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ACS Barker using pressure tactics to sell carnival tickets
By gdy2shoez From ‘Carnival tickets: Students feel sales pressure', 11 April 2015, article by Pearl Lee, ST "A letter by the principal of Anglo-Chinese School (Barker) appears to pressure students to sell tickets for a fund-raising carnival, saying the school would know how many tickets each boy had sold. A 44-year-old mother, whose two sons attend the secondary school in Barker Road, was so upset she sent the letter to citizen journalism website Stomp on Wednesday. In his letter, e-mailed to all parents and uploaded on the school website, principal Peter Tan said: “As I told the boys, their effort in selling coupons reflects on their attitude. It is less an issue of ‘rich’ friends or relatives, but their willingness to step out of their comfort zone.” …In the letter, Mr Tan wrote: “A student I spoke with this morning said he did not try to contact or speak to any of his relatives, though knowing that even if they are unable to attend, the coupons will be donated to needy families… I wonder if your son/ward is like him? “My concern is that this lack of drive becomes a habit that will not do him any good.” …On ACS (Primary)’s parent support group website, it said the carnival aims to raise $600,000, “which will be channelled towards enriching the education of ACS boys”. The school also started an initiative for students to donate coupons to needy families nearby. In the letter, Mr Tan also recommended that each boy buy $50 worth of tickets for themselves to use at the carnival, which will have food, drinks and games stalls. He called on parents to help out at the carnival. “Extra pairs of hands ready and willing to help that day would be great! For instance, we have a parent who has offered to drive in his Ferrari and Maserati to add to the carnival atmosphere,” he wrote. Each boy was given 20 tickets to sell, with each costing $10. One ticket is made up of five $2 coupons, which cannot be sold individually." If you’re the kind of ACS boy who’s too proud or shy to beg friends or relatives for money, you can post your carnival tickets online for strangers, like what this guy did on Carousell. He may not be graded high on ‘getting out of comfort zone’ but will probably get an A for creativity. Of course if you’re passionate about your school or want to score points with your teachers and principal, it’s your prerogative if you want to go balls-out to squeeze money out of other people’s pockets. Your customers may see you as a pushy syncophant, but your principal will think nothing less of you than an inspiration for all ACS boys, especially if your dad has volunteered to grace the carnival with a Ferrari, which you can showcase to the needy folks invited to the event telling them: ‘Too bad you don’t have the money to send your kid to our school because THIS is what they’ll drive when they’re older’. If you’re an introvert with no business going around asking people for money and you just want to spend your career in a lab than be a travelling salesman, then you’re viewed as a weak link, and may be arrowed to be the guy who gets dunked in a tub of water repeatedly in a carnival game since you didn’t contribute monetary-wise. There are other ways to prove your ACSian mettle, of course, other than going around bugging people to attend a funfair, but principal Peter Tan seems to be using carnival fund-raising as the litmus test of the ACS spirit, that you’ll be judged for your lack of ambition, or even character, if you don’t meet the challenge. If your parents happen to be elites with a bunch of loaded contacts, you don’t need to do much to satisfy the criteria. If they, however, are working round the clock in a food stall keeping you in ACS thanks to good ol’ meritocracy, then you’ll probably have your fill of humble pie, while your rich ass friend has the luxury of preparing for the test next week because his folks are doing all the collecting on his behalf. I doubt the school monitors how you actually went about raising the money, whether it’s out of your own savings, or if you had to service a 65 year old pedophile in a toilet cubicle to get $300 in one night. In 1987, Victoria School ran a fund-raising campaign with a less demanding target of $25 per student. Naturally someone complained that they were coerced into buying tickets, that success in this project was testament to one’s ‘desire to achieve’. I’m sure there are other meaningful, creative ways to both give back to society and prevent the school building from collapsing at the same time, without having to distinguish your students by how many coupons they managed to sell, like running a charity car-wash or recycling project outside of school grounds, something that better represents the collective spirit of your students, without boys having to compete with each other to see who makes a better contestant on ‘The Apprentice’. Hey, ACS, here’s an idea. How about chartering a private MRT ride for all the needy families to your carnival then? This article was first published over at the blog of gdy2shoez on 11 April 2015. It is reproduced with permission.
YOU MAY WISH TO READ: Letter From An ACS Father To His ACS Son Presbyterian High Vice Principal Also Scolded Students Over Fund-raising We have learnt to receive, and it is probably about time that we learn to give.