"To deride the hopes of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind" - Sir Peter Medawar, 1960 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
One's graduation is a time to reflect upon life, and upon one's education. And I hear this term being bundled around a lot these days, of how people are settling into quarter-life crises. Of how people have no idea of what they want to do.
An article I read by a talented young writer set me thinking. In it, she talked about a friend who was the archetypal model student - straight As student, talented athlete, officer in the army and scholarship holder in the civil service. But when he was discussing his personal statement for admission into an American university, he came up with this statement.
“I have a feeling that education has taught me all about this world, but nothing about myself.”
And this statement is the crux of why we feel quarter-life crisises. An education is supposed to teach us everything that we need to function as grown-ups. At least, that is its premise, and it is something we buy into unconsciously.
Never mind the countless warning bells along the way that tell us that maybe, just maybe, education does not really prepare you for everything in life, or how little it actually does for you as a person.
For me, the warning bells came early. When I was in primary school, I was often bullied by three bigger boys for being a small kid. But because much of the abuse took place during recesses or in between breaks, none of the teachers were aware of it. One day during recess, one of them took my file and I snapped. I gave it to them as best as I could, and of course that landed me in suspension because one of them needed medical treatment. At the age of 8. And I was to get two suspensions before the year was out.
My parents came to school and scolded me for being a bad kid, but I wondered why nobody ever noticed that maybe I was a victim of bullying. It was then I realised that maybe, my teachers and my parents, people who were supposedly better educated, they did not know everything.
In secondary school, I got a lesson into the inequalities of life, and the systems that perpetuated it. A scion of a powerful family in Singapore was admitted into my class, despite being less than qualified for the school. And the teachers virtually bent over backwards to let him promote to the next year although he failed every single subject and showed no interest in doing anything other than disrupting our classes. It made me wonder why I even worked hard at all. Was it because I did not come from a distinguished background?
Now, decades on, I see that like any institution, education is not without its flaws. The purpose of education often trumpeted as an ideal has its foundations in democratic forms of government, where the emphasis is on developing rational and enlightened individuals able to collectively decide the best course for their country in the future. The focus is on developing well-rounded individuals, healthy in body and spirit, while filled with a burgeoning curiosity about life.
However, the purpose of education that is the reality here is often more harsh and unforgiving. It is focused solely on grades and other benchmarks of success, so as to funnel people into different stratums of ability. It purports to do as the fairest way to ensure that everyone gets what they deserve, that the most capable get the best jobs and hence the best lives, without recognising that many times, it is not just the most capable but the most well-connected and privileged that have the tools to fast-track themselves into those lives.
Education here is a tool to feed the economic machinery, to keep it running, and to sift out the populace into the different roles within that machinery. It takes little into account who you are as a person, it is more interested in making you into a cog within a large whirring and clicking system of gears and crankshafts. It is why upon graduation many of us are quickly funneled into large soulless bureaucracies, where we find little emotional satisfaction.
But we are humans, we are many things apart from a cog. We have hopes, aspirations and dreams, many of which cannot be fulfilled simply by being a part of someone else's blueprint for the future. But, many times, our circumstances dictate whether we ever get to break free and seek out these dreams.
I've spent much of my educational life seeing less qualified peers leapfrog over me because their parents had more money to buy better degrees for them. I've survived a less than intellectually stimulating education, mostly by pursuing my own education outside of the curriculum picking up skills and reading.
When people ask me why I didn't choose a scholarship, I simply tell them that selling oneself into an organisation should not be the only way one can get a good education. You have no idea what you are selling away, those four or more years of your life. The time and freedom you give away is often a greater price than you imagine.
Many of us are aware of what we are signing ourselves into when we decide to embark on scholarships. But we are not sure if we are ready to give up our dreams and hopes, because once we go into these organisations and become part of the machinery, it becomes that much harder to escape. We think that these organisations will help us fulfill our dreams. But years later, many find that apart from money, they grew little as people.
But if we do not choose the security and privileges that the iron rice bowl provides, we face disapproval from society in general, for being unemployed, for being jobless, for studying in less famous schools, for trying to find ourselves before others take even that away from us.
This is why I challenge that your socioeconomic status actually determines more than any one factor whether you get to live a fulfilling life, have a fulfilling education. The rush for upward social mobility is really to escape this machinery, to finally find a life that is your own. It is the reason why education is often the means to an end, rather than the end in itself.
The phrase I often hear from my friends is "I wish to be my own boss." The reason that is so is, people who do that are able to live out their dreams. Work in something they are passionate about, take time off to do things they are interested in. The rest of us, we are just tools to fulfill others' dreams.
Even in our schools, we are made acutely aware that some of us are destined for greater things, and some of us are just cogs. Look at our clubs and societies. How many are the presidents, and how many are just members. We are socialised into our future roles in society. I'm not arguing that it is impossible to make something of yourself despite your circumstances. I'm just saying that it is a lot harder to. Access to the right education determines if you will develop the right skills or meet the right people so you can do that.
As individuals, there is often little we can do about circumstances. As Mills once said, we live life feeling as though we are trapped, and by what, we are often seldom aware of. But I challenge that no matter what, it is most important to find yourself first, what you want out of life, what you really want to do. It will not be easy, it is a path fraught with failure, difficulty and probably even social disapproval.
But once you do, and you know what you want out of life, no one can take that away from you. You will seek out a life that gives you satisfaction, and the rest of that life will be filled with the meaning that all before it lacked.