Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Social Studies assignment wanted us to write on government stuffs and i found a very interesting article on the net about elitism in Singapore.
(It is about an 18 year old daughther of an MP,Wee Shu Min, launched a scathing attack on Singaporean Derek Wee for voicing concerns on job security and age discrimination.She described Derek as a “stupid crackpot”, “the sadder class”, over-reliant on the government in Singapore where society is “far too survival of the fittest” and signed off with: “Get out of my elite uncaring face”.
Other condescending terms: Derek is a typical “wretched, under-motivated, over-assuming leeches” specimen of Singapore. He has a “middle-class under-educated penchant” for complaining and should get on with life.)All these highlighted information comes from The Sunday Star, Oct 29, 2006
First a brief introduction on elitism,it is the belief or attitude that the people who are considered to be the elite.They may be a group of people with outstanding talents,wealth, experience and other attributes.This is the meaning of it obtained from wikipidea.Singapore elitism can be said to start off from Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who believed that a person's intelligence is inherited from his/her parents and it was this man that done it all for Singapore.
Singapore was led by Mr Lee Kuan Yew for many years where it constantly improves until the form it is now, an advanced developing country.The government plays a important part in this and especially the ministers in Singapore who had slogged for many many years for the country.This is where the important point about elitism comes in, it is practised in Singapore for many years where ministers are chosen based on their results,professional or business achievements, and particularly those who are related to past achievers.Those who are from the middle class group can come in the government too, but very few made it through.Singapore has been said to practise meritocracy and will never change this principle, but is this meritocracy?I personally do not agree that it is, because by looking at relation with past achievers, that already is napotism, the total opposite of meritocracy.
In the case shown above in the newspaper article, that is totally shocking to me.It is so because an 18 year old girl insulted a man named Derek Wee who is much older and more experienced in life than she is.This is very rude in my opinion and especially saying these comments straight to the media.She used the fact that she finished junior college with top honours and her father is an important figure in the government to make comments about this man. This is the problem with elitism, because it gives those who call themselves "elite", pride and they will soon be blinded by it.They will be arrogant, thinking themselves as more superior than others and this will not benifit Singapore at all in the near future.In the article, it said,"hundreds of angry Singaporeans consider her remarks as elitist and insensitive against the common people." This shows that the public is not happy with her comments, but soon after that, the MP backed up her comments, supporting it, which made the matters a lot worse.
In the earlier years of his time as the Prime Minister,Lee Kuan Yew had already carved elitism into the hearts of the people in the government, and it has created a big problem.Besides the public not happy with such comments, the Singapore government will also be unable to interact completely with the poorer people.They would not be able to understand these people's feelings and could not show sympathy to them.This will effect the people's trust towards our government and may even start to have bad impressions on them, especially after those rude comment by Wee Shu Min.The worst scenario could be riots happening in Singapore again and i believe that no one wants that at all.So i think that they need to settle this problem on elitism as fast as possible.
shinnstellar
5:52 AM
