Wednesday, May 16, 2007

The Verdict

Setting: Student Centre
Background: There are 5 children in the centre who attend tutorials. They are all attending the same school for girls and are all in P5(Primary 5). They are friends actually but in different classes. As they have the same assignments and lessons, their tutorial sessions are going smoothly. They are all able to help each other and discuss what are happening in their school. They all have the same likes and dislikes and are fond of gymnastics and ballet. The only thing that differs is that one of them is Eurasian.
The Story: Lane is a very accomodating girl. She can understand other girls' feelings, behaviour and nature. Though she is Eurasian, she tries to be in with the girls by accepting without malice what she sees hears and feels. She was not able to learn any local dialect so she always express herself in English. When one of her friends speak in English and the other answers in Mandarin, she will never ever show any discomfort. For her, there is no malice in having her friends speak infront of her in a language she can't even understand. So it goes on and on. They will speak mixtures of English and Chinese. But lately, it became a pattern that they all speak Chinese all the time. Hearing pure Chinese spoken infront of her, she feels uncomfortable. Not being able to take it anymore, she distances herself from the group.
The Consequence: The teacher noticed something wrong with the group. After some observations, she concluded that Lane was wrong in distancing herself from the group. She advised her to learn basic Mandarin.
The Verdict: Ahh, can I say something. I feel for Lane. And my verdict: that girl disrespected Lane. She is not a real friend. Why can't she speak English infront of Lane when she is also fluent in English? She got no manners.

And you know who you are. You got no manners!!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is really really bad...I hope things like this can be resolve in a very procedural manner; like every school should prepare itself in tackling this kind of situation in the future.

Unknown said...

Hi major tom thanks for the visit. today is vesak day and a holiday here in sg.the point i mentioned here in my post is just a small matter but actually after this and everything calmed down, people can realize and understand the situation better and that it was not personal but something like an innate cultural and psychological reaction.