Disappointed with those who lashed out at NLB |
|---|
The long story in short: The National Library Board (NLB) receives complaints about three children's books perceived to contain themes aligned with homosexuality, and swiftly takes them off the shelves. Members of the public scream bloody murder. Reputable local writers pull out of scheduled events, while others attend readings of the banned books. However, there are those who support NLB's move, such as netizen Sushi88 who shares her thoughts:
|
|
" I feel sad when I read NLB's remarks in the papers this morning. While there are local writers who want to boycott NLB, so be it, there are enough people who support it too. As writers, if they do not want to support NLB's event, it is to their detriment. NLB has a strong support of readers. Without readers, what good are writers? What concerns me is this standoffish and irresponsible attitude of the writers who withdraw from NLB events in a childish manner at the eleventh hour. What good is it if we have writers with good English but carry with them poor attitudes? Quoting from The Straits Times, "On Friday, playwright and novelist Ovidia Yu resigned from the steering committee of the Singapore Writers Festival, of which NLB is a partner. Then writers Gwee Li Sui, Adrian Tan, Prem Anand and Felix Cheong cancelled their panel to be held today at the Central Public Library as part of the Read! Singapore initiative." Is such behaviour acceptable? LOL Sorry, not to me. I hope they understand and learn to respect those who are just doing their jobs. Lastly, there is a group of people who are showing defiance by running a public event to showcase two of the books that were banned. Is this the kind of Singapore we want, no room for reasoning? Sheesh.... how is this any different from rioting? NLB provides a myriad of genres for everyone's reading pleasure. Such themes just require age appropriateness. They carry such books for the right reading age on their shelves so I feel it is only fair to accord them the rights to determine the age appropriateness based on the content of books. Don't lose our minds just because there are many other ways to air our views these days. Swing to the extreme, the world will go into darkness eventually. THANK YOU SUSHI88 FOR ALLOWING US TO REPRODUCE YOUR POSTS. The Czar (Site Founder) Dated 13 July 2014 |
|
YOU MAY WISH TO READ: The Problem With Singlish And Singaporean Education The attitudes of our teachers impacts our children's education the most Reading books: our children live in different times |
