Can you reveal the foreign country?
Ghana. why you wanna know?
Originally posted by boi.moudi:Well, so you reckon that they do not care and are not interested.
But its that the actual goal/aim of the Exchange Program. And the program is called Exchange. What do you exchange if you just receive something from the counter part only?
I'm not sure about what your exchange programme does exactly.
But from my experience, although such programmes are meant for exchanging views between the students of host countries and the local students, it usually does not happen at all. The intention of the organisers is there, but sadly, it is rarely realised. However, when it does happen, although rarely, there's no necessity to have different races to portray any of the cultural views here.
It seems more likely now that the word 'exchange' is used when foreign exchange students come in and local exchange students go out. Something to that effect.
hmm. lemme rephrase the name of the program again.
Its a Cultural Exchange Program.
Not Students Exchange Program.
Originally posted by boi.moudi:hmm. lemme rephrase the name of the program again.
Its a Cultural Exchange Program.
Not Students Exchange Program.
That's different from your previous name Overseas Exchange Program -.-"
Anyway what are you supposed to do there first? Meet up with students of various countries or?
Oh ya, and what was the selection criteria? I have no additional comments to be made without knowing more of what is going on.
Ghana?
Here's something:
The background of the whole process of African decolonization was built up in the wartime and early postwar periods, but the trigger on the chain reaction of the decolonization process was the defeat of the Anglo-French effort at Suez because of America and Soviet pressure in October 1956. As might, perhaps, be expected, the process began in a British colony, the Gold Coast, now called Ghana.
The independence of Ghana was a personal achievement of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, who returned to Accra from an educational process in Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics. The year before, in 1946, the Gold Coast obtained the first British African Legislative Assembly that was allowed a majority of Africans. Nkrumah's agitations, including the founding of a new political party, the Convention People's Party, under his own control, earned him a two-year jail sentence. While he was still in jail, his party won 34 of the 38 seats in the Assembly in the election of 1951; therefore he was released from confinement to take control of the administration. With good will on both sides, a transition period of six years gave Ghana its independence, under Nkrumah's rule, in March 1957.
Within a year of independence, Nkrumah faced the typical problems of post-colonialism that we have mentioned: a rapid fall in cocoa prices upon which Ghana's international trade position depended; disease in the cocoa trees, which required destruction of thousands of trees over the violent protests of their peasant owners; dissension between the pagan, commercial, coastal area, in which the Convention People's Party was based, and the more pastoral, Islamic, remote interior.
Nkrumah soon showed his readiness to handle all problems with ruthless decision.
The "sick" cocoa trees were cut down; political opponents were silenced in one way or another; Nkrumah was ballyhooed as the father of all Africans, the unique genius of the African revolution, the mystic symbol of all black men's hopes.
A Five-Year Plan for economic development (1959-1964) promised to spend over 92 million dollars. In 1960 the previous British-granted constitution was replaced by a new republican constitution that was amended almost at once by a clause allowing Nkrumah to rule without parliament whenever necessary.
The leader's Pan-African hopes were reflected in a clause that permitted "the surrender of the whole or part of the sovereignty of Ghana" to a union of African states.
By the end of the same year, political party designations were abolished in Parliament, and the Preventive Detention Act (which allowed Nkrumah to imprison his enemies without charge) was used to arrest the chief members of the political opposition. Ghana embarked on an economic war witl1 the Union of South Africa in protest against the latter's extreme segregation of the races and on a somewhat weaker system of economic reprisals against France in retaliation for its nuclear-explosion tests in the Sahara.
Vigorous activities at the United Nations, in African affairs (chiefly in opposition to any Pan-African movement that would not be dominated by Nkrumah), in balancing the two sides of the Cold War while seeking economic aid from both, in establishing a Ghana shipping line defiantly called the "Black Star line," and in constructing a gigantic hydroelectric and aluminum manufacturing complex on the Volta River, kept Nkrumah's name in the world's press...
... The ordinary African is very remote from either future preference or infinitely expandable material demands.
He generally has preference for the present, and his demands are often nonmaterial and even non-economic, such as his desire for leisure or for social approval.
The African has a fair recognition of the immediate past, a dominant concern for the present, and little concern for the future.
Accordingly, his conception of time is totally different from that of the average Western man.
The latter sees the present only as a moving point of no dimension that separates the past from the future.
The African sees time as a wide gamut of the present with a moderate dimensioned past and almost no future.
This outlook is reflected in the structure of the Bantu languages, which do not emphasize the tense distinctions of past, present, and future, as we do, but instead emphasize categories of condition, including a basic distinction in the verb between completed and incompleted actions that places the present and the future (both concerned with unfinished actions) in the same category.
We do this occasionally in English when we use the present tense in a future sense by saying, "He is coming tomorrow," but this rare use of the present to indicate the future does not blur our conception of the future the way constant use of such a construction does in Bantu.
...In addition to his present preference, the Bantu has a list of priorities, in his conception of a higher standard of living, which contains many non-economic goals.
A fairly typical list of such priorities might run thus: food, sex dalliance, joking with one's friends, a bicycle, music and dancing, a radio, leisure to go fishing.
Any list such as this, with its high priority for non-economic and basically leisure activities, does not provide the constantly expanding material demands that are the motivating force in the West's economic expansion.
Nor is the African's strongly socialized personality, which shares all its successes and wants with others and constantly yearns for the social approval obtained by sharing income with kinfolk and friends, capable of supporting any economy of private selfishness and individual capital accumulation that became the basis for the industrial expansion of the West...
First of all, it is an Overseas Cultural Exchange Program, okay.
Criterias are as follows:
Students who are interested in other countries and cultures
Student who are academically okay. Also contributions to school and volutary works
Students who have pleasant personality. That kinda stuff.
Poh Ah Pak:
Whats that for?
Eagle:
There, will do tours, house stay, will be performing, might have a presentation by us too (ppt kinda thing).
Aiyah, it is still a student exchange programme, just a different name only
This type of thing very hard to question there on their selection criteria also. They will tell you they select based on merits, not on race. Those type of criteria also too dead to consider so many other factors.
I have a few such stories also, where the criteria very stupid one, resulting in able and extremely interested people not getting shortlisted in place of those less interested ones.
Originally posted by boi.moudi:Poh Ah Pak:
Whats that for?
Eagle:
There, will do tours, house stay, will be performing, might have a presentation by us too (ppt kinda thing).
I have done all those you mentioned before, in 4 different programmes, and I believe those few interested parties learned more about Singapore from what we tell them than what they see of the party.
Example: Taiwanese and China Chinese actually thought Singaporeans could only speak English, and till the Taiwan coordinator assigned to the Singapore team was one that was trained in English. And we showed them otherwise. But the race distribution was not well spread out at all though...
Then for Germany, out of the 30 sent for homestay, there were only 1 indian and 1 muslim.
at least there is 1.
Anyways, I want to get to the root of the problem. Do you think the racial issue can be used to help gain a place in the Exchange Program.
Originally posted by boi.moudi:at least there is 1.
Anyways, I want to get to the root of the problem. Do you think the racial issue can be used to help gain a place in the Exchange Program.
Probably, if the selection criteria includes a selection essay.
Or if I were you, I would email the coordinator about this viewpoint and request to reconsider my application. No harm trying for something that you would really like. This is the best you could do now, because the system wasn't created by us. Basically, you will have to sell your point across and drive it into their heads (can be very thick sometimes). You never know if they suddenly decide to increase the number of participants. Happened before (the increase in number) for my friend in the Germany homestay programme.
But... I have to say... no guarantees, and don't expect too much...
"Hopefully I can get to meet the great leader Kim Jong Il."
Didnt his people just come to Singapore recently? If you are part of PAP gang then could have shake hands.
Eh Ask the Ghanians they support Obama or not.
"Taiwanese and China Chinese actually thought Singaporeans could only speak English"
Thats not that far from the truth. Unless you have been to a Chinese school and was in the Chinese stream, apart from everyday ordinary Mandarin, Singaporean Chinese cannot converse in more sophisticated, refined and fluent dialogue. Best example - ask LHL to write his own Mandarin speeches like Kevin Rudd of Oz.
In Malaysia, it is pretty similar. I recall this article I read so and so of some big bank (Malaysian working in Singapore) transferred to China branch but cant take up CFO post because of poor Mandarin skills, despite being ethnically Chinese.
Singaporean Chinese cannot converse in more sophisticated, refined and fluent dialogue.
That is Lee Kuan Yew's doing.
His stupid educational policy.
My biggest issue with that old fucking bastard.
um.. i dont think the people overseas care.
my school mates went to new zealand last year and most were chinese. Chinese to Malay ratio was about 8:1. i dont think any indians went.
How many went?
Yeah. and what was that trip?
um.. i dont think the people overseas care.
Yeah, I have been saying that