With all this talk about abolishing the death penalty in the country, I thought I'd give a plug to this movie which was one of the best made films of 2009 and a kind of movie that is rarely seen nowadays. It's a decades long story about a murder case and the lives changed by it. Along the way it makes one of the persuasive cases against sentencing someone to death.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Interest in colour.
Every time I hear about an issue with race in my country (which means everyday) and which usually involves one race crying out that they are being endangered (as always, by another race), I am reminded of a parable as told by Jesus. To paraphrase and make relevant that parable somewhat:
A Malay man is waylaid and robbed on the roadside. Another Malay drives past, sees the injured man and quickly drives off. Somewhat later, an Indian man sees the victim and drives him to the hospital, paying all his medical bills.
Who, do you think, is that man's neighbour?
I am tired of people of one race (or ethnicity or skin colour; whichever taxanomical word you prefer) feeling endangered and threatened by others. As if their "own" kind will treat them any better.
To dream
I've met my fair share of disillusioned adults. The common theme is that when they were young they were full of passion and energy. Naturally, as the years went on, they realized that they could not actually take on the world anymore. So much for dreams and hopes.
"Wait till you're older" is what I'm told often. Indeed, time is one of the greatest judge of all things. I am 20 years old and I realize how much I've grown. When I was eleven and had just left school there was absolutely nothing for me to do. And then on a rainy evening, with nothing to do, I sat down and typed out my first real story on our new PC.
And from then onwards, I knew quite clearly what I wanted to be "when I am grown up", despite the occasional advice to be a businessman here and a lawyer there. I've had occasional detours along the way, but I always somehow ended back on the main road.
Right now, this is a detour albeit a necessary one. I'm young and full of dreams and hopes. At the very least I should try. Dear time, at least allow me that.
To learn.
On quite a few occasions in conversations with strangers and acquaintances the topic of my education comes up. Very often shock and awe is expressed as I tell them that I didn't quite attend "school".
All homeschoolers follow a curriculum. I had my own. Rather than following the educational philosophies of a bunch of North Americans (ha), I decided to learn what I wanted to learn.
Now this tends to raise questions. Perhaps I missed out on a few "essential" areas of study? Indeed, I did miss out on quite a few areas if you consider physics, chemistry, additional mathematics (a uniquely Asian subject, I noticed) as compulsory life skills.
But somehow I've survived. My knowledge is extremely uneven, that I admit. In the place of equations (the beauty of which I've sadly yet to grasp) I substituted the study of ideas, dreams and doings of (mostly) dead white men. They would be known as history, philosophy and maybe theology. I've picked up what would be called Information Technology skills as well, something which is helping me most tremendously in my current job.
In my current state of busyness I've sadly fallen far short in the schedule of my grand education plan (indeed, who does not?). I remember, of course, that knowledge does not equal wisdom and that learning for the sake of learning is a time-waster that is admirable but a time-waster nonetheless.
But enough about my experiences. To learn what you want to learn. That's a radical thought. Almost like saying do whatever you want to do. Actually, it's the exact same thing. We're too afraid to let our young do what they want to do. And we probably have good reasons for that. But there is mostly bad reasoning behind the current process. I'm not just referring to the local education system of this country (indeed, people in the US [1] and Europe [2] have expressed the same concerns about their own educational systems).
I chose to do what I wanted to do. I have no regrets for not reading the textbooks I was supposed to read and for not going to the classes I was supposed to be in. But I do regret one thing - now that I have looked beyond the teachers and the classroom walls, I only see a vast sea of knowledge I dare not swim in.
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2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
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