I will be discussing about this topic through the perspective of a sports champion, which is also my CA role.
Sports is about winning competition
As a sports champion, I firmly believes that the main role of sports in schools is to train athletes to win competitions. In my opinion, the meaning of the word “sports” itself is just about competitions. Sports is an organized, competitive, and skillful physical activity requiring commitment and fair play. There are rules and regulations in sports that one has to follow. But why are there rules and regulations? This is to ensure that the players win fairly and only the player who deserves it can raise the trophy in his hands. The spirit of sports itself is about winning.
The purpose of sports is also to win. Let’s face the fact. We play sports because we want to win. We want to defeat the opposition and come first. Sport is about winning.
I think that school sports should continue to be an arena where athletes can challenge each other. School sports should be more competitive as competitions would encourage and motivate us to work hard and play the sports well. It is due to the desire for glory and honour that compels us to be serious about training and do our best when we play the sports. It is the fear of losing that hinders us to be lazy and not train up our skills. Hence, competitions are important as they raise our standards and we would strive for the better.
Elite sports in schools select the best players when they are recruiting members to the CCA. Why best players? This is because they would be able to win more competitions. They want highly potential players that could help them to win competitions. If not, they would be selecting them based on interest than skills instead. Hence, the main role of sports in schools, as well as in national context, is to train athletes to win competitions.
School sports should also be more competitive. Competition is good for us as without it we would not evolve, we could not better ourselves and world records could not be broken. Competitions push our limits and we will improve ourselves. Competition drives us forward and it is a way to strive for continuous improvement whereby we tries to do the best you can and doing even better next time.
Professional Coaches inculcate sportsmanship in players
Competition is harmless and most of the time it is, but there are times whereby competition becomes violence and we do not respect our opponents. An example is the incident on the students from Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) and Saint Andrews’ Secondary engaging in a major brawl after an ill-tempered rugby match. I think that this incident could have been prevented if they had developed sportsmanlike behaviour and were able to lose graciously. Hence, I strongly believe that players require professional coaching. Professionals would do a better job in imparting sporting skills and inculcating soft skills. These soft skills include teamwork, building of character and sportsmanship. Learning to become a graceful loser is certainly an important lesson.
Furthermore, these coaches would demand good sportsmanship from their players and this help shape the moral, ethical, and spiritual character of the players. Young players look up to their coaches as role models and are likely to observe their coaches’ behaviours. Professional coaches who show respect to officials and opponents before, during, and after games can truly expect their players to do the same.
Professional coaches engage the athletes in the sport, making it interesting for them and teach good sportsmanship through competitiveness. Therefore, I think that professional coaches should be hired so as to solve the problem of players being scared to lose and their resentment towards their rivals and opponents. This would then prevent incidents such as the conflict between ACS(I) and SAS.
Safety standards in Singapore School Sports
There also had been a spate of injuries and accidents that took place and the present safety standards of sports in Singapore was questioned. In my opinion, I think that it is inevitable that injuries happen and there are no safety lapses in sports in school. It was also reported that since 2007, the post-final celebrations of the B Division rugby have been incident-free. This shows that such injuries happened rarely, and these accidents occur as a low rate. There have been 54 games in the B Division Rugby Championship this season but such accidents happened in only two games. Such low percentage of the accidents happening shows that there are no serious safety lapses in school sports.
In conclusion, I think that the purpose of having sports in school is to train athletes to win competitions and for school sports to maintain as a platform for athletes to challenge each other. I also think that school sports should be more competitive and the players will be able to cope with professional coaching. They would have the right mind-set from such coaching. I also think that the current safety standards and practices do not have to be revamped.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Ranting about Projects Day
Our Projects Day experiment just ended and this is the last time we will be doing the experiment! Yay! Enough of looking at crickets and crickets and crickets. After calculating, I just found out we did 416 trials with maximum of 5 minutes each for only experiment! Imagine the amount of time we spent on the experiments. I have spent approximately 35 hours observing the crickets going out of the hole for 416 times! The time and effort spent on this is epic.
Before the semi-finals, we finished experiment 1 and 20 crickets for experiment 2. The teacher judge was not sastified with the little number, and even said that for professionals like scientist, when dealing with life science (like crickets), normally do 200 of the subject matter. We certainly do not have time, hence she suggested 50. So we have it, we did a total of 52 crickets for the experiment and for richer data.
Experiments aside, there are still discussions and research that had to be done before the experiment. This causes much more time to be spent. Furthermore, during the discussions, our group members are not contributing much, causing the slow progress of the discussions. Other than the leader (the rick), the others just want to slack. The slacking included not doing of the google docs tasks and it dates back to term 1, including the research notes, experiment ideas, extensions ideas and now the discussion document. If the google docs task were completed, the work would of low quality and does not benefit much to the experiment.
Things are worse during meetings. People (with exception of the leader) only wants to kill time and hope that the meeting will end early so as to go home. I do admit that I am sometimes one of them but at least I do contribute to the meetings. This causes the whole meeting to be unproductive and to be a waste of time. Furthermore, people also finds excuses to not come for meetings. This includes deliberately arranging CIP to be at the day of the experiment or meetings.
However, come to speak of it, our group members is actually better than other groups that I know of, these include giving up of the whole projects day finals and finding lame excuses to skip meetings. That's all for the ranting..
Before the semi-finals, we finished experiment 1 and 20 crickets for experiment 2. The teacher judge was not sastified with the little number, and even said that for professionals like scientist, when dealing with life science (like crickets), normally do 200 of the subject matter. We certainly do not have time, hence she suggested 50. So we have it, we did a total of 52 crickets for the experiment and for richer data.
Experiments aside, there are still discussions and research that had to be done before the experiment. This causes much more time to be spent. Furthermore, during the discussions, our group members are not contributing much, causing the slow progress of the discussions. Other than the leader (the rick), the others just want to slack. The slacking included not doing of the google docs tasks and it dates back to term 1, including the research notes, experiment ideas, extensions ideas and now the discussion document. If the google docs task were completed, the work would of low quality and does not benefit much to the experiment.
Things are worse during meetings. People (with exception of the leader) only wants to kill time and hope that the meeting will end early so as to go home. I do admit that I am sometimes one of them but at least I do contribute to the meetings. This causes the whole meeting to be unproductive and to be a waste of time. Furthermore, people also finds excuses to not come for meetings. This includes deliberately arranging CIP to be at the day of the experiment or meetings.
However, come to speak of it, our group members is actually better than other groups that I know of, these include giving up of the whole projects day finals and finding lame excuses to skip meetings. That's all for the ranting..
Mug Mug Mug
Haven't blogged for quite some time and I just found out that my latest blog post has been spammed with comments from anonymous users. So I decided to repost it as the some of the content of the comments are undesirable. This is the effect of leaving your blog dead for a long time!
Coming back to the topic, this post is not to promote the initiative of the Ortus Council (selling teachers' mug) or to advertise for Ms Lim's personally designed mug (although it had been sold already). I will be looking into the another (singaporean) meaning of "mug" which is what we, HC students like to use to connote studying, revising, doing homework, looking at notes, flipping through notes and even taking out your files, books, etc.
From wiki, it says that the term "mugging" is a Singapore colloquial term for intensive studying; a person who is studying intensively - derived from British colloquial term to mug up. The real meaning of the word "mugger" is someone who robs and attacks another in a public place. In HC, the term "mugging" when used on others seems to be a form of discrimination and people detests muggers. We often hear phrases such as "Can you stop mugging?!"
Everything time I am online on MSN, people would be telling me to go and "mug", and the way he puts it seems to be a stereotype that I am a mugger and I should go and mug. I hates it, especially when I was just playing the computer or not mugging.
I also think that the term "mugging" is similiar to that of a "nerd" and it actually shows that one is only capable of studying and do not know how to enjoy life. It is as if that if you mug, you will for sure get the highest grades but less likely to do well in other aspects, showing that you are not an all-rounder.
However, I do agree that there might some positive things about being labeled as a mugger. You can treat it as a compliment to show that you are hardworking and do not slack. It also shows that you are preparing for test and that gives you some kind of confidence that you can ace your test. Furthermore, when you are playing a computer and your friend expects you to mug, it could be a reminder for you to mug and stop playing.
Or is it that I am just thinking too much and that mugging is simply a plain word used to describe someone who is studying and does not carry any negative elements in it?
Coming back to the topic, this post is not to promote the initiative of the Ortus Council (selling teachers' mug) or to advertise for Ms Lim's personally designed mug (although it had been sold already). I will be looking into the another (singaporean) meaning of "mug" which is what we, HC students like to use to connote studying, revising, doing homework, looking at notes, flipping through notes and even taking out your files, books, etc.
From wiki, it says that the term "mugging" is a Singapore colloquial term for intensive studying; a person who is studying intensively - derived from British colloquial term to mug up. The real meaning of the word "mugger" is someone who robs and attacks another in a public place. In HC, the term "mugging" when used on others seems to be a form of discrimination and people detests muggers. We often hear phrases such as "Can you stop mugging?!"
Everything time I am online on MSN, people would be telling me to go and "mug", and the way he puts it seems to be a stereotype that I am a mugger and I should go and mug. I hates it, especially when I was just playing the computer or not mugging.
I also think that the term "mugging" is similiar to that of a "nerd" and it actually shows that one is only capable of studying and do not know how to enjoy life. It is as if that if you mug, you will for sure get the highest grades but less likely to do well in other aspects, showing that you are not an all-rounder.
However, I do agree that there might some positive things about being labeled as a mugger. You can treat it as a compliment to show that you are hardworking and do not slack. It also shows that you are preparing for test and that gives you some kind of confidence that you can ace your test. Furthermore, when you are playing a computer and your friend expects you to mug, it could be a reminder for you to mug and stop playing.
Or is it that I am just thinking too much and that mugging is simply a plain word used to describe someone who is studying and does not carry any negative elements in it?
Analysis of the poem "Rainbow Death"
1. Point of View
The voice of the poet is dramatised. This is evident from "Green, pink, purple and other colors death potpourri". The poet listed the colours, "green, pink, purple" to emphasise on the different types of chemicals used and each had their negative effect on people. This presented chemical warfare in a dramatic way. "Death potpourri" makes it more dramatic as it showed that the chemicals not just had negative effects on the people, but it can and it will led to death.
It is also evident from "Generations untold WILL pay". The intentional making of the word "will" in caps show the exaggeration and emphasis on this word. This is to show that even people that are borned after the war will suffer from the war as well. The poet was particular sure of that from the word "will".
2. Situation and Setting
Social conflict between the Vietnamese and the American. This is evident from "omnipotent and disregarding who will mourn". The Americans thought that they have unlimited power and could do what they want to the Vietnamese, mostly whom were innocent. They disregarded the sufferings that would occur just because of an instant release of the gas.
There is also emotional conflict in the poet. He was an American yet he criticised America for killing the innocent. Furthermore, he was one of the personnel involved and sent to Vietnam. The criticism is obvious in "nefariously America led astray". He criticised America for being extremely wicked and evil.
3. Language/ Diction
The use of the word "potpourri". Potpourri actually is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material. "Potpourri" is often used to refer to any collection of miscellaneous or diverse items. The word "pourri" means rotten. This implies that because of the chemicals, a lot of people died and the corpses start to rot. This resulted in a "mixture" of people who died, ranging from children to the eldery.
The use of the word "innocent". This emphasises the fact that the Americans are killing the innocent who was not harmful in any ways or did not offended them. They are not of any danger to them so why do the Americans still kill them. Furthermore, using chemicals like that causes the unborn to suffer as well, which were free of evil or any sin. The word "innocent" also shows that negative side of Americans and they were oblivious to the suffering of the innocent.
4. Personal Response
I agree very much with the poet. War is a harsh and cruel thing and we should try to avoid war as much as possible. War does not solve any problems. In fact, it causes more problems and suffering to the people, the government, the victim, the offender, etc. It is a lose-lose situation for both sides. Nobody would benefit from war and it is not worth it to start a war. One's decision can cause a lot of harm to millions and millions of people.
1. Point of View
The voice of the poet is dramatised. This is evident from "Green, pink, purple and other colors death potpourri". The poet listed the colours, "green, pink, purple" to emphasise on the different types of chemicals used and each had their negative effect on people. This presented chemical warfare in a dramatic way. "Death potpourri" makes it more dramatic as it showed that the chemicals not just had negative effects on the people, but it can and it will led to death.
It is also evident from "Generations untold WILL pay". The intentional making of the word "will" in caps show the exaggeration and emphasis on this word. This is to show that even people that are borned after the war will suffer from the war as well. The poet was particular sure of that from the word "will".
2. Situation and Setting
Social conflict between the Vietnamese and the American. This is evident from "omnipotent and disregarding who will mourn". The Americans thought that they have unlimited power and could do what they want to the Vietnamese, mostly whom were innocent. They disregarded the sufferings that would occur just because of an instant release of the gas.
There is also emotional conflict in the poet. He was an American yet he criticised America for killing the innocent. Furthermore, he was one of the personnel involved and sent to Vietnam. The criticism is obvious in "nefariously America led astray". He criticised America for being extremely wicked and evil.
3. Language/ Diction
The use of the word "potpourri". Potpourri actually is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material. "Potpourri" is often used to refer to any collection of miscellaneous or diverse items. The word "pourri" means rotten. This implies that because of the chemicals, a lot of people died and the corpses start to rot. This resulted in a "mixture" of people who died, ranging from children to the eldery.
The use of the word "innocent". This emphasises the fact that the Americans are killing the innocent who was not harmful in any ways or did not offended them. They are not of any danger to them so why do the Americans still kill them. Furthermore, using chemicals like that causes the unborn to suffer as well, which were free of evil or any sin. The word "innocent" also shows that negative side of Americans and they were oblivious to the suffering of the innocent.
4. Personal Response
I agree very much with the poet. War is a harsh and cruel thing and we should try to avoid war as much as possible. War does not solve any problems. In fact, it causes more problems and suffering to the people, the government, the victim, the offender, etc. It is a lose-lose situation for both sides. Nobody would benefit from war and it is not worth it to start a war. One's decision can cause a lot of harm to millions and millions of people.
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