***
"With these factors eliminated, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the failure of some Malay parents to send their children to kindergarten is a matter of choice, not necessity...
It should not be surprising that many Malay parents are uncomfortable sending their children to PCF kindergartens. The Straits Times, 18 September 1999, carried a story of a Chinese mother who put her son into a PCF kindergarten and her daughter into a YWCA kindergarten. According to the newspaper report,
She could not help but be struck by the difference. She noted that her [daughter] learnt to be sociable and confident, and knew her numbers and letters too. [Her son] was good academically, but he would hide from strangers and was poor in social skills. So [the mother] moved him to the YWCA centre and he . . . improved.
This testimony is consistent with the apocryphal evidence about the nature of socialisation in PCF kindergartens that was put forward to Barr in several interviews. PCF kindergartens socialise children into an academic and examination-oriented education system at the expense of social skills. It may be re-running a stereotype to assert that Malays place a high value on family, motherhood, social skills, inter-personal relations and personal virtues like generosity, but there is no escaping that there is a large amount of truth in this particular stereotype. Whether in casual conversation, in a formal interview or conducting a business transaction with a Malay Singaporean, one is usually struck by the gentleness and sophistication of the conversational skills, the reluctance to press a point or articulate a criticism, the comfortable sense of self-composure and friendly serenity. It reflects a rather generous spirituality and humanism that is commonplace within this community, but which is not in step with the dominant ethos of Singapore. This is not to say that these characteristics are innate. Malay mothers work very hard to teach their children how to behave, as do mothers everywhere. In this particular culture, however, these virtues are given a position of pre-eminence. Malays are capable of adapting to Singapore’s materialistic exam-oriented culture, and they have no intrinsic problems with engaging in capitalist pursuit of profit. But it seems that Malays are reluctant to enter wholeheartedly into the milieu of the Singaporean education system at the expense of these virtues. Hence, Malay reservations about the sterile anti-humanistic culture of the PCF kindergartens, coming on top of issues of cost and lack of Muslim kindergartens, have combined to generate a situation of underrepresentation of Malay children in kindergartens."
--- Assimilation as multiracialism: The case of Singapore's Malays, Michael D. Barr; Jevon Low
Cultural differences are denied or played up alternately by academics, but always for the same agenda - to prove that there is structural and/or systemic discrimination and/or marginalization which is unwarranted.
Or, in other words, the Powers That Be are evil.
Using similar mumbo jumbo, I can "prove" that women are not physically weaker than men and that claiming that they are is sexist.
We need more reflexivity here.
Friend: They did a project on how left handed people are marginalised.
Me: Har?
Friend: It's social theory - everyone is marginalised.
