Imperfect, tractable data is better than subjective life histories

"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better." - Laurie Anderson

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On the limitations of data-gathering (on a Gifted Education Branch survey which mainly asks what awards you have won, what competitions you have taken part in, how patents you have registered, what organisations you belong to, etc.:


*many comments about how the survey doesn't measure the GEP's goals "to develop a strong social conscience and commitment to serve society and nation" and "to develop moral values and qualities for responsible leadership"*


A: to be fair though they do have a section for comm service. Also, there is no way for a survey to divine the individual's inner heart so no survey could ever tell [two otherwise identical scholars] apart...

The point of this survey is so that MOE can justify the crapton of taxpayer’s cash that it spent on us. Instead of, y’know, giving it to the poor or using it to build more one-room HDB apartments. In a sense, they’re covering our butts on why we once (wittingly or unwittingly) siphoned off a larger-than-fair share of the nation’s resources.

As a waffly English major and save-the-world type myself, I’m tired of the “it can’t be measured!” battle-cry that some (mostly in humanities, but others too) trot out as defensive apologia for their pursuits. I have sensed that some of these complainants feel as if they were special or felt it demeaning to be held accountable, therefore I eventually moved away from that line of argument so as to disassociate myself from that disingenuous sub-segment.

To me, it is unproductive to be defensive about one’s activities/achievements falling outside the color-blind spectrum of officialdom’s recognition. I’m sure that behind each of the faux self-deprecating comments we make about ourselves lies a life fully lived in unapologetic geeky pursuit of the things that make us come alive. (Some call this quality “integrity”, but they’re just being poetic.)

It is precisely that sort of unapologetic boundary-pushing that we need right now. I point out that there is an "other achievements" box on the survey that you can fill if you value your out-of-the-box "achievements" (define that word as broadly as possible). Yes it’s a small box, but write outside the box if you must, and briefly appreciate the metaphorical aptness as you do so.

In fact, I challenge each of us here to put something true but awesome in their "Other achievements" box for the survey. Something that would stop a reading civil servant in his tracks and force him – maybe, just maybe – to rethink what the hell an “achievement” is. Think of it as a protest ballot (because, hey, when will you ever get to cast one of those, realistically?).

What would each of us put? Some hypothetical ideas:

"Led Saffron Revolution rally on university campus to call for overthrow of Myanmar's military junta after the massacre of Buddhist monks."

"Illegally visited and produced film documentary on AIDS villages in China whose existence the government denies."

“Taught firstborn daughter to share her sweets with younger brother”

“Donated spare kidney to someone have never met before.”

“Convinced 15-year-old nephew not to commit suicide.”

C’mon, what else have we done that won’t fit neatly anywhere else on the survey? I'd like to see some suit have a fit over this.


B: I'd have written back if they'd asked for a (qualitative) retrospective of say 500 words on the program and my honest assessment of its effects. But that wouldn't have been useful for justifying taxpayer spending, and would be too troublesome to carry out, administratively.

Maybe we could draft a letter and get signatures from our batch. Or simply get signatures for [one already sent].


A on MOE's reply to feedback: It looks like they read your letter (well enough to quote bits of it). They do look like they're aware of the limitations of their mechanism and are trying to fill in the (qualitative) gaps.

B: They could totally call for a focus group of GEPpers to reflect and give feedback. That would be great.


C: i agree with A's general arc, but tend to err more on the side of pity for the oft-mocked survey designer, coming from the perspective of understaffed underpaid civil servant tasked to pursue a thankless job - if you have 24 hours in your day, it's much more efficient to sift through a few hundred quantifiable and generally accredited metrics and throw them into a couple of graphs, than to read a few hundred essays and uh, draw any form of trendable conclusion.

if anything, changing the survey to "pls write 500 words about ur life" fundamentally skews the results towards the [thread starter-s] of this world... of course, it is more "fair" to provide both options - but as i mentioned - this whole ballyhooed survey process is probably the product of 1 dude sitting in the "historical academic performance calibration" office, on alternate second mondays of every other month. what's he supposed to do when he looks at your result? feedback to his boss that approximately a dozen geps out of the thousands past are passionate, good at writing, and uh... free? :}

my pessimist view is that few other gep alums have the energy or free time to bother with the survey to begin with, let alone do a out-of-the-box write-in.