Racial harmony assignment

Social responsibility Vs Freedom of speech

Singapore is a multi-racial country where democracy is practiced. A democratic nation is built on the foundation of freedom of speech. Quoting from singer’s write up, freedom of expression is defined as the basic right to “hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” This means that individuals irregardless of race and religious are permitted to post any comments base on their will and perspective. However, in my opinion, social responsibility should never be denied as the obstacle that hinders the aim of progressing towards freedom of speech for a democratic country. This is especially true for a multi-racial country like Singapore. Hence, I agree with Szilagyi that social responsibility should be considered before carrying out the freedom of expression.


Citing from one example which happened sometimes ago a teenager was arrested for posting undesirable and insulting comments on his blog against another race. This had again open up the long existing issue of whether Singaporeans accept one another as one family or we are Singaporeans of difference race living under one roof and we are only concern about our pride and right? As for the teenager, he could have claimed that he was exercising freedom of speech where the government seems to promote in our society. Nevertheless, he has neglected the most important integrity which is sensitivity. As there is a Chinese saying “In order to receive respect form others, one has to show respect towards others first.” Hence, overlooking at his insensitive behaviour, his offensive remarks had land himself to re-consider practicing freedom of speech at his own risk. Luckily, his action did not evoke a serious unhappiness of the other party and Singaporeans are matured enough to handle such situations, or else, we have to prepare for racial riots again. From this, we have learnt that social responsibility does play an essential role in marking out a limit to freedom of speech.


On the contrary, what singer had expressed in his article was also reasonable to some extent that “freedom of speech is essential to democratic regimes, and it must include the freedom to say what everyone else believes to be false, and even what many people find offensive. Without that freedom, human progress will always run up against a basic roadblock.” Singapore government encourages freedom of speech as it allows the exchanging of new ideas between its people and the government bodies so that the government may better understand the thinking and need of its people. Also, practicing freedom of speech allows the authorities to receive diverse views and look at problems with a different perspective.


Only in this way, a country can then upgrade itself to be a so called a “balanced” democratic nation where both social responsibility and freedom of speech is carefully taken care of.

“Prejudice is a disease we can never get rid of.” Discuss


Prejudice is defined as a biased opinion, like or dislike formed on somebody, that is not found on experience or reason, which may be considered as unreasonable. Prejudice is seen as a social norm that often leads to discrimination and being stereotype towards another group of people based on difference in race, social status and even physical ability. As prejudice is passed down to generations of people unknowingly, it has become a contagious disease that is widespread in this society. Hence, I agree that prejudice can never be get rid of and we can only try to minimize the level of being prejudice towards others.


Prejudice is inevitable and it is often inherited from strong influential family backgrounds. It is normally performed through the act of discrimination. Discrimination is thus the action or behaviour in which people used to display their prejudism. The most frequent type of prejudice that exists in the society today is racism. Although Singapore is a multiracial country where people of difference skin colour live in harmony under one roof, being racist towards people of different race still pretty much existed. For instance, in schools, the Chinese students still prefer to mix with Chinese students while Indians tends to socialize with friends of same race. In order to prevent discrimination form erupting in schools among students of different race, schools especially organize activities on racial harmony day to encourage students of different race to learn the culture heritage and traditions of each other. In this case, the effect of being prejudice can be reduced.

“YouTube has no ethics, it's been created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money.” Do you agree?


YouTube has since been a very popular internet portal where surfers can upload and share video clips with their friends freely. It is well-known for its extensively wide range of information of almost all kinds of topics, be it politics, social and even medical issues. Due to its convenience and easy accessibility, it has soon become the essential first hand information dispenser to all the surfers. However, as mentioned, YouTube allows freelance uploading of any kinds of video clips and minimal restrictions are set, problems of abusing the granted right in creating unethical and unpleasant video clips began to surface. This has aroused many diversely opinions from the public about YouTube being an unethical website which is only concern about gaining profits and providing entertainment. In my opinion, I agree to a small extent that YouTube has neglected it initial aim of sharing interesting and informative videos among friends to encourage active learning when criticisms among races, politics arises.



Recently, YouTube faced much criticism from the public for dispensing unethical and disrespectful information to the masses. This has led to injecting immoral values and extreme views to surfers indirectly through video clips. For instance, one of the political personnel in Thailand was being mocked by disrespectful people. Due to their blunt comments posted on YouTube accompanied by the video clip, it has portrayed negative image about the political personnel based on their own opinions which may not be sound. Hence, it may become an act of malign and Thailand is now blocking its people from accessing to YouTube to prevent them from influencing by such disreputable comments.

Self Introduction

Hello, my name is Liu Qiong. I was from Crescent Girls' school and my previous CCA was choir. I have a strong passion for singing and making music has always been my interest . Hence, once again i have decided to join AJ choir as my CCA for the next two years. My subject combination is Biology, chemistry, maths at H2 and economic at H1. The reasons for me to choose this combination is because i have an interest in human biology and wants to explore more about processes and functions related to our human body.However i was a little diappointed when i come to realise that the syllabus has changed. It concentrates more on molecular biology now. As time goes by, i hope that i will grew to like molecular biology. In college, English is renamed as General paper.Personally, i feel that GP is another subject which is quite difficult to master. One has to read widely and regularly to keep track of happenings around the world. For the next two years, i hope to improve my English as much as i can .

This is the first time that i have ever created a blog for myself. I guess i need time to adjust to the trend of writing blog entries. Hope it's a good start!





LQ:)