Activism spooks MOE

This move by the Ministry of Education leaves me with more questions than answers:

Education ministry drops arts mentor
By Adeline Chia
The Straits Times
Oct 3, 2009

Poet-playwright Ng Yi-Sheng has been dropped by the Ministry of Education (MOE) as a mentor in the Creative Arts Programme (CAP) one month into his mentorship.

The programme pairs students who are budding writers with mentors who are full-time writers. The mentors, who are invited by the ministry, critique the work of the young ones.

Ng, 29, who won the Singapore Literature Prize last year for his poetry anthology called last boy, had been invited to be a mentor in August. The attachment was supposed to last nine months and he was to be paid $300 at the end of it.

Last month, he was informed by e-mail that MOE had found a more suitable mentor for his student.

He asked the ministry for an explanation but received none.

His student, who declined to be named, told Life!: 'He has been a wonderful mentor so far and I don't see the rationale behind them abruptly changing mentors.'

Ng thinks that he had been replaced due to his involvement in political and gay rights activism.

He wrote SQ21: Singapore Queers In The 21st Century, a collection of stories from gay, lesbian and bisexual Singaporeans in 2006. The following year, he wrote 251, a play about the life of Singaporean porn star Annabel Chong.

'But of course they knew all this before they invited me,' he adds.

In August, he performed a poem called The Right Hand at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Gifted Education Programme at the Raffles Town Club.

The poem was made up of the words from the Singapore pledge and was read with a pen in his mouth, so that the words could not be heard clearly.

In a statement to Life!, an MOE spokesman said: 'Mentors play an important role. They not only impart their expertise in the specialised fields but are also role models to our students. As mentorship is expected to have a deep impact on students, we take the appointment and replacement of mentors seriously, and regularly review the mentoring experience.'

She added that mentors are usually reviewed a month into their stint to see if they are suitable for the student.

'The fit of the mentoring relationship, based on the needs and the best interest of the student, is the key consideration in such reviews.'

Ng himself, like some local writers, had emerged from the programme. He was mentored by poets Lee Tzu Pheng and Angeline Yap.

He says: 'CAP made me realise that there was a local poetry scene, and formed me as a writer. To invite me to become a mentor and then to slap me in the face like that, it's much more upsetting than if I've never been involved with CAP.'

Playwright Haresh Sharma, who used to be a mentor with the programme in the 1990s, says: 'Artists need to be more careful about what they say and do in public.'

Mr Ng seems eminently qualified to mentor our future generation of writers; he is a winner of the Singapore Literature Prize, and is a beneficiary of the Creative Arts Programme, making him a role-model of what the programme can achieve. MOE clearly thought Mr Ng can carry out his role, otherwise the invitation would never have been extended. His student was also happy with Mr Ng as his mentor.

Which leaves us with an inevitable conclusion: Mr Ng's feeling about his political and gay rights activism causing the decision was spot-on, and that someone at MOE felt Mr Ng's activism was a political risk they cannot afford to take.

This reinforces my opinion that Singapore will never be that vibrant arts hub the government wants it to be. If we cannot tolerate dissent and differences, and feel the need to "shelter" the younger generation because of dissent, we cannot expect our future generation to embrace the arts. If there is no domestic buy-in to the arts scene, then we should just call it quits.

Comments

[chrisloup]

its practically modus operandi now.