Education Competition

In a case of academic competiveness gone wrong, a student in Stanford University is accused of poisoning her follow students. Why is this news in Singapore? Because the student in question is from Singapore!

An A*Star scholarship holder, 27 year old Ouyang Xiangyu, has been charged with four counts of poisoning the drinking water of lab mates at Stanford University. Yes, I know a lot Singaporeans are immediately arguing that the girl is from China but if she is sent to America by the Singapore government; so she is a Singaporean!

What’s more important to me is the reason why she thinks she needed to do this? According to all reports, Ms. Ouyang was a quiet and shy girl who do have good grades. She just seemingly broke under the pressure of needing to get "great" grades. Her current good grades just aren’t good enough it seems.  Why?

A*Star scholarship holder or not; Singapore or Chinese national; I find this very disturbing. Just what kind of pressure are we putting on our young that the idea of poisoning their follow students to get a leg up is even considered, much less implemented? That is something Singapore need to look into. 

The fact that students here are under great pressure to beat their peers and deliver good grades is something no one argue against. Some even think it’s a good thing that students are under pressure to deliver, but there’s a limit to everything and with the case of Ouyang Xiangyu, it would seem Singapore had went pass the limit.