because the whole reward and panality system of education here is
geared towards that negative behaviour you talked about and
reinforced the students such that only through rote learning,
regurgitating, model answers and other socially unacceptable
actions that they can make it to higher levels of education but for
people outside of the system do not understand.
Whereas, in other countries, perhaps, its geared towards
exploration, discovery, sharing and presentation with an ideal to
groom better, curious, independent people. Such is not the ideal of
MOE that much I can say. And it will not happen any time soon, so
don't hold your beathe...
or you'd turn blue. 
Anyways, I did it for survival. Without a good cert in singapore,
all the doors are closed to you. So you see, the entire system is
geared in this way and it becames social conditioning and a
norm/bahaviour trait imprinted onto the society.
