Abortion destroys families and the nation

Posted on April 3, 2013 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Abortion destroys nation building’, 2 April 2013, Voices, Today

(Edmund Leong Meng Tsi): It is indeed “Time again to review abortion laws” (April 1), considering the long-term emotional harm on post-abortive women. Some of them are adversely affected and are easier to identify, as they suffer visibly. Much is known about the treatments for them.

Literature on abortion suggests that “unaffected” women harden their hearts instead. Cognitive dissonance hinders their ability to love properly because they had denied love to their closest kin through abortion, and yet must continue to extend love and show compassion to others throughout their lives.

They feared a tiny human so much as to eliminate it, and will subconsciously guard against bigger humans by building walls around their hearts. I believe that when the heart of the family is compromised, the entire family is affected. Emotional strains can tear families apart, and the effects can be passed to future generations.

Singapore’s nation-building efforts are inadvertently being foiled not only because 12,000 babies are aborted annually, but because women are offered an easy way out of adversity.

Abortion is biased towards self-interest by eliminating another’s interest, thereby destroying families and the nation. We must instead utilise all means to keep babies and their mothers alive, physically and emotionally. Adoption is the better choice.

The issue of legalised abortion has been fought over by pro-lifers, pro-choicers, feminists, religious folks, moral philosophers, doctors and politicians for ages, and we will probably never understand enough about the human consciousness or even what ‘life’ means to come to a consensus on the ‘rights and wrongs’ of terminating a ‘potential’ human being. So instead people focus on abortion as a matter of disrupting the natural order of how society traditionally grows. Even more so now that we’re facing a dearth of babies and on surface it would seem logical to assume that one unaborted baby equals to +1 population. If only it were that simple.

In the eighties, loss of babies who could be borne of educated couples was deemed a shame and a loss of productive citizenry. A writer known only as PGT lamented the loss of ‘educated genes’ which would have given rise to ‘smarter babies’. Husbands whose wives went for revenge abortions decried them for ‘the break up of an otherwise happy marriage and family relationship’. Our ‘over-liberal’ abortion laws would also supposedly encourage more people to ‘change bed-partners without any sense of responsibility’. The fact is we have been promiscuous and having unwanted babies way before surgical abortion even existed. The difference is being skewered with a blade on an operating theatre vs drinking some awful tasting folk remedy concocted by your witch-doctor that would scramble your foetus into a bloody pulp before you shed its mushy corpse out through your genitalia. Even today, you’d find dead or barely alive infants in toilets, rubbish chutes or buried in the ground. We always had a means of killing the unborn if we wanted to, with varying success, but nations didn’t get ‘destroyed’ and families still thrived.

If one could ‘destroy’ a nation by depriving it of babies and have abortion turning us all into promiscuous devil-may-care lunatics who scrimp on condoms, neither is it a good idea to have children borne out of mothers who wanted them eliminated out of their uteri in the first place. The simplistic answer to unloved babies would be adoption, but that’s assuming every rejected baby will automatically be shuffled away from a ‘hardened’, emotionless mother and nurtured in a warm, loving home where stepparents make them Eggs Benedict for breakfast everyday.

There are as many complications of reluctant birth as there are to terminating pregnancies. What if no one wants your baby? If your chronically depressed mother told you she had wanted to abort you but was forced to relent at the last minute, and she couldn’t find anyone to take over maternal duties because you were such an ugly infant with all sorts of respiratory problems, how would that make you feel? Even if you found yourself a home, what if your foster parents, though initially enthusiastic about the whole adoption thing, turn out to be really terrible people who wish they had picked someone else from the orphanage? What if you found out that you were conceived after your mother was gang-raped and she couldn’t bear to put you down? Neither choice is, as the writer proclaimed, an ‘easy way out of adversity’, nor do women who face the abortion dilemma necessarily FEAR that tiny human like it was the devil’s spawn. Tell that to the rape victim, the single unemployed mom with quintuplet foetuses, or the mother who realises her baby’s got a monstrous physical defect or severe Down’s syndrome.

We can do little about sex-starved teenagers and religious attitudes towards contraception, but it’ll take more than a nasty pre-abortion video, or haranguing anti-abortionist men who speak about post-abortion psyche as if they’ve been through it themselves, to keep the deaths of the unborn in check.

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Filed under: 1980s, 2013, Babies, Funerals/Death, Parenting, Sex | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Vulgar RI teacher reported to Police and 2 Ministers

Posted on December 8, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘RI takes action against teacher’, 8 Dec 2012, article by May Chen, ST

RAFFLES Institution (RI) is taking disciplinary action against one of its teachers, Mr Adrian Chng, for using inappropriate language – even though he did not do so in his capacity as an RI teacher. The Straits Times reported on Thursday that Chew Jee Yang, 17, a Singapore Polytechnic student and member of the national youth softball team, had filed a police report against Mr Chng, the team manager, for his use of expletives in a WhatsApp group chat with three co-captains of the squad. Wang Zheng Rong, 18, also took issue with Mr Chng’s choice of words, although Chin Ken Min, 19, distanced himself from the complaints.

…Mr Chng, RI’s assistant head of the physical education and co-curricular activities department, is also the secretary-general of the Singapore Baseball and Softball Association. Mr Chng and the three players had been discussing preparations for an overseas tournament in Argentina last month in the WhatsApp conversation, which took place in September. In it, he used expletives such as “f***” no fewer than four times.

A complaint against Mr Chng was also later e-mailed to several parties – including Education Minister Heng Swee Keat and Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong – by Chew and Wang’s mothers.

…AN EXCERPT of one of the exchanges Mr Chng had with his student-athletes.

The conversation was in response to the teacher, who was functioning as a team manager, chasing the boys for jersey and slacks sizes ahead of an overseas trip. He had lamented that time was “tight”.

  • Zheng Rong: Frankly speaking time can’t be tight time runs at a constant speed! HAHAH!
  • Teammate: Lol
  • Adrian Chng: U better make sure ur a** super tight if not de bat I’m gonna stuff in there is gonna fall out

Maybe it’s not Adrian Chng’s profanity that the MOTHERS of these teenagers are worried about, but that he could be a dangerous bat-wielding sodomiser who preys on innocent virgin boys. This is how the accused looks like according to the SBSA (Singapore Baseball and Softball Association) website. You can’t deny the respectability of a suit and tie.

By now, getting the police involved in teacher-student spats isn’t surprising anymore. It has been done for teachers who’re too stern, or those who ruin expensive haircuts before important examinations. What’s disturbing is these budding athletes have their mummies complaining to MINISTERS for abusive, sexually charged, language. When Chew and Wang enlist into the army, is Mummy going to complain to Ng Eng Hen for homophobic verbal abuse by drill sergeants as well? Or feedback to SAF that no one tucks them in to sleep at night?

Perhaps Chng as team manager was doing a favour and prepping the boys for a hard NS life, where threats of sodomy with random objects are used in place of ‘Good Morning Recruits!’. Or he was just doing what most sports team managers would do to discipline their charges, regardless of whether their day job was teaching in a prestigious school or preaching from a pulpit. I thought we’ve come to accept that angry, ‘macho’ profanity in the management of competitive sport is all part of team camaraderie, whether it’s boys’ softball, men’s rugby or in a bikini beach volleyball World Cup tournament. The only sports coach who doesn’t need to resort to potty-mouthing is the one in charge of seniors’ Gateball.

What is known is that Chng is apparently doing a good job with RI softball. Earlier this year, the RI team beat Hwa Chong for their fifth national school’s title in 6 years. God knows if a fiery personality and foul language were part of his coaching methodology, but it seems to work for RI. It was just unfortunate that Chng’s obscenities were documented in Whatsapp group chat this time round. If every testosterone-charged team coach or manager was caught F-bombing or mentally ass-raping his squad and summoned by the police or ministers because of distraught parents, what hope is there for youth sports in this country? What if Chng wasn’t from RI but from a ‘neighbourhood school’ instead? Would the boys and their mothers let him off then? Maybe these boys and their parents have been watching too much of Disney’s Angels in the Outfield.

Even if Chng were indeed using foul language on a student in the capacity of an educator, is a police report even necessary? In 2008, a CCA teacher reportedly cursed and sweared at his ex-student for not greeting him properly.  Private tutors have been known to lash out at hopeless students on Facebook.  But in most cases it’s often the teacher at the receiving end of a student’s fury. In a reversal of the case above, a distressed teacher called the police to report a Hokkien-vulgarity spewing pupil in 2008. Another RJC teacher had to respond to a vulgar Facebook post online about not being able to ‘fxxxing control the class’. Many petty obscenities hurled at unpopular teachers are often ignored, because students heaping scorn on a teacher is expected – it even bonds them with fellow students – but not the other way round, even if such ‘motivational’ expletives are the secret to a softball team’s success.

Without a full picture of the relationship between Chng and his boys, one can’t tell if he was indeed abusing his authority or was just being his normal foul-mouthed self and was marked for some unknown reason. I’m guessing that it’s his ties with an elite school which may have inflamed any misgivings between the parties involved. In the meantime, if you’re in the business of playing a sport that uses anything with a handle, be it a softball bat or a croquet mallet, making nerdy jokes to your coach about ‘time-tightness’ may not be the smartest thing to do. If you’re a teacher suffering from Tourette’s syndrome, delete Whatsapp off your phone with immediate effect.

Filed under: 2012, Foul language, Kids, Parenting, Police officers, Politicians, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 12 Comments »

PSLE not a sacred cow but a big elephant

Posted on September 22, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Scrap PSLE? Not yet, but space out exams’, 22 Sept 2012, Voices, Today

(Ng Ya Ken): We can change the components and emphasis or assessment method of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), but we cannot eliminate the need for a standardised grading mechanism, at least not now. Scrapping the PSLE may not solve the problems we have now. Neither would replacing it, because parents would hunt for new tuition lessons to help their children score in the new system.

With our competitive education system, after we get rid of one big elephant, another big animal will come to take its place. Perhaps we can only abolish the evaluating mechanism when all secondary schools are perceived by parents as equally good. In the long run, we must close the quality and perception gaps between good and very good schools.

In the meantime, we can think of ways to lessen the tension caused by the PSLE for our young and their parents. For example, we could split the exam into three parts, with the first two parts to be taken at the end of Primary 5 and at the middle of Primary 6.

…Also, let us not label the PSLE a “sacred cow”. The term carries a negative connotation when not aptly used.

Of all the wildlife analogies to describe a life-changing event for most young Singaporeans, the most apt in my opinion is the ‘big bad WEREWOLF’ as suggested by Senior Minister of State Lawrence Wong, when he said ‘there is no silver bullet, no magic solution’ when it comes to the dreaded PSLE. Like the mythical beast ravaging the daily lives of villagers, this academic sieve is often blamed for our pressure-cooker educational system and society in general, though the more pragmatic-minded may defend its existence as a necessary evil, just as a fable needs its proverbial dragon to slay. Despite all these arguments about having a fairer system to pigeonhole our children, and how PM has insisted that children live their childhood, there will still be some with this mindset of conquest and ‘baptism of fire’ when it comes to the PSLE or anything like it. These include not just parents, academics, but even some CHILDREN themselves, who take the exam so seriously and gamely that the cramping of playtime, the tuition expenses, the mental disorders, are all worthy sacrifices in the name of being victorious in what’s essentially a national competition for secondary school placing.

No other trial exemplifies the term ‘pursuit of excellence’ than scoring in the PSLE, and no thanks to the media lauding top scorers annually, green-eyed parents all over the country will feel inadequate if they’re not gearing their little champions for the battle of their lives. For decades we have subjected our kids to ‘survival mode’, and we can’t make drastic changes overnight unless we’re reasonably certain that 6 years of Social Darwinism has done more long-term harm than good. The PSLE is like the Singaporean Hunger Games, except with only sweat and buckets of tears. Like any story of courage and triumph over adversity, the PSLE too has its Heroes’ Hall of Fame, which likens its conquest to that of snaring the Crown jewel, or completing one of the seven tasks of Sinbad. If you take the monster out of a Greek legend, you won’t have an ‘Odyssey’. You’d get the Love Boat instead.

Our champions and Hall of Famers are naturally media darlings, and no congratulatory story is complete without some heartwarming  filler to assure kiasu parents that if top-scorers can pull it off despite their troubles, so could their kids. The current grand champion and record holder is 294 scorer Natasha from St Hilda’s in 2007, whose grandfather died just before she sat for the exam. The media also buzzed over Natasha’s piano and violin lessons, her ambitions to be a paediatrician, and being rewarded for her efforts with a place in RGS. 2009′s champion, China-born Qiu Biqing could hardly speak a word of English, but slew the ‘elephant’ despite coming from a ‘neighbourhood’ school (Qi Fa). Whether you’re disabled, a foreigner, pint-sized, read nothing but Harry Potter in your free time, work part-time at your parents’ hawker stall or suffer from dyslexia, nothing makes a score sweeter than a tale about how you overcame the odds to beat everyone else who requires 3 days of tuition a week.

Still, any anxious parent with a child in P6 reading such accolades would instantly, and irrationally, associate smart kids with schools which breed, and accept, PSLE champions, nevermind what people are saying about ‘every school being a good school’ following the recent demolition of the banding system. Clearly, in this case, the best in the country, whichever primary school they’re from, is heading for the best ‘brand name’ school the highest PSLE score can buy. A 2000 Today article described top scorers as ‘St Hilda’s STARS’ (30 Nov 2000), and even till now, you hear of ‘top’ schools being embroiled in scandal, whether it’s teacher-student sex or drugs. There will be a stratum of prestige, the cream of the crop, that will continue to endear as long as top schools only accept top scorers, as long as top scorers are treated like they are the best and brightest brains our country has to offer.

Interestingly, the past 5 years’ PSLE top scorers were all girls (2007, 2008, 2009, 2011), with the exception of Alex Tan in 2010, who was described as the ‘son of two doctors’. Grand champion Natasha and Alex were from GEP as well. Whether as a means to spur or baffle parents with these seemingly mixed signals on what a top scorer is made of, perhaps the Ministry should look into curbing such implicit rankings through blatant top-scorer fanfare as well. Like the 4 four blind men touching different parts of the elephant, we’re still missing the big picture, and if it turns out the PSLE is more a hydra than a marauding beast, scrapping it through brute force alone without addressing the culture of branding, reputation and kiasuism that exists because of it will just mean another ugly head spontaneously regenerating to take its place.

Filed under: 2000s, 2010, 2011, 2012, Kids, Parenting, Politicians, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Preschool graduation concerts in expensive hotel ballrooms

Posted on September 3, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Pre-school concert too costly, say parents’, 3 Sept 2012, article by Melody Zaccheus, ST

PARENTS have sent an open letter to a kindergarten asking why they have to pay $65 for their children to attend a graduation concert. At least 30 of them have signed the document imploring the principal to reduce the price.s

Ms Irene Lum, whose daughter attends the kindergarten, wrote to The Straits Times last month complaining about the cost of the event at Kallang Theatre. “Graduation is an important part of our children’s education journey,” said the 38-year-old. “It doesn’t make sense for the school to charge so much and make it difficult for families to afford.”

The kindergarten is run by the Punggol North PAP Community Foundation (PCF). Its vice-chairman Lily Hugh sent an e-mail to Ms Lum to say the price included snacks, lunch and transport to and from rehearsals, and on the actual day of the concert.

…Five other PCF branches told The Straits Times that parents are charged between $40 and $50 per child. Most of this goes towards paying for costumes….Montessori for Children, which has campuses at Broadrick Road and Newton Road, has booked ballrooms at the Conrad, Sheraton and Swissotel hotels for its graduating pupils.

At Pat’s Schoolhouse, founder Patricia Koh is usually busy at this time of year, putting the finishing touches on the script. This time, the children will be staging a concert based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory at Raffles Hotel Jubilee Theatre. Tickets are $50 each.

Pat’s Schoolhouse’s $50 ticket only grants you ENTRANCE to the show. In 2010, the same preschool could charge you up to $270 which includes a bundle pack of two tickets (Mommy and Daddy), calendar, video, photo and costumes; an astonishing amount that’s worth more than a front row seat to watch Jay Chou live($228 in 2010). The fact that Pat’s can actually score a ‘Distinction award’ for Group Performance by the London College of Music just goes to show how much pride and effort is spent on posh extravaganzas, though how such an accolade benefits the preschool as a centre for LEARNING and its ‘graduands’ baffles me. It’s a KINDERGARTEN, not a theatre company. If I had wanted my kid to be the next Phantom of the Opera I would have enrolled him in drama nursery or cast him in Drypers ads right away. For a kindergarten performance, my expectations would be along the lines of draping my kid a caterpillar costume that’s made out of a green sleeping bag and have him wriggle around a bit, not recite Shakespeare in a junior toga or giving Mediacorp Channel 8 a run for the money.

Red Cliff: The Next Generation

But perhaps kids like such outlandish, over-the-top theatrics these days, and wouldn’t settle for anything less than sweeping period drama and intricately designed plastic spears. In my time we pranced around in recycled props lip-syncing to nursery rhymes like Old King Cole or Hickory Dickory Dock, where crowns were made of rings of cardboard strips and giftwrap, not an actual headpiece with velvet cushioning inside. There wasn’t any ‘choreography’ to speak of, but now parents part with their money to see their little thespians perform historical epics that they won’t be reading about until at least a decade later, just to humour preschool teachers with closet ambitions to write grand musicals and win Tony awards. Yet not all preschools charge ridiculous admission cum costume fees for their concerts. NTUC’s My First Skool made it free for parents in 2010, where the kids didn’t have to put on silly make up or trudge around in furry robes playing the Last Emperor of China.

Still, I wonder why parents are complaining about a one-off concert ticket when they’ve no qualms paying for enrichment classes IN ADDITION to preschool. Some parents prefer to just have their kid wear an oversized frock, go on stage, grab a scroll and walk off without the entertainment, a rite of passage that even schools like PCF Pioneer dispensed with to make way for the MAIN event of the night; a multi-ethnic, magical spectacular where the actors will grow up to become embarrassed teenagers who wish they had taken the role of the coconut tree in the background rather than the gyrating hula boy or girl.  Other than charging for concerts, Montesorri organises preschool camps which cost at least 1K, in which failure to participate would mean your kid not graduating with the rest of his class. Either way, parents will be sucked dry before the REAL test of primary school even begins. With enough luck, your kid may be inspired from his award-winning performance to want to pursue his TRUE calling, that of a fearless, concubine-collecting, Mongol warrior rather than, you know,  studying for PSLE.

Perhaps our ministers had something to do with this whole graduation concert ‘tradition’. VIPs started making special appearances in the early seventies to attend ‘costume parades’ at PAP kindergartens.   In the eighties, kindergartens went all out to impress guests of honour such as Goh Chok Tong and Yeo Cheow Tong, a time when PCF was already holding such concerts at the Kallang Theatre instead of community centres of the past. To entertain Tony Tan, PAP Sembawang had kids crooning the rousing number ‘Count on Me Singapore’ in 1986, and it wasn’t even NATIONAL DAY.  Since then, you may no longer settle for Jack and Jill went up the Hill anymore. Someone on stage must play superstar, there must be exploding glitter at the finale, even an INTERMISSION if need be, parents will erupt in thunderous applause with their camera-phones in one hand, overpriced memorabilia in the other, and pockets as empty as the memories that their kids will have of the entire event.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, 2010, 2012, Kids, Money, Parenting, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Teachers have no business cutting students’ hair

Posted on August 23, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Teacher cuts pupil’s hair, mum files police report’, 23 Aug 2012, article by Lua Jia Min, ST

A MOTHER has lodged a police report after her 12-year-old son’s teacher cut his hair an hour before his PSLE oral exam last Thursday. The mother, Madam Serene Ong, is outraged that the teacher did this just before a crucial exam, that it was done without her knowledge – and that it ruined the boy’s $60 haircut.

She claimed the teacher – Ms Belinda Cheng of Unity Primary – also threatened to deduct marks from the boy’s exam if he refused to have his hair cut. Yesterday, the school’s principal, Mrs Jasmail Singh Gill, agreed with Madam Ong that the teacher had no business cutting the boy’s hair.

But, she said, Primary 6 pupils had been warned before about sporting long hair, and Ms Cheng had the right intentions. “The teacher cut the boys’ hair as she wanted them to look neat,” said Mrs Gill.

…Madam Ong, 39, a sales manager, said she received a call from her son Ryan Ang at about 10am on the day of the exam. His oral exam was at 11am. He was crying and told her that Ms Cheng, who is one of his form teachers, had cut his fringe and sideburns. He and the two other boys had been pulled up during a spot check for long hair.

“The teacher had no right to cut his hair,” said Madam Ong. “She showed me no respect by not telling me that she was going to cut his hair beforehand,” she said. “Worse, she threatened to deduct his oral marks if he didn’t agree to let her cut his hair. It was an hour before his PSLE oral exam. What if it had affected his performance?”

She said she was so upset she made a police report and complained to the Ministry of Education that night. She said Ryan did not dare to step out of the house for two days “because he thought he looked funny“.

Ms Cheng, she added, had also wasted the $60 she had spent on Ryan’s hair just five days before the incident. He has been going to a hairstylist at Reds Hairdressing for several years. Madam Ong spent another $60 getting his hair restyled on Saturday.

…”Doing this is like going back hundreds of years,” said Dr Foo Suan Fong, principal of Dunman High. His students are given a warning and a deadline to get their hair cut. If they do not do so, the school will contact their parents, whom it regards as “our education partners”.

Earlier this year, the police were hauled in to investigate a case of verbal abuse when a teacher told a student that he ‘didn’t want to see her face’. In the case of a vainpot Ryan who spent the equivalent of my entire year’s haircut budget ($120) at Red’s, my concern is not so much whether his teacher went overboard or if his mum overreacted (parents always do these days), but how his reaction to the ordeal of a teacher manhandling his funky mop speaks for kids of his generation, kids whose parents resist till this day from calling them ‘BABY’, though ‘babies’ are exactly what they behave like.

What bugs me is that he’s TWELVE, CRIED and LOCKED himself at home for DAYS as if it weren’t a few snips of a scissors but a crude lopping and scalping with pruning shears. Ever heard of a CAP, boy? God, it’s like the apocalypse just befell us all. I mean, just look at his pose. Look at it. I don’t blame the teacher for having the urge to run his head through with a motorised grass-cutter.

The police didn’t notice that in some countries this is an obscene gesture

And then take a look at this. Both images make you want to hurt someone real bad.

Cuteness in Spades

Having teachers multitasking as hairdressers is not a ‘hundred year old’ practice as one principal claimed. Hair-snipping as a last-resort punishment has been meted out as late as the early eighties, when long hair was a bane of society, associated with delinquency, truancy and Satanic rock music. Sometimes, even the vice-principals joined in the sadistic fun of seeing girls weep when their fringes are chopped off. In fact, it was only early this year that a similar case of police reporting occurred when a SEC TWO boy went home crying to mommy that the school’s stand-in hairdresser did a cut so patchy it looked like he singed his head over a BBQ fire. Hey, at least you didn’t get EXPELLED for unruly hair, eh? On the bright side, if you’re a kiasu parent volunteer balloting for Primary 1 next year and happen to be a PROFESSIONAL hairdresser, you have a high chance of landing your kid a spot, if only to prevent other kids from calling the police on teachers whose only crime is giving kids haircuts so awful they can’t face the world bearing them. How on earth are they going to post flirty pics of themselves on Facebook with such embarrassingly crappy hairdos?

Oh I know it’s blase to lament about how spoilt modern children have become, living a high-strung life of mollycoddling privilege with a sense of entitlement, cam-whoring narcissism and inflated self-esteem, brought up like little dainty princes and princesses with maids at their beck and call to carry schoolbags for them. Still, it’s totally unwise and unnecessary in my opinion that the police be involved in this matter even if the teacher got a touch too physical and intimidating at the worst possible time. Ryan wasn’t groped on the buttocks or hung upside down for days without food as punishment.  If the police call-operators had any sense of proportion, such petty calls should have been directed to the kind folks at IMH, who specialise in managing not only pediatric mental disorders like body (or hair) dysmorphic depressive disorder but anxiety management for the parents as well. Maybe they have special packages for such parent-son treatments, buy one sedative get 1 anti-depressant free.

Well all the best for your PSLE, Ryan. I’m sure you’ll do fine, this after all not being a test of your MANHOOD.

Filed under: 2012, Kids, Parenting, Police officers, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Uncle breaking jaw of gangster half his age

Posted on June 23, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Man who punched and fractured gangster’s jaw escapes jail’, 23 June 2012, article in asiaone.com

A Singaporean businessman was fined $3,000 on Thursday for punching and fracturing a gangster’s jaw. The Straits Times reported that he was spared a jail sentence as the judge said it was an exceptional case.

Ong Long Hock, 64, had pleaded guilty to causing hurt to Lee Tze Wei, 32, a sales executive. The incident occurred on Feb 17, 2009 at about 7pm. Ong and his family had drove down to the Punggol Nasi Lemak stall near Tanjong Katong Road.

Ong’s daughter-in-law, Delia Chiang Chia Yen, 31, was on the way to queue for food when she was pestered by Lee and his friend. Claiming to be gangsters, the duo swore at her and her husband. The two men started punching and kicking Ong’s son before family members could call the police. A third man also joined in the assault. Ong tried to break up the fight and was also hit. When the three assailants tried to flee, Ong and his son managed to grab Lee and pin him to the ground. That was when Ong punched him.

…Ong told the Shin Min Daily News on Thursday that he had lost five teeth in the fight, and spent $20,000 on dental treatment.

This is the second senseless brawl in a week, following a biker gang assault on a SIM student which was later classified as ‘rioting’. One shouldn’t underestimate the strength of old uncles, and Ong Long Hock, who may actually be as ferocious as his loanshark-ish name sounds, packs a nasty punch here. He even has real teeth knocked out of him. Most seniors his age would have choked on their dentures fending off gang attacks before getting their wrinkled fists anywhere near someone’s face. Others in a bid to play ‘tough guy’ end up embarrassing themselves after quarreling over seats on a bus, their bark worse than their bite (assuming they have teeth to do so)

Any hooligan who harasses innocent couples queuing for nasi lemak deserves to be taught a lesson, and nobody dishes out pain and humiliation to a shoddy whippersnapper like a ‘Lao Hero’. The tough-as-nails ah pek used to be a cinematic myth, particularly in the Asian context where retired pugilists with white flowing beards are almost always expected to give upstarts a solid dressing down.There is something satisfying about elderly men who appear meek and hobbling about on walking sticks turning into badass fighting machines, from Jackie Chan’s ‘shifu’ in ‘Drunken Master’ to the Karate Kid’s Mr Miyagi and even non-human seniors like Yoda in the Attack of the Clones.

Attack of the Crones

But Ong’s plot most resembles that of a Western film, namely protagonist Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino, a one-man army who beats up a bunch of Asian hoodlums and scares people with gun gestures.

Feeling lucky, punk?

So poetic justice demands that a protective father and senior citizen who can beat me in arm-wrestling be spared a jail term, though if it were true that his victim did belong to a gang of some sorts, Ong should watch his back. Perhaps fellow gang members are keeping an eye on his back as we speak, withholding a revenge attack only because of a possible dragon-Guan Yin tattoo decorating it.

Most fist-fights between elderly men don’t end well. In 1986, a 77 year old died of a heart attack after tussling with another old nutter. In 1998, a 68 year old killed his fellow senior flatmate in a heated frenzy (Man, 68, gets jail for killing flatmate, 31 Dec 1998, ST). Being a hero is also a hazardous task in the golden years; In 1981 a 70 year old hawker sacrificed himself to save a blind elderly man from a fire, BREAKING DOWN A DOOR in the process. Compared to our namby-pamby thugs of today, our hardy old geezers are Sparta warriors, men who in their prime could disarm hacks with penknives, or disassemble a rickshaw with nothing but a spanner. Unlike the Coen brothers’ refrain that we live in No Country For Old Men, with the flourishing of troublemakers of late and men my generation having evolved into softies who have never swung a punch in their entire lives despite 2 years of NS, we probably need our frisky old men to double up as  surrogate cops more than ever.

Filed under: 1980s, 1990s, 2012, Justice system/Lawsuits, Parenting, Singaporean men, Violence | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Wallhola more hazardous than rock climbing

Posted on June 20, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Whoa, pause before scaling that Wallhola’, 20 June 2012, ST Forum

(Ng Chee Kheon): AT THE risk of being labelled paranoid, over-protective and risk-adverse, I feel that climbing up the Wallhola (a ‘vertical playground’) is more hazardous than doing so on an indoor rock wall (‘High time for play in Bishan’; last Friday).

Unlike rock wall climbing, it appears that no safety gear is required when climbing the Wallhola. As shown in the photograph accompanying the report, none of the climbers was wearing a safety helmet. One of the children was bare-footed while another was wearing a pair of sandals.

On the other hand, a helmet and a pair of climbing shoes are standard safety gear worn during rock wall climbing. In addition, the climber will also wear a harness attached to a climbing rope, which is held by a belayer, to stop him from falling to the ground.

Although the maximum climbing height of the Wallhola appears to be only about 3m, any child aged five to 12 falling from this height may suffer serious injury, and worse if he falls wrongly. As prevention is always better than cure, the relevant agency may wish to stipulate that certain basic safety precautions must be taken when climbing the Wallhola.

Wallhola: Cage of Doom

Comparing the 3m high steel cage of vertical mayhem vs indoor rock climbing is like saying bumper cars are more hazardous than a carousel. It may well be true, but where is the fun and adventure in being strapped to cables and scaling a fixed wall under the watchful eyes of ‘belayers’? Rather, how is indoor rock climbing a form of ‘play’ whatsoever? Kids should let their imagination run wild in a ‘battleground’ with colourful plastic obstacles that is the modern playground. They want ropes and swinging objects that respond to the touch, to defy the laws of physics or succumb rapturously to them, to chase each other through tunnels and down slides, not grapple with harnesses in an activity that most adults are forced to face during motivation camp.

Unlike adult ‘play’, kids don’t see the need to ‘achieve’ anything when they’re having fun, and the very design of a foreboding rock wall demands that you seek a ‘goal’ and makes you a loser if you don’t make it to the top. A weak kid who fails to get past the first rock will banish the sport for life and suffer a blow to his self-esteem, and rock-climbing’s anti-social nature makes it plain lonely and BORING, unless the kid wants to be a sherpa when he grows up. And that’s the point of a playground; that there IS no POINT and no challenge that can’t be overcome. It doesn’t have a rigid narrative to determine how you interact with it and doesn’t discriminate the little Type A high-achievers from those who just want to sit on the springy horsies. More importantly it doesn’t require you to wear silly-looking cumbersome safety gear that makes you look like a contestant on Junior Ninja Warror. Any kid who dons a helmet at the Wallhola will be a laughing stock, and parents worried about every little loose plank or bolt might as well put their kids on a leash and get ready a fireman’s safety net when he tumbles.

But turning the Wallhola into a fat over-padded bouncy castle isn’t going to take away the fact that ANY playground is a potential hazard because accidents happen, and parents (or maids) are not there ALL the time to supervise. The humble concrete slide of the eighties can be a menacing back-breaker. Someone once called for the ban of MONKEY BARS because his kid fractured an elbow. You could fall off swings, or get your teeth chipped from a rising see saw. Things hidden in the sand can impale your foot (Teen injured by metal plates left in playground, 30 July 2004, ST), or you may  get your legs trapped in a ‘mini-ski’ in the ironically named fitness corner. Sometimes it’s not even the playground’s fault that you get hurt. In 200o, a BEER MUG was flung towards a playground out of a window, hitting a girl on the head (Mug hurled down hits kid’s head, 10 July 20oo). That won’t be a problem for the Wallhola, no not even stray footballs or falling plaster from the 17th floor of a HDB block would rankle this behemoth. Let’s not even talk about the treacherous perils that the outside world may bring. Kids can be hospitalised for falling off SOFAS at home, and unlike the Wallhola these things haven’t been certified safe for jumping on.

If you made playgrounds too safe and lack any sense of ‘danger’ whatsover, the only outlet where kids could release their boundless energy is in reckless parkour, a far more dangerous way to pass time. Or they would ride a mattress down a flight of HDB stairs. The Wallhola, for all its intimidating cage design that would make any mixed martial arts fighter feel at home, is at least a safer option than what was proposed in the seventies, a monster contraption of steel bars and poles that can only serve as a training tool for professional stuntmen, or construction workers.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, 2012, Kids, Parenting, Public works | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Principal stalking students on Facebook

Posted on June 16, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Parent claims principal stalks ex-students on Facebook’, 16 June 2012, article in asiaone.com Edvantage

…Another principal has made the news with his Facebook exploits – namely  for posting comments on pictures of his ex-students that a parent claimed to be “sexy and seductive”. The parent added the principal had made these comments when he was Physical Education teacher and is now a principal of a secondary school in the North.

A parent only known as Nel voiced his concerns on local citizen journalism site, Stomp. He said, “We (Nel and his wife) were prowling through our teenage daughter’s Facebook when we saw her ex-PE teacher making the comment ‘Nice!’ on one of her profile photos!

“Feeling uneasy about such a comment, we went into his Facebook account and discovered that he has been stalking his secondary students on Facebook, visiting their photo albums repeatedly and posting comments like ‘Nice!’, ‘Cute!’, ‘Sweet!’, ‘Pretty!’ on their sexy and seductive photos!” The parent added that the principal had crossed a line by commenting on these pictures. He also drew references to senior education officials Lee Lip Hong and Chua Ren Cheng who were charged for sleeping with the underage prostitute.

He concluded by saying, “What kind of message is this educator sending to his pupils when these postings can be openly viewed by all? “

No sane figure of authority will risk his reputation flirting stupidly with young girls on Facebook, and this overprotective, self-confessed ‘prowling’ parent should ask himself if these postings were in fact the work of an imposter latching onto the principal’s real account, or some prankster creating a fake account just to sabotage a man’s career, rather than jumping the gun and accuse the head of a school of preying on young girls. Flirting principals aside, what about the problem of his attention-seeking camwhore daughter posing ‘sexily and seductively’ and thriving on cheap flattery from random strangers? Or perhaps he’s using his daughter’s  narcissism as bait to lure curious boys and suitors for him to lash out at and revenge-stalk later, whether or not they’re pimply classmates or grown men with a weakness for underaged prostitutes.

Still, as a worried parent, such fears are not totally unfounded. In 2010, a relief teacher who added a student to his Facebook contacts ended up making indecent proposals once he got her mobile phone number. Anyone with filthy intentions would opt for the more personal mobile phone approach rather than soliciting through Facebook for all to see. So if ‘Nel’ needs to know if his sexy daughter is being stalked for real, I’d suggest he probe her phone’s message list first, instead of telling the whole world there’s another pervert principal on the loose and tarnishing the profession. Other parents would run a sneaky background check on teachers with Facebook accounts, and raise alarm bells if they discover he’s somewhat of a ladies’ man who poses with random women in clubs in his free time. Yet nobody rummages through parents’ Facebook accounts to expose what bad parenting skills, dress sense or taste in music they have. We have a Faces of Haters already, maybe it’s time for a ‘Faces of Kamchiong Parents’.

As if pupils and teachers haven’t had enough of each other’s faces during schooltime, social media has somehow morphed into a after-hours badmouthing battleground for students to rally against bad teachers, teachers to rally against nuisance or difficult students, or parents to shame overbearing teachers on their kids’ behalf. All this puts our educators at a sorry disadvantage. Some parents would forgo Stomp or Facebook altogether and make a police report directly for cases of ‘verbal abuse’.  A teacher with a Facebook account used to be ‘cool’ at some point. Today, he’s a potential pedophile who’ll tell you how ‘nice’ you look when he’s actually thinking, and maybe doing, something else while viewing your deliberately jaw-dropping photo which alone could pass off as a CV for a lucrative career in amateur porn.

Some teachers, assuming their FB identities are genuine, turn out to be pretty immature cyberbullies themselves.  In 2009, one mocked the atrocious standards of grammar in her students’ assignments.  Some of a more sadistic nature bragged about the number of lines their student were made to write out of punishment, or resorted to insults like ‘My stupid student is such a goner’. In a reversal of the above incident, another posted an exchange between herself and a student over a mysterious smell, hinting at sexual harassment by the student in 2011 (What’s that smell? Your pxxxy!).

Yet, just as there should be a penalty for teachers acting like angry teenagers, the ones who don’t bitch about their students online or even own a Facebook account should be protected against busybody parents or being maliciously framed by anyone with a grudge, even if these pranksters were students themselves. Facebook has no place in a teacher-student relationship, just as it has no place between a subordinate and a boss.  Anyone caught defaming an educator through FB should be dealt with as it were a ruthless slap across the face, just as any disgruntled teacher expressing their violent slapping fantasies online deserves to be disciplined. The cost of ‘losing touch’ with your FB-savvy students by not communicating online is nothing compared to the ordeal of just ONE parent reporting you for harassment if you so much as ‘act cute’ online or if your FB profile is not Virgin Mary enough. Even a smiley face may be misconstrued as a sly invitation to strip live on cam, not to mention a ‘Niiiicceeee!’

Filed under: 2000s, 2011, 2012, Bloggers, Foul language, Fun and games, Kids, Parenting, Sex, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Parents sending kids for GEP tuition

Posted on June 3, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘My child is GIFTED’, 3 June 2012, article by Jane Ng, Sunday Times

Parents desperate to get their children into the Gifted Education Programme (GEP) are turning to tuition centres that claim they can help bright nine-year-olds ace the screening test. A growing number of enrichment centres are offering these classes at monthly fees of between $200 and $1,000.

…Mr Kelvin Ong, 36, went from being a GEP student to a GEP teacher before he quit to start his tuition agency, AristoCare. He decides whether to accept a pupil only after a month of lessons which cost $1,000.…He has even started GEP ‘foundation classes’ for kindergarten pupils priced at $600 a month.

At Doctor Peh Associates, a 10-year-old outfit started by Mr Allen Peh – who does not have a doctorate – children who want to sign up for the ‘GEP clinic’ must have English and mathematics scores above 90, while kindergarten pupils must have an IQ score of 130 and above.

‘If they don’t meet those criteria, the GEP is not suitable for them as their foundation is not there,’ said Mr Peh, 51, who has a science degree from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the University of Warwick….He charges $2,600 for 10 lessons.

Enrichment school Morris Allen offers an annual two-week GEP intensive preparation course in June, after selecting its pupils through an IQ test…. ‘With practice under pressure, and repeated exposure to the questions, they show significant improvement and become more confident in answering them,’ said Mr Scarrott (Principal). The fee for 10 days: $888.

Housewife Cindy Tan, 40, is among the hopeful parents whose children are attending GEP preparation classes ahead of the ministry’s screening test in August….’Every mother has hopes for her child. Since we can’t help him at home, we have to get some help for him,’ said Mrs Tan…Adrin, who scored above 95 in his English and mathematics mid-year exams, is getting help at AristoCare. He also has tuition. ‘He has the occasional tantrum but I’ll tell him to finish his homework and I’ll take him out for a McDonald’s treat,’ said Mrs Tan, who has O-level qualification.

What if Adrin does not make it to GEP in the end? ‘I’ll be very sad and disappointed – after all the money spent and we get nothing,’ she said.

I vaguely remember going through the GEP screening test myself and I had no idea what to expect, though I spent most of the time flipping my paper around to work on picture puzzles.  I might as well be deciphering hieroglyphics or Matrix alien squiggles. Not being naturally GIFTED, I flunked out of the first round. Now, if I had MONEY then, that could have been a different matter altogether. I would be out there, you know, making a DIFFERENCE, instead of writing a blog post complaining about GEP.

‘Gifted’ used to describe individuals ‘born’ with a special ‘talent’, and implies extraordinariness and exclusiveness, not something anyone can attain purely through ‘hard work’, or in this case, the help of an ex-GEP student turned tuition teacher with a ‘gift’ for business. One would expect an ex GEP student to do something more worthwhile with his intelligence, like solving the problems plaguing the world today (and getting a doctorate while at it), but that’s besides the point. It’s obvious that having a scorching IQ as determined by some screening test doesn’t guarantee that you’ll do anything particularly useful for humanity. There are so many exceptions to the rule, game-changers, high school dropouts turned self-made billionaires or Nobel-prize winning authors or scientists, people who excelled not just through IQ alone, but mostly through creative innovation, inspiration and sheer luck, things which all these tuition centres and GEP programmes can’t deliver in an entire lifetime no matter how many derivative puzzles they drill their gifted brethren with. Yet these ‘geniuses’ and ‘icons’, though having qualities of the ‘gifted’,  remain, in all appearances, perfectly NORMAL save a few eccentricities without anyone seeing the need to classify them as higher evolved beings in school.

Being a prodigy and working on your ‘gift’ go hand in hand, and one shouldn’t deny kids with a genuine obsession for complex maths puzzles from achieving one’s fullest potential in this scheme, at the risk of being oestracised from their ‘mainstream’ peers, which is an inevitable side effect of being cleverer than your age group. A screening test alone isn’t THE litmus test for genius, and selects for only a certain skill-set that may or may not qualify you as being ‘highly intelligent’.  If you can buy IQ scores through very specific practices like training an archer how to shoot arrows, one trivialises the GEP programme to that of a very expensive, elite mind-sports fraternity. You may well get a couple of sharpshooters in the end, though you’ll also have some singed by their own arrows, victims so worn out by the demands of the programme that their behaviour changes completely, some into angry little recluses who ignore their families. Moreover, the Ministry clearly feels that you’re wasting your time with ‘normal’ students, as what is stated in their GEP webpage.

The intellectually gifted need a high degree of mental stimulation. This need may not be met in the mainstream classroom and the gifted child may become mediocre, indifferent or disruptive in class.

Meaning, if you don’t put your above average kid in GEP, he’ll ROT in class among the minions! Such divisive , sweeping presumptions on what smart kids need for mental nourishment have led many to call the GEP programme ‘elitist’. In fact, the MOE’s statement is copied and pasted wholesale in Kelvin Ong’s Aristocare Gifted programme website. Hell, even the name of his agency has a kingly ring to it.  Here’s a chicken-and-egg argument in reference to those GEP kids who think high and mighty of themselves: Are these kids ‘gifted’ hence arrogant, or did they ‘become’ arrogant once they were labelled and exalted as ‘gifted’ 1%-ters? What have we produced in 30 years that justifies the relevance of a GEP breeding ground in creating mavericks, trailblazers and great thinkers? In an age where brains alone don’t cut it and ‘EQ’ matters more than ever, have we instead LOST ‘functional’ geniuses rather than spawned them through a scheme that cuts them off from the more socially fertile morass that is ‘the rest of us’?

The gifted have been stereotyped as being ‘socially inept’, stick to their own ‘kind’, and summon the image of an awkward, quantum physics textbook totting, bespectacled kid with imaginary friends because all his real ones have left him/her. Meaner ‘mainstream’ kids would refer to them as ‘freaks’.  ‘Gifted’ already has a euphemistic cousin known as ‘high-ability’, which attempts to tone down the lofty suggestions of innate genius but ironically emphasises the disturbing trend that one can be ‘trained’ to qualify for GEP, as long as you’re willing the spend the money and forget about June holidays altogether. One thing these tuition centres dare to boast about is a high success rate of passing tests, but as to what becomes of their students after that, nobody has the slightest clue. High-ability doesn’t equate to hire-ability. From the way they are being groomed and hothoused, they’ve either become stark raving mad scientists  or Phantoms of the Opera.

Adrin above is a high-scoring kid with the occasional lack of interest in homework (like everyone else) but yet nudged by parents to prepare for a programme which he may not be suited, using McDonalds as bait like a  Pavlov dog salivating to the sound of a bell. He may very well ace the screening thanks to some insanely methodical and ultimately meaningless grilling, but end up at the bottom of the GEP pack because his ‘giftedness’ is a product not of his genes or upbringing, but that of a tuition machine. Not to mention having his arteries clogged with all the fat from the ‘reward’ fries he’s been eating to finish his work. His mum may be utterly disappointed from all the wasted money and effort, but failure to get into GEP only means one thing for a face-saving kiasu parent: More enrichment classes.

Filed under: 2000s, 2012, Kids, Money, Parenting, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Teacher ‘don’t want to see your face’

Posted on May 11, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Verbal abuse’ by teacher: Dad files police report’, 10 May 2012, article by Stacey Chia, ST

AN UPSET parent, learning that a teacher had used hurtful words on his daughter in class, has filed a police report for verbal abuse. Mr Mohamed Ariffin, 53, said that his seven-year-old daughter, who goes to New Town Primary School in Tanglin Halt Road, told him that her teacher said to her: ‘I don’t want to see your face.’

Mr Ariffin made the police report last week. The school and teacher have both apologised for the incident….Mr Ariffin, who is unemployed, said he learnt about the matter when his child was reluctant to go to school last week. His wife, Madam Norhayati Hashim, 43, a quality control surveyor, said: ‘She was always not very keen on going to school, and I used to wonder why she would ask me every morning if she had lessons with that teacher.’

Their daughter, who is in Primary 1, said: ‘The teacher banged my table and told me that she did not want to see my face after I told her that I did not know how to do a question.’ When told about what happened, Mr Ariffin first made a police report and then went to the school to speak with Madam Ng and the teacher involved.

I’ve written enough about teachers verbally ‘abusing’ pupils in a previous post (You’ve got the cheek to tell me this!) and how even ‘shut up’ has become as degrading as ‘son of a whore’. If you’ve ever experienced the police  delaying search for your missing pet goldfish, this is probably one of the reasons why. This sets a ridiculous precedent of teachers succumbing to emotional blackmail by their students, via overprotective parents who might as well march into the classroom with a chopper. Now you can come up with any woolly excuse in the world for not doing your homework as long as you know who to call when your teacher starts ‘verbally abusing’ you. Forget counsellors, fart cushions or car-scratching,  if you want to exact revenge on a cranky teacher, the neighbourhood police will be there to assist. The crooks, thieves, paedophiles, gangsters, kidnappers can all wait. Someone’s ego is at stake and the fate of one’s education as we know it depends on someone soothing it with a hapless apology.

Thanks to the likes of Ariffin here who’s taking up more of the police’s time than necessary and turning law enforcers into nannies from a child protection agency, you’d have to wait in line behind angry parents at the police post even if you need to report your neighbour’s crazy rotweiller for gnawing your bloody toes off. If some madman is out there spreading anthrax dust, too bad, there’s a foul-mouthed teacher on the loose! Oh think of the children! Yes,  Dad-who-called-police-for-no-damned-reason, no one from New Town Primary School wants to see your face either.

Filed under: 2012, Foul language, Kids, Parenting, Police officers, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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