Sunday, March 30, 2008
ReduxDaftstar @ 11:57 AM
Dear teacher-in-charge, NCOs and fellow cadets,
Last... what day was it? Never mind. I came across with an incident which drew me into some reflections which I want to share with my fellow SJABians as well as suggestions to the teacher-in-charge.
At… what time again? Never mind. In the day, my platoon and I left salt centre for our footdrill procedure. To our surprise, there was Dr. Chen’s car, a St John’s ambulance, a fire engine, a police car and a lorry parked right in front of the entrance of the salt centre, with the vehicles’ bonnet already touching the security post. The vehicles made it very difficult for people to access the gates thus caused inconvenience to cadets and NCOs. It was unclear if this was due to a traffic accident or random parking by an irresponsible man. I thought that the corps should be alerted so that measures will be taken to prevent people like that irresponsible driver from parking cars randomly or avoid similar accident from happening. However, just when I was about to take out my watch, a staff sergeant from NPCC (if I am not wrong), possibly a marshal of sorts, of the school appeared and yelled at me for taking down the time of the accident he thought I have noted. He then took away my watch and checked through it. He asked me to collect it from him afterwards. When I did went to see him after EP3, another staff sergeant appeared and ordered me to show him my watch to ensure that no time was taken down, according to him, “the school” does not want the time to be published. I was taken aback and felt frustrated by the command that I have to show to a NPCC NCO my personal stuff, thus argued with a few strong statements.
I want to hereby apologize to the (ir)relevant NPCCians if any unhappiness was aroused. After all they were just playing their role to guard the Hwa Chong’s Uniformed Groups reputation. However, after consulting the NCOs about this issue I was encouraged to write this PSB message to discuss whether students should use their watch to help supervise unacceptable noting in the time in the school compound. The difficulty of examining such issues is that there is no distinct watershed between obliged supervision to improve the school ethos and the intrusions of privates in SJAB (no offence).
In my should-be-but-not-humble opinion, since the yardsticks of such issues could be rather ambiguous, I suggest that relevant incidents to be treated in a case-to-case (wow original writer English very pro sia.) basis. I think that the intention of the particular students taking note of the time is the most important factor to be examined. Some students take note of the time of indecent moments of teachers with his/her colleagues in school without being permitted just for their own pleasure; such nonsense are definitely not acceptable and should face severe punishment. However, I think that students should be given the rights to highlight some problems existing in our school or to supervise our corps so that mistakes can be corrected to create a more conducive training environment in Hwa Chong through methods such as taking note of the time as evidence for the corps’s reference. For an example, if we are witnessing our squad being dismissed later than other squads after it has endedby a male or female staff or staff sergeant from NPCC, we are obliged to take necessary measures such as taking note of the time as evidence for our squad being mistreated/discriminated. And I think the school should even encourage students for doing so. Thus after reflection of (That guy's English very good, should be “reflecting” only) my deed last Friday, I felt though I was rather unfair to use such strong words on our school’s NPCC NCOs, my intention was not wrong, and after consulting the NCOs my intention was approved by them and they even said that they actually wanted to see the photos! I felt deeply encouraged/motivated/enthu-ed/emotionally charged and became more confident to hereby appeal to the school to allow more freedom to use modern technology to make our trainings better.
After all I believe that Hwa Chong is an institution that is open and democratic and certainly hope that corps will take my case into consideration and make amendments to the school regulations to benefit the cadets and NCOs as well as to the corps.
I’m looking forward to my fellow cadets’ views upon this issue, feel free to kindly leave your comments and suggestions in the response box, let us keep on striving to fight for our rights (to take note of the time) and watches! :-)
yours faithfully,
Cheng can, 29/3/08
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FUTURE EVENTS
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ABOUT
The Hwa Chong Institution St. John Ambulance Brigade has had various awards, which recognizes the corps’ ability to train platoons of cadets, who are highly disciplined and well versed in First Aid. Following the motto of ‘For the service of mankind’, we also provide and render first aid coverage during events such as the combined sports meet, MUNs etc. As of 2009, the Hwa Chong Corps is one of the three schools in Singapore to have a record number of 10 consecutive CAA Gold. |
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