Of Questionaires , Ivory Tower-Living Academicians And The XY-Generationers

I love survey questionaires especially Likert-scaled ones. I mean anyone who wants to manipulate statistics could easily concoct narrowed-down questions geared towards its goal. Say for example my objective is that all women should be obliterated from the surface of the earth, I could easily devise a questionaire thus:

Q1. What qualities do you associate women with?
(a) buttheads
(b) irrational beings
(c) footsies
(d) gold diggers
(e) paranormals

Q2 Do you think women are vain and if yes, what evidence can you prove they are?
(a) paint their toe and finger nails
(b) apply foundation and layered make-up
(c) pay for expensive hair-do
(d) dress to the nines
(e) undertake boobs, slimming and other cosmetic surgery

Q3 How do you rate women at work?
(a) always skivving under the guise of women's issues
(b) blabbermouths who know not what they utter
(c) gossip-mongers and tale-bearers
(d) haughty , conniving , trouble-makers and ill-advisers
(e) slinks away from mistakes by excuse of their gender

There! A list of choices like that is enough to have them gassed. I met a real estate wussy who has every trait mentioned above and any dud who listens and falls for her convincingly good lies would have their fortune torn asunder.

Just for you to sample how a Likert-scaled questionaire can elicit "Yes" or "No" or even guarded half-hearted responses without ever probing the true reason as to why, consider this:

Q1. Masturbation is good for health
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree

Q2. Homosexuality is not deviant behaviour and a second option for sexual liasions for society
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree

But have we found the explanations for supporting, not supporting or being indifferent to the above socail issues? Has a Likert-scaled questionaire thus measured any social phenomenal statistic usefully and provided answers for sociological conclusions?

Incidentally I read a teacher's blog urging her students to write blogs meaningfully (I certainly have no issue with that) but she added a caveat that "what you write reflects the kind of person you are (I wholly agree with this). So you are the best person to decide how you want people to see you." Whoa! Hold on a second here! I am not writing to please an audience all the time and project a false image of propriety and politeness when I feel so strongly and passionate about issues close to my heart. I do not intend to be politically correct all the time when issues and truth have to be enunciated exactly the way it is, no holds barred.

Doubly unfortunate too that she chooses to look at life from a more than rose-tinted angle - the beautiful and charming side of life such as coaxing her charges to visit a photo-gallery display of spectacularly artful works. I suggest she can also take her class to Boon Lay Court and see for themselves the seedier and sleazier side of ghetto life in Singapore and the pockets of poverty we still find here. Perhaps then the class can be better imbibed with a sense of rage and injustice so much so that they believe in it enough to take up a humanitarian cause for the underdogs in our society.

That would be the ivory tower of academia some academicians are living in.

I am praying for some blogs that will examine our statutes and their relevance to our times today. More blogs on social and human issues. On the receiving end of policies . Detailed analyses and so on. I have yet to see many of such blogs coming from the students.

I suppose the helmers of the educational system have such a big shoe to fill in playing a role to emphasize more on argumentative and expository essay topics in place of narrative and descriptive ones at the middle high school years. Even a critical-thinking paper like the Cambridge "Advanced" level General Paper has topics not requiring more depth and breadth of analysis than it should and a more diverse range of issues to argue upon.

Small wonder the blogs have been parochial, navel-gazing, self-centred , air-heady and airy-fairy blogs on overseas trips, shopping escapades , food, walking adverts for product endorsement, personal narcissism on fashion, appearances, the opposite sex, parties and so on.

Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) and What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) in computer parlance of the good old days of disk operating systems.