Collecting Memories for a Lifetime

One of the strategies that I teach children for English Oral at Singapore Primary level is to tap into their personal experiences. During an Intensive English Oral course I was conducting, I realised that one boy could only relate very mundane experiences. In the hopes of drawing out something more exciting, I asked him what he did during the last December holidays. He said he went to Paris with his family. “Wow!” I thought, “That must have been quite a unique experience!” So, I asked him what he did there. He just shrugged and said, “I dunno. Nothing much. Just eat and walk around.”

The Sense of Wonder

A ticket to Paris is not cheap and many children don’t get to have such exotic experiences. I couldn’t help but think what a wasted opportunity that was for this child. Sadly, I find that this phenomenon is very common among many children today. They’ve somehow lost their sense of wonder.

I remember the first time I had a mud pie. I was 18, and I was celebrating the end of my exams with some classmates at NYDC in Holland V. Up to that point, the only dessert I ever had was ice kachang, chendol or a cone at McDonald’s. I had saved up over a couple of weeks for that dinner. This is a true story. When I tasted that crispy chocolate crust on that moist cake body, complemented with a thick layer of vanilla ice-cream and topped with hot fudge, my eyes started to tear. The pleasure nodes in my brain and tongue were overwhelmed by a sweet euphoric explosion in my mouth. While I don’t weep at eating a mud pie anymore, that first experience is still very vivid in my mind.

Over-stimulated

Once, during my Social Studies class, I showed my students a video clip about Lieutenant Adnan and the Battle of Bukit Chandu. It’s stirring portrayal of the regiment’s last stand against the hordes of Japanese soldiers, despite being dramatised, moved me greatly. Hence, I was disturbed when some of the boys started sniggering. Then, one of the boys shouted out, “Head shot!” and the class burst out into laughter. I immediately stopped the video and talked to the class about sacrifice, bravery, death and the horror of war. I wasn’t angry at the children, but I was sad that they had been so desensitised.

In action movies today, the action sequences are designed to provide sensory overload; in 3D if that’s not enough of that for you. They’re loud and bright, and the scenes and camera angles shift at breakneck speeds. Player versus player computer games trigger adrenaline rushes as players chalk up kill after kill and are rewarded with visual ultra-violence coupled with voiceovers that congratulate them on their gaming prowess.

Even for some of us who are not into movies or gaming, we are constantly feeding our senses on our mobile devices. It’s a buffet of stimulation. And most of us, having gone to buffets, know this: You stop tasting anything after a while.

Virtual Realities

Our mobile devices give us the ability, on demand, to tune out the world around us and allow us to cognitively exist in a virtual world where we are entertained, rewarded and stimulated. As the proportion of time we consciously exist in the real and virtual world shifts in favour of the latter, the value of concrete experiences in the real world may begin to diminish.

I’ve been to the Hagia Sophia in Turkey. I’ve walked its halls and heard my footsteps reverberate through the chambers. I’ve looked up at the ceiling with its layers of religious art, each a silent witness to war. I can still recall the smell of the place and the cool touch of its towering marble pillars, which were repurposed from pagan temples that were demolished as Christianity swept the region. But beyond the five physical senses, no word or picture could do justice to the feeling of actually being there. There was a weight to the atmosphere, as if the air itself was filled with the history of kings and soldiers and holy men. None of these can be translated through pixels on a screen.

This was the central message of the recent movie, Ready Player One. The virtual world is fun, for sure, but it shouldn’t compare with anything in the real world.

The Best Sushi in the World

“Do you know where you can get the best sushi in the world?” A friend of mine recently told me how he convinced his family to take a trip to Japan by telling one of his sons about how the sushi restaurants near Tsukiji market served the best and freshest sushi. Of course, his family went to Japan for more than just eating sushi, but that small effort to intrigue his children had set them up for the time of their lives. His three sons are married with children today, but they still remember that trip fondly.

Anticipate the Unexpected

This holidays, wherever you plan to go with your kids, even if it’s somewhere local, tell them why it’s going to be special. Take some time to prime them to expect an experience that they would not have had otherwise. Let them know that there is a huge world, beyond the virtual ones that they mentally live in, that is filled with wondrous places and people that they can feel and touch and interact with; and that these experiences don’t end when the credits roll, when the words “game over” flash on the screen, or when they come to the last page of a book. Ready their hearts to wonder and anticipate the unexpected and unfamiliar, and in so doing, be rewarded with a deposit of a memory that will last a lifetime.

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