Term 3 Blog Entry: Plagiarism - Hundreds may lose Aussie visas

Many students in the University of New England in New South Wales were found to have plagarised material on the internet. Among them, there were some who simply pasted work from the Internet. The plagiarism was discovered last November when an academic alerted the university after suspecting the work of a student. Most of them were believed to have come from Asian countries, but surprisingly, no Singaporeans were involved. Completion of the course usually guarantees a student permanent Austalian residency in addition to the degree. This could be the main motivation behind the eagerness to succeed. However, although I understand that success is important, I strongly believe that plagiarism is not the right way to achieve success. Firstly, plagiarism makes it unfair to those who had diligently and painstakingly brainstormed for ideas and completed the work by themselves. Furthermore, as plagiarism is the copying of ideas or work of other people, the students would have lost this opportunity to improve themselves, whether in terms of character, knowing themselves better, or knowledge, which is what I feel is the main purpose of school work. When the students plagiarize, they do not work their brains, thus do not benefit from the work.

Plagiarism would also encourage actions without integrity, and might cause the students to lose their sense of integrity. Plagiarism creates an environment of mistrust, where teachers are always suspicious of the integrity of the students, and students who do not trust each other.
I believe this incident has also showed us how successful the Singapore education system is. Many people coming from our neighbouring countries, like Malaysia and China, were found out to have plagarised, but no Singaporean was involved. I believe the success in the education system in Singapore is because of its emphasis on character development and its dedicated, professionally trained and constantly improving teachers.

We can see the emphasis of Singapore’s education system on character development as in primary schools, children are taught during curriculum time on how to be good citizens. Even in some secondary schools, activities are planned and curriculum time spent on helping students develop their character. Therefore, I believe these are very effective in instilling the right values into our young.

Singapore’s education system also educates our young on the consequences of plagiarism. Therefore, our young have grown up in an environment where they know that plagiarism is wrong. With the help of strict laws to act as deterrents, our young know that success cannot be obtained by underhand means, like plagiarism.

As Singapore has already succeeded in developing our country and our people well, I feel that we should go further to help our neighbouring countries, especially in teaching them about our education systems. Our help might be able to help them improve their education systems, so that many more people would benefit from these systems. Furthermore, this might help boost political ties and maintain the friendly relationship with our neighbouring countries.

Term 3 Blog Entry: Firms redesign jobs for older workers by trial and error

January 1, 2012, will be the date when employers would need to offer jobs to workers who have reached the retirement age of 62, as said by the prime minister in the National Day Rally Speech. The message that the government is serious about retaining older workers has been very successful as 13 out of the 14 companies which were checked by the Straits Times had already started retaining old workers. Companies are redesigning jobs, redeploying workers and changing working hours to get ready for this new legislation. However, without any specific guidelines to go about these changes necessary to suit the old workers, companies are using trial and error.

I feel that this policy will be beneficial to Singapore and its people in the long term. With advanced technology and increasing knowledge on staying healthy, more people are living to a very old age. Therefore, the money in the central provision fund might not be able to last them for the remaining time in their life. In the long term, when more and more people grow to a ripe old age and lack enough money to survive, they would live an unhappy and painful life, and at that age, it would already be too late to start saving money. In addition to these, they might also become burdens to the society, as the government would have to spend a lot of time and money solving this problem. Therefore, with this new legislation, more old people would be able to work and save enough money for retirement.

There are many benefits of older workers. As said by many employers, old people tend to be more serious about their work. They do not take unnecessary leaves and would work overtime without expecting extra payment. Furthermore, they are hardworking, determined and most are sincere about helping companies succeed.

I believe this trial and error method used by companies to make changes to the jobs to suit the needs of the old is an effective method. As this legislation is new to Singapore, the companies have to find out what modifications to the jobs would suit the needs of the old workers, without compromising on the companies’ ability to achieve results. Furthermore, different old workers encounter different problems carrying out ordinary jobs that younger ones are having. Some have knee problems, which do not allow them to bend, while others have back problems, which results in them not being able to carry heavy items. Whatever their problem may be, the job should be changed to suit their needs. Companies are already starting to do so. In the Yusen Air and Sea Service, older workers contribute by helping younger staff develop skills. New office-based jobs, such as filing clerks and quality control manager, are also created for older workers. With these modifications, old workers can have a comfortable environment to work in, and also be of much use to companies.

However, in the future, I hope that proper guidelines would replace this trial and error method. Research should be done on the needs of different types of elderly with their different difficulties in carrying out ordinary work. With previous experience, this knowledge could be used to set guidelines on redesigning jobs to account for the different difficulties of old workers. This would be more useful as research and experience of others had been used to design the guidelines. Furthermore, this would help save time, as the companies would not need to trial and error, thus giving them more time to work on developing their skills or equipping them with new skills, so that they can be of good use to the companies.