Top: The old SJI campus at Bras Basah Rd.

Image credit: TheLongnWindingRoad

I began thinking a lot about my days at SJI when I passed the newly renovated campus just a few weeks ago. In doing so, I came to realise that independent school identities were never just about who we were. They were also about who we were not supposed to be; an identity always in relation to the others we were meant to be differentiated from.

For the 4 years I attended Saint Joseph’s Institution (SJI), I was informed that SJI boys only dated IJ girls. Specifically, CHIJ Toa Payoh girls. The St. Nick’s girls were for the Catholic High boys, and even though MGS wasn’t too far from our Malcolm Road campus, they were off-limits because the ACS boys had first dibs.

If you wanted to live dangerously, you dated a girl from Nanyang Girls High.

A lot of these school culture stereotypes sound arbitrary now, as though it was just good fun at the time to joke about how all SCGS girls grow up to become tai tais. But it was enough to land me in a relationship with an IJ girl that lasted way longer than it should have.

And I wasn’t the only one. From who we dated to how we carried ourselves, this was how seriously we took the template of the “model” SJI boy.

Here’s the thing about independent schools. When you get into one, you’re buying into a unique cultural consciousness—one built on tradition, values, and a specific concept of the person you’re supposed to become. It sounds fairly non-toxic, but this sort of school branding was the first step towards us independent school students seeing ourselves as different (better) than others.

In other words, school culture played a big part in nurturing our elitism.