Welcome to the 21st century way of brainwashing regular students into docile, politically infantile adults: Social Studies.
Honestly, after a good solid hour of attempting to memorise the infamous chapter on globalisation (up to now I fail to see where on
earth the rest of the world is...isn't globalisation supposed to involve the movements of the entire world? Funnily enough, there's a gargantuan wedge of it focusing on 'ol, self-centered Singapore.
No wonder foreigners hate our country and our people so much.
What is the point of Social studies, apart from teaching us critical thinking skills? I only find the whole 'critical thinking' bit useful in Social Studies..the self-praising, pompous, outlandish praisings of Singapore and its reigning government start to grate on one's nerves after a while. I can't give a flying fuck whether you hosted the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Haze in December 1997 or not, so apologetic to tell you. It's almost as if every single tiny, nanoscopic achievement Singapore has gleaned is polished like gold and embellished with pride before dropping it straight into textbooks.
And of course, A1-hungry memorisers like us docile sheep will jsut gobble it up and vomit it back on the exam paper. After continuous regurgitations, we learn to accept what we come to memorise as the absolute truth.
Yes, learning about government policies is important. But all I see are the pertinent point of these policies -- why aren't their drawbacks expounded upon? If they want to teach us 'critical thinking', why do they only do so in sources of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, and never of Singapore? All we get are politically 'correct', clean versions in newspapers. Kinda reminds you of George Owell;s 1984, where the government had free reign over the textbooks and knowledge, and tinkered with people' minds like machines, ain't it?
I am a Singaporean and proud of it. I love Singapore. But the social studies textbook just irks me sometimes. Why can't they be like America and teach us about the constitution, or give us more details abotu the policies? It's better than the boring trifles.
There. I just admitted Social Studies can be boring. Right now I am bored off my ass, still stuck on 'globalisation'.
ARGHHHH.
Someone please help me take my paper tomorrow.
