When I watched the video clip "Social Cohesion", I recalled how insensitive my peers and I were as students and that was quite a number of years back! This video clip showed exactly how real this racial insensitivity is in the school environment even though the message of racial harmony is prevalently evident in schools and is taught in certain humanities subjects.
After I watched this video, I felt that as educators, we can do a more to help curb this problem. For example, the traditional use of racial conflicts in Singapore’s past to teach the importance of racial harmony should not be dominant as students are unable to effectively relate it to their lives.
They may understand it as something that has happened in the past and that it has caused much suffering and many problems. This understanding for the importance of racial harmony does not have as much an impact as when they are shown how racial disharmony will affect them and how real the problem still is till this day. They also need to be shown how racial disharmony can be a problem even in today’s context and how racial insensitive remarks are not something to be used as a joke and laughed upon.
Hence, I believe that in order to nurture in students this value of harmony, I need to present to them the consequences in a context they can relate to and explain from there. From this, it has reinforced the fact that it is more than just academics and physical fitness when it comes to the total development of a child.
- Kingsley Ng
1 comment:
Good words.
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