Blogging - evidence of creativity in Singapore
Scores of articles have been published, tons of studies have been carried out, and many ministers have expressed the lack of creativity among local Singaporeans.
"There is an over-emphasis on rote learning!" one reader of the local newspaper wrote.
"The government is stifling creativity by creaming off the best!" wrote another.
"They spend too much time on TV and games," the author went.
Would these factors have so much of an impact on the lack of creativity in Singapore as the individual themselves? Creativity is a willingness to think out of the norm, and daring to come up with ideas, and be empowered to nurture these ideas no matter what others may say. In fact, more people are unaware of their ability to be creative, than they are actually incapable of this mind-aerobics.
I believe that when one makes an effort to discover new ideas, he will be able to generate it as easily as everybody else. The perveived inability to be creative is probably a reflection on the poor education grounding of our young on their brains.
Examination oriented schools force their students to become text-books, concerned fully on standardised question and answers, and are discouraged from thinking on their own. It is precisely this ignorance that people grow up with their creative potential untapped. They then go about their lives, waiting for cut-and-dried answers, because they are unaware that they have the power to think.
Some of them do wake up from their ignorance. This is manifested in plethora of writings that we see on the Internet - web sites and blogs. These people take into their hands the process of creating content out of nothing (one of the aspects of creativity). Certainly, if you ask a rote-learned person to write about anything, you would probably get an answer along the lines of "Do you need a standard answer?"
The explosion in popularity of online blogs is by far one of the most definitive evidence of the existence of conscious, creative humans. Singaporeans are picking blogging up to share their days with others, most of the time complete strangers. They exhibit a willingness to expose their literature to these people, and take comments from strangers. This is definitely something which should be encouraged. Being a low cost medium, it has the lowest entry barrier to express oneself.
So why not get your own blog now, and prove those buereacratic officials wrong? Blogger from Google allows you to blog for free:
http://www.blogger.com
