My brother showed me this article: http://www.todayonline.com/Voices/EDC111226-0000019/Disparity-in-tertiary-education-facilities#.TvfagqyflYU.facebook
Read it yourself.
And then... I will share my thoughts!

When I first read it I generally agreed with the writer, but I felt there was something wrong with his article although I couldn't pinpoint it immediately.
After a while I read it again (as well as the comments) and found out why I didn't sit so comfortably with the author's argument. I realized that I was guilty of elitism! Firstly, I didn't realize that it was wrong to say that "the best and brightest students" are not found in ITE. Of course, "best" and "brightest" are subjective terms and are unfair when used carelessly like in his article. It is not fair to compare who is the best when the type of education received is totally different. If you throw me in ITE I don't think I'd do very well; for one thing, I'm clumsy and blur and I rarely do technical work.
But you can't really blame me for not spotting the error immediately, right? All my life I've grown up in a tight, small social circle and I rarely mix with people not from my school (because frankly the only place I've gone to is school. Except for that one time I was at NUH and we met some students from polytechnic. That's all.)
And it is hard to spot the mistake when the author uses meritocracy to support his argument. Sure, Singapore swears by meritocracy. But it is dangerous when meritocracy is measured with a singular scale, with ITE at the bottom, followed by polytechnics, followed by JCs. Who should really be at the top of this scale? Should it really be measured by educational background? So, it's unfair and narrow-minded to label JC students as the "best and brightest". It is easy to make this mistake since we are JC students ourselves.
Yup, there's my response. On a rather related note, elitism is part of what fuelled the mindless massacre of Jews during World War II. This is how dangerous elitism can be. We shouldn't let it fester in our minds! I mention this because I visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz during my holiday. :)
In the next post maybe, I'll talk more about my trip...