2/03/2006
racial harmony or peaceful coexistence
a forumer, michael heng, wrote in the straits times lamenting that his son did not have a malay friend in his school. he is worried that his son will not be able to understand his malay friends and their culture etc. such atrocious situation shall not have happened. such parents must send their children to a school where there are more malay students so that their sons will grow up in the company of malay friends. if they did not do so they will undermine our objective of racial harmony and peaceful coexistence among the different races. and if they are stubborn, like michael heng, and keep their sons in such schools, they should be caned.
and schools that have few malay students must make special effort to recruit more malay students or students from minority groups into their cohorts. or the principal must be made to explain why they have failed to do so.
now am i making sense?
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19 comments:
Of course! What you have said made sense. Racial Harmony in Singapore is important and everyone must play a part in it. Otherwise the goodwill built by our forefathers will come to naught.
But this doesnt mean I support the GRC scheme as a means of racial equility. If a person is really helpful to the people, I don't see why I'm not voting for him as compared to someone of the same race but not as helpful to the people.
hi abao,
you went on holiday?
my views about schools is that it is a policy decision on how the schools shall be packaged. base on merit or base on racial integration or base on the student population around them. for primary school, the location and distance travelled is very important.
in secondary schools and above it is a matter of choice. shall we do away with putting all the high achievers together and emphasise on racial integration, so all schools will have expressed and normal streams? or shall all the expressed and high achievers be placed in the same schools to progress together. these are conscious policy decisions.
i did a little discussion on sap schools in ypap. and i agree that good students shall be placed together, including in sap schools. and sap schools shall also make some adjustments to take in students with different mother tongues.
on the other hand we can go back to the days of integrated schools. each system has its strength and weaknesses.
for grcs, i will support them if don't selectively, maybe have a few 3/4 candidates grcs. what is happening is now questionable.
there are some merits to grcs. every racial group has its bigots and chauvinists. some grcs will help. and it will do our political system more good with more single wards.
Another idiot parent, caught in the throes of a racial-identity crisis.
Hmmm... I wonder what kind of signals his kid is receving from the home and school environments - where kids spend most of their waking hours.
No, you are not making sense redbean. Human relationships go on much deeper levelS (plural) than just race.
"Racial harmony" can never be an objective or objective. People get along on (or not) the individual and fundamental levels.
We don't need the statist assholes interfering with this shit.
i think the only sense i made here is for parents who want their children to mix with other children they should simply enrol their children in those schools. problem solved.
complaining that the school no chance to mix and still remain in the school, then what?
racial harmony is not by mixing the two groups together. familiarity may make things worst.
does mixing criminals with the goodies reduces crimes or make them love each other?
Hi Redbean,
Our place in Singapore is near a school. Pupils coming to school and leaving for home pass our front door each morning and afternoon. I have noticed that the pupils group themselves racially. I have never seen a Malay or an Indian pupil in any group of Chinese pupils. The Malays pupils, fewer in number, tend to form their own group and so do the Indian pupils.
This is quite an unhealthy sign. Surely they must be encouraged to mix a little more.
though i would say that it is a natural tendency for people to group among their own kinds, it does not mean that it s bad. there are plenty of opportunities for them to know each other in school activities.
as the forumer was trying to say that put them in same school will ensure that they understand each other need not be so. but the school civics class and the community, govt and society shall continuously send out the message and encourage when possible to have them mixing or knowing each other. that is the best that can be done.
forcing them to accept each other, to love each other is too contrived and may produce negative results instead.
to understand and respect or leave each other to enjoy their own life does not need one to hug and kiss one another all the time.
as a student, my class has several malay students. we treat each other just like any students would. no thoughts of race. but we don't socialise that much as our interests were never the same. we never quarrel or fight or pass racist remarks against each other.
No, i'm busy visiting relatives during Chinese New Year. Came home late every night.
redbean,
The is only one race - the human race.
hi abao,
you went distributing angpows or collecting angpows? your extended family must be very big.
i still find it difficult to imagine that all the human races were one race before. it is like all the animals evolved from one single cell animal.
how did they evolved into animal, fish, insects and birds, and plants?
maybe from the word go there were already different races and all the different animals.
never were they one.
You forget one thing, the aspect pf our nature which binds us, unlike animals:
Humans have free will, and are therefore on an individual basis, experiencing life subjectively
that i agree. human is different from animals in many ways.
but the concept that we were one race in the beginning is still yet to be proven. if we look at the different races, my gut feel is that they all started in different places as different races. the theory that we all came from africa, were africans is just logical deductions made from missing links.
That is because the social, traditional and cultural conditioning is so strong.
Its all a damn illusion.
To fully accept that the human race is the only race, one has to drop and let go of ALL those disempowering social institutions, or put them into another context, perhaps poke fun at them.
Not easy, it fact highly improbable, seeing as how so many people lean on their race and culture, and use them as building blocks of their individual identity.
And one cannot prevent people from doing stupid and disempowering things. If they want to believe in illusions, they have that right.
What a wonderful world!
all religion and politics aside, i can imagine a mongoloid being of the same race as a aryan or a negrito? the physical characteristics show that they are different, not simply colour. the difference in gene count maybe few but significant enough. just like the difference in gene count between humans and primates.
this world is built on chaos, order, chaos...
Skin colour and physical charateristics are genetic and biological.
Dividing the world by RACES in more a social institution.
When we say "there is one race - the human race".
I'm refering to the social the social institution. You got "biological" on me...
This world is what it is. "Chaos and order" are human observations and a representation in symbols in an attempt to form an abstract to explain the unexplinable.
i think it is not so simple as just differences in physical characteristics. there is this primodial instinct among the different races that divides them as being different.
but it is not totally hopeless to say that we cannot live as one human race. there are many commonalities. and there need maybe a foreign catalyst to give more meanings to this one human race. when aliens are different and competiting with us as a different specie just like the different races becomes american and identified themselves as such.
well, possible. it takes time to change the mindset as the world gets smaller and people understand each other more, minus religion.
In biology and anthropology, there are no sub species in humans.
Everything about behaviour in a social setting is learnt by emulating or obeying social constructs and insitutions.
You can notice this: an Asian kid who grows up in a totally western environment behaves exactly like any other kid brought up the same way.
The fact that we tie skin colour, and other physical characteristics to race, is also learnt behaviour. Quite simply, we notice things which are different from ourselves. The fact that we "group" together with people who look the same, is the same mechanism.
Conditioning by social institutions is very strong. It goes to very deep levels, and becomes peoples' realities. (perceptions of)
the differences among the races may be very little but enough to divide and enough for them to tear each other apart. they might remain as a group for a different purpose and the race element may appear to be insignificant.
but given the right combination and condition, the race element can still surface.
in malaysia, a chinese, even if he accepts the malay way of life and islam, he will still be a chinese. a non bumi.
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