Leader: GEP

Basically the moral of the story is: woots to elites, sucks to elitism.
Who are the elites? The elites are the leaders of Singapore's future society, who are vital for the progress of the country. When we talk about elites, we mean leaders who truly leads the country, who is able to command the people to work as one, who is willing to serve the people of Singapore. This are the type of true leaders, unlike some "leaders" whose job is simply to order his workers around and his secretary would do the job.
When people look at students of GEP in Singapore, they tend to view the students as the very hardworking, knowledgeable, and often the muuger type. True, to a certain extent. Some students are naturally talented in a certain area of studies, thus they do not require to spend as much time on that subject as other students need to. Also, students may not necessarily be the "mug" type, they may develop special methods to help in their studies and to make learning less stressful. Nowadays, purely mugging is never the correct method in facing studies. Through purely mugging you MAY be able to have good results for tests which are tested only in that area. But what about outside the classroom? Students who are pure muggers could only gaze blankly because they only remember what the textbook says, and are not knowledgeable about other topics outside the textbook.
Take for example in my class, it is mainly divided into 4 groups. The muggers, the talented muggers, the talented slackers, the slackers. It is very easily understood. Students who study subjects a lot and sometimes requires hard memorising before he can understand a topic, like me towards mathematics. Students to are talented and also spend a lot of time studying subject. Students who are talented but does not study subjects to THAT extent. And students who spend their time relaxing. For me, I feel that the last group would not be very efficient if they do not at least start by revising their homework. The first type would only lose to the rest of those who studied felxibly when he competed with them for scholarships and competitions. Some students may think that following one's own hobbies instead of preparing themselves for tests by endless studying is wrong. What I can say is that such nursery chain of thoughts would only bring harm to the person. In this society nowadays, everyone is good in tests, and can be good in tests. When students compete for scholarships, nobody would bother to look at their test results anymore - they have good results anyway. What does people look at? Their talents, their hobbies. What differs one student from another is exactly the hobbies and interests that student has. For example, a student who is interested and good in science would of course have a better chance when competing with another student who is only interest in getting good results for his tests and is good in tests.
Secondly, I would like to bring up the issue of "relaxing", as some students may say when they saw their classmates taking time out of their stressful studies to take a break. Relaxing is the best way to make a student learn better as it gives the brain time to cool down. Endless mugging would only affect the student more if he does not know how to relax properly.
Hence, I feel that Singapore should have elites, but elites who are really elites, not muggers.