Before I start shooting my mouth off (in this case, typing without any pauses), there is a disclaimer for you guys.
I will claim the sole responsibility of this entry. If this entry is deemed defamatory in any ways I know not of, I am more than willing to retract this entry without fail, along with an apology. Any characters that I mentioned, except the targeted ones, are not involved in this creation of this entry. It is solely my idea. That is the disclaimer.
I and alphi had an interesting discussion on politics, education system and surprisingly MM Lee. Oops... My bad, I forgot what the sequence was. It happened during the 1 1/2 hr break we had on Thursday (we do not take CLA or HCL). Let me recall. Ooh yes, the present Singapore: How open does it allow the youths today to speak up? What can be done to remedy this? From where we can emulate. How culture affects the politics in schools. Examples on which we can draw upon from to see the openness Singapore allows for the youths today. The political structure of Singapore. The dark secrets of the Government. The puppeteer of Singapore. We also mentioned about the Matrix likeness in the real world (not the reel world). Animov’s ‘Foundation and Empire’ series’ ‘Seldon’ and ‘Seldon’s plan’ in Singapore. Surprising to talk about Seldon and Matrix. Well, there are some philosophy stuff that are applicable in the real world. Real chim you can say. That is roughly what we talked about on that morning. I have to break this up into at least 3 instalments as I wish not to bombard you guys with world. Already this introduction is a half a page by Microsoft Word’s reckoning.
It all sparked off from a comment from alphi. For a couple of science guys, we are abit deep in our response, and deeper if you put us together. For once, I have a nagging suspicion about it nothing to be co-incidental. If I am right, the comment goes, “How I wish we can speak up more.” Correct me if I am wrong alphi. “How so, that is we are not speaking up more?” My eyebrow rose. And there we go. One thing to note: the discussion we had merely streamlined my thinking, expand my horizon and bring in new perspectives. Kind of contradicting each other. Nevermind about that. We can talk about it next time. (New topic for you guys to broach on.)
Yes, how open is open for us, the youths of today, to talk about politics. Yes, we do have politicks in the classrooms, the teachersÂ’ office, the workplace, in every small but yet possible and significant way. But the politics I am talking about is the major one, the one tat is always in the news. The Government, Ministries, PAP, WorkerÂ’s Party, yada yada. You get the idea. The new Government led by the 3rd generation Prime Minister, PM Lee, encourage the youths today to speak up, to think critically for and against the Government and the political settings in Singapore. The previous Government led by the then PM Goh had opened the SpeakersÂ’ Corner. Of course, there were plenty of red tape and strings attached to it. Even though some of them have being deemed obsolete and removed, the popularity of it still remains at the bare bottom. Even now, I am not certain that the regular speakers still speak in that little corner.
Oh, by the way, courtesy of the Pre-U Sem presenters. Youths are defined by the age group of 13-30 and are split into 2 classes generally: the studying youth, thatÂ’s us now, and the working youths, thatÂ’s us five years down the road.
Are there platforms for the studying youths to voice their opinions, dissatisfactions and other stuff in school? One may argue, yes there is. The platform is called the ‘student dialogue’ session in our school. But still, is it working? The only ‘session’ I have attended so far was held by the 19th Student Council last term. Even so, they were there mainly to get more applicants to be the next Council. It worked on me for awhile, but still I prefer to work from the outside. Other than that, they did mention about teachers and asked us to feedback. The response was muted, even though there were no teachers in sight. So how effective is thatplatform? And that session by far was the only seesion which was the nosiest.
What about other schools? (I simply love using the Young PAP
webpage and LKY’s memoirs for references for this entry. However, as I construct this from memories, the history maybe wrong. Correct me on this.) Let us look at NUS and NTU. Before the then PM Lee managed to stabilize the country, NTU was politically influenced with most of the students being a commie at heart. And NUS was becoming one too. However, after the stability came, the NUS’ only political CCA was not about politics anymore. With the little funding they received from the University, they had to concentrate on fund raising before being closed down due to the poor attendance. Same goes for NTU, but on a much larger scale. The University had to merged with the more ‘stable’ NUS because of the large extent of the political influences before it managed to be a separate entity from NUS years later. The spirit of politicking in University has broken. If that is not enough, take a walk around NUS for once. Many matriculated students and staff members can swear that the school is built with only one factor in mind by the authorities: inconvenience. Spirits are easily replenished as demonstrated in other countries. So even if there is a rally to be held, it will take mucha momentum and persuasion to get the students to march up and down the school. Same goes for the polytechnics. It is not a wonder that most of the NUS lecturers are not friends of PAP. Ahhem. And of course, platforms for these schools are the lectures conducted by the foes of PAP.
I do not have the time to write out the full entry. As I have said earlier, it will be broken into at least 3 parts. Sorry about it, but I have barely scratched the surface. So it might take about 10 entries to finish what I want to write. Providing that I have the time and my interests in this entry does not wane.
