Saturday, May 19, 2007

Mega blue pill

(surely they meant:
"the future of our Matrix Master"?)


"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" - Edward Murrow (1905-1965)

"So long as men worship dictators, Caesars and Napoleons will arise to make them miserable." - Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963)



Have you come across such words of wisdom during your school days?

Perhaps during literature class? Or as part of the history project that you did on Napoleon or Caesar?


(But wait, you did get to study literature or ancient world history in school, right? No? Why not?

I mean, students all over the world from Europe to America, get to study literature and world history as part of their mandatory education, along with other compulsory subjects such as Math and Science. WHY NOT YOU?)


And if you did study history, surely your history lessons have consisted of more than memorising dates about Sir Stamford Raffles, right?

I mean, surely, you must have done many history projects on:
  • Napoleon, Caesar, Hitler: their thinking and their words,
  • the rise and fall of Chinese dynasties: the causes and the reasons,
  • the various types of political ideologies: communism, democracy, how they arose, the theories behind them
  • reading up various contradictory accounts of the same historical event, thus understanding that "history is written by the victor"?
(I said "surely", because that's how students in other developed countries are taught, and we are a developed country.)

No, No, No to all 4 bullet points?

WHY NOT?


Or perhaps, the words of these wise men appeared in one of the hundreds of essays that you read, during your 10-12 years of English language "reading comprehension" lessons?

No? Literally hundreds of essays and not a single work by such famous people/writer?

WHY NOT?


I will tell you why!

Because we are human batteries!

Our responsibility, as far as education goes, is to learn how to build things, cure sickness or make money, so that we can become engineering/ medical/ business human batteries respectively.

Learning to think, to question, and to ultimately liberate the mind is NOT the educational goal assigned to human batteries!

And our Matrix Masters have specially designed an education curriculum and exam syllabus and streaming criteria to ensure that.


"But.. but.. but a country does need people who are well-versed in such history and literature and philosophy and whose mind are liberated in order to survive, does it not?", stammered some human batteries in shock.

Sure it does!

And our Matrix Master knew that too. Long ago, in fact.

More than 20 years ago, he had already come up with the perfect solution - a Humanities Scholar Scheme, designed specially for the top X% of each cohort. Here's how it works:
  • Identify such top students via national exams
  • Allow these students (and only these students) to enroll in selected schools that are funded with extra money allocated specially for the scheme.
  • Let their young minds be liberated through such studies in humanities.
  • It's ok, because they won't betray the Matrix Masters. The undergraduate scholarships and bonds that they will get later, will ensure that!
(Wee Shu Min, by the way, was in this Humanities Scholar Scheme, if I remember correctly).


To put it another way, on this Matrix Island, only the top X% of each cohort are allowed to go through a real education - which seeks to liberate the mind by training it to analyse, to doubt, to question, and hence to be able to sieve truth from falsehood, relevance from irrelevance, fact from myth. And, having had their mind thus liberated, they, while useful to the country, will also become a serious threat to the Matrix Master, and hence all will be bought over with scholarship money and high salary and be inducted into the administrative service!

Oh, btw, X is a very small percentage.

Less than 1%.

The gifted student scheme is for the top 1% of the cohort. Each cohort is about 50,000 students and so only 500 join the scheme each year. The Humanities Scholar Scheme draws its students mostly (but not entirely) from a subset of the gifted student scheme and so is made up of less than 1% of each cohort!

"The remainder i.e. 99.xx% of each cohort, they have better had only a technical education which serves the economy directly and which will ensure that they remain ignorant human batteries!", so thought our Matrix Master.

In Chinese, there is a special term for such an education strategy:

愚民教育!
(an education system to "stupidify" its citizens)

Human Battery: The entire education system - curriculum, exam syllabus, streaming - is a mega blue pill!

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5 Comments:

At Monday, May 21, 2007, Blogger Lucky Tan said...

Human Battery,

This week is Kindness Week so please show some kindness by praising our dear leaders.

Our leaders are just very kind. Instead of everyone thinking, lets have only an elite few that think, the rest can relax and worry about where to shop and eat during the weekend. See how considerate our leaders are. They do the thinking for us as long as we pay them enough. Unfortunately, over many decades many people didn't use their minds much and begin to think every thing is for their own good - GST, means testing, Foreign imported labor, fee hikes, etc. You see so many smiling people in Singapore - the smile no matter what happens to them...they think its for their own good.

Not using their minds much also turn Singaporeans into easy victims of timeshare scam, get rich quick scams, donation scams, land banking, foreign property etc. Even worse, some singaporeans kena scam also dunno. If they dunno, they also won't feel too sad about so its okay.

Trying to wake Singaporeans up is generally a waste of time. They are in a coma....their minds only wake up for the few hours they are at the Harvey Norman sale or the PC show. Otherwise, they switch off and go on with their lives oblivious to what goes on around them.

 
At Tuesday, May 22, 2007, Blogger The Human Battery said...

> Trying to wake Singaporeans up is generally a waste of time

Yes, Mr. Tan! No wonder Jeya and Chee etc have this frown on their faces - they are trying to do the impossible! You, on the other hand, have such a big smile on your face everday... :)

 
At Thursday, May 24, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Fellow Human Battery

The wise words of Edward Murrow and Aldous Huxley which you have quoted can be illustrated in this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6517776133137328105&q=911

Good day!

 
At Sunday, May 27, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Human Battery,

I belong to the final batches of students in a school were GCE 'O' Literature was compulsory for all students (no matter if you were the elite pure science or the arty-farty pure arts or rojak sub-science/arts). We learnt a lot from Literature and also had the benefit of ang-moh teachers who forced us to come up with original answers. Yes, my batch also learnt world history. No wonder I find that I don't fit in SG anymore ;-)

Anyway, no problem... shipping out eventually. Cheers!

 
At Thursday, August 16, 2007, Blogger sohcool said...

Hi Human Battery,
I had taken the red pill since living overseas for 4 years. I love singapore but am not sure if I can ever live there knowing that there's more to shopping, that I can't vote, that I can't manifest.
Keep writing....

 

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