Propaganda and its presence...

Today...
Lets start today's log with a rather interesting question...
What is propaganda?
According to the Longman Dictionary Of contemporary English (1984)
prop-a-gan-da/noun [U] often derog
(Actions taken, esp. By a government, to influence public opinion on some matter by spreading) True or false beliefs, ideas, news etc.

Ok, since we got the meaning in place, please keep it in mind as I start my log.

If you guys know about how our discipline mistress is called the head of pupil management, you would think that it shows that the school has really good discipline. Well, many Sec 1s are forced to believe it when they first stepped into the school due to the orientation talk on the workings of the school.

If you really believe that the school's discipline is that good, wait till you get a glimpse of the Management Diary (MD) that the Class Chairperson and the Deputy Class Chairperson holds in his hand. As far as I am concerned, last year when I went to update the MD, I correctly remembered that three classes can have their whole class be sent for detention as they have all committed more than three offence. And if they really think that this is all, just take a look at the amount of rule breaking that occurs after school ends...
Oh wait, you don't even have to wait until school ends, just look at how many people decides to eat sweets in class...

The Sec 1s who undergone the assembly talk would believe that the school has a really good discipline. OK, I can't deny to a certain extent that our discipline situation is ok, as long as there are no huge increase in the serious offences (Which I remembered seeing quite a bit in those few MD I updated, hmm... Note to self: remember to include it next time...)

So anyhow, is that the only thing that I am going to talk about here, no...

Lets take a look, hmm, we won the school distinction award... And what sustained achievement award, what best practice award, what Singapore quality class... I mean, what does this show of us, that we are better than other schools in terms of spirit and results?

Some people have the chance to go mix with people from other schools who may or may not have won this award. This people finds our school pathetic in a sense, that we do not have the spirit to be able to show to others what our school is and also even though they have not won all this awards, they still can do better than us.

Lets divert away from this topic a bit, what awards do MOE have for us to torture the school and its students.
First there is the Best Practice Award, the Sustained Achievement Award, Singapore Quality Class, Singapore Quality Award, ISO ????, School Distinction Award...........

Are they even AWARDS? Do they do anything in any sense. I mean why compare schools when they are trying to stop ranking schools according to results. The only thing that they are ever going to do to this award is to let me and some people get bored. I mean, why publish we had won this award almost everytime we had to bring a paper back to give to our parents. It is always printed at the bottom of the page with those nice little drawings, showing that we won this and that...

Does it gives the students anything? Nothing, for all I know, we had won all this award, blah blah blah... Does it improves the school outlook in anyway... SCs are still hated (to a certain extent), no one is stopping themselves from breaking rules, school spirits are not improving in any way (although some of us have got an idea how to improve it) I mean, what are all this things for...?

Looking at how other institutions fight for this award seems to be a bit of a joke. Why is everyone under pressure for getting this award that does not mean anything at the very end? I mean, if some institutions are forced to get the Singapore Quality Class (SQC) just because their other branches have it, does it make any sense?

Eventually, everyone would be in SQA (Singapore Quality Award). So what, does it really means that everything is the same in S'pore, everything is just awards, awards, awards... and more awards....

Some even decide whether they should look after some groups in school by looking at the awards they have received...

So, is it what you see that is true, or is it just another stereotype that has been punched into us...
I doubt I will ever know...

Discmon