by Alexius Tan

Created on: December 18, 2011

To this day, I still could feel remnants of the nightmare I got the day before my first GCE “O” levels paper. It was about ten years ago, yet I could still remember it clearly.

-Academic Stress-

Singaporean teenagers generally study in stressed academic environments; students are subjected to streaming, a process whereby students are segregated into different groups based on their (academic) abilities. Such streaming activities take place as early as even before the kids go to primary school for their formal education. The students are so-called “streamed” according to the level of education their parents attained, and the type of job their parents have, with the belief that successful parents give successful offspring.

The kids have to compete against others and must surpass his/her peers in order to get “streamed” into better category of students. Such mentality is instilled into the children while they were in primary schools and was brought over to adolescence. There is a constant worry the teenagers have in mind – failure.

Failures in an academic setting could have very undesirable consequences: not able to go to the desired colleges, unable to pursue what the teenager aspired to be, unable to go to the desired university, unable to get the dream job, and the list continues…

It is a misery to see teenagers vying against each other just to get streamed to better streams, and forgetting the significance of receiving education. Going to school is not so much about learning; it’s about beating your peers so that you can be in the most prestigious group of students performing the best academically.

-Emotional Stress-

Besides academic stresses in school, teenagers get to manage highs and lows in their emotions, sometimes by themselves.

Singapore is a fast-paced society with highly-stressed business environments; it is very likely that the teenagers’ parents are both working and not able to devote time to understand and speak to them. It is usually an issue, as the teenagers are going through various changes during adolescence and would need someone he/she could confide in. The absence of a confidant who is a parent may spur the teenagers to seek the wrong methods in expressing themselves. Some turn to their peers who are going through similar problems in adolescence and it usually does not alleviate the problem to a very large extent.

-Societal Stress-

The stresses a teenager in Singapore faces would root down to what the Singaporean society sees value in. The teenager would probably feel the stress of the need to support his/her parents in the future, as the idea of honoring filial piety is still rooted in the Singaporean-Asian mentality.

Because of this, the teenager felt even more necessary for him/her to succeed in life. Blinded by all the stresses, the teenagers are “encouraged” to eliminate his/her peers in an academic setting. Those who are unable to cope with the stress would give up, and may turn rebellious, protesting against the “social norms” that are creating so much stress that a teenager today needs to face.

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