Speaking at Nan Hua Primary after a school visit, Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew reiterated the importance of allowing gifted students “a chance to mix with a broader spectrum of people. It is helpful for them in their all-round development … to learn and understand some of the difficulties and challenges other students may face, as well as to find ways in which they can learn from these students”.

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yes, what a big risk the folk at the organisation are taking! if the gifted get contaminated by the phlebian, then lose their brilliance, then how? but that is the chance the organisation will have to take, because after all such a Can-Reintegrate-After-Parting (CRAP) programme might help the all-rounded students be even more all-rounded.

yes, let’s learn about the challenges these “other students” face that the gifted might otherwise be always oblivious to. now that the gifted are aware that they are indeed gifted, and have run out of new things to learn because they are so gifted, they can learn from the non-giftedness of the “other students” and value-add their giftedness some more!

if the programme was a failure in not fulfilling long term objectives and therefore needs to be scraped, just say so.

Titled The Ties that Bind and Blind, the report is believed to be the first that categorises the results into the various races and  religions here.

One of the researchers, Assistant Professor Norman Vasu, said: “We have seen many programmes to encourage better inter-racial and inter-religious interaction, but what we wanted to find out is if Singaporeans are even willing to integrate with one another in the first place.”

Those polled have no problems dealing with a person of authority, such as a teacher, who is from a different race. But when it comes to something as personal as marriage,  99 per cent of Chinese said they would marry someone of their own race, but just 31 percent were in favour of marrying a Malay or an Indian.

For Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Gillian Koh, what stood out was the fact that while the Chinese are the “most preferred” group, they are the ones least accepting of the other races. “The majority always thinks it can afford to be less tolerant, and the message we need to send is that it must indeed make the accommodations,” she said.

full article on TODAY

attitudes in the public and private sphere will not necessarily be consistent, that’s a constant and i don’t think that that’s necessarily a problem either. the choice of who you marry is a very personal decision and not being inclined to marry someone of another race does not indicate an unwillingless to “integrate with one another in the first place.”

maybe i’m reading the innuendoes wrong, but that’s the sense i got. as far as statistics go however, it indicates that me and many of my friends do not belong to the majority of the population. actually that includes marrying “ang mohs” but that choice doesn’t seem to be an option in the poll for some reason, it should. even then, i’ve always been deeply suspicious of how statistics are garnered and interpretated.

one thing that i whole heartedly agree is that the majority population does seem to have a lower threshold of sensitivity. i wouldn’t use the word ‘tolerance’ because i believe that we should move beyond ‘putting up with a nuisance’ as far as the word ‘tolerance’ conveys. (a point that a singaporean literature lecturer of mine once advocated in class.)

since the senior research fellow asserts that the majority needs to be more accommodating, let’s start by being sensitive to the everyday. a yardstick for every policy in  place or every practice carried out should be measured against this question, “will anyone feel alienated by __________ (fill in the blank)”

for instance, my constant gripe with tv mobile is that there are far too many chinese programmes shown and without subtitles for that matter. it shouldn’t need to take a survey to tell you that that’s not being very accommodating. my suggestion: have subtitles on every non-english programme (including all advertisements) and screen the bulk of the programmes in english. true, not everyone on the bus will understand english, but at least its a better leveling agent, either alienate all races, or none.