E-learning

After watching the first video, I now truly understand the significance of social cohesion. Getting along well with people from different races, and respecting their religions is especially important in a country like Singapore. This is exactly the reason why the government is promoting racial harmony in schools - to allow students to get along and respect friends from other races while they are still young.

In the video, we see that the Indians and the Malays are not really accepted in the society. The Indians are deemed as "smelly", eat curry everyday and will make things "oily", and people are unwilling to share things with them and do not really want to have connections with them. When Carol approached Vanessa to borrow her Math textbook, Vanessa refused to lent it to her, afraid that her book willbe dirtied. But when she needs helps, she turned to Carol hoping that she would help. I feel that it is really insensitive of her to do that, especially after she already hurt Carol. The Malays also are not really respected as we can see from the video that people from other races do not respect the fact that Malays cannot take pork and when the restaurants the others proposed are not halal and are turned down repeatedly, they flared up and blamed the Malay girl.

It's very important that people from different races can care for each other and accept everybody's religions and practices instead of criticising. Hence I think it's very important that as a future edacutor, it is essential for me to inculcate the right values and thoughts in my students and help to promote good relationship between the different races. I would probably get them to reflect on how they would feel should they be treated unfairly by people from other races or seen as different in a society. Personally, I do not have any problems on getting along with friends from other races, and I hope that this will apply to everyone of us.

I certainly hope that in the near future, there will be no more unjust statements about Indians and Malays or perhaps people from other races, like "dirty", "useless" or "stupid". (I do not actually say this, but heard it from others) Everyone should just be more tolerant and sensitive. Don't do unto others what you don't want them to do unto you.

Lay Jun