Paying Respects
This morning mom and I went to my grandparents cemeteries. It's all the way out at Chai Wan, on the furthest east corner of the HK island, while we stay on the west side. This is the same trip I used to take everyday to attend secondary school, I walked/ran all the way down the hill and then catch the subway train from the west most station all to the way to the east terminal. I sort of enjoyed it, but it was probably expensive becuase of the subway fees.
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I take the subway all the way from the dot on the right to the dot in the left.
The reason I studied all the way out in the sticks is due to my poor scores in the standardized test when I was 11. Basically, the giant government computer decided that I really should start studying basket weaving school (band 5, worst schools) early, because I'm so dumb that I'll probably need a few years to pick up the skill. It's probably a bit of a disgrace for my family, so they used some connections (some school board directors) to get me into a band 3 school.
And that band 3 school is all the way out to the east side of the island, a catholic school. I have no idea what my family had to do/give up to get me into the school. I still remember at the interview the headmaster pointing his finger at my head saying "Don't think you are special, I can still kick you out even though you know someone." The name of my benefactor was never mentioned to me by the headmaster, teacher or my family. Whoever it was, thank you, I had a great time meeting east side friends. And I turned out to be the top scoring student that year.
Apparently that wonderful "band" system was cancelled in 2000, I have no idea what the alternative system is.
Mother likes to remind me that I really am a band 5 basketweaver, and that I really should not harbour too much ambitions about life. There is wisdom in that that I failed to learn from, and I will have an unhappy life because of it.
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I take the subway all the way from the dot on the right to the dot in the left.The reason I studied all the way out in the sticks is due to my poor scores in the standardized test when I was 11. Basically, the giant government computer decided that I really should start studying basket weaving school (band 5, worst schools) early, because I'm so dumb that I'll probably need a few years to pick up the skill. It's probably a bit of a disgrace for my family, so they used some connections (some school board directors) to get me into a band 3 school.
And that band 3 school is all the way out to the east side of the island, a catholic school. I have no idea what my family had to do/give up to get me into the school. I still remember at the interview the headmaster pointing his finger at my head saying "Don't think you are special, I can still kick you out even though you know someone." The name of my benefactor was never mentioned to me by the headmaster, teacher or my family. Whoever it was, thank you, I had a great time meeting east side friends. And I turned out to be the top scoring student that year.
Apparently that wonderful "band" system was cancelled in 2000, I have no idea what the alternative system is.
Mother likes to remind me that I really am a band 5 basketweaver, and that I really should not harbour too much ambitions about life. There is wisdom in that that I failed to learn from, and I will have an unhappy life because of it.
2 Comments:
At 5/17/2006 7:44 PM,
Rick said…
What!!! You are not a Band 5!! You're the best.. is Band 1 the best? That's you Anthony!
At 5/19/2006 2:17 PM,
Anthony Tsui said…
Well...Band 1 are the elite schools, highly stressfull and competitive and everything.
The algorithm used to place students is a preference-apptitude matching process. So if I am a band 2 student, and applied for a band 2 school, I will be placed in the school I chose. But if I picked a band 1 school, I would have effectively wasted my first preference, because I'm not good enough for it.
Things get worse, if my band 3 choice is a second preference, I'm actually getting the left overs from the band 3 students who chose band 3. Very exciting.
So the standardized test did not conclusively tell me whether I was a band 5 student, just that there were no available seats after the first 3 rounds of preference-apptitude matching.
I came from a band 1 primary school, and I easily became the first placed student in my band 3 secondary school - you can imagine the difference in competitiveness.
Perhaps it was due to my previous band 1 exposure, or that there is more pressure to perform due to what happened in the first test, either way the fact is I never liked the system, the intent of the system (conformity), the philosophy behind the system (punish ambition), the methods used by the system (one time sample).
Let's take the suicide rate for example, what if the government told you that there is a way to assess every 8th grader's IQ, except that 7 kids will die each year?
What if it were grade 12th's? University students? Immigrants?
That end result is simply unacceptable, especially when the correlation between real world productivity and standardized test scores is weak.
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