Is that all we're meant to be?

Chua Mui Hoong of The Straits Times admits that her observations on girls from certain schools may be gross stereotypes, but she sure picked a "complimentary" one for my alma mater, Singapore Chinese Girls' School. She writes:

"Singapore Chinese Girls' School girls are said to marry well - because they mix with the right crowd. But if you're not from the right kind of family to begin with, life can be tough. Or so some SCGS girls say."

And on other schools: MGS girls are more gentle and know how to cook and sew, Nanyang Primary kids are status-conscious, and RGS girls get all the deemed-successful traits of a career women (intelligence, competitive nature, less marriagable). The author is an ex-RGS girl herself, and perhaps I'm sensitive but she appears to want to impress upon readers that it's mainly the RGS girl who can state, "sorry if I scare men with my intelligence but I can't help that, I just am" and this would be a far better kind of woman (who also is trained in technical drawings, woodwork and metalwork) to be than the SCGS girl who is geared towards marrying well.

Yes, we are more marriagable than the RGS girls because we know instinctively who to marry in order to marry well; yes, we really do aim to mix with Tatler-featured families and young men of high stature and significant inheritances and certifiable futures; yes, we tend to pity the poor girls who don't know the people worth knowing; yes, our peers often exchange notes on who's the latest catch this month. Oh my, what a bunch of materialistic and manipulative creatures we must be to orchestrate such fates for ourselves!

For heaven's sake, Ms Chua, I pity your nephew if you are the one making the choice of his secondary school. You claim that you will not "use academic criteria alone to choose a school for his formative years", which means you'll be looking into the schools' reputations in "other" areas. Well, you better make sure you know what the schools are really known for because your assessments so far are grossly sweeping and biased, and I doubt that they arrive from a very wide sample.

But seriously, how does anyone really know what a school is known for in "other" areas? These stereotypes come from prominent or socializing figures who give their schools a bad or good image. What about the rest who don't have voices or who have them but aren't given the chance to articulate their opinions? Chances are you'll find that it's only a handful of students who truly subscribe to the image given to them. The rest wouldn't fit into any category provided (not that Ms. Chua has provided many).

Go here to see the article.

Posted by Monoceros at November 16, 2003 12:40 AM