"F*** you, sir", he blogged on 2 June.
On Friday, St Andrew’s Junior College (SAJC)
student Reuben Wang made a U-turn and
apologised toDeputy Prime Minister Teo Chee
Hean in person at the Ministry of Home Affairs.
According to The Straits Times (ST), the JC1
student had initiated the apology after SAJC counseled him on
Wednesday.
Wang’s earlier public post had drawn both support and flak
from Internet users after he blogged about the “conversation”
students had with Teo during the recently
held Pre-University
Seminar.
Teo was the key speaker at this year's annual Pre-U Seminar,
held at the Nanyang Technological
University and attended by more than 500
students last week.
In his 700-word post filled with profanities, the 17-year-old
criticised Teo for answering questions posed by students with
another question instead.
“The participants made it extremely clear they were
dissatisfied with DPM Teo- and when we asked about our concerns
which we do not know what can be done to solved, he will give the
f***ing ridiculous reply “What do you think (can be done)?” Wang
wrote.
The forthright student then reasoned, “We are 17 years old
with very little to no life experience and you want us to come up
with policies for you? It is exactly because we don’t know what can
be done we worry about the country. We seek your opinion. You gave
us none.”
Wang blogged on the topic again, unapologetic, after his
first post went viral. But he has since taken down his entire
blog.
After his apology on Thursday, Wang
told ST that he realised his post
was “rash” after reading his friends’ comments.
In response, Teo was quoted by the paper as saying "I am glad
he has taken the time to reflect, and recognises that what he said,
as well as the way he said it, were wrong."
He added that he avoided spoon feeding students answers
because he wanted them to “think deeply about the difficult choices
they had to make”.
Many Yahoo! users who commented on a Facebook thread felt
that Wang was only partially wrong.
“The only thing he did wrong was the use of profanities,”
said Lendl Tan. “Had he omitted all the
profanities, I think it'd have been a rather intelligent and apt
piece.”
Agreeing, another user Henry
Chua let on, “I still believe the student was
correct in being frustrated by the non answer given by DPM, just
that he should not have used the expletive.”
Others, who were less supportive, pointed out that it is
about time today’s youngsters understand that they are all
accountable for their words and actions.
“Kids need to learn that they are responsible for everything
they do, and everything they write online,”
said David Ernie. “Although I am not a
fan of DPM, and his political party, I definitely do not support
what the kid did.”
Added Eva Lim Sng, “Have a point,
make it, but do it respectfully and without using profanities.
Let's not dive into gutter politics. The undergrads today can do
better than this.”
When contacted, political analyst Derek da
Cunha told Yahoo!
Singapore that there is “clearly a right way and a
wrong way to express disagreement”.
“If a person's argument is strong then all that needs to be
done is to cast that argument in purely intellectual terms
substantiated by examples, without any descent to profanities,” he
advised.
The independent scholar also noted that this incident is
likely to strengthen the argument for a code of conduct on
responsible online behaviour, which Minister for Information,
Communications and the Arts Yaacob Ibrahim had recently called
for.
Added da Cunha, “If you
continue to allow a virtual free-for-all on the Internet with few
restrictions (and) thresholds of what are unacceptable continue to
be breached, this might increasingly be reflected in errant
behaviour offline.”
Read for comments: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/jc-student-apologises-to-dpm-teo-for-offensive-blog-post.html
hahaha...the admiral teo should wake up suddenly from his
million dollar job.actually he was seen sleeping in parliament with
head down and eyes closed.
i think the 17 yr old kid has the right of speech. he
thinks ahead of his time for a kid.maybe he should become PM one
day.
