Category Archives: Miscellaneous

How far do you agree that media coverage of celebrities has a positive influence on young people in your society?

Explore how media coverage of celebrities influences young Singaporeans, from fleeting fandom to shaping realistic ambitions and career aspirations

The most important aim of a scientist is to satisfy human curiosity about the world. Evaluate this view.

There is a difference between satisfying curiosity and delivering understanding. While an entertainer could fulfil the former, it is the job of the scientist to fulfil the latter.

Assess the view that only well-known works of art can be considered great.

It is easy to conflate fame and popularity in the form of eyeballs, awards and a massive price tag with an artwork’s greatness. But metrics alone do not make an artwork great. Art simply needs to exist — from nothing to something — therein lies the greatness of a piece of art.

“No country should sacrifice its economic development in favour of preserving the environment.” Discuss.

Saving the environment sounds like a bitter economic pill. Yet, the state of our planet forces us to rethink global consumer-driven economics, which has served us well… until now. Reshaping our economies for sustainability is a less painful but necessary approach, and could even prove more lucrative in the long-run.

How far can prosperity and uncontrolled population growth go hand in hand?

The mice in the experiment proved that uncontrolled population expansion was a disaster. Let’s hope human expansion on a planet will fare better.

Given greater levels of international cooperation, how necessary is it for countries to engage in the arms trade?

Global cooperation has increased, true, but not to the point that nations can trust one another enough to finally put the arms trade out of business. We still have too many insecurities, too much paranoia for that to happen.

‘We shape our buildings, but then our buildings shape us.’ To what extent is this true of your society?

Buildings are costly so we only build when it’s worth the cost to us. The decision of what buildings to erect also reflect their builders’ needs and priorities, so our buildings are, in a way, telling on us too.

To what extent is human life in general about the survival of the fittest?

It’s amazing how our species, comparatively physically weak as it is, could overtake our competing species and finally emerge at the top of the Earth’s food chain. In the game of ‘survival of the fittest’, how did we win? And what did we win?