Consider the merits and demerits of censorship and state your reasons why you think it is un/necessary.

Censor when bring used as a verb as quoted from Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: "to remove the parts of a book, film/movie, etc. that are considered to be offensive, immoral or a political threat".
And censorship is " the act or policy of censoring books, etc "

The merits of censorship:
1. Protects general audience : as seen from the above definitions, censorship will protect the public from seeing images which are gruesome like a headless corpse or a person whose body is being tore apart. Immoral images which are linked to taboo issues are also removed to prevent negative influence.
2. Protects national security: this is especially true in Singapore which is a multi-racial country because if images or even speeches that promote discrimination among the races are shown, riots and conflicts among the races are bound to occur. As Singapore is a small nation, we cannot afford to be fighting among ourselves. Thus censorship serves to protect the national security.

The demerits of censorship:
1. Narrow one's learning horizon : by leaving out certain parts of information or even facts, we are restraining the amount of information portrayed to the general mass which they have the right to know. Also in the process of censoring information or images, we are giving the general public a biased view and a limited chance to know the truth.
2. No transparency : by not showing the truth to the public, we are not being transparent. And what is democracy without transparency. We are depriving people of the right to know the truth and with the raging concerns about human rights in our generation, there will bound to have many conflicts about the issue of censorship.

Other than the merits, censorship is necessary in the sense that it helps to shield the young from negative influence such as violence, unnatural sex and polities in certain extent. Professionals have said that under long exposure to such negative influence, one will have a higher possibility to carry out the acts that he/she sees. Thus with censorship, we are in one sense or another helping to reduce the crime rates. Also, by having censorship will also ensure that terrorists who have the thought of using the media to arouse the people's anger and cause riots and chaos to happen in a country to not get their way. Thus censorship also helps to maintain peace and stability.

However, censorship is unnecessary as it is to certain extent promoting ignorance. If people are not exposed to the reality, wouldn't their general knowledge be limited or to some extent biased? How would other country think of us if our people cannot converse with a wide scope of facts? Also, by blocking out images or information to our young, wouldn't they be even more curious? As the saying goes, "curiosity kills the cat”. When the young especially the teenagers are curious, they will stop at nothing to search the "truth". Especially in our generation, where anything can just be found on the internet, wouldn't it be worse if they were to stumble upon unhealthy stuff and get addicted to it?

To conclude, i feel that censorship is unnecessary IF only there is proper and adequate parental guidance where parents will be able to tell their child how to differentiate between what’s right and wrong and in the meanwhile instill moral values in them. However due to the fact that there is an increased in numbers of families where both parents are working long hours and thus not being able to spend time with their children, i still think that a certain censorship is necessary. However, the government who is playing the role as the censor should always adapt to the changing world and do necessary changes to the censorship and allow the young citizens to be exposed to the reality of life bit by bit. Hence a flexible censorship is necessary.

The influence of media

If you have watched the television the last month or last 2 weeks ago, you would have notice an advertisement which shows grody image of a mouth which is full of mouth ulcers which are filled with pus. Just in case you have not seen it, it was part of an anti-smoking campaign to discourage smokers where they show an image of a smoker addict's mouth.

Many viewers have mixed reaction towards the advertisement.

For me, i was quite stunned by the image as it makes people feel disgusted. It would surely take away one's appetite and perhaps even dampen one's spirits for the day. By showing that image, is it really effective in promoting anti-smoking? I once watched a television program that interviews people and ask them about their views on this. A parent who was interviewed said that after watching the image on television, both of her daughters started to have nightmares and dared not watch television for fear of seeing the grotesque image again. So is it really necessary to show such an image to promote anti-smoking? I feel that the media could have shown some statistics to prove that smoking is bad or they could interview some ex-smoker addicts and ask them to share their story on how smoking harms their health. In this way, the media is promoting anti-smoking without terrifying people.

However, from another point of view, there is a saying, “a picture speaks a thousand words “. It is known to most of us that using an image to portray out an idea is much more effective than using words and statistics as our brain tends to register images better than words and figures. There was once a television program that interviews a psychologist who said that an image can stay in a person's sub-conscious mind and will cause a change in the person's behavior or thinking. He stated an example which is after the "911" incident when the whole event was shown on television, many people became scared of taking plane for fear of terrorists. This shows how the media can influence the mass public and perhaps in this case, showing the gordy image may be the best way to ensure results for the anti-smoking campaign.

Simple Introduction

My name is Benny Tan. I am from class 18/07. I was from Commonwealth Secondary School and was in Jurong Junior College(PAE). One common joke people have about Commonwealth is the word "Common wealth". And so the first question people always ask me is ,"Do everybody in your school has the same amount of money? ".

Basically i am a very talkative person but that will only happens when i know you well. I tend to keep quiet and talk much much lesser in front of strangers. But i like to make new friends. To me, a friend of a friend is a friend!

I am quite a sporty person and like to play basketball. I go to the gym quite regularly to lift some weights. I aim to be fit and healthy .But sadly I am still quite plump and overweight so i hope after my two years in AJ, i can shed some weight and at the same time tone my muscles.

I am currently " a thorn among the roses" in my class. If you are smart, you should be able to figure out what it means. Of course many guys are envious of me. Most of them always ask me ," do you enjoy spending time with your class? " And my answer will be you have to experience it yourself to know the answer. To me, it was tough spending the first few days in the class as you practically have no friends and trust me it was really lonely to spend all your breaks by yourself. But as the days went by, when you get to know your class, it is really fun as you get to understand girls better.
People says there is two outcomes being the "thorn" . One is being more gentleman and the other is to become more "gentle" . Whatever is the outcome, I shall leave it to those people who know me to judge themselves.