Subjectively Singaporean

Recently, there has been concerns about safety in school sports following a brawl in between SAS and ACSI following a B div rugby match between SAS and ACSI.

Personally i feel that there is no much of a problem in school sports safety and discipline as i felt that it is quite ok already, however its inevitable that there are brawls here and there.

This april, I participated in the national squash championships. The situation was tense but in the end, the opponents shook hands for one another and even did a cheer for one another. I think that these issues all boils down to the tradition of the sport, and the rivalry between the two schools.

Lets us look at the SAS and ACSI rugby brawl. Between the two schools, they have won the last 15 b division titles, this explains the great rivalry between this two schools in this sport, as they feel the pressure mounting on them to win the coveted trophy for their school. This can cause more aggressiveness and major upset when one loses the final. In the case of SAS, having lost the final, they felt frustrated and upset. This was the major reason for the brawl.

You would also have to look at the nature of the sport. For example, contact sports with great aggressiveness would result in a more likely hood of a brawl than non contact sports. For example, the incident that happened in a lot of professional football matches after the team loses a final. Non contact sports would not have so much of a fight because of the nature. For example, after china loses the Badminton Cup, they accept it graciously mainly because of their values and the nature of the sport. Badminton is least aggressive than rugby and football.

Thus, teacher-coaches are well needed to provide good values into the sports players so that they would accept their defeat graciously.

As sexuality become a srutiny in schools, what most parents said to be lacking is the information about such programmes. "Many of the 20 parents interviewed by the strait times yesterday said that they had no idea what went on during sexuality education classes in school" sadi the strait tiems. I was surprised at this statistic.

This statistics shows only two things. One, the students think it is just a trivial matter and did not inform their parents in detail.
Two, this shows the mindsets of parents. One perception is that they are not interested in whatever talk the school is going and do not care as much. Thus, they do not ask for information from their child.

Fortunately, Minister Ng Eng Hen had promised that schools will inform parents of the framework and topics covered in the sexuality talk, and also post such information on the respective websites.

However, the issue of opting out was raised by the parents. Last year, less than 1 per cent of parents said no to letting their children go for such classes. This can be caused by willingness of parents to go for such classes or the lack of information that they can actually opt out.

Personally, I feel that there is a weak link between two; parents and teachers. Based on a interview done by the strait times, experts said that these two groups are not fully equipped to pass on the right information and values to children.

I think most parents are simply embarrassed to discuss the issue with their children. What is worse is that many simply push their responsiblity, and tell their children to get their answers from their teachers instead. Thus, I think teachers need more training to overcome the awkwardness of talking sex in class.

In my opinion, parents are uncomfortable talking about sex because they were not taught by their parents not to talk about it. They also do not have a superficial meaning of sex education. They think sex is about making babies, but actually it is"an emotional, physical adn psycological thing.

Parents like mine may argue that we might be just to young to understand sex and this could pollute our minds. However, I disagreed, supporting it with the idiom that "prevention is better than cure'. Would you rather have your children to be in trouble for sex or to be awkward about telling them about it?

I end this post with a statement. Sex education is essential.

Recently, there was announcement that said that with effect from Nov 1, night-parking charges for cars at carparks in Housing Board estates will be raised from $2 to $4. 


However, I do not think it is a good way to ensure enough parking spaces for season-parking ticket holders, I think that it is only a short-sighted measure. 


Firstly, if a car owner wants to park his car at a car park, he would have to pay the carpark fees no matter how much the charge are, the car owner still need a parking space for his car and thus have to park his car at the car parks. Thus it wont make any difference to the availablity of car parking slots. 


So what can we do instead?  


1) I suggests that the seasonal parking tickets may not be oversold. Tickets should be based on the number of carpark spaces for example one carpark may have 100 parking space so the management should only sell equal or sllightly more than 100 seasonal parking tickets and overselling those tickets may end up in not enough parking spaces. 


2) Those motorists who parked with seasonal parking spaces without seasonal parking tickets should be awarded with a heavier penalty and fine so that it can deter those motorists in parking from those places so that they would be more available parking space. 


Just merely increasing the price will not solve the problem.