In light of the recent CID lessons, I think we've have gained quite a lot of worldly knowledge on a range of topics from preparation for our Overseas learning journey to poverty in singapore and understanding the history of a photograph. In a lesson, we were shown two comparative pictures, a well-dressed mother and her child in arms; a man with a placard asking for a job. When presented with one hundred dollars and asked to make a choice between giving the mother and the man, many cast their votes to the mother, with piety in their hearts. I asked, can we split the hundred dollars? Can we give the mother half and the man half? The answer I got was a simple no. Even though in reality, that is possible, in a scenario where you could not half the money, who would you give the cash to? Someone suggested buying daily nessecities and distributing it to the two. I thought, this is a feasible plan. However, when it came to my decision, I would give it in it's entirety to the man. My reasoning is that the women and her baby are clad in warm looking clothes and the baby looks well-fed, they might be phonies, or fraudsters. The man is asking for a job, so I assume that he wishes to be self reliant. As the saying goes,' give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime.' Without prior knowledge of the background, that was my reasoning at the moment.
Turns out, the women and her baby are part of a syndicate in India. The man geniunely is a beggar who met with misfortune. He needed financial aid to get back on track. So to say, althought the women and her baby are not entirely innocent, they are pitiful. Part of their donations , perhaps most of it will be returned to the syndicate. This made me view the pictures in a different light.
The lesson impacted me greatly, although a picture speaks a thousand words, are we interpreting the words correctly? This allowed me a deeper insight on pictures and the meaning behind them.
-sinyee
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