Days Of Our Lives...

Ever remember the younger days of our lives, when we were studying in kindergarten or primary school, that our teachers would tell us "colour" is spelt with a "u" and not "color", among many other things.

And the reason was, from our teachers, that Singapore's education system is based on British English, and not American English. So for most words, there's a "u" if it's a "-lor", and there's a "s" in place of a "z" in most spellings.

If you had refused to learn, and spelt "labor", or "color" in your Spelling Test, you would get zero marks for that word. Nada. Zip. End of story. Go back and cry to your mum.

Fast forward to the 21st century, in a "local" university. How many times have you actually seen words that actually spelt with British English? I have seen none of it. Words like "organizations" or "analyze" or "criticize" seems to appear much more than their British-spelling counterparts.

Have the objective of the education system been forgotten? Or is the "local" university actually an independent organisation that is totally unrelated to the Singapore education system? It sure does seem odd, taking that the teaching staff (mostly locals), HAVE gone through the Singaporean education system as well.

What might be the possible reasons for the above?
1.) Laziness. There's no difference with or without the "u". No "u", less one alphabet to remember.

2.) Ditching the British English and adopting American English on their own? I wonder why this wasn't in the news. Seems like a unanimous decision that was made without any proper consultation of the education ministers.

3.) Going in line with some local political responses from the government that seems to be pro-American? I'm don't want to go into politics here, in case the government sees this blog and decides to prosecute me. I'm just saying that there just happens to be a coincidence in this situation. Hmmm...

Everything's changed. Nothing stays the same anymore...