Express vs GEPpers
Like it or not, admit it or not, there has always been a huge gigantic gap between geppers and express students. There is obviously this prejudice existing between us.
From Primary 4 onwards, we start to be conscious about our streams. EM1, EM2, EM3. EM1 -- divided into two parts -- express and gep. Gep pupils have to pass this stupid gifted test, go on to the second round and pass that test again before they become Geppers. They go through different teaching methods, different ways of learning while us express learn the same way as the others.
And that's where the trouble begins. From Primary school we are painfully aware of what stream we are in. There's like this social ranking: Geppers, then EM1, EM2 and finally EM3 at the bottom.
Primary schools with GEPpers should understand this problem.
With different streams come conflicts. Like with different countries, different races, different religions, different companies, different regions come wars. As long as we are different, there will always be conflicts existing. I remember there was this song by John Lennon I think where he was going about how it would be like if there were no countries, where everyone are together and united without any wars. Now that's like an impossible scenario. Never mind. Go back to the topic...
I didn't encounter this problem when I was in primary school for my primary school didn't have geppers.
It was only in secondary then i began to encounter it.
How shall I talk about this delicate situation? Ok, don't take offense geppers if any of you are reading this. This isn't insulting you all or anything. It's just what we feel.
Let's just say that us express students are generally not fond of geppers. Why? Well, in our minds, it seems as though teachers favour them more. Why can they move much faster in their syllabus when we go at the normal speed? Are they cleverer? This is made worse by the fact that some teachers go harping about how geppers are so enthusiastic, how geppers are so contributing to a class discussion, how geppers grasp a concept easily, how geppers can do this and can do that.
Another thing that causes this gap is that whenever there is an inter-class competion, it seems as though gepper classes will always win most of the time. For example, for lower sec drama nite, out of the top 4 were 2 gepper classes. Why should this be the case when there are 10 express classes vs 3 gepper classes? For the environmental dance skit our school had, it was like out of the 4 top classes all 3 gepper classes were inside. It seems, to us, that teachers indeed favour them more.
Gepper students who are arrogant worsen the situation. These students, who generally stand out more, ignore the express stream students, give them the oh-i-am-so-superior look and only talk to pupils who are geppers. And there are some geppers who have this slang or "accent" who just totally seems fake and it just sounds as though they adopt this "accent" to make themselves sound "cheemer".
Of course, out of all these assumptions we have, only some are partially true. Not that gepper students are completely innocent of this crime of prejudice of course. I don't know how they feel about us though.
Oh yeah. I should have clarified. I personally hold no big grudge towards geppers whatsoever except at certain geppers (i also don't like certain express students, so this isn't exclusive) and at certain times when teachers obviously are biased towards them. In fact, I know quite a number of really nice geppers so all the stuff i wrote above are simply not completely true. That's why they invented a word STEREOTYPE. haha.
Why the sudden blog entry about this?
Today was the sucky racial harmony day rehearsal. The sadistic teachers, who live to see the tortured expressions on students' faces, decided to run through the whole thing again when the time was 6pm. Being seriously sian, all we wanted was to go home as soon as possible.
Us 202 should have gone first because of numerical order (top 3 classes: 202, 204, 212).
Suddenly, the teachers announce a change in schedule: 212 shall go first followed by 202 then 204.
Without an explanation.
We of course complained within ourselves. Why do they get to go home earlier? Why are they scheduled earlier? Without a reason provided to us, our logical conclusion: because they are geppers.
To us, MOE especially favours GEPpers as well. On our IVP website, when obviously us normal students participate as well, they had this "GEP students" label everywhere on the links as though IVP was exclusively for GEPpers.
But I never did realize how deep this prejudice is. Until yesterday during debate.
Head prefect elections. Nadia got voted the most number of times, thus she is going to become the head prefect of 2006.
During debate yesterday, while we were discussing our debate motion, we naturally digressed and started talking about other stuff as well.
And she was telling us about how someone, after the results were announced, dropped a tag on her tagboard, "Damn you geppers" or something like that.
Alison Joseph (A.J.), another debater, also had similar comments like this for she was elected as one of the vice heads. And because of this, she shut down her entire private blog.
That's how serious the problem is for some people.
And that's rather sad. How our student population is divided into geppers and non-geppers.
Kinda like whites and non-whites.
Like it or not, this problem is going to stay until some action is done by some people (haha, remind you of something? THBT African problems require African intervention). For example, the teachers could first stop praising geppers and holding them in a higher esteem level than us. We could also stop seeing ourselves as geppers and non-geppers; instead, students of singapore. Stuff could also be made not exclusively to geppers only.
Don't worry. I like most geppers I know. (:
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Tuesday, July 19
9:32 PM
