Once an AC boy, always an AC boy -- but it will stop there

Proud Anglo Chinese School celebrates 122 years of great tradition today. But it is ironic how popular perception puts it down as an institution for snobs, pretty boys, and bourgeois society.

The AC-detractors are not wrong in doing so.

"A beacon of truth and light", and "an emblem of grand endeavour"? Those superlatives dress up a song sung with the heart and not the head, and remain an ideal and a 'best' that is yet to -- but possibly never will -- be.

I am an AC alumni, and I draw much of my identity from a decade there, and I write with regret, but candour.

How else would one explain the recent moral and social calamities that have besieged the school? I hate making a list but the list demands to be made; an assessment of the slippery slope some of us have gone down because they believed the 'you're so cool!' hype and threw away the "we'll stand together" ideals.

A wannabe-famous alumni squaring up to his army superior; a teacher charged with molest of boys under his care; a principal accused of outraging a student's modesty; a head prefect cheating the school in doctoring his operation by signing off as a brain surgeon -- are we lying to ourselves that this as great an institution it's made out to be?

No, say the light-seekers. These are abberations, they say; look instead to: ACS (I) coming out tops in the recent IB results; member schools topping the Odyssey of the Mind competitions; the fantastic literary talent at every concert; and success stories like Vivian Balakrishnan, Eunice Olsen, Ang Peng Siong, Hossan Leong going places.

True: Yin and Yang is a concept that applies to anglicised ACS (note the irony in Anglicised Anglo Chinese School).

But for every Vivan and Eunice Olsen, there is a Glenn Knight and an 'Aloysius'.

No school is perfect, but I am not writing this on a high horse -- No one is perfect. I am horribly flawed. But we came together and went through it all, with some guidance along the way. And that is why I embrace ACS as the teacher of my youth.

The crucial consideration is: might any other school have given me the same teaching? Yes.
Is ACS a bastion of moral values? No, for reasons stated above.
Do I want to pass down this tradition to my children? No -- read on.

Here is my crux: I fear sending my son to ACS.

For all the identity I have got from it, I, like many others, have also suffered greatly. We cannot shake off our image, and the pre-conceived notions that come with it. People expect us to be bad boys, and they stick with the slightest hint they get, never probing deeper, comfortable with their conclusion that we live up to our reputation. I do not want my son to be judged as cavalier and rich --because this is our reputation, whatever the anthem sings -- even before people know his name.

But my biggest regret is ACS institutionalising me in Christianity. Everyday I struggle to wipe the slate clean and decide for myself my own moral and religious approach to life. Noble as the cause is, force-feeding a kid when he is 6 that 'following Jesus is the only way of life' is rude and morally wrong, as he is neither rational nor cognisant of its logical and scientific holes. Tied up (pun unintended) every monday morning in chapel, he cannot decide to choose. Then come out of Secondary Four ten years later, and the transformation is complete and very irreversible. I do not want my son to suffer this predestined fate.