Theme: Racism
Racial Harmony Day does not do enough to sensitize students to racial issues. Recall your experience in Racial Harmony Day. After the event, are you more aware of the current racial issues? Does it further enhance your knowledge of racial issues? Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Recall the activities in Racial Harmony Day. The bazaar, auditorium performance and the Indian dance. These activities, in some way or another, taught us the importance of racial harmony and to be fair and equal even to people of other races. We learn the Indian dance culture, and through the auditorium performance, we saw how united and cooperated people from different races could be, through the dance. However, this is only the basic level. The school needs to do more than just educating to us the obvious. We need to know the racial issues globally, to understand the issues and to identify the solutions and cause behind it. Only through then can we keep abreast of the current racial issues, and truly understand the meaning of “Racial Harmony” by applying what we have learnt to come up with solutions for the racial disputes.
Rethink about it. Do you really think that the current programmes for Racial Harmony Day are sufficient to sensitize students to racial issues? Or is it just teaching the obvious – to be open to friends of other races, not to be prejudiced against them, and learnt more about their culture. The real problem here is not that students do not know what racial harmony is. The real problem lies where the students have little or no idea to the current racial issues, which is very important for us, the next generation of leaders, to prevent such mistakes from happening. It is therefore important to enhance our knowledge about the current racial issues, so that we could get an idea of the consequences when racism is present, and know about the current situation in the world. Therefore, a possible suggestion is a discussion about the current racial issues. The school really needs to do more to sensitize us to racial issues. Thank you.
Yes, I do agree with you that not enough is done to teach people to respect others from different cultural backgrounds. The students should understand the various racial issues all over the world and show empathy to people who have been victims of racism. Being a multi-racial country, the young generation of Singaporeans must learn to work with other races without causing any racial issue. I do hope that the government and schools would continue to promote harmony among the races.
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