Basket.

I was somewhat amused today to see a letter in yesterday's TODAY (hmm, that sounds delightfully confusing) complaining (what's new) about schools exploiting students. I was also surprised, because that's the first letter of its sort I've ever seen - which is a surprise, because guess what - OF COURSE SCHOOLS EXPLOIT THEIR STUDENTS, AND THEY HAVE BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS.

Yes, the students do all the hard work and the schools get all the credit. Yes, students have to sell at all costs tickets to their own performances, or pay the money out of their own pockets. No, I won't even go into donation cards that have minmum amounts here. Yes, students get little reward for their efforts. Yes - even though it was not mentioned - the (fortunately) now-defunct PEARLS system was grossly unfair and utterly failed to be the equitable judge of talent and effort that it was meant to be.

In other words, I sympathise, but what can we do? This is nothing new, and in the innocence of youth the 14-year-old who wrote the letter failed to realise that things can only get worse for him from here. For myself, many were the nights and countless were the hours I spent slaving for my schools, with just about no rewards or credit.

But the odd thing I realise is that those are some of my most enduring memories. I suppose students have to look beyond a work-credit/rewards system, and ask themselves whether they really do enjoy being in the activities they are in. If not, they should quit - that simple. And they are able to do so far more freely than we were - because there is no more points system. The decision to scrap PEARLS was one of MOE's extremely few good ones in recent years. From my own experience, as long as you are interested in something, you wouldn't mind if you had to spend entire nights on it. If you can find something so serious to complain about, perhaps the activity is not for you. Perhaps you don't like it that much after all.

In that case, not much point going on with it, right?