While many oldies reminisce daily about the good old days of
catching spiders, flying kites and 5
stones, as if these were the greatest things to happen
in their lives, and wanting the young of today to share their wonderful
amusements of the past, do the young really appreciate or want to appreciate
these primitive distractions of days of poverty? Would they care a dime or want
to spend a second to ponder what the excitement was about?
What is really in their mind, what is really exciting to
them is beyond the grips of the oldies. Their fantasies and passions today are
things that were out of this world in the times of the babyboomers, unheard of
then and still alien to many of them today. In their lips, in their sleeps, it
is things like BoA, EXO K and M, TVXQ, and Shinee. Now what’s that? Not a clue.
These are the young sensations from Korea,
the K pop generations. They are in town to perform live at the floating
platform in Marina Bay.
The young have been queuing 2 fortnights in advance for a front row seat
costing many times more than a kite.
These young performers are earning real good money that
comes with fame and a big following of fans. They are celebrities in their own
right while in their 20s and could be making more money than our scholars. Who
cares about PSLE? What is PSLE? Not that they did badly in their school days,
but PSLE is almost irrelevant in their success.
Our young are only there to be spectators to their success,
to pay to watch them, probably because of PSLE. They have no time, no passion
for anything except PSLE while these entertainers are having a ball of a time,
travelling the world, wowing their little innocent fans that probably have a
few sheets of model answer papers in their bags while at the concert. And in their
spare time the Sinkie young were enticed to visit the museums to admire the
good old days of their parents, how great a time they had with little beads of
seeds, match boxes to hold spiders, catapults, and what primitive little toys.
Why are our young so imprisoned in a small and uncreative
world of books and PSLE and ancient toys and not aspiring to be world beaters
on their own, to be provocatively creative and exploring the new frontiers like
Gangnam or K Pops? If the young Koreans can do it and be such an international
success without PSLE, why the obsession for that piece of paper as the end all
of living happily and having a good time?
Would our little ones be inspired to new challenges and not
be bounded or trapped by the PSLE forever, and complaining about stress that is
not worth it? I would suggest that all the parents bring their young to the Marina
Bay and see a different facet of
life, of living life, of creating something new beyond old mindsets and be
emancipated, and to set their young free on a course of discovery and finding
new meaning in life.