The lady was a kindergarten teacher. She quitted her job 3 years ago when her 2nd daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. She loves her children and wanted to care for them. Let's us not be judgemental and think we know her situation better than she does and think that we can run her family better than she does.
I have visited her and sense that she has love and compassion and is doing her best to love and care for her family. Unlike what you think, she is dignified and is not looking for sympathy. Despite her situation I have great respect for her as she takes good care of her children. Her childen are doing very well in school..her eldest daughter is taking pure biology, pur chemistry, pure physics, elementary maths and additional maths.
What wld be disastrous is that because of their situation and that they dont seek financial aid, they dont get enough nutrition and their children get trapped in the vicious poverty cycle and their health suffers in later years.
As a country, we can help dignified singaporeans like her who try to make the best of a bad situation.
To people like you who have experienced and risen from a bad hand, I am happy for you and wish you well. I hope you have more heart and compassion for the poor and under privileged and not look down at them and think that it was their fault to be in a bad situation
I dont know how much a kindergarten teacher makes. I guess it would be a respectable amount but she wouldnt qualify as a high income earner. But regardless of how much she made, she would have been a learned woman. she would have understood the risks and costs of parenthood. My wife and I did the math the day we decide to become parents. Insurance, education costs, etc... Anyway, it was a choice that her husband and her made to have 4 children and they should have made contingencies for sickness or death to anyone in the family. That's called prudence. That's called responsibility. They made their choices so they should live by them.
Education is the best social mobility tool. It is also a tool that is hard to abuse - i.e. lazy ppl can't over consume education. And if like what you say, that her children are doing well in school, then they would do alright. You worry too much. How many skin and bones students do you see in school these days? I haven't seen one. Now there are programs in school where children get fed. Anyway, when she is at her wits end, she will go knocking on doors that will help her. For the moment, she is choosing to give her family emotional/spiritual wealth over financial wealth, so let her be.
Your call for me/us not to be judgemental... I am partly in agreement. I am not judging her. She's not the one calling out for help. I am judging you. You are the one thats asking for us to sympathise with her. We don't live in lalaland. We live in the real world where there are taxes, budgets, and deficits. I agree that the govt can be more generous with welfare support. Even though, I had never been on welfare, I have seen families apply and get financial help (but made to jump through hoops first) - and in this case, it was financial help for breast cancer treatment. But I have also seen welfare being abused. A single mother who refuses to work, claiming that she has to take care of her 2 young children, who also picks on the brand of canned food that the charities handed out to her. The point I am trying to make here is that it is easy to call on the govt to give out more help but it is hard to determine who geniunely needs help and hard to prevent abuse. The case you highlighted does not justify the need for welfare. Just because you are willing to pay higher taxes to fund more generous welfare programs doesn't mean others want to.
Ironically, welfare programs, in the long run, hurt the people they are suppose to help. Educated, wealthy and socially mobile ppl will and can move away when taxes rise to a level that they deem unacceptable. It's the ppl who cant leave who will have to stay behind and pay for the welfare that the generations before them enjoyed. Then that would truly be the crumbling of Singapore-when it becomes a welfare state with taxes so high that the elite start to leave.
Highlight a genuine case of hardship that the govt agencies refused to help and I will be more supportive
(blind) cos he didn't read my post properly and (stupid) doesn't give good arguements...
