COMMENT: Villagers don’t exist to teach Singaporeans gratitude
Kirsten Han is a Singaporean blogger, journalist and filmmaker. She is also involved in the We Believe in Second Chances campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty. A social media junkie, she tweets at @kixes. The views expressed are her own.
Singapore is the best country in the world (or at least the region), and anyone who tells you otherwise needs to redo their Social Studies O Levels. But just in case our younglings aren’t convinced, perhaps we should also send them overseas to objectify villagers, I mean, learn?
Ang Wei Neng, MP for Jurong GRC, proposed the idea of mandatory community service field trips to rural villages in neighbouring countries in Parliament.
“I hope parents and teachers will see the value of such trips when the students return from the trip more mature and sensible. I am confident that such field trips will help our youths appreciate Singapore’s success better, reduce the sense of entitlement and inculcate the value of service to others,” Channel NewsAsia quoted him as saying.
“It will be money well spent. It will generate a wind of gratitude. It will help us cherish the pioneering spirit that built the Singapore we see today.”
I’m not sure what a “wind of gratitude” feels like, but there’s definitely more than a whiff of elitism and condescension in the idea that Ang appears to be worryingly oblivious to.
Ang’s idea appears to be this: send Singaporean youths to rural villages in the region, where there will be no air-con and streetlights, and they will return to Singapore keeling over with gratitude for our infrastructure and the PAP for having built it!
The rebuttal to Ang’s proposal is simple: people are people, regardless of where they live and the circumstances in which they live. No one exists to be a teaching moment for anyone else. Families in rural villages do not live their lives just so we can ship Singaporean youths over to gawp wide-eyed at their plight and come back feeling a renewed sense of smugness.
Ang’s idea is also not original; Singaporean children have already been packed off on such overseas excursions. I remember the assembly presentations in school; the obligatory PowerPoint presentation with photographs of some trip to Cambodia, Vietnam or China. “There are no real toilets there!” one rehearsed participant will say with a mixture of wonder and disgust. Everyone in the hall will then luxuriate in self-satisfaction made possible by the existence of Singapore’s modern plumbing system.
Gratuitous overseas trips to rural environs are unlikely to be of any real help. With little understanding of the local historical and political context, unleashing a group of young Singaporean do-gooders might not actually do much good. There are already plenty of critiques of "voluntourism", and how it is actually more about assuaging the consciences of the privileged than about helping those really in need.
There is plenty to be gained from traveling and leaving one’s comfort zone. But the condescension implicit in Ang’s suggestion is unlikely to teach young Singaporeans about humility, or reduce their sense of entitlement. It is far more likely to objectify rural villagers as pitiable creatures lacking in agency, and therefore indebted to “developed” Singaporeans for aid.
Such a mindset will not teach empathy, which is sorely needed in Singaporean society. It is much more likely to perpetuate the condescension that led Ang to make such a suggestion in the first place, and make us much more insufferable neighbours.
