The value of time : understanding how class influence students' conceptions of time.

• Main Author: Lim, Vernon Cham Lak.
• Other Authors: Teo You Yenn
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Sociology::Social influence
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/48743
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Why do students who experience the same education curriculum emerge with different capacities and focuses? This paper suggests, through a Singaporean context, that different values individuals attach to afterschool time are an inherited accumulation of cultural capital transmitted through generations. After employing qualitative methods including interviews and focus group discussions and focusing data analysis on comparing how the experiences of students from different socioeconomic classes shapes the values they attach to afterschool time, this study proposes that parents’ arrangements of their children’s timetables after school conditions children to conceptualize afterschool time as an extension of school, resulting in children’s use of this time for study-related activities. For Singapore, in particular, tuition is an integral yet informal element of a child’s education and the consumption of tuition, depending on its integration into children’s lives, can serve as a powerful socialization tool by transmitting class values. This study demonstrates that meritocracy in Singapore is greatly influenced by the values parents transmit to their children, rather than being based solely on a child’s merit.