moral responsibility

it is as many have pointed out - singaporeans die by stages, from young, unaware that it's even happening. creativity, independent thought, chutzpah, free-spiritedness, hope, dreams - all systematically snuffed.

i'm reminded of this by the latest psle brouhaha - devastated children, angry letters etc. - and honestly, it really is getting to be too much. the moe will defend itself to the death, i know, but the fact remains that there is something seriously wrong with an examination that wilfully reduces twelve-year old children to tears year after year after year. it started, iirc, with the math question in the 1992 paper - our paper - the one about the two bloody trains that approach each other at different speeds, when will they meet? (i always imagine people like yisheng putting down something like 'never the twain' and waking up the next morning to find themselves in acs.) and ever since we set the precedent it's just been one big annual sobfest.

look at it this way. say you're walking along your way and you come upon a grown man beating up a little kid. other people around. intervention, i feel, is a moral imperative (unless you're a singaporean, in which case you find out the boy's age and the number of times he was hit and come up with a 4d number). my suggestion, therefore, is that we hunt down mr. shanmugaratnam and punch him in the nose, many times. seriously. people should learn to pick on those their own size.

Currently reading:
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
The Sea and Poison - Shusaku Endo