Comments on: HDB Kids Don’t Perform as well in PSLE

By: to Mus'ad

to Mus'ad — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:42:36 +0000

if we were to advance, we should stay away from model reports and answers. It just doesn’t help in the long run. Anyone watched the movie 3 idiots?

I believe rich kids stand out from having more resources, not just money-wise, but also having more time to explore enriching activities rather than doing the non-value adding stuff like cleaning the house or getting a part time job as a waiter.

By: Mus'ad

Mus'ad — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:24:49 +0000

With the age of IT and Information, any answers from exams can be bought for little as nothing from students in India. Students from India are widely doing peoples reports and answers for exams. The rich know this but the HDB kids have a lot to learn. One day the tides will turn!

By: solo

solo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:57:55 +0000

I was born in the 70s. During those times, alot of kids lived in HDB. Fastforward for more than 20yrs later, I guess I have to agree that rich kids has more advantage especially those extra lessons like MindChamps, etc that their parents can afford to enrol them in

By: Geek

Geek — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:01:09 +0000

Someone out there said rich kids get best teachers/classmates? You are undermining the teaching profession. What makes you think only certain schools have the ‘best teachers’?

By: shu shu

shu shu — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:09:53 +0000

For each primary one cohort of students, what respective percentages of those who went through Junior College or Polytechnic, were able to enter the 3 local universities i.e. NUS, NTU, SMU. Any statistics?

By: ami2lait

ami2lait — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:03:44 +0000

Apart from ‘smart genes’ and opportunities, which I believe contributes to the success in an individual, the time contributed by a home-staying parent helps alot in the kid doing better in PSLE. So, in this hypothesis, a richer family will be able to cope better with a 1-man salary. And so, with 1 parent staying at home to groom the child, the child would naturally performs better in school.
based only on my observation, I see most children who do well in school or other activities, has 1 home staying parent.

By: bmw

bmw — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:59:02 +0000

pls lah. why don’t you also blame the 12% increase in electricity price on the foreigners? imagine all the foreigners leave at once, who’s going to play jackpots in our two big casinos? we already have 2 useless durians. are we going to have 3 more tombstones in marina and 1 ugly brown town in mati island?

By: reporter

reporter — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:43:52 +0000

Another case of positive sounding reporting from Straits Times: rather than saying “more than one-third of the population are foreign citizens”, they choose to say “almost two-thirds are Singapore citizens” and simply ignore the cold hard truth that our country is now flooded with non-citizens. Whether they create jobs for citizens is now very questionable now that it’s highly probable that they have taken away jobs that could have gone to Singaporeans. Not to mention that they also have a hand in pushing up housing prices, which may be a good thing for people with a roof but not so much for those without.

By: jack

jack — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:23:05 +0000

sorry, but this is something i would not take a step back on.

the more we believe that rich kids do well in school because they inherited ‘smart genes’, the less we attribute it to the many, many more opportunities and advantages that come from have rich parents supporting their education. this way, policies that would help poorer students do well in school would never be implemented. and smarter poor students would, as i said, be displaced by less capable rich kids just because they did not enjoy the advantages that money brings.

and, of course, i firmly believe kevin’s theory is wholly unsubstantiated and does not present itself in actuality. there are so many examples of capable parents having bums for kids, and stupid parents having exceptionally smart kids, that cannot be written off as mere anomalies or exceptions to the theory.

By: middleclass

middleclass — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:47:23 +0000

kevin: yes you are right that it was misquoted. but i would still believe that the idea is adaptability behind evolution that is more important than whether a human being simply his genes from Stephen Hawkings or Usain Bolt.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpurrin1/3163273537/
As for PSLE results i’m not sure either since I’ve never been that big on academic results being an indicator of success(potential success maybe).