The newspapers today carried reports of Twitter being used as a platform for teaching our youngsters the importance of speaking good English.
Would it work? I don’t think so.
My personal belief is that good spoken (and written) English is a deep-rooted affair which is imbued in our individual person. All this starts from when a person is young – and there is, of course, influence from his/her family and peers to speak good English. If a person grows up in an environment where his/her family and peers pay little heed to speaking good English, he/she will be imbued with the idea that speaking good English is unimportant, and thus there is no need to speak it well as long as his/her family and friends can understand him/her in poor English or any other language he/she speaks.
As such, online social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook will end up serving only as an experiment. The youngsters who have been targeted will only end up as clueless human lab rats.
If our authorities decide to target youngsters with such modern platforms, then how does one reach out to the middle aged folks in society? They too need to be educated – how not to fall into robbery traps, and even how to be courteous to others.
From my personal experiences travelling to work on the MRT, I am convinced that our society needs a lot of improvement on our social behaviour and manners, especially the older folks (whom I do not completely fault due to perhaps their lack of education). The courtesy campaign should be revived and it should always remain. Sticking life-sized Phua Chu Kang stickers around the MRT stations do not help.
I’m wondering: If the usage of online social media platforms is synonymous with youths, then what types of platforms are synonymous with middle aged people? Newspapers and magazines? How else can we reach out to educate older folks?
Any thoughts or ideas? If so, leave a comment. All comments are welcome.
