Why Shakespeare?

Fri, 22 May 2009
4 min read
6 Comments

It’s a slow blog day and I thought I’d bash out a quick post on this before I lose this thought once again.

We had a forum of sorts at the NIE the other day, and I raised an issue which has been close to my heart for some time. I’m gonna raise it again here now, not only because it needs to be talked about, but also because I want to save it somewhere for posterity.

My stand:

The teaching of Literature in schools should preferably center on contemporary writers, both local and global. We should only teach Shakespeare and similar writers at the university level.

Reasons/Explication:

  1. “Shakespeare and similar writers” = anything that was published before the student’s own parents were born. To be more specific:
  2. “Contemporary” = an inversely proportional function which I will work on establishing so it doesn’t seem arbitrary. It should be something along the lines of: for students sitting for the ‘O’ level in 2009, year that work was published should be between 10 – 15 years ago. For students sitting for the ‘A’ level in 2009, year that work was published should be between 16 – 30 years ago. For undergraduates, the period/genre/text type etc. is fair game – they are majoring in Literature, after all.
  3. Reason for the above: we don’t want to spend too much time deciphering the language. The ‘contemporary’ rule ensures that the language and themes are accessible to the students.
  4. One argument against my stand: Shakespeare’s work is beautiful; we stand to lose more than we gain if we stop teaching his work. My view: I agree. His work rocks. But a majority of students really have a problem with the language (I will touch on this in my next point). Why turn them off from Literature right from the start? Maybe one way to negotiate this is to update the language used in Shakespearean works, but literary purists are going to have a problem with that as well.
  5. Another argument against my stand: students must be trained to work with the language; it’s part of the struggle to learn; there’s nothing very difficult if they try, etc. My response: The people who make this argument (and the other arguments for keeping Shakespeare in teenage students’ syllabuses) often have what I term as ‘the privilege of context’. They’re born into certain families and have access to certain kinds of environments and education which ease the struggle somewhat. For the rest of the students who don’t have these privileges, reading itself might even be a problem. We must keep them in mind when teaching.
  6. Last but not least, an argument against my stand has a bit of flawed logic in it. It goes something like this: if I went through the Singapore system and I studied Shakespeare, and I came out of it unscathed, so can the other students. No. That’s like saying we shouldn’t fix what’s broken – when we actually don’t know it’s broken because we can’t see the cracks. Furthermore, it adopts a very selfish viewpoint: I’m like this, so everyone can be the same too. The only reason why we came out of it unscathed was because: (a) even if we had problems, we could overcome it because of our inherent traits or determination to do well, and (b) See point (5).

There’s probably more to say but I’ve exhausted my words for now and I’ve to go for the production soon. But I’ll definitely want to revisit this topic again if I have the chance or if more ideas spring to mind. Nevertheless, feel free to add in your thoughts in the comments section, if you have any.

My response to “Singapore on the lookout for new NMP candidates”.

Thu, 14 May 2009
2 min read
2 Comments

I fully support any NMP who is willing to speak up for minority rights, regardless of what the minority group is. We should be fair and provide a platform for a multiplicity of voices to be heard, ranging from groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses, to NSmen (yes – even NSmen can be considered a minority group), and even QLGBTs.

At the same time, I think the people who have slandered Mr Siew Kum Hong should be ashamed of themselves. You have no right to drag anyone’s name through the mud just to fulfill your own agenda.

To these people: stop being selfish. Everyone is as human as you are and everyone wants to be treated justly and fairly.

You are lucky because you were born into a majority group – whether it is race-based, religion-based or the like. The difference between you and the people who do not belong to the same group that you belong to is purely superficial; to paraphrase Shakespeare loosely, everyone’s blood bleeds red regardless of the cut that is made. Let’s keep that in mind when making decisions for the good of Singapore society.

Also, I hope the people who have left comments that are derogatory and/or defamatory in nature will please have the guts to apologise and retract their statements. As mentioned, everyone bleeds too – how would you like it if you were the one being slandered?

~

You can read the rest of the thread here. Please do consider posting something if you feel strongly enough about the issue to do so.

Good music again, at last.

Tue, 12 May 2009
2 min read
Add Comment

I’ve finally found out what happened to Virgin Radio UK – eight months too late! It seems the station has become Absolute Radio, which is why the iTunes Internet radio link I used to use stopped working after a while.

(Some background context here: I don’t normally listen to the radio, local or otherwise, because I don’t like 80% of the music that is played, the advertising jangles are lame and the DJs’ banal chatter annoys me. But Virgin Radio was different – the songs played like my iTunes playlist, the advertisements were creative and the DJs at least displayed some degree of intelligence.

This also meant that I was introduced to new songs which I’d like too, which was good, because it helped me keep my knowledge of music fresh and relevant. But I was rather sad when the station stopped functioning, and I kind of lost interest in listening to music between then and now. No more, though!)

Anyway, I don’t know how I didn’t know about the change earlier (or maybe it never occurred to me to check), but better late than never, I guess. If you want to listen to Absolute Radio too, point your brower toward this link and click on ‘Listen Live’ to find out the ways in which you can listen to the station.

To reiterate my point about the music: they’re playing “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses now as I conclude this post.