By Les Tan.
Two young Singaporeans died while serving National Service recently. 20-year-old Recruit Andrew Cheah died on a 2km training walk on Pulau Tekong on June 10. Two days later, on June 12, officer cadet Clifton Lam died near the end of a 4km jungle orientation trek in Brunei.
With three boys of my own, I feel for the parents of both boys. It is traumatic beyond words to bury your own children. The young should bury the old and we feel despair when the order is reversed.
Are we rugged enough as a people? We live in an air-conditioned bubble. We move from air-conditioned bedrooms to air-conditioned cars or buses, from air-conditioned classrooms to air-conditioned malls.
Our high rates of myopia are indicative. According to the New Scientist, in 2004, 80% of our National Service recruits were myopic, up from 25% 30 years before. Myopia results from long periods spent indoors studying, watching television or playing computer games. The percentage of severely obese students rose from 2.8 per cent in 1994 to 3.6 per cent in 2007.
Adults aren’t free and clear either. 35% of Singaporean adults are overweight. 14% are considered obese. There is a “healthy” industry servicing adults looking for short cuts to lose weight – surgery and pill popping. A pair of running shoes is cheaper.
Health is a personal issue and nobody can legislate for health and fitness. So we make our own choices in life and usually reap what we sow. The length of our life on earth and the manner of our death will probably provide the best answer to the question: Are we rugged enough?
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i agree that we are not rugged enough, but that is not the point. Recruit Andrew Cheah died while doing a 2km training walk, not even completing it. Many of us healthy people would have no problem doing a 1km+ walk without any serious difficulties. It is much more than being rugged or not. Please don’t make this issue seem so simple.
Hi Frank, so you would rather see this singaporean problem perpetuate even more? Why can’t we tackle it head on? I know it is easier said than done, but I am sure there are many singaporeans who feel the same way and can offer workable solutions to this unique problem of ours.
true true. but the remedy to this problem is not small, and no one wishes to undertake it. so there =/
Hi Imao, thank you for your thoughts. It’s good to get constructive feedback on my comment on the above topic. Yes I am not from your generation, I am in my early 50s and grew up in a generation where the education system was not as stressful as at present and I spent a lot of my childhood time playing outdoors. I did my national service in the 70s when I believe army training was tougher than the present system.
Frankly, I am not having a dig at your generation but at those responsible for your shortcomings i.e. “kiasu parents and ignorant grandparents”. Our current education system already puts a lot of pressure and stress on our young ones and to top it off, over zealous parents load more pressure on their children with after school tuition and enrichment classes hoping to gain academic achievement while placing sporting activity and free play at a low priority. From my observation, only a small percentage of parents encourage their children to participate in active and physically demanding sports like competitive swimming or track and field. Physical activity has been replaced in many instances with computer games or handheld PSP in what little free time there is between tuition classes and meals. Research shows myopia is caused by many hours of close quarter reading or sitting in front of a computer screen.
In addition, grandparents help aggravate the situation by providing an unhealthy and fatty diet thinking that “chubby is healthy”. Boisterous activity is discouraged and overprotective care results in timid and physically under-developed children. So instead of helping the young child to grow up to be an active, alert and well-balanced person, they discourage athleticism and encourage timidity. No wonder they aren’t rugged later on in life.
It seems this generation can be compared to a young wild animal reared in the controlled environment of a zoo with food and comfort provided. They lose their instinct to think outside of the box when the going gets tough.
the kids and young adults there also die at forty and earn maybe two dollars a day. most of them don’t see the end of primary education. we may be fatter, we may have vision problems, but we live an average of 35 years longer. maybe you’d like the toned and tough body, but personally, i’d take 35 years of life in an imperfect vessel.
of course they’re slim and hardy. if you had to work in the fields all day, you’d be slim and hardy too. we don’t. it’s a fact of life. most youngsters today will end up with desk jobs, where their work involves nothing more than working their brains and their fingers on keyboards.
you can’t expect a nation of youths brought up in affluent conditions to be rugged. we don’t develop this ruggedness due to the circumstances we are in – it is not our fault, maybe it’s a problem, maybe it needs to be fixed, but you cannot blame us for it.
you did not mention if you were a member of the previous generation, but assuming you are, you would have grown up in much poorer conditions. this would have fuelled your drive to succeed, to survive. we have no reason to develop this survival instinct.
so i would invite you, sir, to stop attacking this generation like it’s our fault we turned out this way. it is a natural reaction to the enviroment we have been exposed to – nothing more.
No, we are not rugged at all. In fact, we are a pampered society. Kids get to sleep in air-conditioned rooms, chaffeured around in air-conditioned vehicles, run after by their maids, made to sit instead of standing on mrt trains (great for their core muscles) and stuffed their mouths with junk food. Put them on a trampoline and they can’t even find their balance. Our Singaporean kids (male and female) are weak, spoilt brats, obese, and overly pampered. No wonder they are myopic and obese by the time they enlist for National Service. How sad! Look at our South East Asian neighbours like Vietnam or Cambodia, the kids and young adults of those countries are slim, healthy, fit, and hardy, because they don’t have a pampered and over-protected lifestyle like us. They either walk or cycle, not like us in our air-conditioned modes of transport. They work from sunrise to sundown, not like us having our afternoon high tea or working out in the gym (doing what?). Yet they are a happy bunch of people, not like us who want more and more (never satisfied). Its about time we learn from our hard-working neighbours. Boy we have a long way to go!