This is a joint blog shared by 2 lazy pple - Ciping & Wilbur, who wishes to use each other to maintain the blog. Sadly, Ciping is the more inactive one and Wilbur does most of the work in the end. Feel free to post comments on the tag-board, it feels good to know pple are actually reading and responding to your posts. It gives motivation to write more.
5 more papers to go.. so little time. Will I make it?
I think I've learnt to stop worrying about that now.
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GP question 2:
Blogs are the champion of media freedom.
I would guess the GP setters really had foresight, or they put in the question at the last minute.
With the 2 men getting charged for making 'seditous and inflammatory' remarks about Muslims; and closer to our hearts, 5 JC students being suspended for posting insults about their teachers, how can we say blogs are the champion of media freedom?
I like the way the New Paper put it -
"One student at a top boy's school learnt it the hard way - he was publicly caned."
"One Sec 2 student at a top girls' school in the Orchard Road area said that her teacher told off her class for using foul language in their blog entries."
Yes, they don't name the schools, but already, we have quite a good idea of what they might be already.
I don't want to go too much into the argument that our blogs are personal and teachers or whoever have no right to question what we say. And of course, if the remarks of the students didn't have truth in it, they would be deemed to be silly and stupid rather than insulting. I can call my teacher an idiot, but if he's a nice and widely-respected teacher, I'd probably be on the receiving end of insults instead.
I would like to point out a trend - that is, teachers who are particularly concerned or uptight over this matter would be from the 'better' schools. Notice the 5 students were from JC, that guy was from a top boys' school, while the girl was from a top girls' school.
"One teacher at a secondary school in Jurong who declined to be named told The New Paper that she often does online searches of her name.
She said: 'I found one of my student's blogs - he commented on what I wore to class one day. It was pretty offensive, but I didn't want to make a fuss about it in class.'"
I have come to the conclusion that since students from top schools are supposed to be much better behaved than those from neighbourhood schools, the authorities would kick up a much bigger fuss about it.
Probably the teacher would be hearing such uncouth stuff from students everyday that it is not so much from a concern now that its put into words. Not discriminating the neighbourhood schools here, but its true that the students in there (especially those who join gangs and the likes) would give teachers much bigger headaches than blogging concerns.
So, being good and responsible students as we ought to be, we should not be writing hurting truths about our teachers; but instead, learn how to put on a veil of hypocrisy even in our supposedly personal blogs, and allow the need to be politically correct to infiltrate every aspect of our lives.
Next time, be careful what you whisper to your friend too; your teacher might have put a bugging device on you.
Anyway, I didn't do this question for my GP. I felt that many more people would be doing it, and those who had experience in the so-hyped-up NIBC would do much better than me. My GP teacher also mentioned not to do any question on the mass media as it would almost certainly lead to a disaster. And of course, listening to your teacher obediently is always the best thing to do, isn't it?
On a sidenote, my stance is quite neutral actually. I don't really blame the teachers; without learning more about the truth of the matter and passing a judgement would be silly. I'm just airing a perspective as a responsible member of the blogging community, or rather, just writing out of boredom. Actually, to look at this with a postive light, we're actually quite fortunate that the major issues that we have to discuss are actually stuff as mundane as blogging. At least it reflects the relatively peaceful environment that we're living in.
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