Short Takes From Parliament - The PAP Grows Bored

May 27, 2009
Changes to political system
By Clarissa Oon

NEW changes to Singapore's political system will lead to non-People's Action Party members taking up at least 18 seats in Parliament, or roughly one-fifth of the House.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in Parliament on Wednesday that the Constitution will be amended to allow for up to nine 9 Non-Constituency MPs, who are opposition candidates who lose but are nevertheless given seats in Parliament.

Workers' Party chairman Sylvia is currently one such MP.

At the same time, the Parliamentary Elections Act will be amended to increase the stipulated minimum number of opposition MPs, including NCMPs, to nine.

The current minimum is three. This means there will be a guaranteed nine MPs from opposition parties in Parliament, whether or not they win an election.

A good move. It probably stems from the PAP's deepening sense of boredom. But anyway it's a good move for Singapore.

Would you not be bored, if 95% of the time, you were just talking to yourself, nodding your head at yourself and agreeing with yourself? Yes, you would grow bored. You would run short of ideas, and get lost in your own stagnating mindset, and secretly wonder what was the point of all this. And eventually you might even long for some genuine discussion, engagement and feedback.

That is what has been happening in Parliament for many years. 95% of the time, the PAP is just talking to itself, nodding its head to itself and amiably agreeing with itself.

Well, at least the PAP will now have a few extra Opposition MPs to talk to.

"Wow, soon we might have real debate in Parliament ... We could even become too busy for hiphop."

What I Teach My Kids About Sex

I have two children. My daughter is five, and my son is seven. Both of them know about sex.

In fact, my son first learned about sex, when he was only in kindergarten. Since I've previously blogged about my son's kindergarten sexuality lesson, I won't say any more about it, except to provide the link to that old post.

At home, I have also talked to both my children about sex. I think of it as my personal responsibility to do so. However I do not think of it as a special sort of parental responsibility. It is just part of my overall parental responsibility to teach my children about the real world, which comprises plenty of things other than sex.

The book that I have used to teach my children about sex is entitled "Who Am I? Where Did I Come From?". It is written by Dr Ruth Westheimer, an 81-year-old sex therapist and grandmother of three.

As you might expect of any other children's book, the book has many bright colourful pictures and is written in simple language. A reasonably literate six-year-old should be able to read most of it on his own.

The book does contain various words and phrases which would not be in the average six-year-old child's vocabulary. So I think that it is best that a parent reads the book with his or her child. The words and phrases I am referring to include penis, vagina, having sex, making love, sperm and so on.

To give you a better sense of what the book is like, I'll give a few excerpts:

1. "Sex is a word that causes some people to become shy, to hide their feelings. But you're not bothered by such a little word, are you? Why don't you say it out loud right now: sex."

2. ".... so the man puts his penis inside the woman's vagina. This is called having sex. Having sex is also called making love, because the adults love each other very much."

3. "It feels very good, and mommies and daddies only do it in private, when they are alone."

4. "A woman's vagina is very special. The vagina is made to stretch and stretch, after the mommy pushes and pushes, until it gets wide enough for the baby's head to pop out."

The book also contains a full frontal picture of a naked man (to explain what is a penis) and a full frontal picture of a naked woman (to explain what is a vagina). There is also a picture of a man and woman cuddling under a blanket, and a pop-up picture of sperm cells approaching an ovum (the pop-up also has a movable part to demonstrate a sperm cell successfully penetrating the ovum). Additionally there are pictures of a foetus developing in the woman's womb.

Based on my own experiences, I think that talking to your children about sex when they are still quite young is probably a lot easier than waiting till they reach puberty. If you wait too long, they might have picked up too many misconceptions by then and it becomes difficult to explain things. Or worse, if you wait too long, then one day you might discover that they already know much more about sex than you.

When I talked to my little children about sex, they were curious and interested. They pointed at the pictures, asked questions and made comments. But they were not any more curious and interested in the topic of sex, than they would have been if I were talking to them about dinosaurs or outer space or the life cycle of a butterfly. To them, the most remarkable thing they learned from the Ruth Westheimer book was that a woman's vagina could actually stretch wide enough for something as large as a baby to get out of it.

As the years pass and my children grow older, there will of course be more occasions when I will have to talk to them about sex. It is nothing to be dreaded, or to feel awkward about. It's all just part of life - in fact, there would be no life, if there was no sex.

Sex Education - To Tell or Not to Tell

A letter to the ST Forum:

ST May 20, 2009
Useful programme except for condom excerpt

I RECENTLY came to know that upper secondary and junior college students go through an educational programme on Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids), called Breaking Down Barriers, by the Health Promotion Board (HPB).

Besides providing accurate facts about STIs, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Aids, the programme also imparts useful skills to students, such as decision-making and the right places to obtain reliable information, as well as assertiveness and strategies on how not to succumb to persuasion.

I was truly heartened to learn that the students were taught that the best way to avoid STIs and Aids is to avoid casual sex, sex with multiple partners and unprotected sex, and to stay faithful to a partner within the context of marriage.

However, the students were subsequently taught how to use a condom.

While I understand HPB's good intention to curb the rising incidence of STIs among the young, I wish to express my concerns as a parent that students are being taught how to use condoms in school.

- It gives a mixed and confusing message. Is it not better to encourage students to avoid pre-marital sex altogether, since the programme also teaches that the use of condom is not 100 per cent safe?

- Students are not likely to heed or remember to practise safe sex just because they have attended a lesson on condom use.

- Even if they do use a condom, they are not likely - in the heat of the moment - to remember or follow the steps to use a condom correctly.

I truly appreciate the HPB's efforts for creating such a programme and hope that it will review and consider whether it is really necessary or useful to teach students how to use a condom.

This confuses, contradicts and compromises the good advice to avoid pre-marital sex as the only foolproof protection against STIs and Aids.

Steven Tan

Sigh .....

Steven assumes that if you tell students not to have sex, then they will all just obediently decide not to have sex. Of course this is nonsense. Yes, some students will abstain. But some other students are going to have sex, even if you give them all the advice in the world about the merits of abstinence.

So the question is - for all thise students who are going to be sexually active, should we or should we not provide them with the necessary information to save them from diseases like AIDS etc? To me, the answer is clear.

However, Steven would probably say, "If you don't tell them about condoms, then it is more likely that they will abstain. If you do tell them about condoms, then it is more likely that they WILL get curious and decide to have sex."

This kind of argument is highly unpersuasive to me. Its basic assumptions are that:

(1) young people who have sex, have sex because they have been unnecessarily exposed to the idea of having sex (eg through TV or the Internet or educational talks on condom usage); and

(2) we should therefore avoid, as far as possible, talking to young people about sex.

In my opinion, this is pretty much nonsense. Young people do not have sex just because they watch TV or attend a talk on condom usage. The real reason why young people have sex is that they have sexual desires. (Oh, by the way, the same applies to the rest of the animal kingdom).

Whether TV or the Internet or sex education programmes exist or not, young people are going to have sexual desires and therefore young people will have sex. And that's the plain and simple story of the human race. So once again, the question is - in the era of AIDS, should we educate young people about condoms or not? To me, the answer is a no-brainer.

As a side note, you can easily see why Aware's sex education programme attracted flak from certain quarters. Stephen isn't alone in his thinking - strangely enough, there are many other people who also believe that if you just don't talk to students about condoms, then they won't have sex. And the natural extension of their "logic" is that if you don't talk to people about homosexuality, then they just won't be gay.

In my opinion, that kind of reasoning is so very mistaken. I just wonder what will happen next. Hang on - Steven's letter refers to a sex education programmme organised for junior college students. Doesn't Stephen know that straight after JC, all the boys go off to the army? Then they get sent to Thailand or Taiwan for training. And on their R&R weekends, the Singapore Armed Forces will be handing out free condoms to them (right after the SAF doctor does the usual demonstration with the yellow banana).

I am glad that the SAF does that. But is Steven going to file a complaint here as well?

The Meaninglessness of Asian Values

This is Asia.
A reader requested that I write about Asian values.

I don't like "Asian values". It usually implies dishonesty. Most of the time, when someone is using that term, he's actually pushing his own secret agenda.

That someone could be an authority figure using "Asian values" to tell you why you should respect his authority.

He could be a suppressor of free speech, using "Asian values" to tell you why he should have the power to suppress your speech.

This is Asia.
Or he could simply be wanting to impose on you his views on how you should eat, dress, work or have sex. And he's using "Asian values" to argue why you should conform to his views.

In all these cases, it's just a con job. And I have to say that people who do fall for the "Asian values" argument are either very stupid, or very ignorant about Asia.

Okay, folks - here are some basic facts. Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. Asian countries include China, India, Japan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea and Singapore.

Now, tell me what values you share with the average person in all these countries.

This is Asia.
You'll quickly see that "Asian values" is a largely meaningless term. Simply because Asia is such a large, diverse continent. It has all sorts of different countries, cultures, traditions and religions.

The world's biggest democracy is an Asian country. The world's largest communist state is also an Asian country. The word's largest Muslim nation is an Asian country. The world's largest Buddhist nation is an Asian country. The world's largest Hindu population is also an Asian country.

So what can the term "Asian values" possibly mean? Approximately nothing. Asia is much too vast and varied for us to be able to speak meaningfully of its "values".

This is Asia too.

Sex, Suicide and Poetry

Sometime last year, I received an email from an editor in Hong Kong. He was compiling poems for a new publication. The book would be used as a literature textbook for high school students in Hong Kong.

The editor asked for permission to include a particular poem of mine in his book. He also said some very nice things about my poem. I felt pleased, not because of his compliments, but because I felt that this particular poem was indeed an excellent choice for his book.

Why? Because the poem addressed a topic which was very relevant to students (in fact it was based on a real-life event concerning a young student). So I could see how a teacher might use the poem to create and present a highly interesting lesson in class. And I could easily imagine the students relating very well to the poem.

So I replied to the editor - yes, please go ahead and include my poem in your textbook.

This year the editor wrote to me again. He informed me that the poem, unfortunately, would not be included in the new book. Apparently, a higher authority had objected. They did not feel that the poem was suitable for inclusion in a textbook for students.

Why? Because, in the editor's own words, the poem cuts "too close to the bone of everyday reality". The poem would not be suitable for teenagers in school, because it was "too real ...".

Anyway, here's the poem:

The Schoolgirl Kills Herself After Failing An Exam

She jumps from the tenth floor of a housing block
into the brief wild terror of freedom, dies and transforms
into twelve paragraphs of newsprint in the Straits Times,
cool and objective, black and white, verifiable facts only.

We are told that her classmates are "shocked".
And that her parents refuse to comment. We know that
she scored 41 marks for her last exam paper, a fatal result.
A teacher describes her as a "quiet, hardworking girl".

We feel obliged to pause to reflect. We wish to search
our conscience. She was only eleven, we remind ourselves.
There must be others like her. There must be another way,
we suspect, for children to grow up in this country.

But yesterday's news is quick to slide into the grey of memory.
She will become another incidental casualty. We turn the page.
We forget. Again we trip and fall head first into the future,
down into the depths of a national urge to never stop excelling.

I mention the poetry incident now, because I've just been reminded of it - strangely enough, by the Aware saga. Let me explain.

Suicide can be a disturbing topic. Nevertheless the issue is real, and worthy of discussion. Only a small proportion of students will ever become suicidal, but that takes nothing away from the significance of the topic as a social issue. To avoid the topic, on the grounds that it cuts "too close to the bone of everyday reality", is basically a kind of chickening out.

Homosexuality is also real. Only a small proportion of the general population is homosexual. Again, that takes nothing away from the significance of the topic as a social issue. For educators to deliberately avoid the topic, as if it did not exist, is somewhat like trying to pretend that in the real world, young people do not commit suicide.

The fact that a topic is controversial is a bad reason to avoid discussing it. It might even be said that the more controversial a topic, the greater the need to openly discuss it. We should bring the topic out into the light; analyse the facts; study the theories; and share our views. We should work towards gaining more clarity and understanding, instead of doing the ostrich thing and sticking our heads into the sand.

Unfortunately, it appears that some members of the Christian right have recently been insisting that schools in Singapore behave like ostriches. The specific targets? Junior colleges whose students have discussed gay issues in their General Paper classes.

Below you can see the Education Ministry's half-hearted defence against the attack of the Christian right:

ST May 7, 2009
GP teachers did not push alternative lifestyles
By Amelia Tan

IN ITS letter to The Straits Times yesterday, the Ministry of Education (MOE) revealed that it had received 'feedback' about materials on alternative lifestyles used in junior college General Paper lessons.

Among the issues raised was one contained in an e-mail which has made the rounds recently. It said that during a discussion of same-sex marriages, students at a junior college were given a worksheet with questions asking for their views of a nuclear family unit. They were also asked to discuss topics such as the legalisation of gay marriage and parents of the same sex forming families through adoption.

A documentary on the lifestyles of such families was also shown in class, the e-mail said. It questioned if it was appropriate to discuss such topics, and charged that this promoted homosexuality. It is not known who wrote the e-mail.

In its response yesterday, MOE said: 'GP lessons are meant to promote critical thinking and discussion on contemporary issues.

'These materials and lessons did not involve Aware...MOE investigations showed that the teachers had used these materials to initiate discussion on family structures, and not to promote alternative lifestyles.

'Nevertheless, MOE will remind school leaders and teachers to exercise greater professional discretion in guiding their students when such topics are discussed. They should also adhere to social norms and values of our mainstream society.'

Sigh ... I wonder what's next on the cards, for Singapore. Perhaps the Christian fundamentalists will insist that everyone subscribes to their view that the world was created in seven days. And then they will insist that the topic of Darwinian evolution be banned from discussion in our schools.

This kind of issue has already shown up in other countries. Read this article about Josie Lau's favourite "charity", Focus on the Family. When is Singapore's turn?