands instead – caught fire. He wrote in to Today, some people responded to say they agreed, he was asked to air his thoughts on a TV interview, and just last Sunday, the Prime Minister announced that they were going to do away with the T-score as it creates unnecessary stress, and that they were going to grade students based on bands of A, B, C, D instead. I was rather surprised when I read that, as it echoed all that your father had initially said.

Too bad there is no authorship rights, and neither will there be any monetary remuneration for a good idea. Nonetheless, just think of the many lives that might possibly be changed thanks to the change in system. Think of the generations of children who will no longer be chasing to have a PSLE score of 271 instead of 270, just so they can go into their dream school.

So, son, please believe that we can effect change. And if we can make a change in the world, it is certainly possible to overcome whatever hurdle you think is currently in your life, to change ourselves, and our lives.