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Japan’s clean habits worth picking up

The views in “A clean S’pore requires mindset shift” and “Constant reminders about litter essential” (both Feb 11) are valid.

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Ong Siew Chey

The views in “A clean S’pore requires mindset shift” and “Constant reminders about litter essential” (both Feb 11) are valid.

However, we should ask why, after decades of effort to keep Singapore clean, we are not making sustained progress.

The number of summonses issued for littering last year was a 100 per cent increase from the 2013 figure.

Japan is one of the cleanest countries in the world, an achievement not attained by strict law enforcement or frequent campaigns.

Japanese children stay behind after school to help teachers clean up toilets, for example.

The students are imbued with interpersonal ethics through teaching, indoctrination or whatever we choose to call it.

In childhood and early youth, most Japanese have assimilated civic-mindedness as second nature; there is little need to rely on law and campaigns to sustain it.

It is a pity that in the past few decades, we have not made a serious effort in schools to instil civic-mindedness in our young.

What we are doing now about controlling littering would be akin to, using medical parlance, treating the symptoms and not the underlying cause.

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