Fostering Intercultural Communication

My memory of a most vivid juxtapose of intercultural views took place in my French class last year. The session was on the topic of marriage, and the tutor shared with us his insights on the topic. He described to us that in France, the concept of marriage is not generally popular and most couples sign an agreement called PACS (pacte civil de solidarité). This is an alternative form of union that encompasses all the legal rights of a marriage but less cumbersome to annul. People (who do not want to or cannot get married) register themselves with the local mayor and are then recognised as a couple before the law. This applies to both homo- and heterosexual couples. He added that this has more advantages than a true marriage, where couples may be tied down to a less-than-fulfilling relationship but avoid a divorce as it is socially stigmatised and legally tedious. The PACS allow couples to enjoy the legal benefits of marriage (such as tax benefits enjoyed only by couples and the right to co-own a house) with no life-long commitment.

A Muslim girl then voiced out that the union of a woman and a man has to be recognised by God in Islam. Marriage is also a union solely between a man and a woman and not between homosexuals. Another girl, who is a Catholic, realised that under PACS, couples would be having pre-marital sex, which is a cardinal sin in Christianity. She added that the act of sexual intercourse should be purely for the purposes of procreation, not for lustful gratification and definitely not between gay couples. The two of them stood strongly for the idea of a holy matrimony and pointed out the moral implications of PACS.

Having heard these opinions, the tutor insisted that the idea of marriage is purely religious and that people should be free to pursue relationships without being bonded to religious practices and long-term commitments. He added that staying in a relationship should be a choice and not an obligation. It was then clear to all of us that the tutor was imposing his views on us and was unreceptive to our views, thus the two girls did not argue further. This could also be due to us being Asians brought up with the Confucian values of not rebutting the teacher strongly. On the other hand, it is in the French education culture to argue and state their points of view without any negative feelings and thus the tutor stood for his stand adamantly. Communication in this case was one-way due to the cultural views and caused the teacher to be rather unreceptive and aggressive to our views. In my opinion, this is not a question of whether PACS or marriage should be favoured in either society but rather an exchange of views. Learning a language would require embracing and accepting the particular culture in order to understand the language, although this may sometimes translate into a relaxation of our own cultural norms and values.

Ugly Commuters and Priority Seats

Photo courtesy of stomp.com.sg

The moment the train doors open at the station, all the immaculately-dressed and able-bodied professionals cast all social etiquette aside, jostle their way onto it and snatch up all the available seats. An elderly lady, after bearing several shoves, finally gets onto the train. She hobbles towards the seats and realises that they are all taken up by the young and healthy pretending to be asleep.

More often than not, commuters turn a blind eye to those who need the seats more than themselves. The Prime Minister in his National Day Rally has also encouraged Singaporeans to be more courteous and to move towards a more gracious society. The above scenario is familiar to all who have taken our MRT before, and clearly does not depict the behaviour of Singaporeans as considerate, much less gracious.

In a bid to advocate mindfulness towards the elderly, the pregnant as well as the handicapped, SMRT recently assigned certain seats as priority seats. These priority seats are introduced with the well-being of the needy commuters in mind; to rise the level of awareness of their needs in society and at the same time to urge the other commuters to be more altruistic. These seats are also commonly seen on the London Underground and Japanese trains. A visiting Taiwanese friend once shared that these priority seats in Taipei are only occupied by the needy. Having said that, however, are these priority seats effective in protecting the interests of people in need of seats on our MRT?

To study if such a measure is efficacious, a survey on the opinions of commuters would be appropriate. The survey would find out if commuters themselves actually fulfil the purpose of these priority seats and their general ground observations of other commuters on our MRTs, amongst other things. The survey, if conducted in an unbiased manner, would aid greatly in deducing if the newly-introduced priority seats have served their objective. Such a study would be valuable feedback to the relevant transport authorities and the Singapore Kindness Movement Council, and would surface feasible improvements to the concept of "priority seats".