Famous Amos

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

I would like to state for the record that I am not Amos Yee’s teacher. I have never met him nor had I the dubious honour of “moulding” his mind and so I would be very much relieved, if some of you can now lay down your online pitchforks and allow me to express myself objectively. I start my reflection as an educator with a question that perhaps most of us have in mind after watching his most recent rant on YouTube.

Why are our students now incapable of processing, analysing, criticizing and expressing controversial viewpoints without feeling the sudden, uncontrollable urge to use profanities and karate-kicking rather unfortunate listeners and readers with unpleasant and obscene languages?

If by appreciating his obvious courage to speak out and articulate quite intelligently for a 17 year old (disregarding the profanities), a series of rather interesting counter view-points on our founding father’s legacy; you instinctively conjure up an image of an average Singaporean student who’s free-thinking and open-minded, who is a critical, independent and original thinker and one who loves having a pop at orthodoxies, then you urgently need to update your mind’s picture bank.

Our average students in Singapore are pretty much an exact opposite of that. It’s hard to think of any other section of society that has undergone as epic a transformation as our students have (for good or for bad) since our nation’s independence. From freewheelin’ political activists to conformative representatives, from askers of awkward and controversial questions to suppressors of contrary views, from confident and articulate speakers to anonymous key-board warriors all in the space of a single generation.

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