Religion and better mental health.

2,270 participants. That was what it took to come out with a finding about religion and positive mental health (“PMH”). The study was carried out by IMH in collaboration with Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

What is PMH? According to lead researcher Janhavi Vaingankar, 45, it generally refers to "a person's attitudes towards themselves, ability to handle life's surprises and ability to reach their true potential and resist stress".

To me, it is a deep soul searching personality, one that is intensely introspective and is aligned with a worldview (or a metanarrative) that not only provides solace and resilience to the individual, but also faith and hope to move forward in life (one step/day at a time).

So, are those with religion, or believe in a purpose beyond themselves and the world they engage in, cope better with life’s circumstances or trials? Well, the study seems to point to that. 

Reported by Cheryl Doo, it reads: “People with a religion were found to have a higher total PMH score, faring better in spirituality, emotional support and general coping. As spirituality includes practices like prayer and religious beliefs such as trust in a higher being, it was not surprising that people with a religion had stronger spirituality, says Ms Vaingankar.”

And FYI, the study measures six aspects of PMS: “General coping, emotional support, spirituality, interpersonal skills, personal growth and autonomy, and global affect, which is the experience of positive moods such as being calm and happy.”

Lesson? One - should we now go and sign up for a church, mosque or temple, do some good deeds and then wait for favour to pour on us in this life and the next? 

Well, being a Christian since 1985, I know intimately what religion can do to a soul. At least, that knowledge is personal to me. Like a fingerprint, no two religious experiences are alike. That is my caveat. 

To every belief, there is a dark and a bright side. A study like that is generally on point. You can’t believe in isolation. No religious man or woman is an island by itself. We are an archipelago of closely knit islands, pandemic or otherwise, collectively coping courageously in a sea of uncertainty, disappointment and doubt. 

The basis of religion is to bind a community together with a timeless purpose beyond this world. Being a social animal, body warmth always brings soul healing, cults and false teachings notwithstanding. 

Cheryl observed: ““That people with a religion had stronger emotional support indicates that "interpersonal aspects of PMH are stronger among people with religious affiliations than those without"”.

However, in the continuum of belief, at one extreme you have the martyr and on the other extreme you have the pew warmer. Under all circumstances, only the martyr will die for and with the faith. For the pew warmer, there is a price to his/her devotion. When it gets too high, you can be sure that one by one they will fall away, or remain in a suspended faith state.

Well, I do not know how the 2,270 participants are lined up for the study. What is their level of belief and faith. But there is a deeper aspect to belief or religion that can make or break a person. In general, most of us believe because of the community (and some of us stray also because of the community. It’s a double-edged sword, leaning in favour of community, of course). 

The binding communal effect of religion is irresistible to the faith subscriber. People attract people, masses draw masses, and crowd huddles with crowd. That is the interpersonal aspect of religion, and in that connection, ties, hope and faith are build up. 

Sometimes, it is an involuntary knock-on effect like the domino effect, or it’s something like the time when preacher Benny Hinn swung his coat at the congregation and that managed to pull down a whole row of front seaters, some falling due to gravitational reasons.

So, between the martyrs and the pew warmers, there is the goldilocks zone of religious belief comprising the unquestioning believers and the inquisitive ones. And their level of bliss depends on the level of ignorance they are prepared to bear by faith. 

Because, ultimately, the omnipotence is largely unknowable, and this has already been foretold in Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

Yet, having said all that, here is where the faith of the martyrs leave little doubt that that Deuteronomic scripture is not a source of frustration, but one of comfort and hope. It is also a source of strength and courage to them. 

They are indeed a rare breed in the continuum of belief, and their faith is unshakable because they have a resilient and all-encompassing worldview that endures through good and bad times, blissful and stressful times. In fact, quite quizzically, their hope is so anchored that it is in the furnace of fire that they shine the brightest.

Religion for them is more than just a community of many. It is however first and foremost a community with one, that is, with the object of their affection and devotion. That is the true price of their faith, one that they are prepared to pay because for them, it is real, timeless and nothing in this world compares. 

That is the true prize of religion, and it is hard to study that kind of faith because it is not just about community, that is, the interpersonal aspects that yield better mental health. It is about a soul so transformed by a transcendental purpose that mentally, emotionally and physically, they are simply set apart from the things of the world as the latter goes strangely dim in the light of what is ahead of them.

 

Stigmatisation and education.

Ong Ye Kung is asking for society to play a part in today’s papers.

He said that MOE has taken the initiative towards subject banding by 2024. Now, the mic or baton is handed over to society to rally up support towards a mindset shift. That about sums up his position.

However, he said “stigmatisation is not a government policy, but a societal response. Society also has the responsibility to now recognise that we all have different strengths and different skill sets.”

He defended the education system he is now helming by saying that “it caters to these strengths and not label students. Labels are everywhere, we are categorised in everything we do. Whether we want to create a wall between different people, it is really up to us as a society.”

Lesson? I like Ong. I think he’s smart and caring. He’s sincere too. But I found his remarks confounding. 

So, I’ll just deal with the issue, leaving the man aside. He is nevertheless still a man contending with his own environment like all of us contending with ours, with all its strictures and what not. 

First, let me just say that stigmatisation is predominantly a government policy, not just a societal response unlike Ong’s view earlier. 

But to be fair, I have not read his full speech and he did say that “to overcome the stigma that some parents remain concerned about, society will have to play a part too.” That “too” implies that it takes two to clap. 

Still, words are words and it is to me clear that stigmatisation is a government policy, not just a societal response. Let me explain with our goldfish culture.

We are admired throughout the world for achieving a certain competitive form of excellence in the academic field, especially mathematics, science and English. 

At most times, it felt like the marveling takes place in a goldfish culture where the high achievers are parading their stuff for all to see. 

This culture does not happen overnight. It takes 40 or more years to calibrate and manicure, tweak and nurture. If there is a name for it, it is called meritocracy with exactitude. 

Our little red dot was once compared to the Spartan republic as opposed to Athens with its “loose, less strict culture”.

Here is how Michele Gelfand in the book “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers” describes it and see whether it sounds a tad familiar: -

“Spartans abided by clear-cut mannerism taught in childhood. They were trained to wear solemn expressions and speak concisely. Children were disciplined to never cry, speak in public or express fear. Spartan appreciated laughter and humor, but had to adhere to strict rules on what was acceptable and unacceptable: jokes were to be refined and witty, never slapstick. It was also important for Spartan citizens, who considered themselves a superior race of warriors, to remain unpolluted by non-Spartan culture. Total uniformity in dress, hairstyle and behaviour was demanded.”

Although that was a bit extreme, the Spartan’s culture was deliberately engineered unlike the people in Athens who lived in a more permissive normative environment where there are frequent gorging and drinking, unbridled self-expression, and you might meet Diogenes of Sinope, “a philosopher who lived out of an abandoned tub in the streets of the agora, challenging the need for stultifying etiquette, which he believed prevented people from being their authentic selves.

My point is that our government, especially MOE, plays a vital role in entrenching a form of differentiation in schools, and I felt that Ong should just call a spade a spade, or call Normal not normal (for many students who have struggled with their self-esteem under that unnecessary labellistic tonnage). 

The Singapore Spartan I know and grew up in is the product of the deliberative and firm hands of our government who had faithfully and consistently with technocratic precision engineered, and this came with the good and the bad. For it is said that the house you buy is beautiful but it also comes with crows perching on the roof - so to speak. 

In our tight culture, we have eked our academically bright and disciplined students, but the streaming of 40 years have its costs and externalities too. The net result (whether positive or negative) is still something the government has to grapple with. 

The truth is still out there. 

So, when Ong said that “the education system caters to these strengths and not label students” and that “labels are everywhere, we are categorised in everything we do” and “whether we want to create a wall between different people, it is really up to us as a society,” I am confounded because as Michele puts it in her book, “class differences are deeply cultural, and the world urgently needs greater cultural empathy across class lines.” (p 136).

And as a side note, it sure didn’t help at all when a minister’s young daughter in 2016 labeled another (who expressed his views about class divide and elitism) as “the other class” and stated that Singapore is “a tyranny of the capable and the clever, and the only other class is the complement.” 

Alas, many things in society are man-made, and our tendency to stigmatise over the decades - in my view - was largely the result of unchecked meritocracy and a blindsided streaming policy that hastened to find the rare and few academic diamonds amongst the rough “the other class”.

Yes, people like Ong, Tharma and Chuan-Jin have done well for themselves through grit, determination and hard work (with a dash of genetic predisposition to boot), and they have demonstrated character, empathy and gumption too as ministers. 

But in a Spartan-like society, there are many leaders out there in our largely hierarchical society technocratically engineered as such who are less empathetic and more aristocratic in their views and conduct. That accounts for a divided and discriminatory society. 

That also accounts for the stigmatisation too thanks to the 40 years of feeding our sacred cows (drawing premium dairy for some and leaving the inferior milk to the other class). 

Do you agree? Cheerz.

G1, G2 and G3, the new Normal.

We must stop kidding ourselves. Really, because G1, G2 and G3 are the new Normal, Express and IP class. Alas, the customisation may have been tweaked but the stigmatisation will still be there, lurking.

I know, we citizens are hard to please but let’s not get all hurraying about the new changes coming into effect in 2024 without giving the matter more in-depth thought. 

Mind you, such changes do not standalone. It must also come with G1-, G2- and G3-kind of parenting, government and society, especially our civil service who is always scouting around for that one scholar-employee that sparks academic joy.

Now, that kind of change would be the deep-waters-up-your-neck-kind of real hard work for our government. 

Let’s return to the MOE latest announcement.

By now, everyone knows what is subject-banding. The subject is so popular that it just took two days for Ong Ye Kung to announce the changes and it has already spread faster and wider than a forest wildfire. 

But I suppose for some parents, they have to be duly warned that their child is no longer going to be deemed or seen as “special” if they are in the Express stream or the IP track. 

That hallowed status is now replaced with a softer, friendlier label called G2 or G3. (And for those parents who think their child is gifted, they can secretly have a pact with the government to upgrade their child to G4 or even G5 level). 

Royston Tan, who was in the Normal stream, scoring 168 in 1989, said: “Express was the real “Normal” actually. Those of us in the Normal Stream were the inferior product. The Express students would not talk to the Normal students, who were always regarded as troublemakers.”

So, I return to the question, how then does subject banding change the society’s mindset especially when we parents have been so seeped into the streaming mindset for the last 40 years? 

It sure took the government long enough to wake up their idea since the time in the early 80s when Tan Cheng Bock argued that streaming would cause class snobbery and divide. 

But I would like to think that the spirit of TCB’s argument has never been only about streaming. It is however and essentially about a nationwide attitude change regarding class, dignity, equality, community and charity. 

And that I am afraid will take more than subject-banding to overturn. The mindset is unfortunately deeply rooted and entrenched.

Lecturer Kelvin Seah wrote this anecdotal evidence in today’s Straits Times: -

“As Ong (Ye Kung) noted, some parents had told the principal of Edgefield Secondary School that they would not have sent their children to the school had they known that their children would be mixed with children of other streams in subjects like physical education, art and music.”

I guess this is what Royston meant by “we were already regarded as troublemakers...the inferior product.” 

Here is another anecdote from journalist Karamjit Kaur. 

She wrote: “I have a Facebook friend who started posting regularly about how well her daughter is doing after she aced the Primary School Leaving Examination and made it to an independent school, but not a word about her son who sat the same exam two years later.”

Karamjit made this statement that about sums up my post this morning: -

“A child who knows that his parents or teachers have no faith in him is unlikely to have faith in himself. This is the real problem, and unless it is addressed and attitude change, nothing will; even if labels do. Instead of Normal or Express, students will be labelled G1, G2 or G3.”

This equally, if not more, applies to our society, our government too. Same theme here: “A citizen who knows that his government has no faith in him is unlikely to have faith in himself.”

Personally, class snobbery, as TCB referred to, doesn’t need to be in-your-face to be toxic in the society. It just needs to be an attitude embedded in this mindset: “Anything is possible lah, just let it not be my child.” 

Alas, G1,2,3 will not change that because the reflex reaction has already been set for the last 40 years. It took our meritocratic oil tanker that long to change course (unlike a rowboat, which needed only 5 to 6 metres). 

I recall when my son got his PSLE results and he qualified for the Normal stream. My wife’s friend eagerly called and asked about it. When my wife told her about him going into the Normal stream, her first reaction was, “Oh dear!”

I can imagine another parent (whose child is in the IP track) asking, and when she hears that another parent’s child is in the Express stream, her reaction may just be: “Oh never mind, cheer up.”

To be fair, there will always be someone better, smarter. That’s never the problem. But thinking that you are better is the issue. As my wife once told me, “It is not about being better, it is about character.” 

Let me end with what Royston (who went to Temasek Polytechnic and became a successful filmmaker) said: -

“I would tell myself when I was 12 years old that it would get better. The bullying will stop. And you just have to be who you are. You never know who is the winner at the end of the day.”

So true. 

For those being bullied, you never know who is the winner at the end of the day. And it is not even about winning at the end of the day. Royston’s point (I believe) is to never let your circumstances judge and condemn you. They are not even reliable and worthy of your attention in the first place. 

What matters is to believe in yourself. The best change, the most reliable one, and enduring, is the change from within. And that is still within your control. That is what Royston meant by ”you just have to be who you are” because only the you in you can change you. Cheerz.