For the majority of people around the world without a PhD, the academic title is often creatively or cynically assigned a different meaning. Talking of poking fun at those who make a living in an ivory tower—the image of an “ivory tower” is used in the Bible in the Song of Songs (7:4) to describe a woman’s purity—the lay public’s general impression or perception of most PhDs is often anything but positive. Could this be due to some subconscious “intellectual envy”?
Maybe because when they think of academics becoming politicians or of them serving as consultants or advisors for an oft-inept or corrupt government (or of an educational consultant for a publishing house hoping to boost their school adoption rate), many have mixed feelings about these exam-smart folks, who are mostly “un-street-smart,” when it comes to solving everyday life or real-world problems for their fellow citizens—their oft-halfwitted decisions often serve as a living proof of their (practical) unintelligence rather than their intelligence.
PhDs to Save the Planetfrom Covid-19
Below are three entries I submitted during the lockdown two-odd years ago.
Trump’s Covid-19 Con-sultantWas Cummings, ex-PM Johnson’s “corona jerk”?One rule for the Cummings and one for the common people.
Be it the canned “Permanent Head Damage” or “Post Holiday Depression,” new meanings associated with the acronym are only limited by our imagination.
Boosted Jabs at PhDs
A few years ago, I started relooking at new meanings of a PhD. Two such revised definitions were:
Cheat PhD on the CheapGod’s Doctorate Disciples
What’s your life’s PhD, especially when you respectfully compare yourself with those with big titles, most of whom often have infinitesimally positive or quasi-zero impact on those around them?
Meanwhile, why not pray, help, and do rather than just preach, hope, and delay?
Based on feedback from dozens of school teachers, editors, authors, tutors, and parents, below are ten local publishers that are known to sell thick and cheap Singapore math books, and most of them are also notorious for being indifferent or allergic to editorial, conceptual, and linguistic ills. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!
A common sight at Popular bookstores: The first three shelves are stacked with EPH math titles.
BookOne
Casco Publications Pte Ltd
EPH (Educational Publishing House Pte Ltd)
Examaid Book Publishers Pte Ltd
FBP (Fairfield Book Publishers)
Penman (Penman Publishing House Pte Ltd)
Raffles Publications
SAP Education
teachers@work (an imprint of SAP)
Success Publications Pte Ltd
Even in educational publishing, it would be naive for us to think that we could get “good, cheap, and updated” math titles. Undiscerning potential buyers continually think that most local publishers are nonprofit, which offer decent Singapore math titles with a wallet-friendly price tag, except perhaps for a few odd balls, who publish books out of passion for the subject.
Cheap Singapore math assessment books are notoriously littered with mistakes and out-of-syllabus topics, because most of these titles are ghostwritten, if not, written by reluctant editors on a payroll. And yet, undiscerning parents never fail to go for those thick, cheap (hopefully, not “cheat”) supplementary math titles, thinking that they’re getting a pretty good deal.
Bargain Hunters
It always tickles me to witness mothers flip through so many assessment books in Popular bookstores, and after that, they still opt for the thick, cheap ones.
In the early days, parents used to buy math books that were “authored” by those with a PhD, but as consumers become more educated and informed, the percentage of buyers who are still title-conscious seem to have gone down exponentially.
A publishing hypothesis based on feedback from sales and marketing personnel from publishing houses is that the sales figures of Singapore math titles by writers in academia are disappointingly low. Consumers are no longer lured by thick titles, “authored” or “consulted” by those with big academic titles.
Consultant or Con-sultant
Two consultants, five authors.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, it’s an open secret that a disturbing number of National Institute of Education (NIE) lecturers, and a few moonlighters from the National University of Singapore (NUS), who had served as profs-turned-consultants for local and foreign publishers, had their ghostwritten or consulted manuscripts rejected by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore.
Just because they have a PhD or are a tenured faculty staff is no guarantee that they‘ve the knowhow or make-up to add value to a manuscript. Or, just because they’ve been supervising trainee teachers for years or decades, or they’d published a dozen-odd papers in reputable journals doesn’t necessarily make them a suitable math consultant or general editor for a set of textbooks, which need to be MOE-approved before they’re allowed to be used in local schools.
Under-deliver and Over-promise
Two PhDs and Four Authors
At best, their cosmetic suggestions are worth less than a dime a dozen. At worst, their “inputs” had led publishers to lose millions of dollars’ worth of potential revenue due to their MOE-unapproved consulted manuscripts, not to say, missed overseas sales, in the light of growing global interest on Singapore math.
A check with textbook editors who have been in the industry for decades reveals that more often than not, local lecturers from both the NIE and NUS are “under-qualified” and “over-rated” to review manuscripts from teachers-writers, compared to their counterparts from overseas, who generally treat consulting a textbook more as an honor or a privilege rather than a quick way to boost their ego and income.
Zero Sign of Decline
The publication rate of cheap (or “cheat”) and thick supplementary math titles shows no signs of abating, nor is the number of university lecturers who secretly long to be textbook consultants or general editors going to dwindle any time soon, albeit they’ve been “warned” by the university management that they’re not encouraged to freelance or moonlight for both local and foreign math publishers. When ethics often gives in to economics, how many of them would prevent a fat royalty from obstructing an early retirement?
