Basket.

Used my off to go back to school, although it's all the way on the other side of the island (fortunately, crossing only the breadth, and not the length). I can never get used to the vastness of the place. It looks like a bloody city compared to the hovel that was Mt Sinai. Huge, tall stories, spacious corridors, full classrooms (when I spent about three lessons in total in a proper classroom with proper tables and chairs), lifts, canteen stalls twice the size of the old ones and a sprawling carpark complex... set against the tiny split-levels, congested passageways and chalk-dusty half-classrooms of old.

I met my GP teacher of old, who was then also my CCA teacher. She told me of how the school magazine is now a lot more corporatized, with an Corporate Operations Officer (I think) to oversee it. Pity; when I was a part, it was a cosy little operation, almost like a family business newspaper. It began changing just as my time wound down though. Almost as if we, incidentally the last batch to spend it all in Mt Sinai, were the last of an era.

Corporatization seems to be the order of the day, as a matter of fact. My teacher described the new education scene as a "marketplace". It certainly seems like one, and RI/RJC seems to be morphing into a corporation, a firm that provides education. The Raffles brand. She also mentioned treating students like clients - which took me aback, because I never thought of education this way. To turn Sir Stamford Raffles' venerable coat-of-arms into a corporate symbol, into a brand name... it disturbs me. It might explain the distinct lack of atmosphere as compared to the tiny, huddled Mt Sinai campus, though.

I suppose I ought to be glad instead. Glad that an institution almost as old as modern Singapore itself (and who shares the same founder) is able to keep up with the times. With so many choices available for students today, I suppose the crystallisation of this "marketplace" is all but inevitable. After all, students do move amongst the various and varied ideas and programmes like matrons used to move amongst the colourful stalls in the market square. With such freedom of choice, are they not clients of a sort?

I'll keep an open mind for the time being. I have to, anyway. The future is unbelievably difficult to predict. I certainly never saw education turning out this way. Who knows what it will be in four years, when I enter education again, perhaps this time for good?