Is there any grain of truth in school stereotypes?

This is a reply to the article called, "Playing with Stereotypes"written by Ignatius Low in the Sunday Times life on April 12 2009.

Any stereotype cannot continue to persist if they don't have at least some truth in it. To me two things contribute to school stereotypes, school culture and school image. Both are inseparable and to me it is to hard rank which is more influential.

I came from a neighbourhood primary school and was posted to St Margaret Secondary and I remembered how some of my teachers were telling me that girls from St Margaret always had a good command of English. And believe it or not, my command of English was quite good during the four years. And why not, when you have a Principal (the late Caroline Lee) who would correct every sentence we spoke and even taught me to differentiate the pronunciation of words, 'shit'and 'sheet'in the musical piece I was performing. We were also known to be pretty bold (it takes guts to wear green poka dots) and adventurous especially in the early stages of performing arts. This was not a level culture but a school culture. Today when I go to train my juniors in leadership and even after 10 years, the culture still remains. We may not be an elite school but the school identity still holds.

School culture and school image are not frictional and they tend to manifest themselves over the years. Take ACS Barker for instance. When i was a teenager I use to admire ACS/ ACS Barker boys because they were usually athletic and very much a lady's man. They were charismatic and very boyish. I find that very true when I mix around with these boys/men in University and during my JCS days. I even conducted leadership training sessions 2 years back and there is no doubt about what has been said about them (this includes them being snobbish etc).

However there are some images like RGS and RI where the school image which is based on grades, tend to create the stereotypes and once again it is true that RGS and RI boys behave in a certain way that depicts the way they think.

However what really bothers me is the over emphasis on stereotypes of only certain schools. It is just churning the milk over and over again. After a while it gets sour. I am definitely guilt of such churning at times but nowadays I tend to look out for fresh perspectives in the schools I train in. For instance I find Evergeen students to be extremely polite and very neat. Whenever someone mentions the name Evergreen Secondary, the image of something green and clean comes to mind. Mention the name Kranji Secondary I think of future engineers because the students there seem to be good with their physics and maths and very analytical in nature.

The point I am trying to make here is that we should create more stereotypes of schools that are not basically talked about. I mean since there is definitely tons of grains of truth so why not spread it and give ourselves tons to talk about?