Member-only story
More games in the classroom!
playful learning activities from Singapore to Uruguay and Brazil
Singapore
There is a special something here on our island, with the works of woodcarver-artist Ju Ming. Wherever you go, they are there.
Dekho. Who wouldn’t fall in love with the Twelve Gentlemen? Just look how lost and terribly out-of-place they are — there, on the sidewalk, just at the side of the offices of the Ministry of Education at Metropolis. They seem so clueless. It looks as if they are going to ask you for help or something.
I sit and watch and observe how people, mostly civil servants on their way from the MRT to the office, hurriedly pass by and try to ignore them. Like one would look away from a beggar — even the kindest among us have done this at least once in their lives.
Okay, they’re a bit square. But so endearingly out-of-place, like visitors from outer space, and obviously they’d like to ask me for help of some kind, for directions back to their own universe, but they do not speak our language and they do not understand how it happened that nobody seems to actually “see” them.
So one day, I decided to take my umbrella and go over there and cross the Buona Vista green and just stand with them. Perhaps they would notice my sense of empathy…
