So what’s new? Over 600 private schools have closed. The Council for Private Education (CPE) was set up nearly two years ago to clean up the private education sector. They say clean up. Sounds good? Well, what about the students? Many were stranded midway through their studies, with thousands of dollars in fees locked up with the schools.
What else? I like to check out a few popularity ranking just to kaypoh about what fellow Singaporeans like to see on the internet. Here is what we have on the Straits Times’ list of most popular stories:
US woman took dead baby shopping
Decomposed body found near NUS
Body of woman found floating in Singapore River
Skeletal remains found in Tanah Merah forest
Body retrieved from sea near Vivocity
5-year-old boy found dead in flat
Singaporeans see selves as more gracious than others
In a safe place like Singapore, some foreign observer may be inclined to conclude that we either can’t afford proper funerals or we may have this ancient custom of disposing of the dead in public places.
As far as graciousness is concerned, a recent study by Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM) proved something I’ve known all along. The average Singaporean has an ‘unhealthy level of self-centredness’ and considers themselves more gracious than others. Of the 1001 respondents, 43 per cent, or 435, rated themselves high on graciousness, while only 15 per cent rated others likewise. They pointed to public transport, public spaces and public eating places as the top three areas that needed the most improvement in the survey. There’s a flurry of letters to the press, complaining about people not giving up seats to the disadvantaged on trains, people cutting into their lanes when driving etc.
That shows how ungracious other people are? Come on. It’s easy to fault others for something they have done or not done, but what about the people who judge others as ungracious? Have they bothered to give the seemingly ungracious person some benefit of the doubt? Take a recent proposal by The Online Citizen for instance. They suggested that to show ourselves as a more gracious society, we should perhaps remove the mandatory death penalty and give judges the discretion to decide on whether to sentence a drug offender to death. Almost immediately, a flood of objections came from Facebook netizens. Most objected to the lack of a deterrent. But what the proposal said is not about not punishing, but punishing with some flexibility, with every case being dealt with according to circumstances. Perhaps even more telling than the “deterrent argument”, is the candid and somewhat thoughtless remark of “what if our children all become drug addicts?”.
Yes. Many people who have let their maids go on their days off have regretted it. So how do we prevent such corruption? By locking them up? Recently, someone commented on Today that foreigners came to the aid of a senior who has suddenly taken ill at a public place. Does that make them model FTs? Gracious? What if we later discover that they are a couple of prostitutes with hearts of gold while the indifferent were actually people holding decent jobs? What if they were a couple of adulterers while the innocent, happily married couples turned a blind eye. Possible? Of course. Being gracious also means not judging people by a single act of kindness, unkindness, piety or immorality.
Being gracious is certainly a lot more than simply giving up seats on the MRT. It’s not just about giving way on the roads. It’s about giving people the benefit of the doubt, the chance to clear a misunderstanding and also harbouring a little magnanimity to forgive minor lapses, bad career choices and honest mistakes. The biggest sign of ungraciousness in our society is not the failure to give up our seats on the MRT. It’s the quickness in lashing out at someone who has offended us. These folks always think that they are already gracious enough. Becoming more gracious is the job of the rest of the population.
