Thoughts Worth Documenting 🌱

Memento Mori.

I think about my mortality more in recent years.

And after five years at Stories By Children, I feel a sense of completion, at least as far as the first forty-five years of my life are concerned.

Five years, and I have arrived at this conclusion:

Most children, when respected and truly listened to, blossom. 🌱

Back in 2020, it wa

Memento Mori.

I think about my mortality more in recent years.

And after five years at Stories By Children, I feel a sense of completion, at least as far as the first forty-five years of my life are concerned.

Five years, and I have arrived at this conclusion:

Most children, when respected and truly listened to, blossom. 🌱

Back in 2020, it was an intuitive hunch and a hypothesis — one that required testing, perseverance, and sacrifice.

Five years on, it perhaps seems a small statement to make; the result of a self-funded study, one might say.

Nothing grand in itself, but perhaps enough.

Likewise, Evelyn and her life are nothing grand in themselves. Yet, in relation to God and His creation, they become meaningful. For in His perfection, grace, and love, even ordinary lives are made beautiful.

And surely, that is enough too.

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
— Psalm 73:26

 📷 Profile photograph by John 🩷 

This is a streamlined version of an opinion piece by Evelyn. It was written for EveryChild.SG and first published on 26.02.2025. The original article may be accessed here. 

I was at a gathering earlier this year and we were all, about ten of us, seated on a long table organically crafted in rosewood.

“Those who can tak chek (读书 in Hokkien,

This is a streamlined version of an opinion piece by Evelyn. It was written for EveryChild.SG and first published on 26.02.2025. The original article may be accessed here. 

I was at a gathering earlier this year and we were all, about ten of us, seated on a long table organically crafted in rosewood.

“Those who can tak chek (读书 in Hokkien, meaning “study”) on that end, those who can’t on this end,” he quipped matter-of-factly.

He was quite an accomplished executive at a prestigious multinational company and was in his mid-thirties. Brushing his perfectly coiffed fringe with his fingers, he sat himself down amongst peers who, like him, took the neighbourhood secondary school–polytechnic route.

On the other end sat another group who were perhaps seven to ten years his senior. Warming up to each other with nods and polite smiles, they shared stories of their secondary schools, all elite schools, finding a sense of familiarity and strange alliance. 

Behind their backs and unknown to them, this group were often referred to in the community collectively as “high-flyers”, or individually as “that high-flyer” — people with high incomes and influential professions.

Then there were the somewhere-in-betweens. Some a little farther left, some a little farther right, and the occasional oddity — those who did not fit neatly into either category.

Like me.

Someone who, on paper, looks quite elite and yet earns a paltry income, trying to swim against the current, creating an alternative space for children through creative writing, determined to succeed.

"If you tell a bunch of high-achieving privileged kids all their lives that their system is fair and founded on meritocracy, logic leads them to elitism and bigotry. If you tell a bunch of failing underprivileged kids all their lives that their system is fair and founded on meritocracy, logic leads them to self-loathing and an internalised inferiority."

— Ex-educator Chew Wei Shan, Facebook post, 3 October 2018

My intent in sharing Wei Shan's words is not to pigeonhole “high achievers” or “low achievers”, but to acknowledge an undercurrent that runs quietly beneath Singapore's state-professed meritocracy.

Many of us carry our PSLE scores far beyond the age of twelve. They become stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we deserve, and where we belong. For some, a lacklustre score remains like a stamp on the forehead, shaping discussions around self-worth well into adulthood.

Singapore's meritocratic system has undeniably delivered remarkable progress. Through affordable education, public housing and economic opportunities, generations of Singaporeans experienced social mobility unimaginable to our grandparents.

Yet, meritocracy was never designed to answer questions of identity.

As inequality widens and family resources increasingly influence educational outcomes, children no longer start from the same place. 

Parents have become key stakeholders in education, but not every family possesses the same emotional, academic and financial resources to support their children.

Sociologists have termed this phenomenon “parentocracy” — where a child's educational trajectory is shaped not only by ability and effort, but by the resources available at home.

And when parentocracy meets Singapore's deeply ingrained kiasuism, the competition becomes exhausting for everyone.

Not only for the children who struggle.

But also for those who succeed.

Our children risk losing something precious — time and space for play, wonder and imagination.

As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong observed in his 2012 National Rally speech:

"You do harm. You turn the kid off, you make his life miserable… Instead of growing up balanced and happy, he grows up narrow and neurotic."

Whether they have much, little, or somewhere in between, our young people carry immense pressures. Recent concerns around youth mental health remind us that success alone cannot sustain the human spirit. The gathering ended after a few rounds of swirling red wine and clinks of wine glasses.

In his pointy polished leather shoes, the executive stepped into a friend's luxurious European car, hitching a ride home.

Face ruddy and red, he continued the conversation on secondary schools.

“Oh, my father was from XXX Secondary School. It used to be the elite school of the day,” he chimed, as though that could somehow fill in the gaps in his psyche from his own mediocre academic performance.

A final and last attempt, before the night ended, at being seen as a “someone”.

Perhaps that is the tragedy beneath all our sorting and striving.

Not that some of us became high-flyers and others did not.

But that so many of us, decades after leaving school, are still trying to prove that we are someone.

And perhaps no child should have to spend a lifetime doing that.