Singapore's Euphemism for Neurodivergence — The Gifted Education Programme

Are You Satisfied? - MARINA

First, a caveat: this piece is, as all the strawberry gazette pieces are, based on my personal experience. As such, there may be blind spots I have not addressed, and what I lay out may not be the experience other people had. So, I want to highlight that these are my observations, corroborated by what other people around me have discussed. I am open to discourse, but please be gentle. 

There was a running joke in my school about how GEP was created so that the weird kids would be able to make friends, because they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. That’s why there’s so much buzz about how even in adulthood, a lot of former GEP kids only have friends that were also from GEP (other than the obvious elitism point).

While I was writing this, my friend sent me Joshua Ip’s post on GEP, about how there are kids that are “RI GEP” aka natural overachievers, and “AC GEP” aka neurodivergent kids (except he didn’t really directly use the word).

"RI GEPs" are going to be straight A scholars prizewinners ivy league oxbridge captains of industry leaders of tomorrow etc with or without whatever half-cocked GEP programme the MOE can cobble together with its puny resources, which are but a tinkle in the wind compared to the deluge of resources (read: tuition) available to them.

if you are trying to put in place some tests to find RI GEPs, don't waste your time. the RI GEPs will find you. or their parents will.

"AC GEPs" are the kind of kids who set the chem lab on fire / fall asleep in class / enjoy writing offensive lyrics for the school song / permanently daydreaming / don't really do very well in standardised tests despite conveying a general impression of brightness. if introduced into a normal school environment, AC GEPs will get bullied brutally by their peers, ignored and not challenged by teachers, or at best, forced to conform to societal norms and have the GEPness ironed out of them.

so the core problem of the GEP today is that the tests basically exist to find AC GEPs, but have been hacked by tuition such that they keep getting spammed by RI GEPs. so the programme is stuffed full of the wrong kind of kids - the ones that don't need it.

I agree with Ip’s overarching point, but I believe there is a massive under-representation of the amount of kids that are actually the latter, and that there are so many more nuances to this. 

What’s missing from GEP discourse is that when you do standardised testing in the format of what are essentially IQ tests, you pick up on kids with special needs disproportionately. It’s not hard to notice the patterns — just off sheer observation, and with no data or statistics involved, it is abundantly clear that a massive proportion of former GEP kids have high-functioning autism, ADHD, OCD, or other forms of neurodivergence. I want to be clear that it is not to say that the tests pick up on all neurodivergent kids — far from it — but of the kids they pick up, a good educated guess would be that at least half have some sort of neurodivergence, diagnosed or otherwise. I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a child education expert, but it’s just an observable phenomenon, which I’m sure most GEP kids will anecdotally corroborate even without the necessary statistical proof (hence, we have Joshua Ip’s post). Of course, it's not all-encompassing, but it's a significant enough proportion for this topic to be discussed, and is the premise we will work from in this article.

The crazy thing is that if you frame these children as “intellectually gifted” instead of “neurodivergent”, what happens is that their special needs are not only ignored but put onto a pedestal. First, let’s not sugarcoat it — the reason why we don’t use this word or acknowledge this very prevalent phenomenon is because of the stigmatisation behind learning disabilities and special needs. It’s seen as something that cripples you or makes you different, singled out, weird, odd, strange or ruins your life. So we use the euphemism “gifted”, and skirt around the very real special needs that these children have. Secondly, I want to make it very clear that these kids are also usually a very specific type of neurodivergent — extremely high-functioning with some of their symptoms balanced out by IQ when you look at their grade transcripts — which already puts them in a much better position than most neurodivergent kids. Also, various other factors matter. Class, for instance, is a big one — a neurodivergent child with access to effective learning aids like quiet study spaces and noise-cancelling headphones who doesn't need to worry about household chores or taking care of their siblings and so on and so forth would inevitably perform better than neurodivergent children who don’t. 

But back to GEP — the lack of acknowledgment of this high correlation of neurodivergency is certainly not helped by the fact that these kids are surrounded by other kids who act the exact same way they do, so they don’t even feel like there is something wrong with them. The teachers are also completely not trained to accommodate the special needs of children, because it’s not recognised or acknowledged that the children have special needs. It’s all quite chicken-and-egg, but what you get is this: kids with special needs put together, without the recognition that they have special needs in the first place, and treated in a way where the symptoms of their neurodivergence are reduced to either a) factors that contribute to their good grades b) personal or moral failings, depending on which symptom flares up. 

Beyond this, the normalisation of the symptoms of neurodivergence becomes a problem when they’re out of the GEP bubble, and have to interact with people who don’t think the same way they do. This is sometimes delayed, because kids in GEP do usually move on to other places where there are still a lot of other neurodivergent children that act the same way they do. But the truth is at some point in their lives, they’re going to have to take a look at the people around them and wonder: what’s wrong with me? Why do I feel different? Why do I think differently? Why am I so not normal?

Without the appropriate support, they will not be able to answer that question because their special needs have been put on a pedestal their entire lives. In fact, their intelligence might be the only thing they can identify themselves with. The natural consequence is that they’ll struggle with mental health problems because they feel so isolated and misunderstood. They may even go down the path of thinking that they have something inherently superior to them that makes them better than everyone else, because that’s the way they’re conditioned to think from the age of 9 (and thus the seeds of elitism are planted). But it’s not only elitist at the top — it is also very lonely. This lack of acknowledgement of what’s actually the problem alienates, socially, a large group of people. Take into account that this is a group of people that are essentially prepped for success at age 9, and will likely end up in positions of power, and you realise why being unable to relate to people (with no inkling why) is particularly suboptimal for our society.

Here, I want to make clear that I don't absolve these GEP kids of responsibility. At some point, when you become an adult, you're accountable for all of your decisions, including how you interact with other people and the world around you. Given that you were provided with the best opportunities in the nation and probably the world, you should have some form of agency in determining what you want your future to look like, and you should be much more curious about the world and self-reflexive about yourself. In short, you should be able to sort your issues out at some point in adulthood and not peak in primary school. As much as you have worked hard (and been pushed to work hard all your life), you should also realise that a lot of the opportunities you have received had something to do with the luck of the draw. 

GEP is an abundantly difficult concept to grapple with, because the entire programme is built on prestige. Essentially, once you access it, it gives you an insane amount of privilege, which ultimately means that if my premises hold true, it rewards a very particular type of high-functioning neuro-divergency (and a huge component of luck — that your brain can align and just happen to perform well on the tests on those particular days) with major life advantage credits. Moreover, the kids who are neurodivergent but don’t get screened into the GEP suffer even more, because not only are their needs not met, they also don’t get any life kudos for it. I recognise this. GEP kids are very far from victims of the system. But today, in the limited scope of my Strawberry Gazette, I just want to break down the exact issues inbuilt into the GEP and how we frame it, which ties in into how we, as Singaporeans, look at education as a whole. 

On education

A very common buzzword that is used in these spheres is “potential”, which is the idea that if all these GEP kids just put their head into it they’ll be able to get into Harvard and win the Nobel Prize and become world-class musicians and so on and so forth. This isn’t exactly a mistaken train of thought. But if the programme doesn’t acknowledge the fact that most of these kids have special needs, these kids are never going to actually develop in a way that maximises their potential, or — even more importantly — makes them happy or well-adjusted members of society. In fact, the salient truth is as follows: in our education system, it’s always framed as a moral failing to not maximise your potential. Beyond my fundamental disagreement with this principle, it’s even more egregious when you consider that these kids not “maximising their potential” is something that is not within their control.

For instance, let’s take ADHD. Referencing the DIVA-5, symptoms of ADHD include focus issues, not finishing homework, being fidgety in class and unable to sit down for long periods of time. Without the acknowledgement that these are symptoms of ADHD, this sort of behaviour is relegated to personal or moral failures like “laziness” and “not trying hard enough”. It’s never recognised that if a bulk of the students are bouncing off the walls, it’s probably a bigger problem than the individual 10-year old. I recall teachers completely losing it and throwing items in the direction of children, screaming their heads off, or thinking out new and more cruel ways of humiliation — like telling them to wash their mouths out with soap for swearing, or pasting post-it notes on their forehead to remember to do their homework. While I recognise that these are all things that also happen in non-GEP programmes, I want to argue that it has something to do with the potential of these children that sets teachers off in particular. The “disappointment” argument is ubiquitous: “I am disappointed in you because you had so much potential, but you’re not trying hard enough, so you’re falling between the cracks, etc”.

One may argue that if some kids simply refuse to do their homework over and over in spite of the humiliation rituals they have to go through as a consequence every day, there is probably a root cause that has less to do with their recalcitrance and more to do with a deeper inability to focus, and that teachers should hence be trained to be more empathetic and spot these as signs of neurodivergence and not moral failures. If the purpose of a programme is to maximise potential, then that clearly should be the framework — to have trained teachers who are able to cater to these kids with special needs, and work with them in a way that best suits them. This almost seems laughably simple, but the complete lack of acknowledgement, cultural or within the system, that these kids are neurodivergent and hence, are special needs kids is at the root of the issue (stemming from the aforementioned stigmatisation). 

On socialising (aka, The Weird Kid)

see. the root of the GEP programme was in special education - special needs education, and AC GEPs fit entirely in that zone. they benefit the most from the community of other weird kids, and having a safe space to go through their formative years. this prevents them from committing suicide / having long-term mental health issues / turning to a life of crime / having the aforementioned GEPness ironed out of them, and allows them to more likely be productive members of society in their own way.

Well, yeah. Okay, let’s talk about weird kids. It’s definitely true that GEP really creates a community of people who socialise and think in similar ways, which may make them feel a lot more included than in their old schools and classes. But let’s not sugarcoat here. Just because you’re like the people around you…and you feel like you “fit in” more per se…doesn’t mean that that’s actually the best environment for you, especially when everyone refuses to face the glaring truth that they are socially deficient and can’t fit in (as Ip mentioned, will get bullied by the people around you) because they’re neurodivergent.

Kids are brutal. They don’t get less brutal because they’re neurodivergent. Bullying is still present, and in fact may be worse in GEP, because these are kids that disproportionately have more complex emotions and require more coping mechanisms than the average child, with no acknowledgement of their special needs.

Let’s pick out two symptoms of autism spectrum disorder from the ICD-11, for instance:

• Lifelong excessive and persistent hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity to sensory stimuli or unusual interest in a sensory stimulus, which may include actual or anticipated sounds, light, textures (especially clothing and food), odors and tastes, heat, cold, or pain

• Inflexible adherence to particular routines; for example, these may be geographic such as following familiar routes, or may require precise timing such as mealtimes or transport.

As a kid that experiences these symptoms in a class full of neurotypical kids, it sucks to be the only odd one out. Now imagine a whole class of these kids with all sorts of different problems and triggers, then add their massive inflated egos because they also think they’re better than everyone else and aren’t old enough to critically think and realise that that might not be true.

We all recall that one kid that just started screaming and crying in the middle of class. Maybe we were that kid. Unless we are deluding ourselves, we all recall the emotional breakdowns, the suicide threats, and the conflicts that happened on a daily basis exacerbated by teachers that didn’t know how to deal with them in class. If we’re talking about suicide and long-term mental health problems, the post-GEP statistics still aren’t too pretty either.

Without the acknowledgement of the root of the problem, even if you’re surrounded by community, it’s still bad, because there’s a mistaken notion of what you are united by. Personally, I definitely struggled with social interaction in GEP — many times I was much too honest, too direct, too intrusive, which were all symptoms of neurodivergency, but it wasn’t something that I knew how to put into words. Obviously I continued to struggle with things like that later on, but it would have been such a good opportunity if during that key stage of development (10-12), it was explained to me that it wasn’t really something fundamentally broken within me, and that it was just that I saw social interaction differently, and that everyone else around me was also operating on different axes (which made it even harder to figure out social patterns).

So here I differ from Ip’s opinion — I don’t think these kids should necessarily be plucked out of their old school environment and put together in new classes. The change is not always good, especially for children who struggle with things like new environments (which this group is obviously predisposed to be), and it doesn’t necessarily make things better. Also, I simply think that the dichotomy between “RI GEP” and “AC GEP” isn’t that large — girls, especially at that age, are even more under-diagnosed than boys, because they’re socialised in a way that hides their symptoms (a focus on obedience, quietness, propriety). This isn't exactly disputed because there is a large amount of literature in the social science sphere about how neurodivergence is under-reported in women, which gives the impression that they’re less…weird….when that’s clearly not the truth.

Additionally, there is a glaring problem with plucking these kids out and putting them together. It makes it extremely easy for them to never interact with anyone that isn't from GEP, and hence never interact with neurotypical people in any intimate manner, all the way until they have to. First and foremost, they largely only interact with neurodivergent people in the social development stages of 10-12. Then, they're funnelled into top schools, where they can make the natural choice to only befriend neurodivergent people, and then by the end of the IP programme at age 18 you realise that at some point it's no longer a choice — these former GEP kids are simply incapable of connecting with neurotypical people on any level.

In the new GEP, then, it should simply be recognised that “giftedness” is largely a euphemism. I agree with Ip here. If it actually wants to develop children in a way that maximises their potential, it should be entirely rebranded and associated with special needs. Special needs entails that these children have issues that should be de-stigmatised, acknowledged, and worked with, instead of put on a pedestal. If these kids wish to seek out community, neurodivergence is the banner they should work under.

A point that should be made here though is that even with the best tests and monitoring, special needs kids will always fall between the gaps and not be properly identified. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that then we should not aim for a sort of exceptionalism where kids who pass the tests / monitoring are the only ones that have special needs, or “deserve” to have their learning needs met. Every child deserves empathy and to be heard out, and worked with gently to suit their learning needs. 

A Brief Point on the Curriculum

I do want to make a quick point here on the subject of GEP. So far, I’ve addressed the facets of GEP that have nothing to do with the curriculum itself. I think the curriculum is great. You get to do research projects at the age of 11, you get to learn poetry and literature (I still recall getting the difference between prejudice and discrimination explained to me after we went through Friedrich). You write murder mysteries, you figure out your family tree, you do research projects into mathematics, and your science curriculum is largely based on experimentation and actually going out into nature. It’s a dynamic, critical way of thinking that probes the imagination and develops in kids a genuine love for learning. My question is: why isn’t it more accessible? Why shouldn’t non-GEP kids have access to a curriculum that is much less rigid, and a lot more based on learning in dynamic ways? If we’ve been test-running a syllabus for nearly 50 years on the alleged “best and brightest”, it might just be high time to roll it out to everyone else.

To Chew On

The thing that must be acknowledged behind all of this is that the bulk of these GEP children do turn out to be incredibly conventionally successful, and they end up making lifelong friendships with each other. This isn’t deniable. The programme works. No one denies that it's a ridiculously OP buff, and propels your life prospects forward by leaps and bounds. At age 10, you're one foot into a 6-figure annual salary. Like I emphasised earlier, these kids are not disenfranchised victims by any means.

But let's think about it from an outcome-based perspective. So many GEP children grow up to be unable to connect meaningfully with anyone who isn't neurodivergent, because they were segregated at age 9. They fall apart at any semblance of failure — their resilience is characterised by a dogged need to keep on being the best, but emotionally they're wrecked by the fact that they will simply never be. They continue experiencing the symptoms of their neurodivergency well into adulthood, with no clue on how to move forward, because they just weren't equipped with the tools to do so (in fact, they were told that such tools were completely unnecessary, because they're smart enough to work through everything, including their own neurodivergency). They live their lives in gridlock, unable to move forward, incapable of moving backwards. That’s the pipeline, that’s how they’re programmed.

So my point is: did GEP really teach them to lead the best lives that they could have? Does this actually maximise their potential, if, for instance, their only friends are the ones they made at the age of 10? Have most of these children actually grown, emotionally, as individuals, since that age? How could they, if the programme was focused on emphasising that they were the best of the best, and anything that deviates from that is a personal failing (including perhaps even an official diagnosis of their neurological disorders)? What does this mean if they have great trouble talking to and learning from people that they don’t immediately understand? What does this mean for them trying out new things, making bold choices, freeing themselves from the shackles of the conventional routes to success?

But the biggest question I have is: if even the kids that are given the best opportunities, the best resources, and the best “life prospects” are faced with structural roadblocks, isn’t there a fundamental issue with how we look at education as a whole? What about the neurodivergent children that don’t pass the tests, and so just think they’re too stupid to do the work, when the truth is that they have learning disabilities? What about everyone else, everyone who continues to be steeped in the culture of the day-to-day entwining of their grades with their self-worth, without the label of being a “gifted” kid to couch them? If GEP kids, who are at the top of the prestige pyramid in a society that runs on perceived “merit”, are still verbally demeaned and broken down, invalidated and not listened to, with their output (good grades) being the only indicator of their self-worth, then what about everyone else who just didn’t have access to the personal attention, the dynamic curriculum, and most importantly, the prestige of the GEP label? 

These questions force us to interrogate the very social fabric of Singapore. So much of the struggles I’ve outlined are far from unique to GEP kids or even kids with special needs. It’s a national epidemic — the need to excel at all cost, the treatment of any sort of academic failure as some sort of indolence or moral failure, the lack of compatibility of educational methods with the different learning styles of children. The way the GEP works is actually just a tiny microcosm of how Singaporean society treats education and human development, and is only treated as a reference point here because it was mine, and because it shows that even at the most prestigious tiers of education, there is so much room for improvement. 

When we tie education and child development so closely with these big concepts of prestige and intelligence, we do our kids so dirty. We brute force them into doing what we think their best is — normal, neurotypical, good grades straight into med school — instead of pondering what different definitions of “their best” could be, and how we can better cater to each child’s needs. We don’t give them a chance to think about how best to live a life that suits them. At this juncture, we're at a crossroads. It's time to decide: what should excellence mean to us? How do we think better, not within the parameters of what has already been set forth for us? How do we want to progress?