[h=1]RESPONSE TO ST LETTER ON THE "VIRTUE OF GRATITUDE"[/h]
Post date:
22 Mar 2015 - 2:50pm
Dear Madam Chang,
I refer to your letter published in ST Forum dated 21 March 2015 which lambasted some Singaporeans having forgotten the virtue of gratitude. ("Gratitude an Important Virtue" By Madam Chang Choon Kheng)
First and foremost, I personally feel that the creation of a hoax website falsely announcing the death of Lee Kuan Yew is a distasteful and mischievous act. I am against such an act.
However, I also find the way you publicly worshipped Lee Kuan Yew and, more importantly, indoctrinated Singaporeans’ children in your role as a pre-school teacher, equally distasteful.
You claimed that when you were teaching your kindergarten pupils the meaning of gratitude, you would “tell them about the history of Singapore, to show them that we must be grateful to our leaders who worked day and night so that we could live comfortably today.” I am not sure whether you are working for a kindergarten of PAP, NTUC or a private organisation.
It should not be difficult to explain the word “gratitude” to a group of pre-school children. One would have used simple examples of children showing gratitude to parents, friends or teachers. But you chose to explain the word “gratitude” in a much more complicated way to kids who were not even ready for Primary One education! It is strange to me that you found it necessary to talk about your version of Singapore’s history, together with a “must” be grateful to politicians - just to explain a simple word “gratitude” to kids below 7 years old! Either you are an incompetent teacher or you see your role as giving political indoctrination to children! I think parents of your pupils should be worried; hopefully none of those parents was victim of the government’s policies!
Perhaps it was due to your kind of political indoctrination at kindergarten level that I was told a teacher in one of our popular girls’ secondary schools, had to take pains in explaining to her students: a government is not a country; it is alright to die for your country but you should not die for your government! Do you know why, Madam Chang? Because a government is made up of politicians! Politicians are people who will do and say all kinds of thing to ensure they get elected and remain in power for as long as possible. They will always tell people that they have done a better job than politicians of other countries or other parties. And no one else could do that “impossible” task except themselves!
Madam Chang, if you need to explain to your pupils in future the word “traitor”, I suggest that you tell your pupils the history of Singapore when it was invaded and under the control of Japanese. You can then give the example of two persons chose to work for the Japanese military, despite many of their fellow countrymen had been murdered or tortured by the Japanese soldiers. One of them worked as a translator while the other helped to decode intercepted secret signals for the Japanese military.
In your letter, you seemed to suggest that Singapore’s success was due to Lee Kuan Yew and therefore we have to be grateful to him. Except for “a peaceful and clean city”, you did not mention what were those great achievements made by Lee Kuan Yew. If you can tell us which part of Singapore is clean and peaceful, I am sure many Singaporeans can give you a list of clean and peaceful cities around the world! And politicians governing those cities do not demand world highest salaries!
And please, Madam Chang, do not tell us that Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a third-world to first-world country. Singapore was already one of the best cities in Asia when Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP took over. If you follow Lee Kuan Yew’s silly logic of comparing the state of today’s Singapore with that of 50 years ago, then all countries in this world were a third-world nation 50 years ago!
You wrote that given the situation soon after independence, Lee Kuan Yew had no choice but to rule with an iron fist to ensure law and order in Singapore. Again, you failed to elaborate what was the situation that forced Lee Kuan Yew to rule with an iron hand. Was the situation caused by him in the first place? And do you know that long after independence, Lee Kuan Yew continued to rule with a tyrannical hand? Oh, by the way, Lee Kuan Yew had been locking up political dissenters without trial even before Singapore merged with Malaya! When his PAP was an opposition party, he even joined anti-government street protests!
Madam Chang, you are free to wish whatever things for Lee Kuan Yew; you can even go to SGH to burn candles, joss stick and incense papers to pray for his expiry date to be delayed or brought forward! I can’t be bothered! But, stop criticising people for being ungrateful to Lee Kuan Yew! He had ruined many Singaporeans’ lives and caused great hardship to their family members – just because people challenged his preferred way of governing the nation! If you are a daughter of such victim, or you are a victim of his policies, would you still worship Lee Kuan Yew as you have been doing now?
No matter how sad you feel about Lee Kuan Yew is going to die, I want to assure you that after he is dead, the earth will continue to rotate around the sun, the monsoon seasons will still return and go, the Hainanese chicken rice will still be sold, and Char kway teow too will remain available without Lee Kuan Yew!
Celia Lim
*Article first appeared on https://www.facebook.com/celia.maggie/posts/798590313523622:0
Post date:
22 Mar 2015 - 2:50pm
Dear Madam Chang,
I refer to your letter published in ST Forum dated 21 March 2015 which lambasted some Singaporeans having forgotten the virtue of gratitude. ("Gratitude an Important Virtue" By Madam Chang Choon Kheng)
First and foremost, I personally feel that the creation of a hoax website falsely announcing the death of Lee Kuan Yew is a distasteful and mischievous act. I am against such an act.
However, I also find the way you publicly worshipped Lee Kuan Yew and, more importantly, indoctrinated Singaporeans’ children in your role as a pre-school teacher, equally distasteful.
You claimed that when you were teaching your kindergarten pupils the meaning of gratitude, you would “tell them about the history of Singapore, to show them that we must be grateful to our leaders who worked day and night so that we could live comfortably today.” I am not sure whether you are working for a kindergarten of PAP, NTUC or a private organisation.
It should not be difficult to explain the word “gratitude” to a group of pre-school children. One would have used simple examples of children showing gratitude to parents, friends or teachers. But you chose to explain the word “gratitude” in a much more complicated way to kids who were not even ready for Primary One education! It is strange to me that you found it necessary to talk about your version of Singapore’s history, together with a “must” be grateful to politicians - just to explain a simple word “gratitude” to kids below 7 years old! Either you are an incompetent teacher or you see your role as giving political indoctrination to children! I think parents of your pupils should be worried; hopefully none of those parents was victim of the government’s policies!
Perhaps it was due to your kind of political indoctrination at kindergarten level that I was told a teacher in one of our popular girls’ secondary schools, had to take pains in explaining to her students: a government is not a country; it is alright to die for your country but you should not die for your government! Do you know why, Madam Chang? Because a government is made up of politicians! Politicians are people who will do and say all kinds of thing to ensure they get elected and remain in power for as long as possible. They will always tell people that they have done a better job than politicians of other countries or other parties. And no one else could do that “impossible” task except themselves!
Madam Chang, if you need to explain to your pupils in future the word “traitor”, I suggest that you tell your pupils the history of Singapore when it was invaded and under the control of Japanese. You can then give the example of two persons chose to work for the Japanese military, despite many of their fellow countrymen had been murdered or tortured by the Japanese soldiers. One of them worked as a translator while the other helped to decode intercepted secret signals for the Japanese military.
In your letter, you seemed to suggest that Singapore’s success was due to Lee Kuan Yew and therefore we have to be grateful to him. Except for “a peaceful and clean city”, you did not mention what were those great achievements made by Lee Kuan Yew. If you can tell us which part of Singapore is clean and peaceful, I am sure many Singaporeans can give you a list of clean and peaceful cities around the world! And politicians governing those cities do not demand world highest salaries!
And please, Madam Chang, do not tell us that Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore from a third-world to first-world country. Singapore was already one of the best cities in Asia when Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP took over. If you follow Lee Kuan Yew’s silly logic of comparing the state of today’s Singapore with that of 50 years ago, then all countries in this world were a third-world nation 50 years ago!
You wrote that given the situation soon after independence, Lee Kuan Yew had no choice but to rule with an iron fist to ensure law and order in Singapore. Again, you failed to elaborate what was the situation that forced Lee Kuan Yew to rule with an iron hand. Was the situation caused by him in the first place? And do you know that long after independence, Lee Kuan Yew continued to rule with a tyrannical hand? Oh, by the way, Lee Kuan Yew had been locking up political dissenters without trial even before Singapore merged with Malaya! When his PAP was an opposition party, he even joined anti-government street protests!
Madam Chang, you are free to wish whatever things for Lee Kuan Yew; you can even go to SGH to burn candles, joss stick and incense papers to pray for his expiry date to be delayed or brought forward! I can’t be bothered! But, stop criticising people for being ungrateful to Lee Kuan Yew! He had ruined many Singaporeans’ lives and caused great hardship to their family members – just because people challenged his preferred way of governing the nation! If you are a daughter of such victim, or you are a victim of his policies, would you still worship Lee Kuan Yew as you have been doing now?
No matter how sad you feel about Lee Kuan Yew is going to die, I want to assure you that after he is dead, the earth will continue to rotate around the sun, the monsoon seasons will still return and go, the Hainanese chicken rice will still be sold, and Char kway teow too will remain available without Lee Kuan Yew!
Celia Lim
*Article first appeared on https://www.facebook.com/celia.maggie/posts/798590313523622:0
