Navigating “cruel optimism”: Parental vigilance and dilemmas of social mobility in Singapore’s educational landscape
In Singapore, children’s education is often presented as “an overriding and all-consuming concern,” driven by intense competition for grades and school admissions (Waters, 2015: 290). However, the desire for academic excellence as a pathway to better lives is not as straightforward as it may seem. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Singaporean families, this paper explores parents’ affective a
