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Bilingualism is generally viewed as a point of pride for Singapore, yet proficiency in mother tongue languages seems to be low amongst young adults. ‘Lack of fluency hinders parents from raising effectively bilingual children’ (Straits Times, June 2023) explores the causes of this issue through conversations with young adults, academics, and stakeholders in language education. …
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Celebration of the Senses Day falls on 24th June. This celebration calls for everyone to appreciate the experience accorded to us through our five senses. In his book Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Associate Professor Kelvin Low (NUS Sociology and Anthropology) makes the case that studying the senses seriously …
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The COVID-19 pandemic had forced many activities, traditionally held in large groups and in-person, to be adapted into online forms. ‘Cyber Dharma: Celebrating E-Vesak in Singapore’ (CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age, 2023) by Assistant Professor Jack Meng-Tat Chia (NUS History & Asia Research Institute) explores how Buddhist organisations in Singapore have adapted mobility …
Singapore’s racial classification system — the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others (CMIO) scheme — is a key policy in maintaining racial harmony among the country’s diverse multiracial population. Each racial category is associated with traits defined by the state’s racial ideology, a prominent state-defined trait being the mother tongue associated with the three major racial …
On June 10th, 1963, the Equal Pay Act was passed in the US, aiming to abolish wage disparity based on gender. Traditionally, researchers have been using the unadjusted median gender pay gap to compare the median pay of working women relative to that of men. However, this measure may not accurately reflect gender discrimination because …
An Asian version of data journalism?: Uncovering “Asian values” in data stories produced across Asia
Then-Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew famously stated in an address to the General Assembly of the International Press Institute on 9 June 1971: “freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government”. …
Is every school a good school? Parents in Singapore do not seem to believe that, claim Dr Eik Swee (University of Melbourne), Mr Cameron Kheng (Nanyang Technological University), and Associate Professor Vincent Chua (NUS Sociology and Anthropology) in their commentary ‘‘Kiasu’ parents have an unhealthy obsession with ‘top schools’ at P1 registration exercise’ (Straits Times, …
Celebrated annually on 1 June, the Global Day of Parents was initiated by the United Nations to honour parents and parenting around the world. Although not all parents take the same approach to parenting or make the same sacrifices, parenting is a tireless commitment for many fathers and mothers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, parenting became …
The Community Courts are part of the State Courts of Singapore and were established on 1 June 2006 as problem-solving courts which hear special cases that require community resources to establish the root causes of offending behaviours and facilitate the successful reintegration of individuals into community settings. In ‘A Profile Study of Elderly Offenders in …
Professor Elaine Ho (NUS Geography) and Professor Tuen Yi Chiu (Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong) consider the use of technology in bridging the cultural and generational gaps among the grandparent generation in ‘Transnational ageing and “care technologies”: Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore and Sydney’ (Population, Space and Place, 2020) Singapore …