Stresses Of The Asian Youth

Being a Singaporean expatriate, I have the wonderful opportunity to look at Singapore from two perspectives; one as a foreigner and one as a local Singaporean. Whenever I go return to Singapore, I look at all the things I once enjoyed as a child but always taken for granted; the delicious food, the safety that I never fully realised until I moved to Jakarta and the loyal friends who would always stay by my side through thick and thin. I always used to look at Singapore as my world; there was never anything more or could ever want outside the small little island I call home. All the political instability we see nowadays in Syria or all the terrible crimes committed in Malaysia never bothered me; I knew I was always safe in this small little bubble called Singapore. Many of my friends, share the same perspective of Singapore as well; we fail to notice anything going on outside the borders of Singapore unless it is indirectly or directly connected to us in some way, shape or form. Everything changed as soon as I stepped out of this bubble, and my vision of this world shattered.


Moving into Indonesia showed me the world outside of Singapore; a new language, a new culture and different social conventions when addressing young or old. As I had hoped, being in an international school has also showed me the different social conventions of people from many different countries as well and how they all seemed to compromise at some line or even merge to the point that we have our own unique school social convention. English students in our school are display the behaviour of a British School student or an Indonesian one. Rather it is a hybrid of the two (or more if further influenced by other school students of a different social background)


Although I did not plan to or ever wish to, I have succumbed to the conduct of the school students and started to behave like them accordingly. However, due to my Singaporean background, I have my own personal hybrid as I continue to fight the urge to fully "convert" to become one of the crowd. Knowing that this was going to happen one way or the other, I started to subconsciously filter out all the bad or vulgar activities found in both societies. I have therefore analysed all teachings thought to me in the typical Chinese-Singaporean society and ones found in the "expatriate" society and have justified both actions with evidence in the teachings I have decided to ignore and the teachings that I have decided to remember. It is after this analysis that I have come to a compromise between the two communities. However, I feel that  the etiquttes found in the expatriate society will soon overwhelm me and I will be nothing different from the crowd as time wears on. Fortunately at the moment I am still at this hybrid stage.

With this hybrid-perspective of the world at the moment, I return to Singapore with different eyes and start to realise what a globalised country Singapore is. As more companies and brands start to invest in Singapore, more and more of the culture of Singapore gets worn away. We start to lose the slangs we loved so much and the silly things that we used to do that will never be done by future generations. What I haven't noticed until now was the fatigue found in the youths of Singapore.

The syllabus typically found in all English schools opens the students to many things that was never opened to Singaporeans. The Singaporean syllabus typically closes any form of extra-curricular activity (unless a hidden agenda is present) and only focuses the academic aspect of an education. It is not common to find parents constantly complaining about the tiring routines of their children, of which their parents cannot keep up with as well. I am aware of the expectations of children at this current day and age and, when looking at the schedule of a few of my associates, they know it as well. A routine and busy day is productive and brings out the full potential of the person, of whom will be the human capital of the future. The busier you work, the more productive you are. That is, if you can handle it. The world is becoming more and more competitive and the youths of many Asian countries (particularly Singapore and Korea) are becoming stressed to the point of suicide, depression or chronic headaches from lack of sleep (Korea has the highest suicide rate out of all OEDC countries). We cannot form a future of which the foundation of the world rests on youths working all day and all night with no respect for sleep or any form or relaxation, both mentally and physically. Nevertheless I do agree that the people of the future do need to continue being more productive or start learning things at a very quick rate. But that doesn't mean having to start school at the age of 3 (my mother's godchild) or coming back home in the dark of night (my friend's cousin). Rather, what the world needs to do is come up with a more efficient and less time-consuming way of educating these people, whether it is compressing the syllabus (even more, if humanly possible) or making the learning more fun, so that it can coincide with their free or leisure time as well (if any). This is usually adopted by the Western culture of the world to teach children things at a young age; something I plan to do with my child as soon as he learns how to talk as well in the future.

However, at the moment if this continues, all I see is a very depressing future for the youths of the next generation and those after that until this is solved. I wish for this to be solved, and plan by starting a different teaching method with my child so that he both learns and has fun as well. What will you do for the people of the future?