My Induction and Elitism

The induction course at my new workplace was held this past week. It was useful for we learnt a lot more about the different departments within the organization and how they come together (or not). Some of the talks were fascinating, especially the ones on conservation and urban design. And with the site visit to the Singapore River, the lessons became more real and tangible. And then there were the talks on corporate spirit and quality standards which were, to put it mildly, like someone poking their fingers at my eyeballs. Can you imagine the union leader spending 5 minutes reading off the list of my colleagues that have joined the union? Torturous.

It got rather intense near the end of the course when some participants came forward and maligned that they were ostracized by the course facilitators and the workscope of their department misrepresented and marginalized. Indeed, some departments within the organization do not get as much prominence as others. And time and again, people wonder why they are even part of this statutory board. (Historical linkages were the only viable answer for the umbrella assemblage). Anyway, the "marginalized" group (3 of them) accused the facilitators of elitism and looking down on the them.

It is difficult to reflect on this from my own perspective, for I admit that my own background and education history smack fully of the elite. Even if I don't recognize it, the top-ranked local schools I went to, the overseas scholarship I received, the English-speaking crowd I hang out with, the slight foreign lilt of my accent, the sports I play, the activities I do, and my position as a public servant in an organization that thrives on aesthetics and design (mainstays of the cultural elite economy) all contribute to a particular status that can be considered removed from the mainstream.

Although I live in Ang Mo Kio, I do not identify much with the Chinese-speaking crowd. I do not follow jue2 dui4 Superstar, and I rather watch Quidam than Snow.Wolf.Lake. My taste in music range from The Magic Numbers to Belle and Sebastian, and not KTV-friendly Jacky Cheung and Fish Leong. I play squash and tennis and take a swipe at the golf ball once in a while.

While Singapore prides itself as a middle-class nation with equal opportunities for all, signs of an enlarging income gap is all too apparent. When the then PM Goh coined the terms 'cosmopolitans' and 'heartlanders', they provided lingustic avenues to divide and identify. While I believed Mr Goh's intention was to portray an all-encompassing society with the necessary spaces for meeting individual aspirations and material identification, a separate process of segmentation was taking place.

Although the majority of Singaporeans stays in public housing and attended government schools, against this monolithic social profile is an internal segregation. While 'class' may not be a noticeable component of the local society, people were compartmentalizing themselves within the elite single-sex schools and the foreign-schooled community. The english-speaking and chinese-speaking form clear divides that extend over their choice of music, entertainment, television channels, literary materials and cultural iconographies. Some looked up to the advanced East Asian cultures of Korea and Japan as the golden benchmark, while others pride themselves on their affliation with American and British media, lingos and attitudes. Rather than be consciously choosing sides, I naturally found myself associating more with the English-speaking, CNN-watching, arthouse movie crowd.

As seen during the induction course, there were people like me and there were people that were on the other extreme. Friendly banters become exclusionary as we talked at lenghts about our scholarship bonds, our Western-inflected tertiary experiences and the latest watering holes and Poptart events along expat-saturated Robertson Quay and Club Street.

I do not know where this will lead the country to. But on the personal level, I see struggles and new alliances occuring between friends and family. I will no doubt find myself surrounded by more like-minded individuals, but the drive to understand the other will only grow more intense.