Singpore:City of Fear or Model City?

The Statements made below are most often my opinion. Those represented as facts are facts given to me by my Geography teacher in an article

Singapore: City of Fear or Model City?

Singapore is a small country on the end of the Malay Peninsula. The country itself is a single city that is only 240 square miles. For so small a country you would think that they would have now end of trouble in government and other situations, not so, Singapore is very clean and there aren’t any homeless people or beggars. Truth be known, people don’t know whether to call it a model city or a city of fear. For me it represents a city of fear. Everywhere in the city there are reasons to fear. From the daily school regimes, to the strict policies on chewing gum and other foodstuffs, to the policies on other aspects of daily life. To me all of those regimes and policies spell fear. From a city of fear what more can you expect than strictly observed school policies.

In Singapore sporadic tests are given to see if a student is doing well in a specific subject. This happens most often in English. When a student does not perform as expected then that student is ‘streamed’ to vocation and technical schools. Those who perform as expected, and better, go to ‘superschools’ where they prepare for professional careers and going to a university. I don’t know about anybody else, but the constant fear of not doing well in one of these sporadic tests would leave me so stressed that once those tests came I wouldn’t be able to think. To me this spells fear. Just because I seem to be really smart it’s often because I practice, study and work. The sporadic tests would just about kill me, and that spells fear for me. Strict policies don’t only apply to the school situations they apply out on the streets to things like chewing gum.

Here in America it’s almost strange not to see a teenager chewing gum, but on the streets of Singapore, or anywhere in Singapore for that matter, chewing gum is against the law. It is against the law because of vandalism. They have begun to sell it again, but only pharmacists are allowed to sell it. If you sell Chewing gum without a license you owe the country $1600. The same goes for eating on the subway. If you eat on the subway you have to pay a $300 fine. Many other restrictions apply. However, the strictest policy would be that of drug trafficking. If you enter the country with so much as an ounce of marijuana on you it earns you the death penalty with no trial or anything. Another reason Singapore, to me, is a city of fear. Chewing gum, foodstuffs, and drugs all have fines or penalties attached, but the government has tried to put laws on other things too.

The government has always had this policy: “The Government Knows Best.” However, with some of their recent schemes many are starting to doubt this. The Government actually started to make abortions much easier to get and encouraged families to only have children. Then they took a huge step back and realized this would seriously decrease the population. They changed their tune really fast, and made abortions harder to get and encouraged families to go for three children. However, family life is not the only thing they try to control. They control how much people use the roads (in order to keep downtown traffic down) and they keep stiff control of their small city/country. Can you see now why I think this is definitely a city of fear? All these fines, no trials and other startling facts all reach the conclusion that this city is not all it seems.

As I think more and more about Singapore I realize how much of a dystopian society all of the governments laws have made it. Imagine the fear that must enter a child's heart when they realize that they have not lived up to expectations, and, consequently, are being moved to a different school. Many of the trivial things like chewing gum that have been banned. What about the death penalty for simply have some drugs on you, yes this is bad, but does it really require death without a trial? And last, but not least, the government encouragement of abortion and then its quick turnaround later. Is the government really all it’s cracked up to be? I don’t think so. I couldn’t imagine ever living in a place like Singapore. Their strict regimes are more than I could take. To me, it’s a city of fear.