Well we were given our second blog prompt and it was:
1) Have you ever been in the company of a group of which you clearly were not included? Describe the circumstances. How did you act? How did the situation / event affect you?
So here's my reply. :)
I have to say that no matter what happens, everybody once in a while would be clearly excluded from a group or company. But I have always felt excluded from this specific group of people. Since I am a Catholic, every week I would go to a church at Siglap, which is in the East. And teenagers had to go for Cathecism which was something like Gospel Class. And just because I was in the Gifted Education Programme and studied in Hwa Chong Institution, I would sometimes feel excluded from the class. You would need to understand that the students in my Cathecism class came from neighbourhood schools and most often than not they will possess the mentality that GEPers are smart and geniuses UNLIKE themselves. So they would be slightly hostile towards students who are from schools like Hwa Chong Institution. Fortunately my Cathecism teacher and the majority of the students accept me for who I am. :)
So yupp, that's my response and it's true! However I guess sometimes we would just have to live with it and despite all the criticism about you, just continue to trust in yourself and keep persevering on. :)
Cheers!
Raphael (:
I can somehow identify with you. However, I have met more of such incidents when I was still studying in Primary School. Many people treated those GEP people as nerds and other many crude remarks. So, I can understand you feelings but JIA YOU!!
ReplyDeleteI'll end off with a quote, told to me through a friend. I don't even know who said it, but I learnt a lot from it.
"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."
2I125
Hi Raphael,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your insightful post, I have a few comments to make.
First, good job for describing the (very) true cases of prejudice that occur a lot in society. However, you seemed to have missed out the part on your "How did you act?", as I can only see you describing the circumstances. Please elaborate further!
Next, I can also symphathize with you as I am a GEP student too. Being a GEP student, everyone treats you differently. I would elaborate on the pointers you gave in your blog post below.
The advantages are that you receive (from adults and elders) include more pressure from people, having more help in developing your talents, and generally faster and more holistic learning.
That aside, the point I want to stress are the disadvantages. Other mainstream students distance themselves from us for multiple reasons, and in certain schools the situation is so bad till there is "public shunning" and taunting of GEP students to the point they need psychological help. The has been one controversial case in the past couple of years. There was a news article on GEP students online, and when one GEP student commented on the article, soon many other mainstream students started to attack him, sparking off a huge furore in the student community and stressing relationships amongst students themselves.
These mainstream students consider us to have "unfair advantages", and that they have the mentality that we are smarter and look down on them, even though that is not true. Some also say GEP students are arrogant, but that truth only applies to a small minority. It's very possible to become a GEP student through hard work, but they also forget that GEP students ourselves also have our own weaknesses. Look at our class now, there is no perfect person. I'm a GEP student, but yet I'm weaker than some mainstream students in Chinese and Maths. I can't help much about it other than study and revise to attempt to make up for the difference.
Also, do these students realise that there is also a segregation of students in GEP classes? The better students look down on the weaker students in these classes, and they are very reluctant to work with those who are slightly weaker.
Overall, I hope that the Government would help to tweak the education system so that these cases of prejudice/discrimination will not re-surface in the future again.
Keven Loo
Why would they be hostile to you because they perceive you as smart? Is it due to jealousy or due to the additional perception that you are arrogant?
ReplyDelete