There's been some government-hype about making babies recently, so I thought I'll take a closer look at what the government actualy intends to do. My verdict - it seems that our dear PAP has been taking a more comprehensive approach in recent times. In today's papers,
The intentions of this program has been pretty clear from the outset - produce babies and keep the baby-making machine churning.FOR years, it focused on getting single graduates to meet, mingle and marry. More recently, it turned its attention to polytechnic students.
By Carolyn Quek Now the Government matchmaker is ready to spread the message of love to teenagers in junior college.
The Social Development Unit is seeking bids from those willing to teach the 16-to-19-year-olds what they need to know about dating and finding the right partner in life.
The focus is on helping girls and boys to set goals for long-term love relationships, and shore up their confidence to relate with members of the opposite sex.
Hopefully, it will get them in the right frame of mind to want to eventually marry and have babies.
The winning bidder will have to produce teaching materials and have a pool of at least 30 trainers.
The SDU wants the programme run as a pilot project, with a view to having it integrated into the JC curriculum. The 16 colleges have about 30,000 students.
The 24-year-old matchmaking unit was set up originally to fix the problem of graduates who remained unmarried into their 30s and beyond.
More recently though, it has trained its sights on younger people, helping universities fund social activities to get undergraduates together.
Last year, it started a so-called love elective at Singapore Polytechnic, to impart the finer points of coping with relationships.
The programme proved hugely popular, with places expanding from the initial 90 to 420 next semester.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic caught the love bug last October, and began teaching its students how to manage relationships using several methods, including analysing love songs.
Why the move to junior colleges now? Yesterday, an SDU spokesman would only say: 'Extending such courses to junior colleges is part of the effort.' She declined to reveal more.
Tender documents made public yesterday said the SDU wants to 'build the foundation for meaningful relationships and marriage' by equipping young people with 'relationship skills' and a 'pro-family' mindset.
The SDU's latest effort comes at a time when the shortage of babies here is back in the spotlight, with Government leaders mulling once again over the questions of how to get Singaporeans to marry and have babies earlier.
The problem is that couples are marrying later, and putting off having babies. The current birth rate of 1.29 is much lower than the 2.1 needed for the population to replace itself.
Consultant pyschotherapist Richard Lim, 43, who runs a romance, love and sexuality module for Singapore Polytechnic students, thinks it is a good idea to get teenagers up to speed about relationships early.
'When they are younger and not caught up with their careers, being able to reflect and clarify with experts about what they want in relationships will serve them well in the future,' he said.
Former SDU chief Mrs Tan-Huang Shuo Mei agreed, saying: 'It's not about encouraging JC students to get hitched, but about encouraging socialisation and developing a healthy view of relationships.'
"Hopefully, it will get them in the right frame of mind to want to eventually marry and have babies.The SDU's latest effort comes at a time when the shortage of babies here is back in the spotlight, with Government leaders mulling once again over the questions of how to get Singaporeans to marry and have babies earlier.
The problem is that couples are marrying later, and putting off having babies. The current birth rate of 1.29 is much lower than the 2.1 needed for the population to replace itself."
A novel idea? Never really had love education in my school, so I guess it's something new. Beneficial to the students? I know of some people that could certainly use some advice on how to manage their relationships, so I guess it could be beneficial, that is if they take these lessons on love seriously. As with most other "Values Education" programs introduced into the education system by the government such as CME and NE, there is the danger that students might see this love education program as just another government initiative designed with the very pragmatist motivations of achieving economic success for the nation, and consequently be equally cynical towards it as they are towards NE. For the sake of both the students who certainly have much to gain by taking this seriously, as well as the country which truly needs a vibrant Youth, the government should certainly take a more affable and less mercenary approach. (Or it should at least try to appear as such.)
For those who see nothing wrong with the government's current approach toward solving the problem of the aging population, allow me to refer you to a post by Mr Wang, of which I have quoted a segment.
Similarly, a love education program that seeks to solve the proglem of an aging population rather than to serve the students for education's sake threatens to compromise on the content and quality of the education experience for the student. (Values Education in Singapore - Tensions and Suggestions)Human Rights And The Government Baby Incentives – Part 1
However, if you are a country which likes to say “Oh, human rights are just an invention of the West; me, I’m Asian, and I’ll have nothing to do with those hypocritical human rights fanatics," then the fact that you’re a party to CEDAW doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
You may still want to support procreation, but the motivations are different. For example, the Singapore government seeks to promote higher baby production, but its motivations are purely economic; the aim is to generate a steady stream of future workers for Singapore Inc..
Then the conundrum becomes this. Babies are economically useless. This is undeniable. They can’t type; they don’t wash dishes; and for a long, long time, they definitely won’t be doing any life sciences research in a R&D laboratory. In fact, babies are very much like Temasek’s investment in Shin Corp or Merrill Lynch. One day, they might generate good returns, but that will have to be in the very, very distant future. Meanwhile, they are just a huge, constant and bleeding economic loss.
This is not an obstacle, if you view babies and parents as humans, and by virtue of being human, automatically having human rights (like those under CEDAW). But what happens if you view babies merely as future economic units, and women merely as economic-unit-producing machines? The question then becomes – do you, as a government, really dare to bite the bullet? And put your money and political will into this very long-term, risky investment?
So far, the government has failed. From the time that "Two is Enough" gave way to "Have Three If You Can Afford it", the government has never succeeded.
Maybe I'm just being over sensitive, but I sure don't like the way our government introduces policies on the basis of "we need more babies to keep our economy going". It just demeans the value of us as human beings. Have we become mere economic units whose value lies only in the fact that we can either a) produce more workers or b) contribute to the GDP?
I'm not sure. As our nation's birthday approaches, I think it's time we reflect on what our existence as a nation means.
0 comments:
Post a Comment