Platypus ideology

This post is not about how to identify a platypus, and neither is it about how to catch an octopus. It's about how certain aspects of the country exert pressures to shape Singaporeans in the image of the platypus, resulting in us having to become quasi-octopuses.....

Most of the shaping occurs during the teenage years. Look around you and you'll notice how many people actually overload themselves with extra-curricular activities (ECAs). (Or are they called CCAs now?). The idea of having these ECAs is to make students more 'well-rounded'. But everything soon turns into a competition: within specific student societies/clubs/sports teams, people strive for positions of power, because these will enhance their resume. Being good at one thing is not considered to be a big deal in Singapore. This is a country where people will only be impressed if you are excellent in everything. Like a platypus, you should be able to lay eggs, walk on land, swim in water, and look like a duck, an otter and a fish - all at once. It's good if you are the sports captain, students' council leader, and graduate with a good honours degree, but it's still not good enough, for you can still be defeated by the person who have a slightly more impressive 'ECA record'.

I have a feeling that this 'ECA record' mentality is doing more harm than good in our country. How many fine young men and women have been exhausted to their limits because of ECAs? How many student societies and clubs have turned 'political' due to people vying for key positions within the 'committee'? How many potential budding scholars (as opposed to scholarship holders) have missed their first class honours because of excessive commitments to other non-academic activities? How many people truly like the activities they've chosen to join, and how many ended up hating those very activities that they had loved before everything became overly formalized?

Why do capable young people spread themselves so thin? The answer is that their capabilities have given them the feeling that they can take on the world. At the same time, 'society' at large and their immediate social environment send all kinds of signals to tell them that it's good to BE a platypus. If you want a good job after you graduate, you'd better be a platypus and have all kinds of activities listed on your resume - and make sure you hold at least one or two leadership positions. Nobody cares if you had been the worst 'President of Students Council' or 'President of Singapore Society', or the worst Rugby captain throughout the history of your school or university. Nobody will know anyway, and so the game transforms into a power struggle. ECAs are no longer for cultivating a deeper interest in the activity. They are instead platforms for the acquisition of titles which may impress your potential employers....

I'm not sure about the current situation but in my time, we're not allowed to change ECAs 'halfway through' or we'll lose all our 'ECA points'. So it doesn't matter that I've been an excellent player and contributor in the sports team and won several medals in the initial years of my secondary education. If I quit the team in my final year, I shall lose all my merit points. This is an unfair and silly practice, don't you think so? Why can't people have a change of interest? Why can I try out different things during my teenage years? Wouldn't it be nice if I could learn abit of Astronomy from the Astronomers' Club, a bit of horticulture from the Horticultural Society, and a bit of chicken-slaying skills from the Chicken-Slayers' Council? Why must I stick with a single uniformed group and a single sports team for 4 years of my life? I'm quite sure that I'll be very much more well-rounded if I had the chance to try out 5 to 15 different ECAs without any regard for the ECA points!

One might argue that I'm just going to exhaust myself if I try out so many things. But why should merely trying out things exhaust a person? The system is stupid, to begin with. For example, if I'm interested in Air-Rifle, why should I go for Air-Rifle sessions twice a week? And there shouldn't be a system that constrains peoples' movement across societies by imposing penalties or having disincentives. There shouldn't even be an expectation (on the part of employers) that people should have a string of titles associated with their 'official' positions in their ECA groups.

I would rather see people trying out different things in their youth. I would rather see a great young pianist who only has ONE ECA and no official position of responsibility, but could play the piano really well and lets his love for the piano show in his general excitement for life. And I would rather see a young scholar who had been yearning to become a famous professor one day and studied wholeheartedly and as a result had ZERO ECAs. All of these scenarios, in my opinion, are much better than the scenario of many exhausted, half-hearted, and over-stretched platypuses approaching their lives with an overly pragmatic attitude to everything. The process of transforming into a pragmatic platypus will slowly but surely limit one's achievement to mere technical perfection, and extinguish all chances of attaining a much higher, much more magical form of spiritual ecstasy and passionate performance through a hedonistic indulgence in things which he loves.