Posts Tagged ‘educating’
Broader contexts
Posted on: January 13, 2010
I read this Straits Times forum letter [archived version] and juxtaposed it with the videos below.
The letter is written by someone in Singapore who laments the cultural and religious insensitivity of McDonald’s in pulling out the pig charm and replacing it with a stupid Cupid [photo]. The second video features an interview with Marina Mahathir, daughter of the former Prime Mininster of Malaysia, on the aftermath of the firebombing of a church in Malaysia. The latter makes the former trivial by comparison.
I am not trivializing race or religious issues. Those are important issues. But it is also important is to consider the contexts of these events. We take the relative stabilty here in Singapore for granted; our neighbours in the north have a more charged environment. We complain about small things; the Malaysians have a social tsunami to deal with.
The forum letter is trivial because that is all the writer sees. Likewise, teachers and educators here might not look beyond their own classrooms and schools.
I think that it is important to look at broader contexts because that is ulimately what we are preparing our charges for. If we look at the broader picture of how the family, the workplace and the rest of the world are changing, the trivial things fade away and the critical issues emerge. If we do not do this, we are not doing our jobs or heeding our calling.
