National Education made relevant to students

At Swiss Cottage Secondary School, a group of students recently role-played a script about a person making insensitive remarks about someone's joss-paper burning.

The script was written by their teacher, to help students recognise what they should not do when dealing with someone else's culture.

The students' task to identify why the conversation might be offensive and rewrite the script to make it more respectful.

This is part of their weekly Glocal (a mix of global and local) Perspective lessons, which allow lower secondary students to discuss current affairs.

These lessons are also in line with the Ministry of Education announcement in March that part of the new National Education approach will focus on discussions of contemporary issues.

Swiss Cottage Secondary has been doing that since 2014.

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Every week, one hour is set aside for Sec 1 and 2 students to discuss current issues. Techniques such as role-playing and debate help the students to look at issues from multiple perspectives.

Head of department for total curriculum and English literature, Madam Mini Sathiya Sidhan, said: "It is not just about current events, but the modes of thinking and values they learn, such as empathy and leadership."

Last year, the students analysed an offensive online forum post. Students then had to write their own responses to the post.

Madam Sathiya said: "In doing so, they learnt about tact and choosing the right words. It is so relevant because social media postings happen in their daily lives."

Principal Sherwin Cheng added: "We don't want them to feel it is a top-down message, but we allow them to draw on their experience to arrive at their own conclusion."

Students said that they found the lessons useful because of the real examples they discussed.

Aleena Lim, 14, said about online replies: "We have to think twice before speaking. Some of the scenarios we role-played do happen in real life. I have heard people say such things and I told them to stop."