MoE's new Chinese policy change

Recently, MoE announced that there is going to be a new change in the weighting of Chinese Language in which the weighting of Chinese in PSLE will be reduced. I strongly disapprove of this new policy change.

Didn't our teachers always say to us, that all subjects are equal, and that we have to spent equal effort on each of the subjects? Why the sudden change? What do you think will happen if you reduced the weighting of Chinese in PSLE will be reduced? Nobody will study as hard for Chinese anymore. Lets say if the weighting of Chinese were to be reduced to 50%, nobody will study as hard for a subject in which even if you get full marks, you get only half as much as getting full marks in another subject. So if we reduce the weighting of Chinese, the natural reaction of all P6 students and their parents will be to put less emphasis on Chinese and to put more emphasis on the other subjects. This is ridiculous, as it totally undermines the importance of the Chinese Language in our society. And why specifically mention reduce Chinese? What about the other Mother Tongues? Singapore has been encouraging us to study Chinese well just a few months ago, so why the sudden change in policy? Quite ironic, no? Also, do they not know the possible implications of this? China is becoming a stronger economic country by the day, and even foreign countries are studying Chinese, and knowing how important Chinese might be to us in the future, reducing the weighting of Chinese and making people take Chinese less seriously couldn't have came at a worst time. Admittedly, there are people who do badly at Chinese and their grades get dragged down by it because they do not have the background, but if Singapore is reducing the weighting of Chinese because of that, I recommend that Singapore look at the case of the new PSLE scholar. She did not have any background in English, and having came from China at P5, she had just 3 years ( she had to repeat P5), but she still managed to get and A* in English, and A* in Math and Science paper although both the papers were set in English. Now, students in Singapore have 6 years to learn and master Chinese, and there's only one paper in which it is set in Chinese, so I don't get how Singapore student's cannot do well in Chinese. And even if they can't, it doesn't warrant a reduce in the weighting of Chinese. Or is it because the PSLE is being dominated by students from China and Singapore wants to change this by reducing the weighting of Chinese, thus dragging down the students from China? If that is the case, then the government seriously needs to reconsider.

Opinions?

TKAM Test

On a slightly more personal and more positive note, I'm happy to say that I have finally achieved A1 for Literature for the first time in my life! Though its a bit too late for the Math, Chinese and Narrative test, I would like myself to stick to this famous quote

" Genius is 50% perspiration and 50% pure talent."

- Said in 24/4/2010 by Zhang Jin Lin

So maybe I should work harder from now on, and convert 20% of my time into studying time. I'm sure this is going to be a boost to my confidence, albeit slightly, and isnpire me to more A1s!

War

War. This word encapsulates a lot. Suffering. Explosions. Death. Birth of psychopaths( Hitler). New ways to kill. Dismembered bodies. Broken families. Broken dreams. Broken lives.

Out of all the above, there is nothing positive about war. So why then, do we start wars? Why then do we partake in this act of destruction? Is it human nature? Is it unavoidable? What will happen if another major war happened?

The world had gone through several wars and lived through it, such as World War I, World War II, the Gulf War.... The list is endless. But we survived through it all. Through every single war, new ways to kill each other have been created. Through every single war, more people die in the next. So what will happen if we experience a World War III? With nuclear bombs, biological bombs, hydrogen bombs.... Will the world be destroyed? We probably won't be able to survive through another war. But all that is preventing us from attacking one another right now is the fear of being attacked by the allies of the countries you attack, or being attacked by the UN. So all this can be broken with just a country stupid enough to attack another country, which will start off a whole world war, as the whole world right now is being interlinked by alliances. This is just like how World War I started, but the stakes this time is way higher. Nuclear war may erupt if war happens, and you and I may all die. So what exactly had led us to this stage? What has made us to this precarious situation?

The Kaiser started World War I because he wanted more land, more power, and he subsequently failed, having not learned at all from the failures of other warmongers. Hitler, even worse, started another war shortly after the World War I, even though as a soldier, he himself personally witnessed the carnage of war. Maybe there will always be someone within us who will start war. So, if war is inevitable, maybe I should prepare myself for an incoming World War III? Being pessimistic.... Maybe someone close to me may probably start a war in the future. I sure hope it'll never come to that. I know enough of the horrors of war to think that its cool. But the above picture is pretty cool though, if a little..... horrifying. Try imagining hundreds of those rain down on Earth....

Any opinions?

The Starving of Sudan

After a long, long time, I'm posting for the first time in Term 2. This time I will be writing about the controversial photo above, taken by Kevin Carter, known as the Starving of Sudan.

I'm sure that if this is your first time looking at the photo, you would have been shocked by several elements present in the photo. Firstly, the girl in the photo is from Sudan, a country who was extremely impoverished and torn by civil war at that time. People were starving, and though aid packages were being sent there to help the citizens of Sudan, children who were separated from their parents could not get food because of all the stronger adults snatching for the food supplies. So sights like this were very common there, but people outside of Sudan did not totally grasp the severity of the situation there because Sudan was pretty much closed off from the outside world. Then, two reporters were sent to Sudan to take photos of the situation there. One of them, Kevin Carter, came across a girl who was crawling towards an aid station for food, while an eagle was eying her hungrily from a distance. Kevin Carter thought this to be a wonderful photo opportunity, and after a while, captured the photo, chased off the eagle and drove off, leaving the girl to fend for herself. This is the background of the story of this photo. A bit shocking, isn't it? But this is just the first half.

Now, the first question that comes to our mind is that what happened to Kevin Carter? He brought the photo back, and the photo won the Pulitzer Prize. The photo was published in the New York Times, and that photo shocked the whole world. Before long, people who started to ask where and what happened to the girl. But Kevin Carter did not know, as he left the girl alone after taking the photo, thus drawing heavy criticism from people. Why did he not rescue the girl when the girl was just there, when he could have took her on his car and sent her to an aid station, thus saving her life? Does he have no regard for human life? Does he think that the photo, the prize money was more important? While it was true that he needed money then, but he had already gotten the photo, so why did he not save the girl? So why did he leave the girl for dead? After a while of severe criticism, he committed suicide, leaving a note saying, "I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

So this is the background story of this incident. Now I'm going to discuss on the moral issues of this case.

Kevin Carter was lacking money then. He was desperate for money. When someone gets desperate, he is capable of almost anything. But this does not explain the situation at hand. He already had the photo, and he could have both saved the girl and got the reward at the same time. So why didn't he? According to him, he was not sure what made him do that, and he also did not explain the situation very carefully, so maybe what happened at that place was different from what all of us was different. Now that both of the people who were involved in the incident are dead, we can never know what had happened. Maybe the girl was already beyond saving? Or maybe it was just that he had already seen too much of this type of situations and that he had already closed off his heart, and thinks that no matter how many he saves, there will always be more. But if this was really the case, he should have known that life is precious, and that saving one life is good enough. So, I will end off with this conclusion, that what he did was not justified and against what we call human nature., but once humans have been exposed to the cruelty's of the world, we will understand that what we call human nature, is actually the total opposite of what we humans usually behave like. To all those people who have criticised him, are you sure you are any different? Do you agree?