“Because,” he would reply triumphantly, “I paid for one of those bricks.”

I played around the front steps of the National Theatre while waiting for my father to pick me up after class each Saturday, loving the way the pointed sharpness of the brick structures contrasted with the roundness of the fountain in front of it, and the garden that to my little girl’s eyes seemed to stretch away infinitely into the distance.

The National Theatre was supposed to be a symbol of the nation, with its design incorporating references to the Singapore flag. It was also one of the places where the construction of Singapore as a multiracial nation was first enacted, through ethnic cultural performances.

They tore down the National Theatre in 1986.

The National Library at Stamford Road was a place where I spent many happy hours browsing among books that smelled like they had a history behind them. Starting out with the Children’s Section and then progressing to the General Section on the first floor, I eventually visited the Reference Section most frequently when I was in secondary school and junior college. The building was beautifully placed, made of warm red brick, and visited by a steady stream of people who loved to read. I don’t know if my father ‘owned’ part of that building too, but I associate that building with my budding independence. No one drove me there in the years of my most intensive use of the resources it contained. I went by bus or train.

They tore down the National Library in 2004.

The Bukit Brown cemetery is slated to be cleared for a new dual four-lane road. People in the Rochor area are losing their homes for a new expressway. There has been much unhappiness expressed over these issues. The government line, faithfully reported in and backed up by the mainstream media, is that we must be pragmatic. No one likes change. But we are a land-scarce country, and it is not as though there are no solutions. The cemetery is going to gain a new lease of life in the virtual world. Rochor residents are getting new flats in Kallang. What, our efficient but clueless technocrats are wondering, is everyone whining about?

One letter writer in TODAY puts it very well when he says that “communities take many years to grow, and cannot simply be transplanted from one built environment to another”. Philip Holden suggests a refreshing new framework that the government can use, one in which heritage conservation does not have to clash with efficient land use.

It is hard to call a place home when every square inch you invested your memories into gets swept away in the rhetoric of zoning policies and national development. How do you create an identity of citizenship that is rooted in a nation when there is no physical part of the nation to root it to? I have often thought of Singapore as Legoland. Buildings are easily erected, and just as easily dismantled. Citizens are like those little Lego people whom you can fix in place so that they seem rooted. But then with just a little force you can tug them out of the positions you assigned them and plant them somewhere else.

Real people don’t go so easily. Real people need a sense of community. We are social beings who need to build connections with each other. In so many years of civic and citizenship education, National Day Rally speeches, articles by local journalists in the mainstream media and other platforms for the dissemination of national messages, we are told that we must build a sense of loyalty to the nation. This is our home, we are told. We must build communities that are multiracial.

Yet the moment we go past the carefully crafted performances of citizenship represented by events such as Chingay and Racial Harmony Day, and actually start putting down roots in our physical spaces that intertwine with the roots of those around us, we are told that in the name of progress, it is time to uproot and move. Apparently the only sense of citizen identity we are allowed is one that is modular.

We are home-hungry. Community-hungry. And dare I say – dialogue-hungry. It’s not just about the decisions that are made, but the way in which they are made. In my next blog post, I have a story to tell about a group of people who tried to save their community, lost the fight, but emerged from the experience with new insights about the need to change the way in which citizens and the state engage each other.

(Photo of National Theatre is from here, National Library from here, and Legoland from here)

Let’s look at citizenship first. Who is a citizen? Someone who holds citizenship? Of course. But then that sounds fairly value-neutral, no? How do we come to talking about a ‘good’ citizen? Where do the defining qualities of good citizenship come from? I would argue they come from the political system. Democracy is not a monolithic concept. There is no one single model of democracy. But before we can talk about citizenship we need to have rigorous public debate on what our political model is. Clearly we are in a state of flux. There is a system that we have been running on that seems to be under question now, if recent General Election results and the rash of politically engaged activity on online social media sites is anything to go by. Studies concluding that people need education about what constitutes the role of the President, for example, are not really helpful because they hide the fact that the amorphous nature of the President’s duties fits in perfectly with other exigency-based political mechanisms. In fact I am inclined to view the study results as proof that people are redefining what they want the President to do. That people are posting on Twitter and Facebook is not a question of venting frustration and spreading cowboy-town modes of interaction. There is a real and large-scale attempt going on to figure out what we want from our political system. My point is that until we sort out these issues, or at least acknowledge that we can have an environment in which these debates are the norm rather than some educational lacuna that needs to be plugged through indoctrination, we cannot really make any meaningful inroads into citizenship education.

And then there is education. So many debates about what education is, how much it can really achieve, by what criterion it can be measured, to what extent the ideal outcomes can be equally assured for all… But in the area of citizenship education, I think the key question is how much can the school actually do? Imposing a set of values is all very well, but what can the school do when conditions outside school are so different? There will no doubt be an attempt to teach ‘critical thinking’ that uncritically accepts the top-down values and the ideology they fit in with. But this will be set against the backdrop of rising doubt in wider society about the very nature of the political system, an increasing spirit of questioning, and greater confidence in political engagement that may not always be conveniently contained within the discursive limits set by the government and enforced by the mainstream media. The school actually risks marginalising itself in the lives of the young people it is supposed to be equipping for the future.

This is where the unexpected opportunities lie. With the understanding that we cannot neglect our young while all this debate is going on, I think it’s important to teach them to be a part of this flurry of engagement. Let’s not hide the very constructive chaos we have going on around us under the cloak of accusations of bigotry and discrimination. Our school children do not spend all their time poking fun at foreigners. If at all there is any racial undercurrent in their repartee, it is probably rooted in the very real differences between them and their fellow Singaporeans. I have written in a previous post that diversity has not been tackled in our education system. We don’t talk about race, religion, gender or sexuality (to name a few) outside the Pollyanna framework of meritocracy. The diversity among Singaporeans is rhetorically flattened out, with the result that Singaporean-ness becomes an imagined monolith which is then implicated in constructions of anti-foreigner discourse.

We now have an opportunity to really contemplate our political model. We have an opportunity to draw more people into such discussions. I disagree that quantitative studies tell the whole story, or even that they are the most valid pieces of the puzzle. Statistics tell the story someone wants them to tell. They are important, but not sufficient, especially when they are used to shore up dominant arguments that may in the long term be detrimental to the progress of a society. We have an opportunity to view citizenship education as opening up possibilities for active engagement rather than closing an ideological loop. The opportunities we have now are not at the implementation level. What is exciting about the trends we are witnessing is that the opportunities are at the conceptual level. Our biggest opportunity in citizenship education now is to introduce the concept of diversity, not in an instrumental paradigm that feeds into the need to get Singaporeans to unquestioningly accept government policies, but in a paradigm of social justice that delinks ethics and values from the political system (which is not the same thing as depoliticising them), however it happens to be currently configured.

I have no neat quote or witty saying with which to tie up this post. I’d rather leave it open and unfinished for now, an analogy for the work-in-progress that is citizenship education.

This does not have to be a big room.

It can be no more than a broom cupboard as long as there is light and air, and a space for books, pens, paper, computer…the digital and non-digital paraphernalia of writing. There must be a place to sit and contemplate. A chair, at the very least. A desk? Maybe. But that is optional and depends on one’s proclivity. A physical space, inviolate.

But it cannot be only a room.

What makes it a space where writing can take place? Solitude, above all. No woman is an island, but every woman needs an island every now and then. There must be social acceptance of her private space that renders not only the room, but her exclusive occupancy of it legitimate and worthy of protection. The door is not always open, she is not always welcoming. It is a selfish space. But cannot be judged because of this. It is a deservedly selfish space. This room cannot be only a room, but a socially constructed space. It is a space where she is as much a woman inside of it as she is outside of it, in the world of husbands and children and other obligations.

And perhaps it need not even be a room.

When there is no physical facility the space is internal. A free space in the mind of the woman who claims it. A retreat into deep thought and detachment that can be maintained even when external demands on attention are ceaseless and insistent. Inviolate? Yes, to the extent that she allows it to be so. Legitimate? Only in her eyes. Waiting for external legitimation is perhaps a waste of time, and irrelevant. This room of her own is portable, mobile, virtual, but no less real.

Yes, Virginia, a woman does need money and a room of her own. But she also needs love to feed her dreams.

I went shopping for face powder last week. The saleslady dismissed a whole range of colors saying they would be too fair for me, and ended up selling me one that turned out to be three shades too dark. At the hairdresser’s, the only pictures they had everywhere were of Chinese and Caucasian models. At a practical level, this disturbed me. Would they know how to cut my hair? As it turns out, most hairdressers here immediately suggest straightening the hair, because they only know how to deal with straight hair. It’s not fair, of course, to blame either the saleslady or the hairdresser. But I mention these vignettes as examples of how easy it is to feel invisible when you are of minority race.

That’s why Ow Yeong Wai Kit’s article in the “Letters Home” section of the Straits Times today resonated with me. This 23-year-old Literature major at the National University of Singapore who is now on an exchange program at University College Dublin wrote about feeling foreign in Ireland. While everyone he has met in Ireland has been unfailingly polite, the writer mused on what it felt like to be a member of a racial minority. It could have ended there, but what struck me as particularly insightful was the way in which he then went on to link that feeling to those of people who live their entire lives as minorities. “Some tough questions can be asked of ourselves in Singapore,” he says, with a blinding flash of insight that I find especially laudable, given that there is little chance for that sort of perspective to develop in our racially sanitized education system.

The Immigrant-Singaporean

When the Prime Minister, in his National Day Rally speech, spoke of “our shared sense of our history and our common destiny”, I appreciated where he was coming from. As part of a larger strategy of ensuring economic prosperity, I can see how it can seem necessary to focus on that which appears unifying and downplay that which appears divisive. The problem is that we have never addressed the diversity that is an integral part of our national history.

While most of the early immigrants may have arrived in equally dire straits, they evolved very differently as their respective communities took root and made Singapore their home. When glorifying our common heritage, we look back to this early stage. We try to link it to the state of the nation now, with its reorientation as a land of hope for immigrants. We’re in a state of confusion now: we are told that mass immigration is necessary because we aren’t producing enough babies, we aren’t producing enough ideas. Apparently we aren’t producing enough of anything. We are sometimes accused of being xenophobic. Singapore is a land of immigrants, we are told. Your own ancestors came from somewhere else.

This is true, we reply. But there is a dissonance we feel between the rhetoric of ethnic categories forced upon us and the growing sense of national identity that we feel. Why is it that when we FEEL so essentially Singaporean, we are constantly having the notion that there is no such thing imposed upon us? The category “Singaporean”, apparently, is one that has to contain ethnic sub-categories. This is the only way in which we can be primed to accept rapid switches in immigration policy. There may be new Singaporeans, but they are no different from you. You have no claim on this nation that is different from theirs. You have immigrant roots too. It is the immigrant identity that is valorized over the Singaporean identity. Yet the Singapore identity is one of diversity too, except that this very real, bottom-up diversity is very different from the top-down diversity of the shared history rhetoric.

Embracing authentic diversity

This is one of the reasons why racial harmony as an ideal never goes more than clothes-deep. In schools, Racial Harmony Day is often a colorful celebration, with students of one race donning the traditional costumes of another. But this means nothing, when no one wears their traditional costumes anyway.  You may wear my sari, but you know nothing about what it is like to be in my skin. All the messy implications of ethnic differences are swept under the anvil-heavy cover of racial harmony.

When I was a child, I was always conscious of being different from the people around me. My skin was different, the way I spoke English was different, my hair was different, the way I dressed and ate and worshipped were all different. My textbooks always portrayed people of my race as having dark brown skin, and I didn’t see that as representing me in any way because my skin was not that particular shade of brown. In fact, no one’s was! But I knew, even in kindergarten, that that was supposed to be me. There was never any discussion in school about the subtleties of various cultures. No one knew. My classmates would say I was black, and it was my mother who taught me the trick of holding up a black pencil against my skin and teaching the other kids that the two colours were different. I did so much teaching from the day I stepped into school. I even had to teach my teachers. No, Mrs Yap, it is neither right nor accurate to say that Indians have more lice in their hair than Chinese people. Miss Tan, there is no point scrubbing at my knees. That is pigment, not dirt.

I find it so strange when we talk about a shared history. Certainly there are ways in which our pasts are the same. But there are essential ways in which they are different. That difference does not go away. It gets deeply embedded in the social fabric. In the increasingly borderless world that we are moving towards today, I think it is very important to bring the differences into our discussions about national identity. School is an appropriate place for these discussions to take place. There are many models available for teaching about diversity in a way that treats all groups with compassion. Even as a child I never actually blamed anyone who singled me out on the basis of my race. There was some level at which I understood that it was the result of larger forces.

That we are a nation of immigrants is an important fact of our past. That we are now a nation of citizens who want to claim our national identity in ways that are not always economically viable is an important fact of our present. That we must transcend imposed ethnic categories and the artificial cultural packages that accompany them is an important fact of our future. There ARE differences between us. All of us being Singaporean does not have to mean that we ignore these differences. Embracing a Singaporean identity means understanding these differences in authentic ways. It is the work that we have to put into doing this that holds the most potential for transforming us as a nation.

I’ve received queries from flummoxed friends via e-mail, text messages and BlackBerry messenger about my reasons for dropping out of sight. This in itself proves that I don’t actually need Facebook in order to keep in touch with anyone. But of course keeping in touch in the sense of being able to contact people when you have something to say to them is not what Facebook is about.

It started out in a really fun way for me. It was the young people in my life (students mostly, but also some younger family members) who introduced me to it, urged me to join. So I nervously dipped my toes in, and then found myself enjoying the mode of interaction that was framed by the way my young friends used the platform. There were unwritten ethical rules which I quickly figured out and followed. Conversations were energetic and amusing, I got a view of my students’ world that increased my sympathy for them, and found that I actually liked them so much more because they weren’t just students anymore. As far as I was aware there was no judgment on either side. They were friends – in the Facebook sense of course, but also in a more nuanced sense that inhabits a middle zone between social networking nomenclature and ‘real’ friendship (whatever that means). My own experiences in managing my identity as a teacher and as a Facebook friend in my relationships with students even led to a Masters dissertation on teacher-student Facebook interactions. I loved the fact that I had a platform for expressing myself, an audience that enjoyed responding, and new experiences and encounters on a daily basis. I think Facebook trained me to need an audience for every little thing, although it was a while before this realisation dawned upon me, and even longer before it started becoming an emotional  and social burden. In the early stages, I loved the relationship performances that I felt I was conducting on my own little stage.

But then more grownups started joining Facebook, and the rules changed. More careful navigation and strategising became necessary. Kids don’t really care what you post. If they like it, they let you know. If they don’t like it they just roll their eyes and move on. Not so with adults. In a myriad subtle ways, I found that I was now being trained to be more careful about what I posted, how I responded. It would be naive to suggest that I didn’t have to be careful before. It’s also possible that peers are harder to manage than non-peers. Kids who were willing to ignore my transgressions may have been much harder on each other. As a teacher, I was insulated by a bubble of power, however much I downplayed it. In any case, I found that it got more tiring to perform my relationships in front of my ever-expanding public. It wasn’t just about fun and identity exploration anymore. I found myself having to add people based on other people’s recommendations, and for instrumental purposes. Work started to intrude into my private life in a big way, and my private life came under scrutiny by people who didn’t understand the cultural and emotional context in which I operated. In turn, I now had “friends” whom I didn’t feel an actual affinity for, and was horrified to find myself getting annoyed by their unconscious intrusion into my field of vision. They must have felt the same about me. My audience was now much more fragmented. Whom was I posting for? As I connected with more people whom I didn’t have a relationship with beyond Facebook, the emotional way in which I used the platform began to become a drain on my energy. And I did not know how to restrict my usage to instrumental functions.

And then Facebook came along and dealt the final blow to my already weakening ability to hold the threads of my Facebook identity together. Making the platform “much more social” is a misnomer, because it assumes that everyone treats “social” in the same way. Perhaps this is me becoming a grumpy old woman, but I see “more social” in terms of depth. The people at Facebook see it in terms of breadth. And that’s fine. It’s their platform, and they can do what they want with it. Likewise, I can do whatever I like as well. I choose not to have to deal with constantly moving targets of sociability and privacy (at least on Facebook, at least for now). I choose not to share my private life with people who don’t me well enough, and say “You seem to have a lot of time to spend on Facebook”, even though it hardly takes two minutes to post a status update, and I work in a manner that allows for little two-minute breaks every now and then.

Facebook says I can go back whenever I want to. Let’s see how long I’ll last. I’ve left the building, but apparently my stuff is still there.

PS: Got the “unfriend” picture here, the “spy” picture here and the “facebook” picture here.

This set is missing a few because they’re made of glass. When she wore them for a dance performance they broke as they smashed against each other with the vigour of her movements. One piece pierced her foot. She danced on, no outward sign of pain on her face. Afterward she sobbed as he gently eased the offending splinter out of her flesh. Glass bangles are beautiful, but they break easily. And she doesn’t dance anymore.

More glass bangles, red and green, interspersed with gold. To match her wedding sari. Gently eased on ceremoniously, to mark her status as a bride. Everywhere she goes for the next few weeks, the bangles, the henna on her hands and the yellow thread around her neck mark her as newly married. Glass bangles get in the way of the lovemaking, but offer a ritualistic challenge because of their delicate tinkle when they are aroused, their inevitable shattering when they are not treated gently enough. And she’s not a new bride anymore.

These with the pink salwar khameez, those with the blue sari. Oh! These never matched anything so she only wore them when she was in a certain contrary mood. If he had been more observant, her bangles could have foretold that argument. Prevented the shouting, the inevitable tears, the passionate rapprochement after the storm…on second thoughts, perhaps the blinkers made life more fun. Contrary unmatching bangles be damned. And she’s not an overexcited girl anymore.

Plastic bangles, mostly, when the babies came along. They played with the coloured bands as she nursed them. She used them to remind herself which side she had to nurse them on the next time, switching them from one wrist to the other. When they got bored at a gathering or a dinner party, spinning the acrylic circles on the floor mesmerised them, stimulated them, kept them happy long enough for her to grab a bite. A little later, the metal bangles were perfect as a template for drawing circles. And her babies are all grown up.

Metal bangles not good when cooking though. Oh no! They heated up too quickly when she was stirring at the stove, burning her wrist. All it took was once to learn her lesson. A single bangle on each wrist, so that no clanking or tinkling or jingling will wake sleeping children. So that there are no annoyingly repetitive noises from annoyingly repetitive movements like folding clothes, making beds, mopping floors. And she doesn’t do that anymore.

Bangles get in the way when you’re typing at a computer, writing on a notepad, feverishly thumbing through books, trying to frame your thoughts. Bangles remind you of a past life when your femininity was invested in what you did, whom you did it for, how you fit into the rules. Bangles made you a woman, because that was the joke- when a man was less than a man, they gave him bangles. A woman is…less than a man? Bangles are…a woman? A woman is…her bangles? And she’s not that woman anymore.

They’re back there now upon their stand
Decorative in a way that she isn’t anymore
They don’t stand for what she can achieve

Womanhood interruptus

When Wikileaks first burst on the scene last year there were major debates about freedom of information versus the need to protect government secrets. There are governments that have been deceiving their people – in these cases the cause of democracy has (it is argued) been furthered by Assange’s setup. But there are people whose lives are in grave danger because of Wikileaks, as James Ball reports in The Guardian.

The Singapore cables are probably the least important ones in terms of their immediate impact. But even so, some heads must be rolling now. The silence as far as the public is concerned is deafening. I can see how it would make sense for the frontline government action to be “no comment”. Commenting would indicate that Wikileaks is being taken seriously, given legitimacy. But not commenting may not be an option in today’s political climate. If there is anything that the General Election and the Presidential Election have shown us, it is that Singaporeans are clamouring for more transparency. What has been leaked this time are not official documents. They are conversations that had taken place (I assume) under conditions of confidentiality. How are these to be handled?

One of the journalists highlighted in the cable concerning press freedom wrote a Facebook note explaining that she had been quoted out of context. I think that is par for the course in that particular profession. She also pretty much contradicted everything in the cable. I don’t blame her for doing this. Clearly it is not easy to be in the eye of the storm, and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. There is a clear policy on the handling of confidential government information. But this latest round of revelations concerning Singapore came mainly from conversations which were then recorded (amazing memories these chaps have, I must say). What is our policy on those?

Given our current political climate, it might be time for some comment. Love it or hate it, Wikileaks has changed the rules of the game. I’d like to know how we plan to play it on our end.

PS: Found the above picture here

 It all started with the topic of my younger son’s new computer. Rishi is the sort who has brilliant ideas for poems and stories and is always writing. He used to fill uncountable notebooks and, ever since he got a computer, has folder upon folder of works in progress. He tries to talk to me about them but my brain starts hurting after a while.

“It’s not that your ideas are no good, or that they make no sense,” I assure him, “But that I don’t have the intellectual capacity or the imagination to process them beyond a certain point.” And this is completely true.

He recently got a new laptop because the old one was in its death throes. The poor thing was close to giving up the ghost because of the battering it had received at its owner’s feverish fingers. If he is not typing his stories and poems, he is playing games. And you know what that entails in terms of wear and tear!

In contrast, my older son has a Mac that he treats with more respect than he does the woman who gave birth to him (I jest. I think). Very visually oriented and a photography buff, Arjun can spend hours editing photographs, and has a great eye for detail. Wherever we go we are subjected to his critiques of posters, advertisements and signboards. Also interior design of restaurants, presentation of food…the list goes on. I think it is fair to say that I now see the world in a new way, thanks to this observant son of mine. And he usually sees it through the lens of his camera.

So you can see that each of my sons has a very different relationship with, and view of, technology. And that is why the discussion this morning was so interesting. Talk about how we use our computers led to the topic of technology at Hogwarts. Rishi thought it might be nice to write with a quill. I remarked that it would certainly separate the wheat from the chaff, because when your writing process is so slow and interrupted by all the ink-dipping, only those who can really hold their ideas in their head and organise them before committing them to paper would be able to produce any writing at all, as opposed to the “everycrap” you get when everyone can write whatever pops into their head (elitist oversimplification. I know). Arjun wondered why, with all the magic available to them, the students and teachers at Hogwarts used quills that had to be dipped in ink repeatedly to write with.

If you think about it, there is a technological divide at Hogwarts. While the average magical inmate scratches away with a quill on parchment, do you notice that only Dumbledore has access to a pensieve? Is that an indication that only he has so many thoughts that he needs a separate storage device for them? Or that only he can afford one? Or that only he is responsible enough to be able to use one?

And what of the horcrux technology? Only Voldemort wanted it so badly that he took the effort to learn how to use it despite all the barriers to access. Yet what if this technology, along with knowledge about its implications, had been brought out into the open and freely discussed? Would the lure of the dangerous technology have dissipated somewhat? Might constructive and socially beneficial uses have been found for it eventually if enough research had been allowed? The philosopher’s stone is another type of technology that was erased from the narrative after Voldemort had reframed its meaning. Limited access to the most powerful forms of technology seems to be a recurring theme. I’m not saying that’s wrong. It fits in with the polarizing of good and evil that is at the heart of the Harry Potter series. I just think that it is interesting to look at Rowling’s magical technology from the perspective of our relationships with real-life technology.

On another level, both the pensieve and the horcrux can be seen as metaphors for technology that we already possess. When we put our experiences and memories into blogs and online social networking sites via our photographs, status updates and other posts, we are storing them for later retrieval. As Dumbledore shared his memories with Harry, we can share them with our networks. Just as Harry noted that none of the people in the memories could see him or feel his presence, when we look back at our posts online, we see the interactions and the artefacts, but not the actual people behind them. Our lives move on after we have posted, yet these memories are embedded in who we are. Similarly, Dumbledore’s memories remain significantly intertwined in the later episodes of his life, and are relevant even after his death.

Sherry Turkle writes about cyberspace as a metaphor for identity, and suggests that just as we can be different people in different windows on our computer screen, so we can have multiple selves that exist at the same time, but which we cycle through with flexibility. This multiplicity of identity seems to me very close to the notion of horcruxes. You have a piece of yourself on a blog, another on Facebook, a third on Twitter and so on. Yet while the horcrux is seen as a dangerous concept, Turkle sees multiplicity of identity as a healthy thing, as long as we maintain flexibility in the way we move between our selves.

When you think about Hogwarts it is magic, not technology, that immediately comes to mind. Yet what is magic, if not a form of technology that is so poorly understood as to take on mythical qualities?  Let’s face it: to many of us, modern technology IS magic!

I also still view with gratitude all the students who inspire their teachers on an everyday basis: you don’t know it, but when you laugh at our jokes, frown when you don’t understand something, ask questions that send us scrambling for answers when we don’t know them or light up when our explanations have hit home, you’re creating an engaging classroom situation in a powerful and fundamental way.

But this Teachers’ Day I want to pay homage to the transformative power of learning, and I am doing this both as a teacher as well as a student. I’d like to push the boundary a little and use this special day to talk about the process of learning in a way that links back to the role that teachers play, but with a special focus on the transformations that take place when you get thrust out of your comfort zone. This happens to both teachers and students. They are equally valuable sides of the same coin.

If at all success can be measured, one way might be to look at socially approved achievement milestones:

University degree? Check.

Postgraduate degree? Check.

 Professional qualifications? Check.

Married? Check.

Comfortable home? Check.

Kids? Check.

Who are doing okay in school? Check.

I could have gone back to work after my kids were grown up and didn’t need my physical presence 24/7. Or I could have stayed home and lived the life of a slightly down-at-heel but nonetheless privileged housewife. But I chose instead to study, because the brain needed to be engaged, and the hunger for that sort of engagement reached the point where it demanded some attention. I’ve done this my whole life – yanked myself out of my comfort zone against my better judgment and the pleas of my family, who know they have to put up with all the angst that the new “discomfort zone” will churn up in me.

This time is no different. I tutor a third-year module in a field that is new to me, and have to read like crazy before every tutorial. I am learning about theories I used to dismiss as esoteric without even knowing enough about them to make that dismissal in a logical and intelligent way. Comfort zone? I am so far out of it that I can’t find my way back. “Ask me questions if you don’t understand something” is the very kind offer I receive from teachers and classmates. What if I don’t even understand enough to know which questions to ask? As teacher and student, I am assailed with self doubt on an hourly basis. The panic blinds me sometimes, making words on the computer screen swim in front of my face until I step away, cry a few tears on my husband’s broad and much abused shoulders, hug my sons for extra strength and take a few deep breaths.

I thought I had it all. I thought this would just be something extra. It’s not. It is destroying the confidence I had, and shattering any sense of comfort in what I thought I knew. But this is also an essential part of the transformation process. I can’t say with any certainty that anything good is going to come out of this. But if there IS one thing I am learning, it is that uncertainty is the only constant.

If I might be allowed to link this very personal example back to the school setting, this uncertainty is out of sync with the system of high stakes assessment we have here in Singapore. High marks come from pre-packaged answers. Pre-packaged answers come from a false sense of certainty. Teaching becomes about transmitting that false certainty and learning becomes about induction into a mindset of acceptance. Acceptance leads to a belief that the outcome of learning is the skilled reproduction of pre-packaged answers. And so the cycle continues.

But here is the light that shines at the end of the tunnel: comfort zones are getting discarded, transformation is taking place, and this is happening every day. How can it not? As heavily scripted as classroom routines and curriculum demands are, teachers and students are real people with beliefs and dreams of their own. There is a quiet revolution that takes place in many classrooms on a daily basis. Schools are judged based on their examination results, but the outpouring of love and gratitude that you see students expressing for their teachers on Teachers’ Day comes from a different wellspring.

The source of the emotion cannot just be results, awards, performance indicators. I believe it is a recognition of the effort that goes into the transformative process, that leaves teachers and students raw and vulnerable, that is itself its own reward. If at all teachers are singled out in this transformation that is equally terrifying for all, it is because they are the ones who take on the responsibility for the process, hold themselves accountable for its success, and set the initial coordinates for its trajectory.

Happy Teachers’ Day – to my colleagues in the teaching profession, all the teachers I have ever had, and my students past and present. Uncertainty and transformation are not in themselves happy things, but anyone who engages in them deserves a chance to celebrate.

Our education system is based on high-stakes assessment which makes the transmission model of teaching much more time-efficient than any other more participatory and heterarchical model. Large class sizes make it difficult for teachers to conceive of and implement pedagogical innovations. We need foreign talent because the products of our own education system are apparently not creative or intelligent enough. We teach our children only how to pass examinations and then say that that is all they know how to do.

And then along comes a Trinetta Chong. Not exactly run-of-the-mill. She is, after all, valedictorian of a batch that represents the cream of the students in Singapore. Not many make it to university level. She may not have planned her little interjection very far in advance, but it is highly unlikely that it slipped out totally subconsciously. “Fuck” is a word that still has some shock value in largely conservative Singapore, which is why young people enjoy using it. The content of her speech was far from the usual stock phrases that such speeches are made of. Light and informal, she did her best to capture the experiences of her classmates. That this young lady felt confident enough to make the speech she did, and end it the way she did, is a sign of the times – whatever your opinion of the appropriateness of her speech. She reached out to her classmates, roused them and spoke in their voice. If their voice is not one that their elders approve of, it may not matter very much.

There are winds of change blowing through our little island nation. This is not a time when military force, political repression, educational stagnation and social rigidity are tools that can take any society forward. What army can fight an enemy from within? Events in Oslo and Mumbai have shown us that our best hope for peace lies in minds that are open to change, to expressions of diversity, and to the essential humanity that ultimately links us all.

So many things we teach our young people, whether by words or by example, turn out to be useless in helping them cope in a rapidly changing world. We do our best, of course, but ultimately we are staring blind into a future that grows more obscure by the minute. When once in a while they attempt to shine a light on their own path, just to make the journey a little brighter and to make their mark on it in a way that they think is memorable, perhaps the best we can do for them is to graciously accept their need to try.