GES1011 - Learning Journey

Your participation marks consist of your contributions during class discussions (including online forums) AND a learning journal.

This journal can be a word document (or pdf) and may be thought of as an exercise in writing blog entries. So, construct five short entries on anything (idea, topic, reading, image) that is linked to your learning in the module. A reflective paragraph-long reflection for each entry would surely meet requirements.

This journal can be uploaded to the IVLE workbin (a folder will be set up) at the end of the semester. (By the end of Week 13).

= Learning Journal =

2 September - Visit to fort canning park

When I visited the fort canning park together with my teacher, he introduced me to a part of singapore that I did not know about. 

Firstly ,we visited the Iskandu Shar's burial place or supposed to be, its a well kept place with a hut build on top. It laid on the hill and was watched over and cleaned by its caretaker whose family has voluntarily watched the place for generations. What intrigued me is that even thou the place was considered sacred for the Malays, it has become a tourist attraction. Im quite surprise that given its suppose rich history, it is now being treated as a mere sight seeing object for people who are not Malay. The teacher pointed out that even thou it is widely believed that this is the final resting place of the last king of singapore, we do not truly know if that is actually where the burial actually is. What intrigued me more was when the teacher pose this question.

"If we were to scan the bottom of the burial place and find out there is no body... what will happen?"

What would happen to the traditions, the livelihood and the belief for those who truly believe for generations that that was the final resting place of Iskandu Shar. It would be nothing but a lie for them and it will be equivalent to if imagine Jesus in the christianity believe did not exist. Will all the traditions, the culture and the history that was tied together with this place of importance just vanish because of one shocking discovery. My stand is that even thou the actual thing is not real, but the memories it has created as a result of believing are still solid and real. Its up to the people who are affected if they want to continue this tradition or not. People could still come together as the tradition has brought about a means as a gathering to meet everyone rather than just following the tradition. Then again, it really depends on the event and the tradition as well as the people.

As we further walk down the hills of fort canning, we come across a archeological site. Apparently there was an archeological find of what seem to be a glass making area in the 14th century. What really surprise me is the reason why they decided to dig the place up. Apparently the reasoning was that because of the fact that the spot was directly adjacent to the Iskandar Shar. That set me to think that if the reason was purely because of that, how can we not be so sure that there is something else that lies in other parts of singapore. I do not believe it was because of that reason alone that we are able to unearth such artifacts from the 14th century, how can we be so sure that what we are standing on right now, where we are living on right now, could not be a archeological treasure site?

What about the future? Since it is said that the thriving port of Singapura only lasted a century in the 14ths, what about the singapore now. We are merely just people who moved into a second hand home, we have barely reach our 54, how are we so sure that we will be able to last a century. Would the future residence of this space dig up our accomplishments, our buildings and the things we left behind and see it as an archeological finding. Currently singapore has no rules in protecting of these national treasures, we fail to understand that the memories that these findings have are the only memories left behind by our predecessors. We should treat their memories with respect just like how we would want the future generation or the people who share this space in the future to treat our legacy with respect.

Information given by the park was also as pointed out by the teacher, slightly incorrect. For a fact, we are too use to receiving and accepting information given to us without even thinking much about it especially when it was fed to us by the government. After the teacher pointed out the mistake the keramat board had made about inconsistency with the use of the word Singapura and Singapore, it made me doubt about the history we taught since young about how singapore came to be and its history. We cannot take the words of others too lightly without thinking twice about it even if they seem to come from a reliable source.

1 October - Potato and historical mash

Today, Prof Kevin introduced the concept of historical lies, about how the way singapore is teaching our history to the young of singapore is nothing but one sided point of view.

I felt that the way prof started out today's lecture by introducing the song "famine" by sinead.  The song sang about how colonialism of the British affected the country Ireland. Even thou it is said in the history of Ireland of the potato famine, the singer strongly believes that the Famine could have been prevented it it weren't for the British. The singer felt that the British, for the sake of themselves and their business, allow the people of Ireland to starve even though there was plenty of food around, only those food are to be sold to clients of the British corporations. 

I felt disgusted and how these people who come into other people's territories, took advantage of these indigenous people and treated them less than a human. The virus that had struck the potatoes, leading to the great famine, was most likely brought in by incoming ships from other country. Leading to the singer solemnly commenting "But, there was no famine"

This allow me to think about raffles rule in singapore, the way we view Raffles' "rule" in singapore as show in the murder example. Even thou it is a fact that Raffles' have committed an atrocious act, we still idolised him and the worst part of all, our children are still until today taught of the greatness of Raffles in our social studies. However, all traces of these acts done have been almost erased from our history. Why aren't we teaching our children the truth about Raffles. Why are we blowing up his achievements out of proportion? Isn't our history then just a mash of unspoken truths.

18 October - Talking about multiracial

Today we were discussing about the different museums visited by different people in efforts for our letter to director submission. Prof Kevin brought up the fact that the only people visiting the ethical culture museums such as the Indian cultural museum are only the Indians in our class. It was such an obvious fact yet I did not realised it.
This let me reflect on how Singapore promotes racial harmony yet there is a clear segregation on the different races. Such examples are chinese only schools and race defined museums. Some of the class argued that the reason why they visited their race's cultural museum was because of the fact that they felt they are able to relate more to them but I feel that the only people who would visit these race defined museum are either tourist, the respective race or students who are most likely forced to visit by their education institution.

Why do we still segregate based on race even though we claim to be a multiracial and multicultural society. Why do we still segregate our schools, places to live and names of location based on the race.
If singapore is striving so hard to promote racial harmony, isn't the first step is to promote mutual understanding amongst the different races such as by letting different races experience and interact people from other ethnicity. Yet why do chinese only schools exist, isn't that worsening the situation by cutting of people's interaction with other race other then their own.

22 October - The luck of politics

This week's lecture we talked about the ongoing process of decolonisation and how the leaders of singapore managed to free themselves from the colonisation of the British.

I realised that all that singapore had attain was nothing but luck that just happen to be on the side of singapore in certain periods of time. For example, the way singapore gain internal self government was by luck. Originally, the british had no intention on surrendering singapore independence of internal self government but after they had embarrassed themselves publicly worldwide, they feel compelled to surrender to singapore's request of internal government under Lim Yew Hock.

A lot of achievement that singapore have attain was nothing more than timing and luck when playing politics.

11 November - The power of music

As a child born in Singapore, I had my fair share of exposure to the different national day songs (NDP) as well the national anthem up till secondary school. Listening to these songs, although I knew the meanings of the song's lyrics, never have I look into the perspective of the creation of the song's lyrics in regards to the development of singapore and what they are trying to introduce to Singaporeans. During this week's lecture, I was quite amazed at how by comparing the different NDP, we are able to see the themes and tropes being promoted. In the earlier songs such as "Count on me", it is more focused on the possibility of making singapore great, to encourage the citizens to stand together and do their part to achieve something great for singapore. However, as the years go by, the trope turned to singapore as a home for the people, using emotions to connect the listeners to the idea of having singapore as a home.

It is just amazing how the influence of music is able to create an identity for the people in this space and unite people of different class, race and religion into one. By creating these songs, it helps create a common objective and feeling among different people in Singapore.