Minister Chan Chun Sing recently shared a post and uploaded it onto his Facebook page with regards to a conversation he had with a student when visiting a school.
The conversation is of a light-hearted nature and is actually pretty funny, given how the Minister had misinterpreted the words of the student.
The student had shared with the Minister that his CCA is S.T.E.M club when the Minister asked him which CCA did he join.
On hearing the reply, Minister Chan mistook ‘S.T.E.M’ as ‘Stamps’ and proceeded to have a conversation about stamps with the student, sharing that he used to collect stamps too and also writes to pen pals.
He also asked the student if the student also collect stamps, from which countries are his stamp collection from and also asked if the student writes letters and have pen pals.
This called the student by surprise who remained in stun silence to the Minister’s reply before his classmates helped him to explain to the Minister by spelling out ‘S.T.E.M’.
This was when Minister Chan realised that he had misinterpreted the boy’s words earlier and finally understood that S.T.E.M represents Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Minister Chan also shared that through this episode, he learnt that times have changed.
He says that in the past, we all learn our ABCs with A for Apple, B for Boy and so on but nowadays to the young generation, it is A for Apple (Tech Company), B for Beta and so on.
Here is the post by the Minister
“#funnymomentsofschoolvisits
Me: Can you tell me your CCA?
Student: (muffled)…stem club…
Me: Oh, that’s nice. I collected stamps too! Must be hard to collect stamps nowadays? You write letters? You have pen pals?
Student: ?? 😧😧
Me: Where do you get your stamps? Which countries’ stamps do you have?
Student: ????? (Awkward silence….)
Classmates: Minister….S-T-E-M!
Me: Ahhh! Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics….! 😂😂
Moral of story – times have changed. We used to learn our ABCs by reciting:
A for Apple
B for Boy
C for Cat
D for Dog…
Nowadays it’s more likely….
A for Apple (and their tech devices)
B for Bytes
C for Cloud
D for Data”
Image source: Chan Chun Sing/Facebook