The young lack moral compass

From http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_472080.html:

Dec 31, 2009
TEEN CRIME
The young lack moral compass

I REFER to the series of reports this week, titled 'Teen crime: A ticking time bomb'. We should be alarmed. The audacity of youth crimes is symptomatic of the moral milieu of our youth.

Contributing to the moral crisis is de-traditionalisation, which is the progressive decline in the influence of tradition and social institutions on the formation of values. This has grown in parallel with an increasingly tolerant and individualistic interpersonal morality.

Actions which were considered shameful in previous generations are now considered 'cool'. Skimpy shorts worn by girls, vulgar prints on T-shirts and inappropriate expressions of intimacy are a common sight. Youths no longer fear social stigma; some find their self-worth precisely in their fearlessness to break social conventions.

Institutional negligence is another contributing factor. Flagrant disregard for rules is rampant and left unchecked in educational institutions. I have seen students smoking, wearing flip-flops, playing poker and occupying seats reserved for staff in cafeterias, under signs that prohibit such behaviour. Warnings and campaigns have not worked.

Teachers are reluctant to discipline students for fear of parents' complaints and negative feedback from students. When students know the authorities are lax in enforcement, they lose respect for rules and push the envelope.

After getting away with small violations, they become emboldened to commit more serious offences. Unfortunately, when they cross the line, it is too late and they end up in jail.

As observed by Dr Carol Balhetchet, director of youth services at the Singapore Children's Society, parents have become more indulgent and less of a moral compass to their children.

Many parents fail to see that children who misbehave in public today will become the inconsiderate and selfish neighbours and colleagues of tomorrow.

Let's not fool ourselves with the statistic that fewer youths are arrested. Listen to their language and watch their behaviour and you know the situation is dire. With the push to make youth creative, globalised and entrepreneurial, let's help them to be moral too.

Seto Hann Hoi

Questions we need to ask

1. In what way is dressing in certain ways and smoking in school indicative of one's morality?

2. Are old traditions always morally sound and ethically justifiable, such that "detraditionalization" is automatically a negative phenomenon?

3. Is it true that "children who misbehave in public today will become the inconsiderate and selfish neighbours and colleagues of tomorrow"? Consider the converse: Is it true that children who behave in public will become considerate and selfless individuals?

4. Is the "flagrant disregard for rules" the result of weakening moral fibres or the result of a larger teenage population base? Is the observation even a valid one?

5. In what way is enforcement via authority a morally superior system to an authority that does not enforce rules as strictly?

Summary/Update - Part 1 of 2

Philosophy of Language exam was with a History Honours exam a few weeks ago, and on that day I observed how carefree and merry those History buffs were. They made jokes in good english and there seemed to be an unspoken cohesiveness amongst them and even their professor chit chatted and laughed with them. Five minutes before entering the exam classroom, you would have thought they were a bunch of friends going into a bar or something.

I've always been envious of such a class. In the first place, it's good enough to meet people who pursue the same intellectual interests as yourself. Even better if you can get along well with them. And to display such a light-hearted attitude toward examinations is surely a refreshing change from the hunched-over-notes atmosphere we find common in Singapore.

One would have thought there would be something similar going on with the Philosophy of Language students. After all, class size was similarly small, the kind that is best for cultivating a warm and jovial atmosphere. And you'd thought people who are interested enough to take such a course would bond well. But it is not the case, for a multitude of reasons I shall not explore here. If past experience is anything to go by, I doubt I'd find myself a nice Philosophy class where I'd get to know some really nice individuals. To date the best class I've been is a non-Philosophy class, and it's likely I would enjoy the company of those classes more than I would Philosophy classes. Surely there's an irony there, because, again, you'd have thought people who share the same intellectual interests would click better. That's a thesis I think that would prove to be untrue with respect to myself. The comeback, of course, would be that people who take the same classes do not necessarily have the same intellectual interests...But let's leave it at that for now.

One more thing can be said about that History class: I think they were as relaxed as they were partly because they knew they're all competent people. They were probably well-prepared for the exam and they knew they would do well. And they also knew that their friends are competent people who would also do well. And some of them probably knew that they knew. When you know that the peers you're talking to are competent people like yourself, there's a feel-good feeling that emerges. It's something akin to fighting close combat against some rivals with a group whose members you know are well-versed in close combat because you've trained with them before.

I wasn't too happy after I took the Introduction to Psychology finals. Firstly, silly sideline things were tested. More important, they told us to study the 1st half of the course for the finals when it was covered in the mid-terms. Nothing wrong with that, but only 1 out of 5 short-answer questions was related to content covered in the 1st half of the semester, and it was a question you probably didn't need to revise to answer. The annoying thing is students expend significant amounts of time and energy to revise the 1st half of the course, because we were told it was examinable for the 5 short-answer questions. Being a conscientious student that was what I did, and so I couldn't help feeling cheated.

That's all for school matters. To be honest, that's not all. I've wanted to write a critique of grading systems in general and this sem's going-ons add more fuel to the fire. It should be emphasised that I'm critical of both desirable and undesirable outcomes, not just the undesirable ones, because there's always a tendency to think people who criticise systems usually do so only because they are disadvantaged by the system. I believe I've been given the advantage in the current system many times, and I believe those advantages, as much as the disadvantages, are unfair, unjustified, incoherent, and contradictory to the tenets of an institute of higher learning. But I shan't. It is ok. I realise the best action I can take short of dropping out of the system completely is to dissasociate myself from reality as far as possible. Our lives aren't accountable to the standards of outsiders. They are to ourselves.

Hmm

And the priest? A man of broad principles. Of liberal sentiments. Even a generous man. Something of a philosopher. Yet one might say that his way through the world was so broad it scarcely made a path at all. He carried within himself a great reverence for the world, this priest. He heard the voice of the Deity in the murmur of the wind in the trees. Even the stones were sacred. He was a reasonable man and he believed that there was love in his heart.

There was not. Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay His presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom He has spoken can contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair. Trees and stones are no part of it. So. The priest in the very generosity of his spirit stood in mortal peril and knew it not. He believed in a boundless God without center or circumference. By this very formlessness he’d sought to make God manageable. This was his colindancia. In his grandness he had ceded all terrain. And in this colindancia God had no say at all.

- Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing.

...

My suffering provides me with the opportunity to show courage and patience. It provides you with the opportunity to show sympathy and help to alleviate my suffering. And it provides society with the opportunity to choose whether or not to invest a lot of money in trying to find a cure for the particular kind of suffering. A good God gives us a deep responsibility for ourselves, each other, and the world (for whether and how we flourish); and the free choice of how to exercise that responsibility. And it is very good for us to have this responsibility. Although of course a good God regrets our suffering, his greatest concern is surely that each of us shall show patience sympathy, and generosity, and thereby form a holy character. Some people badly NEED to be ill for their own sake; and some people badly need to be ill in order to provide important choices for others. Only so can some people be encouraged to take serious choices about the sort of person they are to be. For other people, illness is not so valuable.

- Richard Swinburne, Oxford theologian; link here

Singapore Idol 3 Top 3 [Updated]

Tabitha sang Superwoman very nicely. Sylvia sang a ballad song after Tabitha, and I wonder how much of Tabitha was still in viewers' minds when Sylvia sang Held (both are ballads).

How much do sequences matter? To what extent are evaluations affected by preceding ones? Exam scripts, interviews, music performances, food-tasting, applications.

Tabitha's Superwoman was great. I'm downloading the song illegally now. I only like the non-chorus bits though.

Here's the youtube video.



Nice appearance.

Lunch for Today (II) + Small Four-Wind Blessing

Lunch for today: Blk 681 Hougang Avenue 8, Western food stall called Lava Rock at a small coffeeshop. Went on a friend's recommendation. It takes the concept of Botak Jones without much success, I think, because the food isn't fantastic. For $6.50 you can get a standard meal with 2 side dishes.

Herbed garlic fish.


Honey mustard chicken.

Lamb and pork, of some variety. Water droplet on the lens there reminiscent of this afternoon's slight downpour.

Peaceful walk after lunch along uncongested roads, nice feel of the cool after-rain wind and the knowledge people are at work on a Monday while you are strolling with no deadline nor pressing issue in mind. I should have taken photos of the tranquil avenues, but I decided my attention should be held fully and uncompromisingly by the cool wind and the blue sky and the near-empty sidewalks and nothing much else.

I almost pulled off a Small Four-Wind Blessing combination in mahjong last night. If it were successful, it would be my second. What's nice about mahjong, I think, is the beauty of creating nice patterns, the beauty of receiving a very nice hand, and the tension involved in waiting for that last tile to complete that pattern you strived for. The time I successfully did the Small Four-Wind Blessing, I had such a neat opening hand I regret not taking a photo of it. Unfortunately, I alerted my partners this time round by referring to a mahjong manual someone once hand-wrote for me. It made them suspicious of what I was trying to do, so I had to abandon the plan. I guess this means I can't take a photo of a nice hand next time, because that would make people suspicious too. Heheh.