The fallacy of “Be faithful” as a safe sex message
Dear Solo Bear, thank you very much for taking the time to read and comment ( http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/thorny-issues-with-sex/#comment-232) — I believe discussion is very important, especially when we do not agree. (Addressing your PS first, I don’t know how to enable the function to alert the poster or anyone of replies. If anyone can tell me how to, i’ll be glad to do so)
To me, “Be faithful” as an advice for safe sex, is like telling people to “BE HONEST” as a crime prevention national campaign advice to decrease theft. In both cases, being faithful and being honest are very good moral values that I would applaud anyone for. However, in both cases, you are putting your own safety in the hands of a potential adulter or thief.
Just as, in our crime prevention messages, we tell people, the pickpockets are out there and they are trying to get you, so please be paranoid and zip up your bags properly, we should continue to tell people that husbands are not as faithful as we hope they would be. so please protect yourself.
Just as in our rape prevention messages, we tell people, there are rapist out there, so please don’t go through deserted parks at night, we should continue to tell people that husbands are not as faithful as we hope they would be. so please protect yourself.
Educating husbands to be faithful is great, and yes we should do that. Just like educating the public to respect the consent rights of women, and not rape them in deserted parks is great, and yes we should do that. But just because these educational campaigns are ongoing, and I would say, successful enough, we should never put our lives at risk by walking through deserted parks late at night. Ditto for the husband. The emotional turmoil from having a philandering husband is terrible enough, without having to deal with another problem of HIV.
While the condom is not 100%, when used correctly and consistently, it protects up to 99%, but more importantly, it is the ONLY method of STI prevention during sex.
As for the case of young unmarried girls, I think you’ve mistaken my meaning. I never, and would never, say that they can have a good fling without getting STIs.
My point is that STIs affect EVERYONE the same way, it does not matter whether you are a slut or a housewife, you’re smart or stupid, Christian or athiest, gay or straight, husband or unmarried girl, STIs are non-discriminatory, it affects you the same way in your virgin attempt at sex , or your 100th attempt. And so no matter WHO you are, WHAT you are, how many times you’ve had sex, PLEASE stay safe, and use a condom. And BE PREPARED to use one. Just because you are a great faithful person, who succumbed unintentionally to temptation or peer pressure or whatever, for that JUST one time, and so were caught unprepared,and had unprotected sex, it does not mean that you will be safe. You are at a much higher risk than a gay prostitute who protects himself 100% of the time.
Thorny issues with Sex
I’ll like to discuss 2 major points that were omitted by The Sunday Times when they published our(AWARE’s) letter ( http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/aware_sex_education/ )regarding teenage sexuality. I suspect they omitted these points because they are really thorny issues, with no easy, non-controversial solutions. I see no easy way out as well, but still I think these issues should be brought out for discussion, in hope that someone reading might have good suggestions or a different angle to it. Definitely should not just sweep it under the carpet.
POINT 1
FACT: If you’re female, being MARRIED is your biggest risk factor for getting and STI or unwanted pregnancy.
There is a common misconception that unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a problem of teenagers. The fact is that in Singapore, teenagers account for only about 5% of the STI cases and about 10% of the abortion cases. About 2/3 of 12,000 – 14,000 abortions here are performed on married women, and 2/3 of the female HIV patients here are faithful wives who contracted the infection from their husbands.
When over 10,000 married women find themselves in the position of having to consider an abortion, every year, in a country like Singapore, where the education system is supposedly one of the world’s best, where condoms are easily available at any supermarket, convenience store and pharmacy, where birth control pills are available for a mere $5 for a month’s supply at public clinics, we really have to reconsider our current sex education system.
Unlike many programs which focus on the teenage years of girls, AWARE’s program takes a lifelong approach. This makes sense to me, because what we learn in school is meant to see us through our entire lives. English, mathematics, science, health education, moral education – all these are as applicable to us today as they were when we were primary school students. Likewise with sex education, the overwhelming majority of people would have sex at some point in their lives, either when they get married, or before they do.
Preaching against premarital sex gives the impression that sex within marriage is somehow safe. Vocal objections in the media to teenage sex, and laws protecting girls below the age of 16, give the impression that sex is safer for older people. Sadly, the fact that the majority of abortion and STI patients are married, and are not teenagers, highlights the importance of equipping people with lifelong skills. The best age to start would be of course, at puberty, where schools provide the best platform and opportunity for giving our adults of tomorrow the information they need.
Taking a lifelong approach, we can see the limitations of the abstinence-only message. The abstinence message is only useful for teenagers. The abstinence message is unhelpful in preventing over 8000 married women from having unwanted pregnancies each year. The abstinence message is unhelpful for the older person who has decided to engage in sex and is looking for ways to practice it safely.
Telling people that being faithful would reduce their risk of getting STI infections is unhelpful for the faithful housewife who feels powerless to stand up to her philandering husband, whom she depends on financially. The abstinence and faithfulness messages are good messages, which are beneficial as a public health policy to reduce the total number of STI infections in the entire population, but they may not always be helpful at the individual’s level.
We need to tell people that unwanted pregnancies and STIs do happen to good, faithful, married people, that they happen to people with college degrees and well-paying jobs. We need to tell you that it could happen to you. We all need to know that the only contraceptive method that can protect us effectively is the condom.
That being said, I know how difficult and thorny this can be. Relationships are built on trust, not paranoia. Why would you be in a relationship with someone you can’t even trust to be faithful, and have to insist on a condom years after being married? As national policy makers, what kind of advice can you give to the faithful partner? There is no easy answer. At the end of the day, we are all human, all vulnerable to fall, and we do. After the forgiveness or divorce is through, the last thing we want to deal with is HIV. The only thing we can do, then, is to equip people with the raw hard facts, rather than give a false sense of assurance, and leave them to decide for themselves.
POINT 2
FACT : Making it a criminal offense of having sex with girls under 16 can harm the under-16 girls having sex.
In the course of conducting these workshops for these students, I have met girls under 16 who love their teenage boyfriends so much, that instead of risking their boyfriends going to jail, they risk their health and lives by sticking objects up their birth canal to do a DIY abortion at home. I have met teenage girls so terrified of authority, they will risk their safety going out with strangers met online while keeping their parents in the dark. I have met girls who come under so much peer pressure to have sex, or who are outright blackmailed – with compromising mobile phone videos and photos for example.
Again, there is no easy answer. The law is there to deter and prosecute malicious sex predators—who tend to be adults. But the law is a weak deterrent for teenage boys whose girlfriends have promised not to tell. Fortunately, it seems that the courts are a lot more lenient to these teenage boys – still, they get probation, simply for having sex. The law has resulted in under-16s going to the doctors only in the late stage of pregnancies or STIs, when it becomes a lot more complicated to treat. How do we get around this problem? I honestly don’t know. I tell teenagers that their health should be No.1 priority, and that no doctor can force them to reveal the identity of their boyfriend.
I understand that condoms can fail especially when used incorrectly. So I show teenagers how to use it correctly, and I make sure they practice using it correctly before leaving my workshop. I make sure they know that even if they do not go “all the way”, STIs can still spread through oral sex or heavy petting, and pregnancies can still happen even if their boyfriends “pull out” in time. I understand that even with practice, people can still fail to use condoms properly or fail to use it at all. So I introduce teenagers to the Morning-after-pill, which is the second and last chance at preventing an unwanted pregnancy.
I understand that we can be pressured into having sex at times, and we can mistake sex for love at times. So I teach teenagers how to negotiate effectively for what they want – whether it is abstinence or sex with condom use. I go through with them what makes a relationship healthy or not, and how to move the relationship towards a healthier direction, or how to get out of it if that cannot be done.
We need go beyond the simplistic view that STIs and unwanted pregnancies are the problems of unruly promiscuous teenagers, and take a closer look at what reality is. We will then see that simply telling them to abstain, will not help the ones who truly need help, and will not help the adults that our teenagers would eventually become.
Ref:
Profile of women presenting for abortions in Singapore at the National University Hospital
Kuldip Singh*, Y.F. Fong, S.Y. Loh Contraception 66
http://www.geocities.com/mathia_lee_yu_chun/singaporeabortions.pdf
Rising Trends of STIs and HIV Infection in Singapore – A Review of Epidemiology Over the last 10 Years (1994 to 2003)
Priya Sen, , Hiok-Hee Tan, Roy KW Chan, Ann Acad Med Singapore
http://www.geocities.com/mathia_lee_yu_chun/STIepidemiology.pdf
Condoms – 85% or 99% effective?
Everyone (and every website) is either claiming that condoms are 85% effective or 99% effective, depending on whether they are pro-abstinence or pro-condom use. Some people have tried to reconcile these 2 figures by saying that with correct use, the condom is 99% effective while with incorrect use, it is 85% effective.
But what do the figures really mean?
I did a bit of research, and came across this letter (see attached, ‘8th Dec’ ) published on 8th December 2004 in Today. (I’m not sure where he got his information from; I looked up the original NIH article, and attached it here too). Here is the most interesting bit:
That figure refers more accurately to risk reduction. The 2001 report by the United States’ National Institute for Health that Dr Hui quotes, states: “Among participants who reported always using condoms, the summary estimate of HIV/Aids incidence was 0.9 seroconversion (HIV-positive testing) per 100 person years. Among those who reported never using condoms, (it) was 6.7 seroconversions per 100 person years.”
Overall, it was estimated that “condoms provided an 85 per cent reduction in HIV/Aids transmission risk” when comparing “always” with “never” users of condoms.
What this means is, for every 100 couples (where one partner is HIV-positive) who have repeated sex over a year and who use condoms every time, only 0.9 persons will test positive. Or, if you consistently have sex using condoms with an HIV-positive person over a 100-year period, your chance of becoming HIV-positive after 100 years would be 0.9 per cent.
The 85-per-cent figure arrived at is because the risk of infection in having sex with an HIV-positive person without using a condom is not 100 per cent.
If it were, the figure would be 99.1 per cent.
I went looking through other research articles, and found that there are 2 main ways people calculate their “effectiveness” statistics.
The first way (and this is supposed to be the correct way, according to my professors at NUS) is the one shown above, where you ask, out of 100 condom users, how many get infected/ pregnant? Then you ask the same question of the non-condom users. Then you calculate the percentage difference and that’s the effectiveness. So even if 1/10,000 condom users got infected, but 8/10,000 non-condom users got infected, the effectiveness is still 80%. According to our local NUH study, only 1 of 2000 patients surveyed got an abortion due to condom failure.
So , 85% effectiveness does NOT mean that 8.5 out of 10 times you have sex with a condom, you’ll be protected, but 1.5 out of 10 times, your condom will fail you.
The second way, which is what condom companies like do, is to ask, out of 100 condoms, how many will burst when it shouldn’t? And the answer is usually much less than 1 out of 100 for the GOOD brands. So then you have 99% effectiveness!
What do all these mean for the USERS?
Firstly, condoms are still the ONLY way to protect yourself against STIs.
Abstinence is definitely great, but only if you choose to abstain your whole life long. The moment you decide to have sex (at 16, at 26, when you’re married, when you’re 46, whatever), condoms are your only protection against STIs. Be faithful? Remember, most female HIV patients in Singapore are faithful wives.
Secondly, if used INCORRECTLY, condoms are 0% effective – as good as not using.
Forget what people say about, with incorrect, inconsistent use, condoms are only 85% effective, rather than 99%.
Think about it, if your condom bursts, or you put it on too late, or it leaked, or it slipped off, or whatever happened, body fluids would have already been exchanged, which is exactly what would have happened if you did not use a condom.
However, even if you did not use a condom, it does not mean you DEFINITELY would get pregnant or get an STI. So when you look at those statistics, don’t think that just because not EVERYONE got pregnant or got an STI when they didn’t use condoms correctly it means there’s some protection. The message we need to stress is, Use a condom, and use it right!
Teenage Magazine gives misleading advice on teenage sex
The Editor
Teenage Magazine,
57 Loyang Drive
Singapore 508968
Dear Editor
I was very glad to see your article “Contraception Misconception’ by Aishah Abdul Hamid in the Dec 08 issue of Teenage.
Teenagers often turn to magazines for advice and information, so such articles like yours play an instrumental role in keeping teenagers healthy, when they choose to engage in sexual activity. The mention of the different forms of contraception available also gives teenagers make an informed choice.
However, I am quite concerned that the article seems to promote the use of the Pill over condom use, because the Pill offers absolutely NO protection against STIs. Promoting the Pill over the condom a dangerous message to bring to teenagers, who often do not have long term faithful relationships at that age. Teenagers also seldom go for health screening before engaging in sex, and so have no clue if their partners carry any STIs like HIV.
Teenagers who choose to use the Pill after reading that “I use a condom all the time. It’s the safest form of contraception” is actually a “Teenage Myth” will be putting themselves at very high risk for all kinds of STIs. While it is true that the pill is more effective at preventing pregnancies compared to the condom, the CONSISTENT and CORRECT use of condoms is the ONLY method that protects against STIs. It might not be 100% safe, but it is significantly safer than using the Pill.
It would be very helpful if you can carry an article in your subsequent issue to highlight this aspect of contraception – that condoms , not Pills, protect against STIs. Because the majority of condom failures result from the inconsistent and incorrect use of the condom, I would ask that you also carry an article to educate teens on the correct use of the condom ( http://www.dsc-sexualhealth.com.sg/showpage.asp?id=38 ).
I would also suggest that you provide information on where teens can go to for prescriptions eg. For the Emergency Pill. , and the approximate cost involved. Ignorance of where to seek for medical help and fear of the high monetary costs involved are a major reason for teens not seeking help.
Another reason why teens do not go to doctors for help, even when they are pregnant or infected with an STI, is that they are under 16 and are afraid of getting their partners into trouble with the law. In protecting their partners from the 10 – 20 yrs jail sentence, they are putting their health and lives at risk.
Should you need more information, I would be very happy to help you, as would any sexual healthcare provider or educator in Singapore.
Thank you very much for your attention and consideration.
Best Regards,
Mathia Lee
AWARE Comprehensive Sexuality Education Trainer
(I am writing in my own personal capacity, though I believe these views reflect that of everyone in this CSE programme that has been conducting workshops for teenage girls since 2007)
Making babies
” The desire for a child cannot justify the “production” of offspring”
- Roman Catholic Church, in a statement disapproving of modern reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilisation
I opened my copy of Times today and saw this qoute. Hmmm….am back into my comfort zone….
Often times, in the debate about reproductive technologies, arguments are raised, that I find can be equally applied to natural reproduction.
If the desire for a child cannot justify the “(artificial) production” of offspring, then why should the desire for a child justify the natural production of offspring?
Societal expections? Duty? A gurantee for old age? National service? Baby bonus? Prohibition of contraception? Divine will a.k.a accident ?
Seldom do people want a child because, “The world is so beautiful and living is such a wonderful experience that I must bring a child into this world so that he can enjoy it”.
Given that most children are going to be born into great suffering (look at the world today), and that the highest birthrates are recorded in places like Afganistan, perhaps we should give some thought into that question
and in this important way, having a child wrongs that child”
Do you think that the State should intervene into the procreative process? I once argued, Yes , in my philosophy paper
http://www.geocities.com/mathia_lee_yu_chun/StateIntervention.pdf
AWARE’s Comprehensive Sex Ed Programme
Please see latest (7 May o9) post “AWARE’s Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) : Re Homosexuality, anal sex, pre-marital sex“
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Here’s AWARE’s letter in response to the Sunday Times teenage sex article that ST did not publish:
[Correction: Sunday Times published it on today's edition of Sunday Times(21 Dec 08). Ommited lines are marked in bold here ]
It is with great empathy that we at AWARE have read your special report” the young and sex”, dated Dec.14, 2008. When an incident such as this one, of the pre-teen girl who invited a 16-year-old boy to have sexual intercourse, hits nearer home, we begin to question why. Instead of looking for a scapegoat and where to place blame, AWARE believes that educating the youth about sex, sexuality and self esteem issues related to Body Image, must be a significant component of every child’s education. To this end, AWARE has introduced Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) workshops for teens and for teachers in schools. Sexual curiosity is the result of a natural biological hormonal response in the young and technology in their hands has merely enabled them to become more public and explicit. How can we deal with this? Through education and open communication alone. Some answers to your question: “Why are they starting so young” may be:
1. Some teens engage in sexual activity to feel a sense of self-worth and love. Solution: help teens build a sense of self-worth through healthy means. Our CSE program discusses the effects of basing our self-esteem on sex. Our Body Image program discusses how our self-worth allows us to stay healthy and safe, and explores the false assumptions and the unhealthy ways of achieving self-worth.
2. Some teens engage in sexual activity out of a sense of curiosity. Solution: short of monitoring teens 24/7, what we need is to equip them with accurate, responsible and complete information to make wise choices, and to make healthy choices about sex. Our CSE program has been proven to do that. We educate youth on the consequences of each choice. Our CSE teaches them to stay healthy and responsible, should they choose to engage. It also teaches them condom usage, as user ignorance is the biggest reason for failure.
3. Some teens engage in sexual activity because they don’t know how to communicate and negotiate for alternatives. Solution: equip and empower them with the skills to say “NO”. Our CSE does that.
Prosecution might be a deterrent for malicious adult sex predators, not teens. Education is what the young need. Fear of prosecution only prevents youth from seeking advice and information from reliable authorities, or seeking help when pregnancy / Sexually transmitted infections (STI) occur. We hear of DIY abortions done by under-14s to prevent their boyfriends from being jailed, hence endangering their own lives.
Lack of open communication about sex from adults, be they parents or teachers drives children to rely on peers or media/internet for information, which may often be less than reliable.
Sex education needs to go beyond preaching abstinence as the only form of sex education. This is not the reality as statistics show. Education should provide life – long skills. Being comfortable with ones sexuality and practicing safe sex needs to be taught to teens so that it is bridged into adulthood as well.
We believe that we should tackle this issue at the prevention stage – by empowering teens and adults to NOT get into a situation where they have to consider abortion, adoption, single parenthood etc. It does not help to criticize the young after they have had abortions, kept their child or developed AIDS.
AWARE will further its education program, by conducting talks and workshops for teachers on how to design programs and conduct Comprehensive Sex Education. We are looking to bring these talks to parents as well.
Dr..Roopa Dewan Public education; Mathia Lee- CSE AWARE;
Minimum wage should come from taxpayers, not businesses
Here’s my 2-cents worth on the Minimum-wage issue that many people seem to be advocating as a means to help the lower income. My disclaimer: I’m way out of my depth here, I’m ignorant about how the country is run financially or how economics works (my JC refused to let me do Econs with Bio, and forced me to do Physics instead. No disrespect to you physicists out there, but till today, I don’t see how learning the equations of gravity has helped me at all — no matter what, we all stick to the ground). So this is my 2-cents worth that i’ll ask everyone to take with a pinch of salt. And I’ll LOVE to hear your views, especially if you disagree.
You know how, during PE lessons, when you have to play a 2-sided ball game, and you need to form your teams ? There’ll be some really really lousy people (I was one) , and if the teacher forced everybody to play, the team quality will be compromised with the lousy people. To have good teams, and a good game, it is more beneficial for the lousy people to stay out of the game. These lousy people “contribute” by staying out of the way. Now, lets say that the teacher rewards the teams — the winning team gets a chocolate bar each. If you were a lousy person, staying out of the game means you WILL NEVER get a chocolate bar. If you insist on being in the game, you MAY get a chocolate bar because your team mates might be able to compensate for you and still win the game. But if you insist on being in the game, the ENTIRE team will actually lower its chances of getting chocolate bars and will thus suffer with you in the game. But its not fair to force you out and deny you of your chance totally. The most beneficial thing for the team to then do is, ask you to stay out of the game, and for agreeing to do so, they will each give you a small portion of their chocolate bar each, such that at the end, you get almost the same amount that everyone else gets. This way, the team has a better chance of getting the chocolate, and you have contributed to that increased chance by staying out, and you are compensated for that act. The teacher should not be the one to give you, the lousy person, extra chocolate, because then the teacher will be rewarding both the top players, and the non-players, and everyone would naturally want to be a non-player then.
Taking this principle, and applying it to the Minimum Wage issue.
I do agree that anyone living in singapore has to have a certain minimum income in order to live in a decent manner. But I do see the govt view about having to remain competitive. Because if I were a businessman, I wouldn’t like laws that prevent me from doing my businesses at the lowest possible cost. How would I benefit, as a businessman, from hiring a more expensive person over a cheaper person, for the same work done? And how would I benefit to pay someone more than he is worth, because of a minimum wage law? Businesses may move out to regional countries if we force them to pay a minimum wage, which i suspect might be quite high to make sure the worker can live decently in Singapore.
Businesses moving out of the country is bad for the country. When the businesses move out , these low income earners would be reduced from fighting for a minimum wage to fighting for a job. That leads to problems for the country as a whole due to the social cost.
So at the end of the day, it is the entire country’s population that benefits from making sure business can be unethical, and can pay workers competitively, so that they remain here. But who pays the price for that benefit? Currently, it’s these low income earners that pay the price. Do they benefit? Yes, to a certain extent, because at least they have jobs. But it’s the ENTIRE population that really stands to benefit the most, and the entire population is NOT paying for it at the moment. We’re trying to shift the cost of this benefit from the low income earners to the businesses, when we are the ones benefiting. We are the ones who ought to pay the costs.
And so I think that these low income earners should have their income TOPPED UP to that minimum level to live decently. Topped up with TAXPAYER money, rather than with the businesses money. And we should pay more taxes for that. Because we benefit from their “cheap labour”. Even for the chronically unemployed, one could argue tha we benefit from their “unemployment” because these people tend to be really lousy workers and forcing businesses to hire them will not be productive. So we should support them with our taxes.
And of course we need the government to enforce that tax increase. Charities are unfair, because with the charity model, the kind-hearted people are paying the cost, and why should we reward selfishness and make the kind-hearted pay? Taxation make sures that everyone contributes fairly.
So what do you all think?
School killed Confidence and Creativity ?
Mr Alfie Othman threw 2 questions to the audience ( http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/12/interesthink-3-gets-people-talking/ ):
How do we teach students to be creative? How do we teach students to be confident?
A few years back, I was teaching Sunday School in church. During the singing session, where the entire group of 3 – 7 yr olds gathered to have fun singing together, it was really easy to tell apart the 6 year olds from the 7 year olds.
Children 6 and below had a spark in their eyes, a joy in their movement. When they reached 7, this spark was gone, their movements muted.
What happened to them, that made them change so much in just one year? They entered primary school – that’s what happened.
Children who are in kindergarten or pre-school tend to respond freely to the Song Leader. They dance freely on their own accord, they sing loudly, they might run around a little, disturb their friends a little. When the Song Leader shouts a question out to the audience, they raise their hands, jumping up and down, shouting out their answers and opinions.
Meanwhile, the primary one group of students would be standing there, singing because they are supposed to, but they no longer jump up and shout out with enthusiastic spontaneity anymore.
They are the favorites of most Song Leaders, to be fair. They are the first group to respond when the Song Leader is trying to quiet the crowd, to get the crowd lined up into their respective age groups, or simply to respond to any instructions give. They sing when asked, stand when asked, answer questions only when called on and asked directly. Their answers are short, sharp and to the point, unlike the 3 year olds who tend to launch into their entire life history to explain their answer.
The Killing of Confidence and Creativity
What has happened here? Confidence has been killed, creativity has been killed.
In my view, children are born with a natural confidence and creativity. I’ll invite anyone looking for evidence to spend a day with a toddler. Ask the child a question, and she’s likely to give you all and any thing that pops into her mind without worrying if that’s correct or silly – that’s confidence. Leave a child alone at your work desk, and you’ll find him taking apart every gadget you have, or putting things together in the most unimaginable ways – that’s creativity.
So asking the question, How do we teach Confidence and Creativity ? , might be the wrong question to ask.
The question we need to ask is, How did we kill Confidence and Creativity?
And it’s so important to start with the right question, before we can get solutions that work.
So what killed confidence?
Here’s my take. When each test and assignment is graded, when students are separated into classes and schools according to their grades, it reinforces the message that “You’re not good enough” in EVERYBODY – yes, even that child who was second best in the whole country. Think about this, if your spouse told you, You are the second best in my life, or your parent told you, You are the second best child I love, would you feel happy that you are better than ten thousand others, or will you be devastated? How many test results does a child have to get back, before his confidence is shattered? Looking at the Primary One kids in my Sunday School, I’ll say, ‘Not many’.
How then do we assess students and motivate them to study? What other way is there?
I think the children have already given us the answers. Look at their games – their Xbox, their PSP. What motivates them to spend hours and hours on the games, ignoring their meals, their sleep, and everything else in life? The games that can be a much bigger challenge than Maths or Chinese or English combined.
I do find an addictive thrill trying a task again and again, till I’m good enough to advance to the next level, where I’ll try again and again to get to the next. I also know that if you put me at a gaming center, hired a tuition teacher to stand behind all of us, distribute big crosses whenever we make a mistake, constantly yell that’s not the right way to do something, distributed grades to all of us after each try, and gave us only 2 tries at most, I will never ever touch a game ever again.
I’m not an expert at game psychology, I can’t pinpoint an theories behind gaming motivation. But I suspect that we should get gamers and game designers into our education overhaul committees instead of educators, who are very experienced at killing confidence.
How about Creativity? What killed Creativity?
Coming from NUS Science, and being part of the emerging Life Sciences research industry, I’ve the privilege of saying that more than 50% of people are interact with are foreigners. The second most common trait (the first being apathy) that differentiates locals and foreigners is that locals are always looking for the “correct answer”. Have a discussion with locals about the education system, and half will be asking ‘ what is the right way to teach?’ ‘who knows the right way?’ ‘what are that person’s qualifications?’ – there is always this need to look at an authority to provide the answers, and there is always this need to look for a “qualified” person. The other half will of course tell you ‘I don’t know. No use one lah, cannot do anything about it anyway’. Foreigners on the other hand, will tell you their personal opinion, and the discussion will be about all the different opinions brought up, what their strengths and merits are. And all these locals and foreigners are your university graduates and PhD graduates.
I think an education system where there are answer sheets and model answers, where an answer is either right or wrong, and the teacher unilaterally determines the right and wrong, builds a culture where there is a “right” way for everything that is determined by a qualified authority. That is the antithesis of creativity.
You may ask, ‘Creative answers are possible for art and literature, but what about Mathematics? 2+2 will always be 4, there has to be a right answer!’
My proposal is this.
Stop setting questions that ask “ 2+2 = ?”
Instead ask “List 5 equations that give the answer 4”
Possible equations = 1 x 4 = 4 , 8 – 4 = 4 , 8 / 2 = 4 , 2+2 = 4, 20 – 16 = 4 ………. The answers are infinite….
Our grave need for an education overhaul
The need for an education overhaul that stops segregating students according to artificial measures of merit and that stops people from saying ‘No other way’ , goes far beyond education itself.
Our educational stratification and ways of selecting leaders from the elite has resulted in policy makers that see poverty as a number, a grade on their career exam sheet, and not the suffering and hopelessness that is the reality of 300,000 (Ravi Philemon, http://singaporesocialactivist.blogspot.com ), because they don’t have a single friend who cannot pass even primary school. The stratification has created a poverty trap as well, filled with the people who couldn’t pass primary school , and has not a single friend from the university to make them feel like that could be a possibility for them too.
Our education system that breeds a culture where there is a right answer to everything, and that right answer is determined by qualified authorities opens up a huge potential for abuse, where qualified authorities recommend policies out of their own self-interest, and no one questions them because of the strength of their qualifications.
What YOU , my reader, can do about this
My dear readers, if you have read up to this point, I want to go beyond thanking you. I want to ask you to take one more step, to share YOUR ideas. There are several ways to. The convenient way is to leave a comment, or email me privately at mathialee@yahoo.com . You can also give your feedback and suggestions directly to the government committee here http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/Events/PRIMARYSCHOOLEDUCATIONREVIEW/tabid/149/Default.aspx .
But of course , you know the most important thing you must do : Stop killing the confidence and creativity of any child you might ever meet.
(Background: Mr Alfie Othman gave a talk at interesThink3 (http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/12/interesthink-3-gets-people-talking/ ). Mr Alfie Othman is part of the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee is convened by the government to study ways to enhance primary education in Singapore. (http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/2008/10/ms-grace-fu-forms-primary-educ.php) )
How we stop apathy
I really want to thank everybody for their encouragement to me, especially to this someone who wrote
Found this article today, it is a very short article but it is deeply meaningful to me. How many times have I hesitated to do something when a situation arise in front of me that prompts the people around to go into action? When you see someone in need, the first instinct is to go and help the person. But too many times the brain reward/punishment machinery kicks in and starts to think about the consequence of the action to help, whether it will cause embarrassment, whether it is acceptable, etc.
I want to make the same commitment as the author: “The commitment to stop waiting for other’s approval or even support, the commitment to just stand up immediately to do what is right. The commitment to never standby when someone is in need.”
I like the last parting words by the author.
“Because a nation which cannot even offer someone in the rain an umbrella without a committee meeting is a nation which can never help itself or others.”
(http://thenextera.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/the-extent-of-apathy-in-singapore/)
I just wanted to say a big thank you and to let you know how much your words mean to me. You won’t believe what a big encouragement it is! I never thought that my personal thoughts could actually make any impact, so I’m so touched that you’ve decided to make the same commitment.
I’m beginning to realize it actually can be a tough commitment. Today I was at a foodcourt, and the stallholder was passing food to a customer standing out of her reach, but I was between both of them so I reached out to take the food to pass it on to her customer. The stallholder immediately recoiled her plate and yelled, ‘Did you order this? This is not yours you know!’ And I was like, ‘But I just wanted to help you pass it to her!’ The customer quickly took the plate and thanked me.
My first reaction and thoughts were ‘Ok I’m not going to do this ever again’ and a while later ‘Maybe she thinks I’ll contaminate the food by passing the plate along’.
But I’m trying to tell myself, ‘Maybe we’re just so not used to being helped that we automatically recoil from help when its given. Our defenses and suspicions just spring up because we’re more used to seeing people getting cheated than getting help’.
And I’m trying to tell myself, ‘No, I’m not going to let that stop me from my commitment. Because I am making it a point to refuse to contribute to this culture of fear.’
Honestly, I find it tough. There’re so many mental obstacles. I’m still thinking, ‘did I do the right thing giving that blind speaker the water? What if the organizers think I’m insulting their level of hospitality?’
But then again, if we act on our fears, rather than on our compassion, we can never ever expect anymore than the silence and inaction towards Myanmar.
The other day, this lady related how she heard domestic violence going on in her neighbour’s flat, and called the police, who actually told her to stop being a busy body.
I imagine it feels horrible to be called that, after trying to help. But we can’t let that stop us. Because somebody’s life actually depends on you being a busybody. And that person’s life might depend on you continuing to be a busybody, to be a bigger one to personally go over in fact, even after being unfairly insulted.
Ten years ago, my very dedicated debate teacher Ms Priya Rajan, told us, ‘You have to learn to speak with butterflies in your stomach and your heart in your mouth. When others are attacking you, that’s when you must smile, calm down, and explain to everyone why you are right.’
I don’t know if she realized it then, but I think that’s the advice that can take us one step towards saving somebody’s world.
Let’s make the pledge “I will not standby and do nothing while someone suffers”
HIV and Cervical cancer discoverers win Nobel Prize and say that …
Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, of the Institut Pasteur, shared half of the 2008 (nobel) prize for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s.
“I think I feel that we have responsibility to try to influence, especially, the politicians.” Barre-Sinoussi said. “Still, 25 years after the HIV discovery, (there is) discrimination, stigmatization against HIV-infected individuals, even criminalization. This is not acceptable. This is really not acceptable,”
German scientist Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf won the other half of the 10-million-Swedish-crown ($1.2 million) award for finding the cause of cervical cancer.
“There’s obviously a belief in many of the politicians and some other people … that you know everything, which of course is nonsense. But in a way indeed I think one cannot ignore this,” zur Hausen said.
Qouted selectively from :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081206/hl_nm/us_nobel_aids_2
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