Singapore's Stupidest Television Show Title

I was horrified to learn that there is a game show on Singapore Television now called Singapore's Brainiest Teenager, which ostensibly aims to find Singapore's smartest teenager by subjecting them to rounds of general and specific knowledge questions, eliminating the stragglers after each round.

The title makes me shudder. It is wholly inappropriate. Singapore is already one of the most highly pressurised places on earth to be if you are a teenager. From young (pre-school/Kindergarten), children here are graded, evaluated, examined, tracked, and screened. Children are taught that it if you aren't academically brilliant, you are nothing. Families and friends bring tremendous amounts of stress onto children to do well in their examinations. Success in Singapore society is entirely reliant on your examination results. One is relentlessly compared to one's peer and exalted or ridiculed depending on how one does. It is a system I completely abhor and thankfully escaped when I was 16. And now we have a game show that not only brings this to national television, but claims to find Singapore's brainiest teenager. What new ways can we find to humiliate our children, stunt their emotional development, and inculcate erroneous values?

Think about it. In this day and age when creativity and innovation are the watchwords of success, we have a gameshow which tells us that being brainy means knowing... lots of trivia. Before anyone claims that all other game shows work by awarding prizes to contestants on the same premise, let me remind you that no other game show (that I know of) purports to find the brainiest teenager in the entire country. "Who wants to be a millionaire!" screamed the most popular game show of the past year. Think Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The XXX dollar Pyramid, The Weakest Link.

When it comes down to it, the declared aim of the show is what I'm annoyed at. It reflects our cultural values. In a nation obsessed with comparing, evaluating, grading and examining, that shows little mercy to those who do not fit into the system and those who do not conform, a show that reinforces these unhealthy ways is a show we do not need. What is worse, this is a show which takes advantage of the fact that we, as children and as teenagers, are relentlessly judged: society has come to expect this and no longer regards it as humiliating or unfair to judge them as such, so why not show it on television?

There are so many less destructive ways of naming a television game show, especially one which is seen in prime time by many of Singapore's families.

I wrote a long letter to the editor of the Straits Times, but my mother advised me that they would not publish something so openly critical and scathing (this is Singapore, after all) so I toned it down to a full bullet points and condensed my letter to three paragraphs:

Dear Sir,

Having recently returned to Singapore after a period of time abroad I saw a game show on TV called "Singapore's Brainiest Teenager", which ostensibly aims to find Singapore's smartest teenager by subjecting them to rounds of general and specific knowledge questions.

The title is wholly inappropriate. In a time when creativity and innovation are the watchwords of success, we have a gameshow which tells us that being intelligent means knowing trivia. As it is, Singapore already has many capable, intelligent children who are tremendously talented and have many contributions to make to Singapore who are going to be told they are failures because they are not academically outstanding. Academic success is but one form of intelligence. I doubt we need to remind people of this in a culture which is already obsessed with only this form of intelligence.

I call upon the producers of the show to rename the show something less starkly judgemental and more descriptive. Surely they can set an example for the teenagers on their show and demonstrate some creativity.

Well, I'll let you know whether it gets published.

UPDATE:

Thank you for your letter to the Forum Page, The Straits Times.

We regret to inform you that we are unable to publish your letter. The Forum Page receives a large number of letters daily and only a small number actually go into print. We seek your kind understanding in this matter.

Yours sincerely

Noor Aiza
for Forum Editor
The Straits Times