Expository Essay: What do you think people of your age can do to improve life in your country?

Everyone plays a part in nation building, no matter how small the role. In my opinion, everyone is able to contribute to improving life in Singapore, even those of my age. Secondary school students are able to improve life in Singapore in three main areas - at home, at school and in the community.

Firstly, how secondary school students can improve life at home. A student can easily improve life at home, by making his family happier and by minimising the work load of family members, which is essentially improving the quality of life of his or her family members. The student can be polite and filial to his or her parents, as well as kind and understanding towards any siblings. This will ensure a conducive, peaceful and pleasant atmosphere at home, and will certainly boost the spirits of his or her family members. Keeping the mind healthy is definitely improving life. Another thing a student can do is to help with the housework at home such as washing dishes, or even if the student is unused to such work, simple things such as not throwing dirty laundry anywhere but instead piled up neatly, or placing dining equipment such as plates, bowls and cutlery into the sink instead of waiting for others to clear up after him or her. This will relieve some stress on family members and thus, improve the quality of life at home as well.

Next, secondary school students can improve life in school by helping classmates and teachers with certain work, such as teaching classmates about topics they are unsure of, or helping teacher’s to carry files and books. This will improve their quality of life as they will be able to relax occasionally during a stressful day, or will help improve grades which will in turn, allow that person to be better able to succeed in life. Another way of improving life in school is by working hard. When one works hard in school, one will be able to go to better universities and thus, when they come back to Singapore, there will be more experts in different areas in Singapore. These experts will then be able to improve life in Singapore, doctors being able to cure sick people, lawyers being able to defend innocent people, researchers being able to find new ways to cure illnesses and new innovations that will allow for more convenience in the country, among many other things. By working hard now in school, one will be able to improve life in the country greatly in the long run.

Lastly, secondary school students are able to improve life in Singapore in the communal level. Singapore has an aged population, and much care has to be taken of the elderly, as well as those handicapped or with learning disabilities. Secondary school students, being more mature, more understanding in such matters, less busy than adults and fitter than primary school students should take time to help the community in community involvement programmes, or even individually. Another way that secondary school students can help the disadvantaged and elderly is by donating money. The pocket money of students has increased rather greatly over the past decade and students are getting richer. Instead of using savings to buy unnecessary items such as earphones, comics and other non-necessities, the students can instead donate these savings to Voluntary Welfare Organizations whose aim is to help those disadvantaged in one way or another. If every student donated just one dollar, a total of about one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars would have been donated! Imagine how useful this amount of money would be to handicapped people, or elderly.

There are many other ways a secondary school student can help improve life in Singapore; what I have listed is just a few. Thus, I believe that there are many things people of my age can do to help improve life in my country.

War & Prejudice

War and prejudice are two themes which have been taught over the past semester, thus, in this post, I will be analysing the relation between each of the themes.

Firstly, prejudice. Prejudice is the judging of a person through attributes such as skin colour, nationality, et cetera without actually knowing the person. Prejudice takes on many forms, instead of merely racial prejudice which is the most commonly known, and which is one of the key themes in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. However, there are in fact many other forms of prejudice, for example, class prejudice. Class prejudice is the pre-judging of a person by his social class, and is becoming a more common issue these days. However, these other forms of prejudice are not taken as seriously as racial prejudice, merely because the amount of racist content is greater - racist jokes are definitely more common to jokes about social classes.

Next, war. War is the battle between two parties, resulting in death and usually bitterness. However, war is not all about negativity, as, like during crisis, the best of men are sometimes displayed through courage, sacrifice and the decision of placing morals over practicality.

Now, about how prejudice leads to war. This is of course, an easily imagined scenario - due to the fact that Country X is prejudiced against Country Y, Country X thinks it is all right to invade Country Y for its resources, which it thinks is being misused by people who do not know how to manage resources. Thus, Country X invades Country Y. In fact, other than the above given scenario, prejudice has lead to war, in a slightly different manner. Adolf Hitler was biased against the Jews, thus, he decided to mass murder them until there would be none left. As a result, the Allied Forces had to step in as it violated basic human rights. In fact, prejudice is a violation of basic human rights, as you are assessing him based on preconceived notions, and not giving that person a chance to show who he/she really is.

Finally, war can also lead to prejudice. War results in grudge and bitterness between the two parties. Even if the leaders of the parties have decided to be on friendly terms in order to benefit from it, its people may still be unsatisfied. This dissatisfaction results in people forming opinions of the other party, and when they actually meet, these preconceived notions will create result in the person judging the other party through past events which may not hold true for the person. Thus, war will lead to prejudice.

Instead of being prejudiced, one should instead get to know a person better before forming opinions, as this "prejudice resulting in fight resulting again in prejudice" cycle will just keep continuing. One should not judge another when one has not known the person, and even if one subconsciously forms prejudice against another, one should not display it.

A riot of protests on wars

War is a theme which Language Arts lessons will be exploring this term. War is also something that is getting more and more common these days, perhaps not in its actual meaning as an invasion of a country but in the sense of a battle between two armies, or at the very least, between two groups of people. Riots and protests in Thailand was all over the papers last year, but this year, the severity seems to have gone up with the protests all across Middle East and Egypt. Wars have of course also occurred in the past, from petty fights to liberate oneself, such as the American Civil War, to massive invasions and counter-invasions involving many countries, such as World War 2.

The causes of war are plentiful. As I mentioned just now, some wars are fought in order to gain freedom, especially the current protests. When sitting down to talk and come to a compromise does not work, people see no other way than to start a war in order to solve their problems, or at the very least, protests. Another cause of war is for personal, in terms of the country, gain. For example, Country X may decide to invade Country Y in order to gain access to its vast supplies of oil. One last main reason for starting a war is from a utilitarian viewpoint, that is, "I start this war as it will benefit the greater good. If I do not start this war, more people will die and crimes will go unpunished." An example of this is how the Allied Forces went to war with the Axis Powers after Germany's mass killing of Jews.

War has many detrimental effects, with the most obvious effect being death. War, being a battle between two armies, will of course result in people from both sides dying. In a moral viewpoint, the taking of a life is of course, saddening. However, in a more pragmatic viewpoint, the decrease in population will ultimately hinder economic progress, as well as other basic functions of a country. War also has another negative impact, that being that it results in bitterness between the two parties, resulting in a grudge. About two months ago, after the Japan Tsunami, Several Chinese netizens commented that the Japanese deserved it. In their opinion, the Japanese government not telling its citizens about the war crimes it has committed is reason enough for the amount of devastation caused by the Tsunami. War, resulted in a grudge between the Chinese and Japanese, to an extent where the Chinese are unwilling to help the Japanese in a time of crisis.

However, not all the things that come out of a war is bad. Just like in times of crisis, even though there may be many negative effects, it also occasionally displays the best in humans. War, other than just about death, is also a time where courage is displayed, where sacrifice of the soldiers is shown. Even if one does not feel any patriotism or courage when fighting a war, when people look back, the people are glorified. War is also a battle between morality and practicality, whether the commander should use underhand methods in order to end the war as quickly as possible or whether he should instead fight fairly and honourably, and when he makes the right choice, it definitely displays what humanity is.

Thus, the first thing that comes to one's mind when "war" is mentioned should not be all about how bad it is, and how a certain party is at fault. Instead, one should consider both points of view before coming to a decision, to avoid being biased and unreasonable to a certain party.

A day in the life of The Second World War

I sat at my outpost, my machine gun in front of me at the ready. I tensed myself, keeping a watchful eye on any signs that an enemy was approaching. The arctic chill numbed my entire body, as I drew my coat tighter over myself. The cold was not going to stop me from spotting enemies – even though enemies had not appeared here, in the Ardennes Mountains region of Wallonia in Belgium.

Then, a distant rumble was heard, increasing in volume steadily. I woke my companion up, speaking into the radio harshly for reinforcements – it sounded as though a large number of enemy troops were heading here. As we looked out at the vast forest, gunshots suddenly rang out in great bursts. Instinctively, we ducked, but my companion was unlucky – a bullet had caught his shoulder and life was slowly leaking from him. As the gunshots became more frequent and much louder, I continued shouting into my radio for reinforcements, ignoring that we would be more easier to locate that way – we were almost certainly dead anyway if reinforcements did not arrive soon. Then, the enemy’s bullets stopped flying past our outpost, but were instead aimed at a huge cloud of smoke and snow – our reinforcements had arrived.

Our soldiers crawled behind their jeeps, returning fire at every opportunity, many falling under the constant, heavy fire of the enemy. The cascade of enemy bullets fell like rain, thudding into barriers and soldiers alike, many of them crumbling under the downpour like earth melting into soil. My companion and I did the same, firing in the general direction of the enemy at every moment they were not firing at us. Perhaps, the first bullet slowed his movements down, or perhaps, the cold numbed his movements, but my companion was hit again – this time just above the heart. He slumped down in the outpost, clutching at his injuries, having sudden coughing bursts of blood.

Spotting a nearby medic, I called out to him, and he quickly crept over. Examining my companion, it was decided that there was no other way but to send him back to the hospital as quickly as possible. We instructed the other soldiers to cover for us, and they began firing more frequently and valiantly. A grenade flew to the outpost as the medic and I dragged my companion away and towards the cover of the jeeps. It exploded, its fragments jarring into my thigh, but gritting my teeth, I held on. The world was silent – figures blurred together for one hazy moment, with the overpowering stench of blood masking everything else. Then, the shell-shock was over and the medic assisted me in dragging my companion over to the nearest jeep – thankfully without much further incidents, and we sped away to the hospital, already crowded with many injured soldiers. The Battle of the Bulge had only just begun.

Descriptive Paragraph of a War Scene

Two men stood at where the window once was, looking furtively out at the ruins that was East Berlin, hoping, or rather, not hoping to see their enemies before they arrived. The stench of smoke and rotting bodies was everywhere, the heat of the flames bearing down on the two lonely sentries. The putrid taste of the aftermath of a battle was so overpowering and constant that the rumble of a distant thunder that had arrived to strike them down was not detected until it was almost too late. “Tanks!” one of them shouted, pointing to a nearby displacement of smoke. The Russians had arrived, thunder sounding from the crash of their boots and the tread of the tanks, light glinting off their many pieces of metal, crushing East Berlin beneath them.