Youth spoilt? Or just privileged

It has been the effort of generations past to build an easier life for the generation ahead, but it seems there has been rising concerns on whether our youth are becoming spoilt as their lives become better. This poses itself to be a worrying situation not just for the older generations, who had hardly tasted the privileges teens often do now, but also to Singaporeans who are concerned about the resilience and strength of our future leaders and workforce.

I refer to a report by The New Paper," Teacher, how to eat this?" (28 Feb). This thought provoking article describes some Singapore youth as a spoilt and over privileged
group of people. It describes how some students of several secondary schools fail to step up to the challenge during Total Defence Day commemorations, where comforts such as electricity were taken away, and only food rations of sweet potatoes were given. Quoting the article, "He (a teacher) said:"We actually had some students coming up to us, asking, 'How do I eat them?'" The author of this article, Teo Chin Ghee, gives a possible reason for this phenomena. He quotes a parent that The New Paper spoke to, who said,"From young, they (her own children) have led such pampered lives. They have 24-hour air-conditioning and a maid to meet their every need", and a teacher who said,"Students these days are definitely spoilt. When you take away certain privileges that they are used to having, then they appear handicapped and cannot cope." This is a stark contrast to the days of the Japanese Occupation when hardly any food, let alone electricity, was available and sweet potatoes were a luxury. Clearly our youth today lack the values of thrift and appreciation for what they have.

This particular report in The New Paper also prompted MP Dr Ong Seh Hong to ask the Parliament how resilient our teens are, as stated in a follow-up article "Can our youngsters weather storms?" (5 Mar) by The New Paper. The response from the education minister was that "Character building and moral development are important tasks in education." And as for how Singapore youths' character development stands as compared to those in other countries, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Masagos Zulkifli said "there has been no detailed study done in this area." However Mr Masagos also stated that through interactions with foreign education ministries, he has found out that character development is a high priority in many areas. But could this be a contradiction to what happened in the many schools that had Total Defence commemorations with negative student responses?

If character development was placed at such a high emphasis, shouldn't we be seeing youth responding positively to such efforts by the schools? I believe we should. But then again it is unfair to judge an entire population's youth with just the actions of a few. Moreover, the number of youths doing volunteery and charity work is rising steadily, reassuring us that youths today are not all that bad.