Ch 8 serial portrays unrealistic picture of educators in Singapore
The current Ch8 serial at 7pm, ‘Let it Shine’, portrays a very unrealistic picture of educators in Singapore. Most secondary school teachers work ‘from 7 to 7′ on weekdays and carry on with our work during weekends.
Few of us would have the time to search for a missing student until midnight for days on end, and the lead character Yoyo played by Felicia Chin is hardly seen marking, planning or handling administrative work. Instead, she gets to leave at midday almost every day to spend time with her students or boyfriend. Her male colleague, ‘Madman’, at one point applies for a one-month no-pay leave to cycle in Thailand. I cannot imagine how this could possibly be granted in any school during term time. Their principal is stiff and authoritarian, and tells a student that he is truly a ‘rotten apple’. MediaCorp clearly has not kept up with the changing image of school leaders. Many principals are authoritative but nowhere as old-fashioned and insensitive as the character played by Patricia Mok.
Tan Chay Lee (Miss)
My take:
There is a reason why TV dramas exist. It helps people to get away from reality. It helps to bring temporary excitement into Singaporeans’ otherwise routine and boring life. How can you expect what is being shown on TV, especially on Channel 8 to be a true?
Covered walkways and air-con make for softies
THERE are more covered walkways at LRT stations and schools are being built in Punggol. Are we making life too comfortable? Surely, some rain and sun won’t hurt, especially for the students?
A covered walkway is a small matter. But is it the tip of the iceberg? Is making life easier and more comfortable our society’s goal? If so, then we are heading for disaster.
Prosperity creates problems like obesity and lack of resilience in the younger generation. We need a roof over our heads and simple meals to keep our bodies going but we don’t need a lot of material comfort to live a quality life.
I give talks to schools and corporations regularly. The teachers and parents tell me that our young ones are too soft. Senior management tells me that those entering the workforce today are no longer as hardworking as the older workers. I tell them I don’t blame the students and workers: It’s the system at work.
It is my theory that the more we are shielded from Mother Nature, the more we lose touch of reality. I am glad to see more parks, and trees being planted. The authorities should be commended but that is only a small part of the big picture.
The harsh reality today is the hot topic of climate change. Severe damage, some irreversible, has been done to Mother Nature from the time of past generations, either through ignorance or greed. World leaders today have the tough job of saving the earth.
Another modern device that makes life more comfortable is the air-conditioner, which Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once hailed as being among the greatest inventions.
However, the air-conditioner consumes a lot of energy and generates heat. Every year, we are creating more air-conditioned space - shopping malls and other indoor venues.
How much energy is used to power air-conditioners for a population of four million? How much heat is being generated?
Last year, I decided to stop using the air-conditioner at home. It has been many months since. I plan to keep it that way unless we have guests on a hot day.
I grew up in a home without air-conditioning for 20 years. I believe I can do without it. Fans are much more environmentally friendly and cheaper.
Resilience is like our muscles - if we don’t use them, we will lose them. I will be very disappointed with myself as a dad if my children grow up knowing only covered walkways and air-conditioned shopping malls.
Khoo Swee Chiow
My take:
Certainly, things are seemingly getting more and more comfortable today. But that is only on the surface. And that is the kind of observation an out of touch individual would make.
Technology progresses endlessly and life is made more comfortable. However, at the same time while technology itself had become more complicated, our life did too.
The amount of stress and pressure experienced by an average Singaporeans nowadays had increased drastically over the year. Unemployment. Peer pressure. Declining quality of school teachers. The meaningless paper chase. Increasing pace of life. All these puts an unseen burden on everyone’s shoulders. What was simple then had became complex. People used to kill themselves because they were being chased by loan sharks. Now, people jump from HDB flats or jump at MRTs because of their small penis size, failing test results, and to gain sympathy money for his family.
What I see is increasing desperation and complication, strain and confusion.
You say building more shelters is a sign of weakness. Is that cheap comfort a sufficient offset for the increased negative impact that society had on people?
You had grown up without an air-con for twenty years. But perhaps it is time to look beyond your banana leaf fan.
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lame more controversial posts by the soreloser weikiat. go on and sulk more. better still start a flame war
lame cowardly post by an anonymous reader.
How has this post on my blog got to do with being a sore loser?
How did you get the impression that I am a sore loser?
How did you get the impression that I am sulking?
Are you sure you know the meaning of the word “controversial”?
Do you know what a discussion is?
Are you even prepared to stand for your false accusations as a real existing human being?
Are you too ashamed of yourself to put your real name?
Answer all the above, or I’ll block all your future nonconstructive comments.
anonymous, i think you are a fucking childish retard. If you have nothing to contribute to a discussion, just shut your fucking flabby mouth up.
go suck your mother’s milk. i’m sure she will teach you what a sore loser is (of which weekiat is not), and the meaning of a discussion.
you sounded like everything you accuse weekiat off: soreloser, sulking, flame war.
you are obviously too fucking childish for the internet. just fuck off.
if i’m your mother i’ll give you one tight slap.
SCUM of the earth.
Relax, passer-by.
No point being so uptight for someone who don’t know what he or she is saying.
lmao! Another annonymous person who is not making much sense? Will this ever end?
The annonymous fellow is not just a hopeless loser, he has a tiny penis as well. Leave your name & email if you want to flame someone next time!
Anyway, I think Khoo Swee Jiao is a nutcase.
actually khoo has a point. simple physics will tell you that air conditioning is really just pushing the heat from one place to another, at the cost of electricity meaning natural gas and coal and whatever fuels we use. so really, it’s not all that “crazy” to say that. and starting small is starting somewhere. the thing about shelters is nonsense tho. i wouldn’t wanna catch a cold from the rain. it’s not just shading the sun. and even if it were to shade the sun, that’s no biggie either. heh.
I’d have to identify this as a complex issue which is difficult to be solved.. as there are many groups of people, with different opinions and different wants, involved in the system.
Generation gap. I wonder how old is Mr Khoo. Mr Khoo says that it’s the system at work. I’d say it’s the PEOPLE. The system (i.e education system) is created BY a group of people with an intention of bringing benefits to the rest of the people. If these people have the power and brains to create this system, it’d be good that these ’system-creators’ should have tried to foresee about what sort of implications that the system would bring. Are the ’system-creators’ capable of knowing how to make the rest of the people fully benefit from the system?
I’d propose a ’simple but difficult to be adopted’ solution. Mindset. Let me just propose an ideal mindset which everyone can adopt so people would be happy. Under the system, we have a few groups of people: teachers, principals, students. I’d just like to focus on these 3 groups of people.
Firstly, teachers should be passionate about their jobs and obey a so-called ‘oath’ that they should nurture the ‘kids’ and make them feel passionate about learning. Only when the teacher is passionate about teaching, would then the students have a tendency of being passionate about learning. If a teacher isn’t passionate about teaching and nurturing the students, would the teacher be able to ‘induce’ a passion for learning amongst the students?
Secondly, principals. My guess is, their key role is to ensure that the school has a lot of achievements and that students achieve good results every year. So they would think of ways to make sure that the school gets good results. One way by ensuring that is to give pressure to the teachers who could be already stressed up by the workload. One way of giving pressure could be being authoritarian. Hence this could explain the stress experienced by teachers. Instead, i think that principals should encourage the teachers instead of giving pressure, and make them feel bonded to the school, make them have a sense of achievement when the results are out or whatever. So, i’d say maybe the it’s the attitude of the principals towards the teachers.
Thirdly, students. Well, they don’t know what goes on up there in the hierarchy. I guess us being students should just be optimistic and look towards the future.
Well.. if only things are that simple.
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