From
http://stressed-teacher.blogspot.com/
National Education: Do You Have That Sense of Belonging?
Since last year, the management had actively been pushing for us teachers to incorporate National Education into our lessons. For example, if you are teaching about conversion of units from square-metres to square-kilometers, you could ask students to calculate the land area of Singapore in square-meters, when given the dimensions in square-kilometers.
If you are still scratching your head, it just means that in your lesson, try to include something from these key phrases; 'Singapore', 'racial harmony', 'National Service', 'Singapore president', etc etc.
And like most teachers, I had actively resisted attempts to incorporate National Education values into the lessons. Most of us have enough things to do; from marking scripts to finishing syllabus to attending unnecessary meetings. In any case, I think National Education is basically a big flop.
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For me, the objective of National Education is to address this question; do you feel that you belong to Singapore? Taking it a step further, it means that should Singapore face war one day, would you stay and defend, surrender at the first opportunity, or flee before the airport gets closed?
Personally, I think National Education shouldn't be about studying facts of Singapore history. Any idiot, including a foreign talent from Timbucktoo, can do that. Rather, the story behind Singapore should be learned as part of your decision-making process on whether do you feel a sense of belonging to Singapore.
Some recent incidents are answering my question on whether should I feel a sense of belonging to this country. And I suspect, these same incidents are answering similar questions from many folks around.
It was in the papers over the past 2 weeks that students from the 'Dragon Cohort' are being rejected for their university courses, despite getting decent grades for their A-level exams. The university justifies their rejections based on the usual replies of demand exceeding supply. It also tries to explain that locals are given preference for varsity courses over foreigners.
Personally, I find the universities' explanation very hard to believe, since over the past decade, it has been our local practice to favour foreigners over locals.
I was a university student myself, studying engineering at a local university where there were easily thousands of foreign students, to the extent that at one of the engineering faculties, they easily made up close to half of the cohort. Many of these foreigners were from India and China, and the bulk of them were on scholarships funded by our own tax-payers.
For most of us local varsity students, we were not given scholarships. I didn't get one because my results didn't qualify me for one. But I had friends with 4 As for their A-levels, and they didn't qualify either. Most of us locals either paid our way, or were on student loans. Varsity tuition fees were around S$5500 a year, and student bursaries which were given to the needy local students, were worth around S$1000 a year. So, you could imagine how many of us felt, when we saw so many foreign students from China and India studying in Singapore for free. Even their hostel fees and monthly allowances were paid for by local tax-payers.
If you were in my shoes, you wouldn't be blamed for wondering if our elected leaders openly favoured foreigners over locals. But of course, no leader would be insane enough to admit this officially. But their actions do send a clear signal. How else should we intepret this local phenomenon; bursaries and student loan for locals, scholarships for foreigners?
Basically, I am not surprised that more and more local students cannot make it into our local universities. After all, we want to be an international education hub. And that means getting thousands of foreign students to study in Singapore, even if it means giving out scholarships to them in the hundreds.
Do we give scholarship to local students in the hundreds? I think this is a rhetorical question that needs no answering.
You will find that your answer to this question has a direct co-relation to whether are we allowing more foreign students in at the expense of local students who do qualify for university courses.
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Coming back to National Education, the biggest form of National Education is in the way our country treats its own citizens.
As a varsity student, it seemed very clear to me that foreign students were favoured over locals, given their numerous scholarships and guaranteed hostel places. I wouldn't be surprised if the same attitude spilled over for varsity applications for courses. I mean, how the hell do you offer some foreign students a scholarship when you can't even assure him of his place in uni?
As a working adult, the working class are left to sink or swim on their own, given the absence of any form of social security. Please don't mention 'CPF' or 'Medisave'. That is made up of your own salary. It is not even close to any remote comparison to insurance.
Even with the poor, the government appears to be very reluctant to help them. Calls raised in Parliament to give more aid to the poor has been deliberately interpreted as attempts to bankrupt the National Reserves of over US$ 100 billion. Ironically, giving a 30% pay-rise to top politicians haven't been seen in the same light.
In the same light, many locals have to sacrifice two years of their lives for National Service. Some had even died in the course of National Service. It is appalling to learn that servicemen, they are not covered under insurance. It least I wasn't covered, because even with my pittance of a military allowance, I bought my own insurance coverage.
I understand that for national servicemen, any compensation they might receive is covered under the 'Workman's Act'. But I hope you do understand that 'Workman' refers to blue-collared workers, and a typical blue-collared worker doesn't earn more than $1800- $2000 a month. And the work culture in Singapore is that the shittier your pay, the shittier your injury compensation. Compensation of a year's wages for a workman won't really carry you far, not if you are maimed for life.
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When the message out there is so clearly being sent out that foreigners matter more than locals, that locals who are disadvantaged are viewed as a national burden, what other National Education values can we teach?
In the end, how many locals will have a sense of belonging?
posted by stressed_teacher @ 6/17/2007 10:51:00 PM 8 Commen
T__T
