Monday, September 10, 2007
Research
Globalisation of Culture - To what end?- Economic Globalisation Invades Cultural Patterns
- Does Culture Matter for Globalisation?
- Cultural Imperialism? The Organisational Dimension of Cultural Globalisation
- Transnational Secular Ideologies Vs. Contemporary Cultural Globalisation
Sources:
http://www.yawningbread.org/
http://www.cpim.org/marxist/200002_marxist_culture_ss.htm
The Marxist
Volume: 16, No. 02
April-June 2000
Environment And Biodiversity, sustainable development
Indicators of Environment and Sustainable development - http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEEI/936217-1115801208804/20486265/IndicatorsofEnvironmentandSustainableDevelopment2003.pdf
Biodiversity and sustainable development - http://www.cbd.int/doc/newsletters/news-sd-suplement-en.pdf
http://www.treatycouncil.org/section_21151113.htm
Terrorism and war
Talking about terrorism and war - http://www.familyeducation.com/article/0,1120,20-6055,00.html
The war on terrorism - http://www.academicinfo.net/terrorism.html
http://www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100383580
Dreamt by Shurlene min at
Teacher unaccountably terminated in Singapore
Teacher unaccountably terminatedhttp://www.yawningbread.org/
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28 August 2007
MOE rejects about 100 relief teachers a year
By Jeremy Au Yong
Minister of State (Education) Lui Tuck Yew yesterday declined to be drawn into the subject of why playwright Alfian Sa'at was rejected as a relief teacher earlier this year.
However, said about 100 people, or roughly 3 per cent of 3,000 applicants, are turned down each year by the Ministry of Education (MOE).
The reasons for their rejection vary, though applicants may not be told specifically what these might be.
Why not? Why is it policy not to reveal reasons? What is the ministry trying to hide?
The topic was raised by two Nominated MPs - Ms Eunice Olsen and Mr Siew Kum Hong - who tabled questions related to Mr Alfian's case and MOE's criteria in hiring relief teachers.
In his reply, Rear-Admiral (NS) Lui declined to broach the details of Mr Alfian's application, saying it was not the appropriate place to do so: 'It is not appropriate to discuss individual cases of teachers or relief teachers in this House.'
If the ministry takes the view that they shouldn't discuss individual cases in Parliament out of concerns for personal privacy, then at least they could have answered Alfian's direct query substantively when he wrote to them in May, and leave it to Alfian to publicise it if he wished.
After Mr Siew posed a supplementary question, RADM Lui responded: 'On Mr Alfian's case, I think the most appropriate thing to do would be for him to engage MOE directly and we can deal with the case on an individual basis.'
This was really too much. As most readers would know, Alfian did write to the ministry as soon as he was terminated, asking for a reason. It was the brick wall of an answer that he got (see the earlier article) which made his case so suspicious. For Lui to now suggest that he should "engage MOE directly" as if he had not, is most unbecoming.
Was Lui unaware that Alfian had written to his ministry already and gotten an opaque reply? If so, you could ask if Lui is incompetent. Or did Lui know that Alfian had already attempted to engage, but still chose to gave the two NMPs a misleading reply? If so, you have to ask if he was halfway to contempt of Parliament. [1]
Further on,
Asked what some of the typical reasons for rejecting applicants are, he replied: 'Some of them because the applicants do not meet the minimum education criteria. Or sometimes it is really because of a variety of reasons, for example, their past record, discipline cases and so on.'
He gave an outline of the criteria they look for in teachers: 'To be engaged as teachers, applicants need to have the requisite educational qualifications, an acceptable content mastery of subjects they intend to teach, and demonstrate the aptitude and a genuine passion for teaching.'
Well, Alfian had the requisite educational qualifications, but surely no one expects relief teachers to "demonstrate the aptitude and a genuine passion for teaching"? Was Lui attempting to obfuscate hiring for fulltime teaching positions with relief teaching?
He added: 'The values they hold and espouse are also an important consideration as they are important role models for our children.'
-- Straits Times, 28 August 2007, MOE rejects
about 100 relief teachers a year
The Straits Times' last paragraph may be the key. I had speculated before that Alfian was being shut out because he was outspoken on politics and gay issues (in Singapore it is impossible to be outspoken on gay issues without being political -- it comes with the terrain). This "role model" excuse that Lui referred to is notorious the world over for its handy use in discriminating against people you don't like.
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June 2007
I heard from Alfian Sa'at on 15 May 2007 that he had lost his relief teaching job. On receiving a telephone call from the Ministry of Education, his school terminated him at once. No reason was provided. That night, he was extremely upset and swore he would "get to the bottom of this".
Privately, I suspected it would be an uphill task, though I'm sure that he too was not so naïve as to think it would be an easy thing to achieve. All I could do was to encourage him to document every step of the process. Documentation has a power that is often underestimated.
I am glad that he has done so. You can see his exchange of letters with the Ministry of Education on his blog.
He tells of how his work had been much appreciated by East View Secondary School to the extent that they had asked him to confirm that he would be staying on for a few months more. Yet within hours of that, his head of department would tell him they had been told to terminate his contract. Alfian wrote, "When I queried him as to whether this was based on my performance in school, he assured me, in his own words, that 'professionally and pedagogically, we had no problems with you'."
They required such an immediate departure that the school was left scrambling to find another relief teacher with no notice. Midyear exams were approaching for the students; where exactly are our educators' priorities?
Perhaps it's only a neighbourhood school, not one that serves the children of the elite? As Alfian himself noted in an earlier blogpost, "Some of these classes have had up to four relief teachers in the space of half a year. Every new relief teacher .... also meant abandonment."
So what was the reason for terminating him? In reply to Alfian's letter to the Ministry, they wrote,
the Ministry of Education sets stringent criteria in the recruitment of relief teachers. This is understandably so when we strive to achieve a high standard in Education. With keen competition, this Ministry has an arduous task of considering each applicant based on several factors. MOE needs to determine which applicants most appropriately meet its organisational needs. In the registering of relief teachers, we look at each applicant in view of the specific requirements of the Ministry at the time, considering each application as a whole, on its own merit. While many capable candidates apply every year, only those that best meet the organisation's requirements will be considered for appointment.
109 words saying abosulutely nothing. No, I take that back. They do say something: "We don't want to tell you why."
And to cap it all, the letter from the Ministry ended by referring Alfian to their HR policies,
For more information on HR matters, please refer to our HR Online at http://intranet.moe.gov.sg/hr_online/circulars01.htm.
Did you notice that it was an intranet address, not accessible to the public? Isn't that being bloody helpful? Or intelligent? And we are paying how much to our ministers and civil servants?
* * * * *
Alfian is not an unknown quantity. He is a highly-regarded poet and playwright. However, in this instance, what comes to mind is the fact that he is also very outspoken about the marginalisation of Malays, and gays.
Both impinge on current government policies. But he is not an extremist by any stretch of the imagination, and it would be a sad day if we expected teachers to have no passionately-held opinions of their own. It would also be a very sad day if teachers did not inspire our students to have the courage of their convictions.
If the ministry's real reason for terminating his services was that he had been vocal about the marginalisation of Malays, then that act itself proves the complaint. It would also make an utter mockery of racial equality in Singapore.
More likely, he is being penalised for being gay. I say this because we in People Like Us have been hearing other similar cases where gay teachers have been shunted out or into dead-end non-teaching jobs. Each time, no reason is provided. But unlike Alfian, they have not documented their cases and made a public issue of their treatment.
In a way, we understand their situation. They needed a job. Perhaps they had families who depend on them, or loans to pay back. Going public would make things much harder. But I would speculate that it's precisely because the earlier cases have not gone public, that the witch-hunt continues. So I am personally glad that Alfian has demanded an explanation from the government.
If there is such a secret policy, how is that fair to the many gay men and women who invest years (and dollars) at university or the National Institute of Education preparing to be teachers, only to be denied the chance to fulfill their calling soon after joining the teaching service?
So hiring policies cannot be secret. But if the ministry lets it be known that they will discriminate against lesbians and gays, then people will no doubt ask: What about Goh Chok Tong's statement in July 2003 about not discriminating against openly gay civil servants? Alfian has been as open as they come, and the school had no problems with him. If Goh and the government does not want to be accused of bad faith in making such public statements in order to falsely entice people to join the civil service, then they had better come clean.
* * * * *
Once again, this shows how badly Singapore needs a Freedom of Information Act, such as the one that the UK has [1]. Such a law would oblige the government to provide substantive information -- not the opaque whitewash that the ministry gave Alfian -- in response to specific requests.
More and more developed countries are enacting such laws because they realise that good governance is not served by ministers and bureaucrats being able to hide what they are doing. With power must come accountability. If the public can be prevented from knowing how decisions are made or what policies are in effect, then all sorts of abusive -- and corrupt -- practices can fester.
How did this ministry award a contract to a company owned by the minister's brother-in-law?
We have stringent contract-awarding procedures in place, the spokesman will say, and all contracts so awarded would have been assessed by our in-house committee of experts to be the optimum among the offers received by us, an assessment based on checklists that have been rigourously developed so as to cover all relevant aspects of the project in question.
How much money did that statutory board promise the foreign university to entice them to set up here; what were the assumptions used in the business plan, and how were those assumptions assessed to be realistic?
What projections were made such that the maternity hospital ended up with more wards than they needed, eventually having to mothball some of them [2], while other hospitals were shortchanged on expansion such that they overflowed with patients, with emergency cases turned away?
Alfian's case is not an isolated issue. It points to a much larger weakness in governance in Singapore. Opacity is a potent tool for those who wish to oppress us. It denies citizens the information they need to judge for themselves how good the government is in its job, and whether they live up to their promises (e.g. non-discrimination). It allows them to hide mistakes that they have made. It gives them the power to do what they please to ordinary citizens, leaving the small guy with no recourse.
For the sake of those larger issues, we must take this case as far as we can. The government must not be allowed so easily to get away with it.
Dreamt by Shurlene min at
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Is same-sex marriage a practical consideration in this age of globalisation?
Is same-sex marriage a practical consideration in this age of globalisation?There has been an increased emphasis on human rights and freedom especially in republican countries like the United Kingdom in this age of advancement. Hence, when same-sex marriage, which is a step further into a homosexual relationship, starts to surface in the society of the world, many carry the question of acceptation as it is a choice of freedom which brings about both positive and negative impacts.
Yes - a practical consideration
1. In most of the countries like Germany and France, where same-sex marriages are legalised, the parties involved in same sex marriages are forbidden to make medical decisions for their partners in an emergency. The hospitals are usually forced by state laws to go to their families for medical decision. In some cases, contacting their family members would be a difficult task as most of them would have distanced themselves from them due to their limited acceptance of homosexuality. So, same-sex marriage is a practical condition so that everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or race, is given equal freedom and choices.
2. The reason why people are uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality roots primarily from the fact that for many years, society has promoted the idea that a marriage between members of the same sex is contemptible and against the nature. And Constitutional government was established to ensure that powerless minorities are still protected from the tyranny of the majority. So, simple discomfort is not a reasonable basis for disallowing it - how many Southern whites were once uncomfortable with allowing black children to attend the same schools as their own, or drink at the same drinking fountain? Half a century ago, those ideas were just as unthinkable - yet nowadays, hardly anybody sees them as a problem, seeing the fears as nothing more than racism. So, like any other forms of discrimination, sexual discrimination should not be encouraged and thus, same-sex marriage is a practical consideration, given enough time for people to change their discriminatory thinking.
No - an impractical consideration1. Many would refute that same-sex marriage defies the task of reproducing which nature assigned to humans as they believe that marriages are for procreation and ensuring the continuation of the species. It is true to a large extent that if same-sex marriage is legalised in many parts of the world, more homosexual couples would get married and there may be a decrease in birth rate as they are unable to reproduce with the same sex.
A decreasing birth rate has been a worry for many countries as it means an ageing population, which leads to many implications. Thus, same-sex marriages should not be practically considered in this age of globalisation.
2. Furthermore, if same-sex marriage is being practically considered and legalised in many countries with reserved and traditional values like China and Singapore, it will arouse a lot of dissatisfaction from the society of the world at large. The reason is that the practice of sexual discrimination is still prominent and it takes time to gradually change their reserved attitude and mindset.
The question of whether same-sex marriage is a practical consideration depends on the values and thinking of different individuals. To a large extent, same sex marriage is a practical consideration, as it will lead to total freedom and equality- even though it may arouse citizens' dissatisfaction and discontentment. Yet, in this age of globalisation and liberalisation, the subject matter is no longer as taboo as it was, and people are more open minded than ever. Moreover, to legalise such marriages would be a big step forward for the betterment of society, by rooting out sexual discrimination. Thus, authorities should consider such moves seriously in order to optimize the social welfare of all.
Dreamt by Shurlene min at