The Holes In Holistic Education

Two first-year female students in Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) were reportedly caught having a tryst in a school toilet, where they were captured on video surreptitiously by other students. ACJC principal Kelvyna Chan declined to comment on the veracity of the limited information about the episode. All she would say: "We would like to assure you that no one has been expelled from the school. From time to time, students are involved in actions which the school does not condone." And why were they not expelled at all? Is this part of the school's holistic approach to education?

When one of the coupling parties was asked on her Formspring site, "Where are you going next?" her online response was: "Where the wind takes us." Like the SarongPartyGirl of old who published her own frontally nude images for the whole wide world to oogle at, she seems awfully cavalier about her infamy. On the practical side, one wonders how they could have been "surreptiously" filmed in the tight confines of a toilet cubicle. Maybe it was all staged as a coming out event of sorts.

In the USA, William Lucas (15), Tyler Clementi (18), Asher Brown (13) and Seth Walsh (13) died because they were hectored by classmates about their sexuality. Young Clementi jumped off the George Washington bridge after his double life of being openly gay to some and tightly closeted to others was exposed, also by video. The outrage here is cyber-bullying, although the harassment could just have been carried out viciously on the campus grounds, as in the case of Seth Walsh.

In Singapore, the ACJC principal doesn't appear to be too outraged by the goings on in her school. How should one read her unflappable attitude about the moral issues here? That girls just wanna have fun?

Insiders say the whole school population, which includes Balakrishnan's son in JC1, knew about the washroom incident several weeks before the story broke. And all the advice the innocent youths had from their educator-in-chief Kelvyna Chan was to stonewall it and "Don't anyhow comment." So what else is lurking in the corridors of Singapore premier schools?