I got another A - for my social context essay! Today was my group's turn to present. Thank God for guiding me throughout the presentation. I did not "gabra" and was actually quite fluent. I managed to elaborate more from the slides, rather than reading off them. So I felt it was a good seminar my group had done. Praise the Lord!

So without further ado, presenting the question for my 3rd essay:

After reading the lecture and the discussion on issues on meritocracy and equity, reflect on your own experience in school (be it as a student, trainee or contract teacher).

How have your views towards inequality in the classroom been affected (or unaffected)?

What are some of the strategies you would adopt (or have consciously adopted before) to make education more equitable for your students?

And my essay is:

It is without a doubt, Singapore’s progress in all areas have been backed up by a strong emphasis on meritocracy. Narrowing our focus to education, while talented students are sifted out from our rigorous and competitive education system, it is also pragmatic enough to suggest that more resources are also dedicated to develop their fullest potential. Therefore, when more resources are allocated to these perceived-to-be-more-deserving students, more opportunities are given to them. When this happens, the untalented - the “remnants”, are suffering from the backlash of inequalities in education.

When I was in Primary School, I had always performed well in my examinations. As I was a well-behaved girl, I was the favourite of my form teacher. Thus, I was made class monitoress and within six months, I got “promoted” to a school prefect. As I reflect on this incident, I realized that inequalities in education were taking place, in favour towards academic ability. 16 years down the road, as an educator in the classroom, I have to confess that I tend to display favoritism towards those who perform academically well. I will give more opportunities to develop my “good” students’ competency in Economics compared to my weaker students, to whom I am more concerned about disciplining them, rather than nurturing them with patience, understanding and of course, less biasness. I also discovered that I look forward to teaching the intelligent classes who tend to intrigue me with their curiosity and thirst for knowledge, compared to my other classes who are less interested in Economics. When this happens, I tend to inject more enthusiasm and insights to teaching these intelligent classes and less to the classes who have a lower interest in Economics. As a result, when I direct more attention towards the intelligent students and classes, I am actually taking away the opportunities of learning from the weaker students and classes.

In addition, inequalities in the classroom occur when there are disparities in social affluence. When I was in Secondary Four, two of my classmates were caught for shoplifting. One belonged to an affluent family while the other belonged to a broken family. When it came to punishment for their deeds, the less affluent student was forced to make a public confession while the more affluent one was let off as her family made a school donation. Sadly, the inequalities of social affluence had deprived my less well-off classmate the opportunities for repentance and reparations. The lack of material wealth stripped my less privileged classmate of her access to equal opportunities of “redemption”, unlike her more affluent counterpart.

Inequalities in the classroom can never be resolved as we are always subconsciously stratifying our students into different characteristics and therefore, accord less equal opportunities to what we perceive as “less-deserving” students. However, these inequalities can be prevented.

There is not any specific strategy I would employ to prevent inequalities in the classroom. Any strategy would be useless if the teacher is not aware of his/her biasness and is not prepared to change his/her mindset. As a trainee teacher, I have come to realize that I possess tremendous power in the classroom to humanize or de-humanize a child. Thus, what I would strive to do is to adopt a nurturing attitude. I will accept my students for who they are and accord them the same self-worth, regardless of academic ability. To my weaker students and classes, I will focus less on their weakness and more on what they could potentially do. Essentially, besides nurturing them academically, I will never compromise my students’ moral and character development, even in the midst of societal pressures and temptations.