I refer to the articles from The Real Singapore(TRS) ITE student: I am sick of all the Proud JC kids looking down on us as well as The Ugly Truth about Hwa Chung JC about the supposed stereotype on JC students looking down on ITE or Polytechnic students.
As a Polytechnic student, I come from a secondary school with a very "JC going" culture; everyone compared their L1R5 and never L1R2B2, only the JCs came down for talks on tertiary education options(sounds familiar) As such, I feel that as an individual, I can give my two cents worth on the matter as I have experienced both sides of the academic spectrum. I recalled feeling weird when I first entered my polytechnic as I had a huge culture shock. Many readers who are current or former students of the various polytechnics would agree that in poly, you meet ALOT of different kinds of people. A common misconception is that students go to polytechnics due to their inability to score well in their Os and have to settle for "the next best option". While this may be true to an extent, there are many students(including yours truly) who CHOSE the polytechnic instead of the conventional JC route even though they did well in their GCE O levels.
In terms of academics, I never understood why there should be a discrimination between the two forms of education institutions. At the end of the day, it all boils down to what you want to do in future. If you are a textbook person or wish to study medicine and be a doctor one day, go to JC, it's really hard(but not unheard of) for polytechnic students to be accepted into localunis' Medicine degree. If you prefer a specialization and prefer more hands-on learning then by all means go to a polytechnic. While we are different, we are actually pretty similar. I'll give you an example. I am a business student, my girlfriend is from one of the top 5 Junior Colleges, when she studied for her As and me for my exams, we ended up understanding better through mutual discussion! Macro and Micro Economics are modules I take while Econs is one of her A Level modules too so we ended up helping each other. JC's General Paper? Consult your peers from poly on their opinions too! We can throw in an intellectual argument or two as well, we interact, we learn, we grow. My point here is that while we are different in the learning methods, we are very much similar in terms of our ending goals which is to enter a local university.
Another point I would like to raise is that through observations, sometimes there is hardly any discrimination. Even if there is, I believe it to be the minority. Many of my peers, seniors and relatives are JC students, they never treat me as someone inferior but instead applaud the practicality of the skills we learn in school. There will always be the stereotype as long as entry to universities for poly students is harder as compared to our JC counterparts but as poly students, we should not live in the stereotype ourselves and constantly push ourselves to achieve more. Action speak louder than words, if you look down on yourself, how do you expect others to treat you as an equal? I love and I am proud of my polytechnic education and I let others know it by taking pride in my education pathway and doing well. My last point is the fact that many often use the fact that as graduates of polytechnics, our starting pay is often higher than that of A level graduates. Firstly, we are trained primarily for the workforce and a university education is a supplement of what we learnt in polytechnics while the primary goal of an A level certificate is to progress to university.
Hardly anyone stops at As and go out to work, we SHOULD get paid more because we are trained to. As poly students, we should stop using this as a weapon. Sometimes I feel it is not the miscommunication but the lack of it that is the cause. There is little to no inter-tertiary interactions for JC and Polytechnics. Even for sports competitions, the JCs compete among themselves while the Polys compete among themselves together with the ITEs and Unis. A deeper understanding on how our respective education system works would make us less aggressive and more appreciative of one another. Having both poly and JC friends not only broaden my perspectives, it allowed me to see the pros and cons of both our education systems. Church, Secondary school and other external organisations are all various platforms we can utilize to know each other better. This is just my humble opinion on this matter and I really don't see the point why we have make childish squabbles on which is the best pathway after Os, go with your heart and you will succeed. Stop hating and start understanding.
Poly Student
TRS Contributor
Related: The Ugly Truth about life as a JC student