Understandably, Kareena is cautious about speaking to the media after being featured in the documentary. Yet she was candid, even sharing what some of the other participants said. (The two other IP students declined to comment when I reached out, and I wasn’t able to reach the two N(T) students in time.)

I was first surprised to learn that Aufa, depicted in the documentary as someone who merely hopes to pass all his subjects because he’s been failing since Secondary One, wants to be an aerospace engineer. According to Kareena, who supports his dreams, he hopes to pursue the course in ITE and eventually in polytechnic. That information was omitted from the final cut.

Kareena also addressed the context of her viral comment, the one about how it wasn’t “viable for students of different streams to be in the same class”.

When Dr Puthucheary asked about the feasibility of a mixed class, the N(T) students were the first to answer. Next, Dr Puthucheary asked whether they found it awkward because the group had “all fallen into this awkward silence”. However, no one knows if this awkward silence was caused by being in the presence of strangers in an unfamiliar studio environment, or by a supposed ‘social divide’.

After all the students agreed that it felt awkward, Kareena thought Dr Puthucheary was still expecting an answer from her about mixing different streams in one class.

She said, “I answered that I didn’t think a mixed class solution was very viable, because it may even increase the gap if these students feel like they cannot cope and give up completely.”

Explaining her studio comments to me, Kareena added, “I didn’t want less academically-inclined students to struggle just because a different class pace might be unsuitable. If a class’s pace is more suited to a specific demographic, students in the class might learn better. But I’m not a policymaker or educationalist, so I’m not very well read in these topics.”

In hindsight, Kareena admitted that she could have phrased ‘give up completely’ as ‘they might struggle more’. The former, she conceded, is “a bit too much of a definite, absolute comment”.

More importantly, she told me, “I continued to say that it would take more than a mixed class to help the problem. Having programmes where students from different streams can volunteer to help each other and teach each other different things would help interaction. They can also teach us about subjects they learn that we hardly come across, like Design & Technology. It’s like a peer-to-peer mentoring scheme.”

She also mentioned that she used to have programmes like this in her primary school, where students would partner up to help each other.

Continuing, she said, “There was this boy I was paired up with. I felt like he understood [the subjects] better as I spent more time with him than the teacher could. Even though I was only 12 and not the best teacher, I did see some a-ha moments come to him.”

Kareena’s words about the peer-to-peer mentoring didn’t make it to the screen.

Instead, the average viewer remembers only the final edit: first Kareena’s brief, ‘elitist’ answer, then an abrupt cut to Aufa’s seemingly dejected face (that many have misconstrued as him tearing up).