A cause of death: legislation against fitness.

Singapore is undoubtedly the only country in the world with legislation against physical fitness.

Let me explain. Recently, I posted about Bangladeshis being forbidden to play football in a disused field. I wondered if this was a specific case of bias against them or if it is a general rule that no-one can just play football anywhere. I am assured, by Singaporean readers, that it is a general rule against football playing in public spaces.

Think about that for a moment. Singapore has a rule against youngsters playing football in spare ground - such as the grass near HDB estates. What, actually is this rule? It is a legislation against physical fitness. Few children will exercise methodically in a gym or on a track - but many will, without knowing it, do a great deal of exercise in the course of playing a game of football. Thus, in depriving youngsters of the freedom to play football when they please, they are also stunting their physical development and reducing their physical fitness.

Why should we care about this? Well, the recent deaths of two national servicemen, while exercising physically, has been blamed, by some commentators, on the reduced physical fitness of modern Singaporeans compared to their forebears. If this is the actual cause, then one has to consider whether rules against free physical play directly contributed to their deaths. Had football and the like, been allowed, just anywhere, there would have been more opportunities for physical play in these young men's childhoods. They would therefore have become fitter - and would have been better prepared for the rigours of National Service.

It is possible that both young men would be alive today, if physical fitness was encouraged by allowing children to do what they please, in the way of activity, wherever they please, instead of regulating it.

The more I come to understand Singapore, the more I come to realize that it is the strangest country I have ever lived in (out of the twenty or so I have visited).

Singapore loses more than the physical fitness of its children by these physical freedom limiting policies. They also prevent young sportsmen from developing. Singapore doesn't have a David Beckham -and they never will until children are given physical freedom, to play where they will.

Just to put David Beckham's accomplishment into perspective, into terms Singaporeans like to think about - his net worth is equivalent to a whole Cabinet full of government Ministers. (His most recent deal was around a quarter of a billion US dollars, as I understand it - and that is just one of the deals in his career).

So, I would like to see little footballers and other games players, busily at work in every spare corner of Singapore. It would be a fitter nation for it. There would most likely be fewer servicemen deaths - and there might even be a few international sporting stars to be proud of, as a result.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind)