ST Forum Editor was right after all | The Online Citizen - 0 views
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Statistics Singapore Education Income Inequality Newspaper media bias Representation
shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Mar 11
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I refer to the article “Straits Times! Why you edit until like that?” (theonlinecitizen, Mar 24). In my view, the Straits Times Forum Editor was not wrong to edit the letter.
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From a statistical pespective, the forum letter writer, Mr Samuel Wee, was quoting the wrong statistics.
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For example, the Education Minister said “How children from the bottom one-third by socio-economic background fare: One in two scores in the top two-thirds at PSLE” - But, Mr Samuel Wee wrote “His statement is backed up with the statistic that 50% of children from the bottom third of the socio-economic ladder score in the bottom third of the Primary School Leaving Examination”. Another example is Mr Wee’s: “it is indeed heartwarming to learn that only 90% of children from one-to-three-room flats do not make it to university”, when the Straits Times article “New chapter in the Singapore Story”http://pdfcast.org/pdf/new-chapter-in-singapore-story of 8 March, on the Minister’s speech in Parliament, clearly showed in the graph “Progression to Unis and Polys” (Source: MOE (Ministry of Eduction)), that the “percentage of P1 pupils who lived in 1- to 3-room HDB flats and subsequently progressed to tertiary education”, was about 50 per cent, and not the ’90 per cent who do not make it’ cited by Mr Samuel Wee.
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The whole point of Samuel Wee’s letter is to present Dr Ng’s statistics from a different angle, so as to show that things are not as rosy as Dr Ng made them seem. As posters above have pointed out, if 50% of poor students score in the top 2/3s, that means the other 50% score in the bottom 1/3. In other words, poor students still score disproportionately lower grades. As for the statistic that 90% of poor students do not make it to university, this was shown a graph provided in the ST. You can see it here: http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20110308/a10.pdf
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Finally, Dr Ng did say: “[Social mobility] cannot be about neglecting those with abilities, just because they come from middle-income homes or are rich. It cannot mean holding back those who are able so that others can catch up.” Samuel Wee paraphrased this as: “…good, able students from the middle-and-high income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students.” I think it was an accurate paraphrase, because that was essentially what Dr Ng was saying. Samuel Wee’s paraphrase merely makes the callousness of Dr Ng’s remark stand out more clearly.
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As to Mr Wee’s: “Therefore, it was greatly reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s great faith in our “unique, meritocratic Singapore system”, which ensures that good, able students from the middle-and-high income groups are not circumscribed or restricted in any way in the name of helping financially disadvantaged students”, there was nothing in the Minister’s speech, Straits Times and all other media reports, that quoted the Minister, in this context. In my opinion, the closest that I could find in all the reports, to link in context to the Minister’s faith in our meritocratic system, was what the Straits Times Forum Editor edited – “Therefore, it was reassuring to read about Dr Ng’s own experience of the ‘unique, meritocratic Singapore system’: he grew up in a three-room flat with five other siblings, and his medical studies at the National University of Singapore were heavily subsidised; later, he trained as a cancer surgeon in the United States using a government scholarship”.
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To the credit of the Straits Times Forum Editor, inspite of the hundreds of letters that he receives in a day, he took the time and effort to:- Check the accuracy of the letter writer’s ‘quoted’ statistics Find the correct ‘quoted’ statistics to replace the writer’s wrongly ‘quoted’ statistics Check for misquotes out of context (in this case, what the Education Minister actually said), and then find the correct quote to amend the writer’s statement
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Kind sir, the statistics state that 1 in 2 are in the top 66.6% (Which, incidentally, includes the top fifth of the bottom 50%!) Does it not stand to reason, then, that if 50% are in the top 66.6%, the remaining 50% are in the bottom 33.3%, as I stated in my letter?
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Also, perhaps you were not aware of the existence of this resource, but here is a graph from the Straits Times illustrating the fact that only 10% of children from one-to-three room flats make it to university–which is to say, 90% of them don’t. http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20110308/a10.pdf
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The writer made it point to say that only 90% did not make it to university. It has been edited to say 50% made it to university AND POLYTECHNIC. Both are right, and that one is made to make the government look good