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.
*
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.
*
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.
*
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
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