Graded Assignment 2 (Education): Here's $500 to study hard and play hard - Is it feasible?

This is another article which holds some rather revolutionary ideas - by offering money to students as a form of motivation. Here is the link:

http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,123979,00.html

*Start Reflection*

This article offers a new idea of offering money to students as a form of motivation and financial support for those students who cannot pursue their dreams just because of financial difficulties. By offering scholarships to support students who have potential, are willing to work hard but are held back because of financial difficulties, this prevents the students' potentials from being buried under family problems and financial difficulties.

This concept is actually meritocracy, where the good gets advantages and subsidies because they perform well in a certain area. This concept is adopted heavily in Singapore, whether is a promotion by your boss or a pay rise because of good performance, or the scholarships given to the top of the batch. We can see clearly the adoption of good ideas and being rewarded fairly for good performance. In this case, the rewards given to players with potential and yet is held back by financial difficulties is a reflection of the adaption of meritocracy.

However, this concept may not work in the way that there will always be people who will think of ways to abuse the idea, and meritocracy is not perfect in spotting the elite. While limiting the scholarships to only the poor, the system will still have problems in spotting elites based on only one person's perspective, which is not enough to grade a person's overall performance and ability. There will be people trying to exploit the advantages of such a system and the true purpose of the scholarship, which is to subsidise the poor students so that they can pursue their dreams, is obscured by the monetary gain of the system. No matter how perfect the scheme seems, there will always be people who would trick you just to get the money. With only one point of view to judge the performance of many people, there will be people who will try to be from poor family conditions to earn that extra five hundred dollars as their pocket money. With many people eyeing for that amount of money, who can tell who is facing a crisis, and who is actually lying?

However, I can appreciate the fact that the teacher is just trying his best to support the students who are suffering from disadvantages. I believe that the intention of helping the students is good and should be further developed, but I cannot help but notice that this system does have quite a number of problems. I probably cannot appreciate the intention to help the poor students as I am not a teacher myself, but I know that the teacher is just trying to help.

Taking the point of view of a student, I must say that I cannot fully empathise with the poor conditions of the students who truly need help as I come from a supportive family, but I must say that I can see some flaws in the idea. All in all, the idea is good but the plan needs refining.

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