7 | Social Cohesion

I cannot believe I just spent an hour of my life watching govsingapore videos :/
Anyway its actually not that surprising cause the video adds they made was really compelling and hitting the issue right at its head. One of the things that really struck me was one of the question in the second episode with regards to scholarship for foreigners in tertiary education. Being a current member of that population and a foreigner myself, I found that the points made by the minister was really valid. Inviting and encouraging foreign nationals into our schools have made them a normal part of our school. In fact I have been studying in Singapore since I was primary 2 and I cannot remember a time where I was the only foreigner in the class. Yet at the same time I could easily also say (other than the initial introduction) I have never seen people being ostracized for their nationality. The fact of the matter is that as students we are doing our best to assimilate to the culture of the society. Moreover the multiracial nature of schools allowed this to happen in a rapid rate.

After staying in Singapore for most of my life I can honestly say most of my best friends are Singaporean. It's not that I do not have Indonesian friends but I have come to a point in my life where I am more Singaporean than Indonesian. However it does not stop me from identifying myself as a non-Singaporean. I enjoy the fact that I'm not a normal Singaporean student.

The whole reason I am writing this post mainly because the video do not allowed comments 0.o I just wanted to say that education is a very smart way to slowly integrate foreigners into Singapore. However doing so in bulk could be counter-productive, because it allows the building of little ______. These people comes from similar background and are in similar situation, they are more likely to cluster together. A great example of this is the SM2 community in SUTD. They moved over to Singapore about a year before school started, thus they started building their own mini community. I am not saying non of them made friends with us, but most of them would stay within that clan. If you contrast this with the Indonesian community in SUTD, most of us come from various background of stay in Singapore some like myself from primary school, others JC, Poly or even directly. We are less likely to form that kind of community that stay within themselves. Even though we have an Indonesian cultural club now, most of us hang out with other people more often than not. The strategy of slow integration through education cannot be rushed.