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Concomitants, Labyrinthine, Seguidilla, Spiel, Debar, Abut, Pellucid, Tenon, Mortise, Prandial, Remit, Subsume, Fratello, Cloying.

This week, on A Stray World:

• The STPM, The Staple Torture of Pondering Men;

"The great revamp, it's coming! It's coming!" argues an incredulously optimistic lad. He believes the government knows what is best, and that all adults should continue voting for the same political party till the end of time.

Believe it or not, those sentiments are the general direction of my thoughts during Form One.

Things have changed now that I am in Form Six. Since those dark days of complete subservience, I have renounced government, god and gratification. I shall christen these my 3-ve G's.

Now that I have grown an adult brain, I will attempt to reconstruct the very situation which resulted in the creation of the STPM.

In a dark and dilapidated room, a man holding a dart sits on his wheelchair staring up at the picture of his ungrateful son.

With a swift throw the man plunges the needle of the dart into his son's forehead.

"You know what, let's make it harder for students to enter university," said the man to the then Education Minister. "Maybe they will be more grateful to us parents and continue the family coffin-making business after they realise its too damn hard to achieve straight-A's."

"Sure," said the minister, who was incidentally planning a way to give the bumiputra's further advantages in education.

And poof, we have the STPM. An examination whose sole purpose is to frustrate generations upon generations of students deemed unworthy of choosing the subjects they wish to study.

While the bumiputras receive a virtually guaranteed university ticket through their one year matriculation courses (some swift ones via SPM results), the unfortunate too-brilliant for their own good student community with slightly paler skin tones took their knowledge elsewhere.

While the incredible debts to MARA piled up, the other Malaysians, alienated by their own place of birth, took to the skies, and never came back.

Back on Earth, a new generation of STPM candidates prepare themselves for two more years of meaningless work.

Meaningless work, noun. Definition: Commonly referred to huge investments in time and energy to something completely unnecessary and meaningless, with the illusion that the person committed to the work is being productive.

Consider this, a sample question of the SAT. The examination almost all American students are required to sit to enter university:

If 44 is the average (arithmetic mean) of x, x, x, 35, and 65, then x =

1. 40
2. 42
3. 44
4. 48
5. 50

Wow, I can see now why American universities consider the STPM inferior to the SAT.

So here I am, a candidate for the STPM, where success means scoring straight A's with a 4.0 CGPA and hopefully getting the courses requested in the university of choice.

STPM success also means suppression of the mature mind in favour of those innocent wide-eye childhood years where you consume whatever you are asked to eat.

Failure is when straight A students fail to obtain their courses of choice for no apparent reason other than praying to the wrong god.

This compounded by the fact employers prefer college graduates to their STPM counterparts, although the college kids choose the subjects they wish to study themselves, as opposed to the streaming system of Form Six where the subjects are chosen by the more knowing government.

Questions... Questions... Questions....

Oh well, let's forget about it and continue studying. We simply aren't mature enough to choose yet.

By the way, you might like to try this site, everyday.

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