Basket.

What the Chinese New Year weekend made me realise is, there is a fine line between tradition and stagnation.

In any case, it was all very quickly over, and so was the truncated work week that followed. We then sat down for yet another sumptuous SFI spread, where there is more flour in the fried fish than fish, where the crab claws are practically synthetic and where everything is unnaturally tasty due to the undoubtedly vast amounts of MSG present within. But hey, free lunch buffet, right? Yet they managed to be incompetent enough to provide one container of cordial for nearly 200 people. Unbelievable.

I haven't touched the education system for a while, not since I got out of it anyway. But it's always a hot topic, now included - as the debate rages on whether school should start later.

I am in full agreement to school starting later, and doing that is very easy (at least for secondary schools onward, because primary schools have all these issues with schoolbuses which I cannot be arsed to make half-sense of): just eliminate morning assembly. It's morning assembly that makes sure students have to be in school almost an hour before lessons actually begins (or that was how it was when I was schooling). Eliminating it and letting students come right in for lessons would solve the problem easily.

Because look, morning assembly is utterly useless. I know the rationale behind making every student sing the national anthem and say the pledge every morning (did you know that's the main point of morning assembly?) - it is to promote national unity and forge a common Singaporean identity. But seriously, does it help? I am skeptical. I also remember my RI days when as a reward for good performance morning assembly was cancelled for up to a few days at a time (the infamous NMAs, remember?). As a reward. So well, what does that tell you about how the school administration treats morning assembly?

Just cut it out, let students come in by 7.50am or so for lessons, give the important announcements over the PA system and solve at least in part the well-established problem of sleep deprivation amongst our secondary and especially JC students.

That aside, I do believe our system is changing for the better. Because it is true - there are more choices now. In fact, there may even be too many choices. I certainly can't list all of them, but I believe the government is making an effort at last to accommodate everyone, instead of the old one-size-fits-all system we all went through hell and back in. Then again - one ominous change is the ruling that has ensured the disappearance of my A-Level subject combination: at least one Humanities subject for science students and one Science subject for Arts students. Thousands are currently suffering, and for nothing. We can't take this all-roundedness thing too far. That's one part of the old system they should not have changed.

The system is now also gentler - maybe too gentle. It's well-known that teachers generally don't really dare lay a finger on their students these days, because parents are all too ready to raise hell if they do. While I am glad that teachers no longer can abuse their power, I am concerned about the emasculation of their authority in our classrooms. And this will affect me in future. There's not always a nice way to make students sit up and listen. I can only hope our parents of now and future will understand that.

But generally, it's been an improvement; less abuse of power by teachers and safer schools. The tricky part is achieving a balance. I speak from experience that the system is a lot gentler now.

For it was 1997 and the place was the school hall of Nanyang Primary. Together with at least 20-odd other students, with many more in the hall, I as an 11-year-old watched as a teacher savagely assaulted a Primary Six student, who was in turn slapped, kicked and shouted at. His hair was also pulled. And the teacher who did it? A tall and muscular PE teacher who knew martial arts. Mind you, this was a guy who had broken wooden boards with his bare hands and feet in stage demonstrations before. Not someone you want to mess with. And here he was, beating the shit out of a 12-year-old kid while 20 others looked on in horror. As far as I know, nothing significant happened to him and he left the school the next year.

If any teacher tries that now, he has balls of iron. Truly.

I also believe (and hope) that our schools are safer these days. Because my primary school was a veritable death trap. I remember many window panes on higher stories always being on the verge of breaking off and tumbling onto unsuspecting students below, and I remember when it actually happened once. Several students were injured. Then there was the time when a metal waterbottle plummeted three stories and my friend was pushed clear at the last moment. Or the time when we saw a student being wheeled into an ambulance and a large, mysterious stain on the basketball court...

But enough of the stories now. That was the 1990s, and people cared a lot less about each other. Things now, they are definitely different. But we really should not make things too nice and clean.