Talk:Gifted Education Programme (Singapore)

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Just a note to all regarding the Talkingcock satire incident: I was heavily involved in the flaming for a while, and the incident was three years ago. It is something I deeply regret because my fellow classmates and I missed an opportunity to present ourselves in a positive manner and instead made fools of ourselves, but at the time the article bothered me very much. I would like to point out that being a young scholar places a lot of stress on us and that much of the prejudice is undeserved and the stereotypes inaccurate. I remain resolute in my absolute rejection of the article because it is largely inaccurate and unnecessarily stereotypes an often misunderstood group of people, but I often wish I had handled it better. As it has been three years since the incident, I would urge people not to view it as representative of the attitudes of gifted students on the whole, but rather at a certain age with a corresponding mindset (at 13 everyone thinks they own the world), and also not to discriminate because it is often offensive or hurtful to be labelled as a gifted student. Again, I plead for your understanding. -P

stereotypes is bad especially for young people, probably the name "gifted" should be changed to something neutral. But, take it easy lah, :D, I normal stream wan, also faced alot of stereotype ... --Vsion (talk) 15:59, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Relax, I think I would have done the same if I had been aware of the thread at the time (in 2001 I was 5 years old, LOL). Such reactions are understandable because the extremely distorted depiction of a typical GEP student in the article adds fuel to the already furiously burning fire of the extreme stereotyping of GEP students. When faced with such a ridiculous article that insults thousands of people throughout Singapore, it is natural to try to strangle everyone nearby and start typing numerous wrathful posts that attempt to prove that not every GEP student is the Mr. Hao Xuesheng visualised by so many mainstream people (OK, I'm stereotyping the mainstream, but whatever). 218.186.8.12 10:37, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The Control Group

The Gifted Education Programme was initially something of an experiment. After all, it was not known what effect, if any, such a programme would have on the educational and social outcomes of the students selected for it. This is a classic educational outcomes problem - it is very difficult to determine whether the quality of the school, or the natural qualities of the students, are responsible for the future success of the students. To put it another way, students from elite schools may succeed because the schools are elite, or because the students who go to elite schools are already predisposed to be successful and cannot be improved further. The implication - if the latter statement were true - is that elite schooling is pointless beyond being a good sorting device that tells society which students are 'good'.

Regardless, in any social experiment, there must be a 'control group' - in this context, a group of students selected not because of their tested intellectual superiority, but rather because of their normality. Such an experiment would provide evidence as to whether the Gifted Education Programme really helped students, or whether student's initial attributes in fact were the dominating determinants of their future outcomes. The possibility of this is recognised by some GEP students when they first enter the program who, when questioned on their poor performance by teachers, jokingly claim that there was a computer error.

No one knows whether the Singapore Gifted Education Programme really had such a 'control group' or not except administrators at MOE's GE Branch. However, members of the ACS(I) class of 1994, among others, continue to believe in the existence of this 'control group'. As with most conspiracy theories, though, this theory is a mish-mash of conjecture, suspicion with a healthy mix of denigration by some GEP students of others perceived by them to be idiots and unworthy to be in the program.

"Oh, please!" - attrib. member of ACS (I) GEP Class of 1993

Transfered from article; purely speculative. Validation required. --Vsion (talk) 16:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Rumour about RI's plan

Since September 2005, word has cirulated that Raffles Institution will be adopting GE pedagodgy and philosophy to teach the pupils who were not in the GEP. It was also said that the RI GEP students from the GEP primary school will still be retained as a group consistent with previous arrangement. In their efforts to incorporate GE pedagodgy in teaching the Special/Express pupils, the teaching staff of the GEP department and the non-GEP department will be working together as one single department. The school administration is of the belief that this will facilitate the working among the teachers and pupils from both streams. It will also help to ensure that the Special Express teachers will be trained to use GE methodology. The school administration has not officially announced this measure, but if this development is really true, this could mean that the GEP bloc in RI would eventually be enlarged to include staff and students from the Special/Express stream.

This has brought about much controversy, leading to a very sluggish implementation by the school administration. Some critics of this plan argue that the MOE's test to select able students to join the GEP is more than reliable to show that the Special-Express pupils simply do not have the aptitute to undergo GEP education. Morever, many have pointed out that such a move would inevitable result in a lowering of standards amongst the GEP students, simply because Special-Express teachers, who lack the training and the qualifications, are being brought in to teach GEP students using GEP methods and the GEP syllabus. However in RI’s case, they do regard all their other students as gifted since they are from the top 3% based on their primary results. So if their plan for all their teachers to be trained to adopt GE methodology is completed, it would bring about a new definition and a significant change to the landscape of Gifted Education in Singapore. It is unclear whether the other schools that also take in students from the top 3% of each cohort, such as Raffles Girls' School (Secondary) and Hwa Chong Institution, will adopt a similar approach.

Transferred from article, speculative. --Vsion (talk) 16:19, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Bias?

"non-GEP students (referred to as "mainstreamers")"

Maybe it's just me but this strikes me as implying that "mainstreamers" is somehow insulting, which it isn't because:

1. Its GEP counterpart ("GEPers") is generally accepted by many (as far as I know) as a short alternative to "GEP students", even if it originated as a derogatory term;
2. It is no different from other non-insulting terms ("scientists", "historians") that refer to people by their profession, status or other characteristics;
3. It is arguably less insulting than "non-GEP students", since that defines the mainstream by the GEP and reminds everyone that they didn't get into the GEP; and
4. "Mainstream" is a widely accepted term for non-GEP classes as a whole; it makes no sense to say "mainstream" is not insulting while "mainstreamers" is.

This may just be my POV, but I think this part is biased. Or maybe I'm just hypersensitive; please comment! --WPholic (talk) 09:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I guess used in this context, both "GEPers" and "mainstreamers" do have negative connotations. An equivilant (worse) form of "mainstreamers" to "GEPers" would be "SEPers" (Special/Express). However, both "GEPers" and "mainstreamers" are not words in the dictionary (Singaporean jargon) and therefore should not be used in the article I guess. "Gifted students" and "mainstream students" should be used as a neutral alternative. --121.6.83.196 (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Though I've never heard of the term "SEPers" in all my years as a student lol. \ G.E.6.M.0.9.^{[[ see ]] ~ [[ talk ]] ~ [[ sign ]]} 11:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Haha that's because it's too negative? --121.7.141.35 (talk) 13:06, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Hm, I wrote a letter to GE Branch and MOE highlighting the segregation between mainstream and gifted pupils a few years back. Apparently, they are well aware of such an existence too and are taking (undisclosed) steps to close this gap. Might be interesting, since it isn't mentioned anywhere in this article, but I doubt private letters are allowed to be sourced. --121.7.141.35 (talk) 13:12, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Controversial statement removed

I have removed this statement: "The severity of the situation is apparent in the fact that there are only thirteen pupils enrolled in the entire Secondary One GEP as of 2006."

The reason being that MOE renamed the GE streams in other schools to "GEP/IP" or "SBGE" instead of keeping the "GEP" label for these schools. It is incorrect to state that "there are only thirteen pupils enrolled", which came about just because of this renaming. This occured during the transitory period where the other secondary schools worked with GE branch for their "GEP/IP" or "SBGE" and were still not fully independent.

The Straits Times gives the reason for the abolishment of the GEP as "only thirteen pupils chose to enroll in the GEP", but this is inaccurate too because of the intentional renaming of the similar programmes to make it appear different. --2.219.221.217 (talk) 22:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

POV tag

@Lionratz: Why did you add the {{POV}} tag to this article, and what should be done in order to make the article more "neutral"? Jarble (talk) 08:08, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

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Potential copyright issues

Documenting what I believe to be a case of copyright infringement dating to January 2008, at least, although I am not exactly sure how to interpret this overall. This concerns content on page 59 of "School For Talented Students In Asian Countries, A Comparative Study" in the The Primary Teacher, January and April 2008 (what I assume is a periodical). I was unable to find much out about its authors or provenance otherwise.

The edition of the "Criticism of the programme" section in this edit from July 2007 includes text that very clear matches the first paragraph on page 59 of the source above. Give the timeline, it might appear that the source copied from Wikipedia. But further investigation reveals that this edit from the same editor in January 2008 entailed the addition of an entire paragraph (under the section "Integration with mainstream") that is almost identical to the second paragraph of page 59 of the "School For Talented Students" article, making it much less clear what was happening. My personal theory is that this relatively obscure periodical was published in text, or perhaps put online in another form, before the 2008 print was made available. Alternatively, the source article could have been published in April 2008, copying the two Wikipedia paragraphs and adding in the citations that were lacking from Wikipedia. Either way, I'm not sure what to make of it, so I am tagging this for potential copyright issues and asking for any insight anyone may have. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 00:07, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Additional clarification: the first potentially plagiarized paragraph is not apparent in the current revision, and the last paragraph has been substantially altered, given the passage of over 12 years. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 00:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, WhinyTheYounger - thanks for your note! I was really surprised to get this message (which I was alerted to in my email), as I haven't been active on Wikipedia for a while and made these edits almost 13 years ago (when I was actually 11 years old). I don't remember ever seeing this article before it was linked in this copyright message, and definitely didn't refer to or plagiarise from it in 2008. I wouldn't have had access to it anyway, as it seems that this is an exclusively Indian publication that isn't distributed in my country (at least I've never seen it), and the page you linked suggests that it was only uploaded online in 2017. I suspect that the article plagiarised from this Wikipedia article and was published in April 2008 like you suggested. I'm not sure what the procedure is to handle this as I've been inactive for years, but I hope that clears it up. Thanks for your concern and for keeping an eye out! :) aoxiang翱翔^(user)(talk) 00:51, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your quick response. In light of this explanation, I am comfortable assuming good faith and withdrawing my copyright complaint, particular since Aoxiang returned from over a year of inactivity to specifically address the issue, which could have been very easy to ignore. WhinyTheYounger (talk) 04:02, 2 June 2020 (UTC)