by Howard Lee/
As a parent of two, I get fairly irritated when I hear comments about schools trying to teach students any thing remotely related to character and values.
I have always believed that the values of my children, for better or worse, are my responsibilities. All I ask is, when they reach school-going age, that schools give me some of their time so that I can impart these to them.
Which is why articles like “What do you do when friends tease a foreign worker?” really rattled a wrong nerve.
The article reports on a hypothetical situation proposed by Dr Michael Goh from the University of Minnesota, who will be speaking at the Character and Citizenship Education Conference organised by the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education, which aims to “cultivate students to become active and concerned citizens”.
Dr Goh seems to be under the impression that teasing foreign workers disrespectfully constitute the daily conversations of our students and reflects their “cultural intelligence”. Evidently, the online comments made by readers are already calling into question the validity of the assumption, even hypothetically, since our students do not deride foreign workers on sight. Regardless, reporter Ng Jing Yng deemed it valid and important enough to focus the entire article on arguing this one point.
Personally, I have nothing against stamping out bigotry. In fact, I support it completely. The question to ask, however, exactly how big is the problem of our students discriminating against foreign workers? Does MOE have the statistics to show that our students hold ingrained biases against foreign workers?
What happened to the age-old moral education syllabus for racial harmony? Did we forget the conversation that happened not so long ago between Lee Kuan Yew and Chan Chun Sing, debating whether our potential social fracture is between religious groups, or between the religious and non-religious?
In fact, why stop at just nationality and religion? There are a whole bunch of discriminatory views that we need to tackle. Race? Men vs women? Heterosexuals vs homosexuals? Young vs old? Fat vs skinny?
How about the diverse positions that we often find in, say, online discussions and blogs? Shouldn’t we start similar Citizenship Education Conference that encourage greater acceptance of these differences as well?
The article, and by extension the Conference agenda, failed to cover any of these aspects that, by all counts, hold more relevance to reality. What it did not fail to explain was the justification for it: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s point about how foreign students in the local university cohort would prepare Singaporean students for the global workplace.
It was also evident to either Dr Goh or Ng that “the tone has to be first set by the Government taking the lead in these discussions, so that institutions like schools can follow suit”.
The root of it lies in the ruling party’s desire to make our immigration policies more acceptable to the population. It was political agenda setting, as it has always been done during the days of moral education in schools.
Why the younger generation? Those likely to attend this Conference would not likely be eligible to vote come 2016. Herein lies the catch: Dr Goh believes that “if parents themselves are making fun of foreign workers or complaining or being judgemental, then the children easily pick these up.”
Such Character and Citizenship Education Conferences, organised and likely paid for using MOE funds, are not meant to inculcate “cultural intelligence” among students, if that is even a by-product. They are merely attempts to impart such national “values” through the proxy of students.
The population is tired of all this – first, the direct labelling of us as anti-immigration, and when that failed, using such indirect measures to define and educate the transgressors of “social norms”.
For the last time, most Singaporeans are not against foreign workers. We are against the poor definition of what constitutes foreign talent and the proper measurement of how such talent benefit our economy, beyond over-crowding our already congested national infrastructure.
Our political leaders seemed to have missed learning that point completely, despite all that has happened leading up to the elections. Instead, they have chosen to continue “engaging” the public by ways of sublime indoctrination.
I say, give it a break, and get some real work done. There are national problems of a burgeoning foreign population to be solved. Imparting tolerance will not make it go away, or make us feel any less resentful about our immigration policies. Answering the question “why do citizens feel this way”, and providing competent solutions to it, will.
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During ww2 many sacrificed fellow citizens to preserve their lives by being informants or spies or traitors.
These people must have passed same values to their hum sons.
If a nationalites mainly are Kia Si , in times of Foreign invasion, not Foreign Talent Invasion ,
Would they not be Kia Si n defend w their lives for the rich who squeeze us?
Values Based education – sounds like an excuse for the PAP government to do some indoctrination in the schools!
The single and greatest issue with our education system is that MOE has artificially created numerous extraneous activities on the schools that academic learning have been relegated to tuition teachers.
Go to any school. Most of the teachers especially those that want to have a promotion are busy with activities other than good old classroom teaching!
As a result, parents are burden with high tuition fees and the less privilged students cannot cope unless they are very bright and hardworking.
Heng Swee Keat should not WAYANG any longer!
@ Howard Lee needs to be fair,
Thank you very much for the clarification, and I agree with you that someone who has not attended the conference cannot technically comment on it. I am not an educator, so did not have the privilege.
I also agree with you that Today has done injustice to Dr Goh, and my apologies to Dr Goh for jumping to conclusions. Unfortunately, this is the narrative that is going out to readers who, like me, do not have the privilege to attend the conference, and at reading the last few paras of the article, might begin to feel guilty that they did not teach their children how to ‘respond properly’ to foreigners.
As a parent, I also appreciate that we have educators like you who can discern between propaganda and proper training in critical thinking.
Nevertheless, I still firmly believe that there is impetus to align the education system with the political agenda of the day. I have seen the best parts of our education system twisted to justify the need to validate errors such as the streaming system, and I ask for your forgiveness that my view will tend to be more critical than usual.
Hence, I believe (and please feel free to correct me if otherwise) that the conference will have elements of “national education” built into it, and would have attempted a conference-educator-student(-parent) line of influence. My key point in my article is to highlight the possibility, no matter how remote, and encourage parents to take things into their own hands, and educate their children better.
@ other commentators who believe that parents do not have the sole responsibility for their children’s values, I ask this simple, if extreme, question: If your child gets hauled up to court for juvenile crime or delinquency, who attends the hearing, the parents or the teachers?
We can wake them up before it gets ingrained too deep.
They seem like expecting to win for anorther 20 years. Too optimistic.
We must discuss nationwide how KIA SI’ism could affect how we fight in a war or international competition against foreigners.
Having some high tech weapons how does Kia Si spirit affect our gutsiness in operating the weapons in times of war?
Do we stand a chance ? R we united like other nationalities? Kia siis one thing what abt kia c h , kia L p, kia c b?
We are all Kia Si.
So, if its bad , why do we not get rid of Kia Si?
So, i regard that we regard Kia Si as a Value.
So, we should impart Kia Si values to our future generations.
Since there is no war in sight, its ok to be Kia Si.
We just not sure, since we are notorious for being kia si, can we fight a war? How will Kia Si values help us in using high tech weapons to defend with our lives?
Are we kia si with our lives? Will we run or be garang enough to fight?
Occupy Wall Street took place in all countries except singapore.
I rest my case, your humness.
Imparting the “V” word is incorrect.
Imparting the “M” word is more relevant, the correct way to go.
“M” = me, my, millions !!!!!!!!!!
The biggest bully in singapore is LKY.
What are we teaching our children when we link upgrading to votes. To take care of no 1 first.
Ministers’ pay. What message does it send about leadership to the young? Look at eg set by CSM.
I agree with the writer that it is people who teach values. Not programmes. What we need are parents and teachers who can give time to our most precious resource. As usual our government is going for the cheapest solution.
Some of the evergreen Values imparted to me are, in no particular order of merit :
1. Kia Si
2. Ignore society plight. The only thing important is me, myself and I.
3. You die your parsar. I act like never see you.
4. whoever is paymaster, i’ll suck up to.
5. No one owes you a living.
6. Self Interest above everything.
7. When there is trouble, RUN!
8. Be a Hypocrite. But present to people, you are sacrificing for them. There are many naive, trust me. You may be shocked how many like this.
9. Money is the God of my life.
A. Once i retire, i wash hands and let whoever take over whatever shit, i also don’t care. I do not owe anyone a living.
B. Money at all cost.
C. Loyalty to money.
D. Greed is not only good, its a must have.
E. Let society take care of itself. I only take care of myself.