PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his National Day Rally speech that Singapore should aim to become a more gracious society.

Recently the Minister of Education Dr Ng also said Singapore's Education System needs to re-balance itself to focus on imparting the correct values while maintaining strong academic achievement.

With two young children of my own, I cannot help but agree that something is very wrong with our highly praised and results-oriented education system. As a parent, I have no problem finding materials and resources to educate my children academically. But I struggle to find help and guidance in building their characters.

Values such as perseverance, righteousness, courage and integrity, which I feel are essential and more important in life than academic excellence, are missing in our main stream curriculum.

My perspective stems from an ancient story about a group of Greeks who placed a high regard on honour and always did the right thing.

The story goes that in an ancient Olympics game, an old man was struggling to find a seat. At each section of the stadium he went to, people just laughed at him.

When he reached the section occupied by a group of Greek soldiers, they stood up to offer their seat at the same time. The whole stadium applauded.

Those familiar with Greek history will know that this group of people were known as the Spartans. While other Greeks knew what the right thing to do was, only the Spartans did it. We are still a long way in finding the honorable way.

There is something valuable we can learn from this ancient group of people who lived more than 2,500 years ago.

To make our country great, we need people with strong minds, but stronger character.

With the correct values that we impart to our children, our story of Singapore will evolve into living legend.

Syu Ying Kwok

» straitstimes.com