What did I miss out when I refused to enroll into ACS

 

A couple of months ago, this guy who bullied me and a bunch of smaller kids in the landed property estate I grew up in died of cancer. He was about a year older than I was. 

Bullying was quite typical for folks in my generation, and I'm not here to recount my personal trauma or seek pity. The bullying was actually relatively mild compared to what some other kids had - I was shamed because the ET BMX bike I rode was allegedly an imitation. Much more seriously, my bully organised "field trips" and invited his ACS classmates to shoot other kids in the estate. The weapon they employed was an air pistol called a Thunderboy, which shot light blue 7mm pellets from a high-pressure chamber, and it really hurt like hell. 

I was never able to confront my bully.  The karmic burden would have been too much - do I really want to go after someone who has survived multiple bouts of cancer? Apparently, according to his social media, he graduated to organise trips to actually shoot and kill animals in Africa and was a famous shooting coach before he passed on. 

Today, I console myself that my bully grew up to be a nice guy ( but not to the animals he shot ). At least that seems to be the case, given the comments on his Instagram after he passed away.

As I get older, I have begun to count the cost of the bullying I experienced.

The immediate effect of this was that, despite scoring 255 in the PSLE, I qualified for ACS but chose to attend the school next door, Swiss Cottage Secondary School. I told my dad that I don't think I will do well in a brand-conscious environment; they will probably despise me, and I wouldn't be able to go around canvassing for donations every year - it would be awkward. I also played too much D&D to endure those religious sessions in a Methodist school. 

As I got older, I began to realise what a terrible mistake it was to avoid a branded institution just because of a small roughing up I experienced as a kid. I met fund managers, who are ok people, and they told me that it was much easier to get a foot in the door because they also have an ACS senior in the industry. 

Worse of all, I started to meet friendly and warm people who came from ACS. NJC in my year "Headhunted" their head prefect, who became student council president for my year and is an all-round great guy, and I have since met the alumni of their wargaming clubs who are keeping one of my hobbies alive today. This realisation hurt most of all: there are great people from ACS with whom I could have connected really well if I had chosen that school. 

So parents now know this - while every school is a good school, not every old boy association can open the same doors for you. 

Reading books about the sociology of privilege and class confirmed my suspicions even more.

ACS-MGS is a system of privilege, not unlike elite high schools in the US, such as St. Paul's or Eton in the UK- it exists to solidify privilege among a particular group of Singaporeans. To do so, invisible barriers need to be erected. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would term this the habitus of ACS. So, donation cards, a certain cockiness, big cars at the drop-off area, strange religious rituals, and a great-sounding English accent actually keep smart Channel 8 heartlanders out. 

Where ordinary Singaporeans do gain entry, they are likely to be relatively intelligent and ambitious, which helps maintain the sense of privilege associated with the institution. And I have evidence - Look no further than the AL score differentials between affiliated primary schools and everyone else. You want access to this old boys' club, you need to be either generally speaking, very smart or very rich.

So now with a neutral perspective, someone asked me what I thought about election candidate Jeremy Tan, who performed exceptionally well in the last election. 

As impressive as Jeremy Tan is, his ACS credentials can provide me with a specific insight into how to approach this class of very prominent men. Imagine different men from different schools. If a boy's school is exposed to materialism and wealth. A subtle shift happens.

A boy will either be very chill and classy because he is old money, or he will literally die trying to make sure that he does not land at the bottom of the totem pole the next time the alumni meet.

So what happens? 

We can express this mathematically!

I spoke about an old equation called the Merton share, where the investor's risk appetite is represented by a variable that looks like an inverted y or gamma. In most cases, this variable is approximately 3; we tend to be risk-averse and take only a third of the risk associated with the optimal equity portfolio.  Seasoned investors have a gamma of about 2. Individuals who are confident or very cocky, such as Sam Bankman-Fried, tend to have a gamma of 1. 

For every Jeremy Tan who excels in crypto and comes from ACJC, you will find ACS alumni like Finan Siow, featured above as a Cambodian scam operator, and Mitchell Ong, a financial advisor turned murderer.

All men exhibit a high willingness to take risks and a gamma tending towards 1. As lambda tends towards 1, all I can say is this: 

The best is yet to be, but the worst is yet to come. 

So, if you ask me whether Finan Siow should not have been given the ACS label when his buddies are all criminals, I would say, for the reasons I stated in this article, that I support what the editor (probably an RI boy-troll from a rival privileged habitus) did.

However, my ACS pals do not need to feel aggrieved - so long as the old boys' network continues to nurture the cultural and social capital of the alumni, this is something to be proud of. None of the neighbourhood schools can do this, not even PM Wong's school. But RI and Chinese High networks come close. 

Okay, let's digress to my YouTube channel, where I'll be talking about STI reaching 10,000,  which can be accessed here. Enjoy!