2 months ago, I tweeted this:
"Sat thru a convo that made me feel quite sad today. My friends were talking about how people looked down on arts students in their school because there was the general consensus that the science stream was more prestigious, safer and meant for smarter kids. I think it's the same mindset that many people have towards fass - that it's a 'last choice' for many & there's the typical question 'what are you gonna do with an arts degree?' It makes me upset bc I wish people could see that there's more to education than grades/ money. Those two are important, to an extent. But education should be more than just a means for pragmatic pursuits. It's about being curious and having the desire to learn/ pursue knowledge. It saddens me so much because I've always been an arts students and my subjects were tough but they taught me to feel & look beyond the surface. I learnt to trust my words & opinions bc there wasn't any fixed answer to memorise. I went for the monologue slam on Sunday and the director quoted this from Dead Poets Society: 'medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. (...) But poetry, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.' I don't think Arts students are any less smarter than students from the science stream, and vice versa. I think different subjects have their own set of challenges and difficulties. But if a subject makes you feel and if it makes you desire to know more, then just go for it. Curiosity is so so important and sometimes we lose ourselves in the paper chase and forget what learning is really all about :("
This year, I was fortunate enough to be given a chance to look at education from a completely new vantage point. I was still in the system, except I was no longer a student. I was a teacher, crafting lesson plans, going to class and running a solo performance with my students as the audience. Except that this performance could make a turn anytime and there wasn't any script to follow. For the first time in a long, long, long time, I felt alive in a classroom - the walls no longer confined me and each time I stepped through the door I felt as if I was transported to a new world where time seemed to fly by. For the past few years, education to me, felt like an endless race that drained me to the core. It was a race I was put into without choice, and I was pit against others and myself. I don't blame the school nor the system, because the onus was on me to determine how far I wanted to go and how much I wanted to push myself. There is a line from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior that remains etched in my mind -- "You can't eat straight As". Unfortunately, I let myself fall victim to the paper chase and for most of my Senior High (JC) days, I let grades determine my self-worth amidst all the other criteria I'd set for myself. The line of As were all I wanted for the whole of my JC life, but what seemed like everything then amounts to nothing much now. I got what I coveted but at the expense of so much -- the repercussions were a nightmare: a face covered with acne (which culminated in hundreds of dollars spent on the dermatologist), dark eye circles, and self-esteem that was shredded to pieces. The thought of exams and the idea of not doing well made me so scared and breaking down became a normalcy.The number of essays I churned out and the number of math questions I attempted then makes me question how different I was from a machine. Back then, I thought I was placed in an environment with air that reeked of competition and comparison. In hindsight, I think I created that environment for myself; I let it choke me and cloud my rationale.
You see, we determine our perspectives. The choice is always ours to make and surely there is a certain kind of hope in realising the amount of power we have in our hands. The school I taught at was always filled with laughter, the pitter-patter of footsteps against concrete and the occasional screams. The school was a living, breathing entity where knowledge was not just words printed on a textbook. The words danced off the pages and the children waltzed with them. Knowledge came in ripples, came in stories, came in experiments, came in library visits, came in songs. Education was more than memorising dull facts or formulae, and it transcended the transfer of knowledge from textbooks or powerpoint slides to lecture theatres filled with apathetic and tepid students. Maybe the magic lies in the age. Maybe it's about being a young child to whom school is a place to "learn new things" and "see (your) friends". Maybe it's about seeing education through lenses that have not yet been tainted with cynicism and the stains of comparison. I struggle to translate my memories into words because there is so much I remember, all of which had a part to play in making me believe in and fall in love with education once more. Imagine being in a class with students who wiggle in their seats with hands raised as high as they can for a chance to answer a math question. Imagine being in a class with students who thrive on satisfying curiosity, who question hard facts and suggest ways to change experiments. Imagine being in an environment where students readily and excitedly gather around their friend who needs help filling in a blank in her English worksheet. Education is so much more than what we have come to define it as. Grades will take you to places, but the purpose of education should not be solely for grades.
The other day, a friend was calculating his potential CAP score and trying to predict his grades for the semester. He lamented that he felt like he was not mugging as hard as his peers, and asked me if I had been studying a lot. In response, I regurgitated the answer I'd given to everyone who had asked me about my studying/ mugging process for the finals. I said "I haven't been doing much. I complete the things I set out to do for the day, but that's about it. I told myself I never want to feel the same way I felt last year during the A levels. I like what I'm studying, but I feel like things are so different in uni that I can't exactly mug anymore. I'm just doing my best. If my best warrants the A, then good for me. If it doesn't, then at least I gave my best. I don't think I'll regret anything." He looked at me with disbelief and for a moment, for that short moment, I second-guessed myself. Was I doing something wrong? Should I have blocked out my entire week to devote myself to my books? How exactly was I supposed to do that anyway, when studying in uni is so different from studying for the A levels?
And then he said something that made me come up with an excuse to end the conversation and leave. He said "aiya, all you arts students don't have to study right, just fluff one essay can already." Under normal circumstances, I would have laughed it off and defended myself. But this was the cherry on top of an extremely tall and ready-to-fall-any-moment-now cake consisting of tiers of reactions I've had from people who found out I was pursuing English at FASS. And that cherry was enough to send the whole cake plunge-diving onto the ground.
I don't understand. I do understand why certain jobs pay more than others, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Different jobs require different skill sets, some more detailed and extensive than others. What I don't understand though, is why an arts degree is perceived to be so "useless" in comparison to others. Why do we always have to think of pragmatic purposes? We don't always do things knowing or expecting what is to come out of it. Sometimes we dive headfirst and swim through the currents afterwards. Sometimes we meet with a massive wave that sends us back to our starting point. Sometimes we get stuck and dog paddle for a longer time than we'd like to. Sometimes we contemplate and listen to our hearts and follow our instincts because in our generation's words, "YOLO anyway." The future can be scary, and perhaps it's better to leave it wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in a glass casing rather than fiddle with it. After all, there is no time for trial and error, no time for figuring things out, no time for making mistakes and absolutely no room for the dreaded word "failure".
(Most) people are a lot nicer. Instead of outrightly asking "Huh??? Arts?????? Humanities?? What are you going to do next time", they express their disbelief and doubt in the question "Oh... so you want to be a teacher?"
Luckily for me, my response has always been "Oh yes. I've always wanted to be a teacher so I'm pretty much on my way to fulfilling my dream", to which they'd nod and either move on to another topic or congratulate me for pursuing my dreams. How ironic though, that I am congratulated and praised for following my heart only because I happen to want to be a teacher. What about those who follow their heart and pursue a subject simply because of their curiosity, interest and passion for it?
The Arts and the Humanities should not be perceived as easier than or inferior to the Sciences, and essays cannot be "fluffed" or memorised and reproduced. Any form of writing demands engagement from the writer -- you feel and you write. Any form of academic discipline should be respected and appreciated for the knowledge and skills it imparts. The future is a blank space we try so desperately to make sense of and we always derive some level of comfort and assurance upon gaining any kind of certainty about it. But the future is never stagnant. It flickers like candle flame and it changes like the season. Don't you want to know what happens when you base your decisions on what you want? The gift of life permits us to make choices every single day, and we get to decide the level of contentment we feel at the end of each day. There is no guarantee that following your heart is synonymous with taking the easy route, but what I do know is that doing what you love is definitely better than being a marionette and going through life like it's one huge puppet show.
Remember, being a real boy was all that Pinocchio ever wanted and there is a reason why education is termed "the key to success". Some may roll their eyes and retort "with these degrees you won't ever see success", but one man's definition of success may not be the same as that of the man standing just next to him.
