Singapore is Trump Country

It's hard enough to get teenagers to focus on anything in school, let alone politics, but there's one topic that's even got the attention of 13-year-olds – Donald Trump.

I teach at an international school in Singapore with instructors and students from more than 40 countries. As one of just a handful of Americans on staff, I expect the questions from my colleagues – "What do Americans see in the guy? How can he get away with saying such outlandish, hateful things? Did you hear he's won another primary?"

Earlier in the week, I dropped by the classroom of a British teacher with a couple of minutes left in the lesson. She began sharing her fears of a possible Trump presidency or even the possibility of him winning the Republican nomination.

Suddenly, I noticed a 9th-grade boy – whose only interest in school is playing rugby afterward – hanging on our every word. We continued chatting because the kids were finishing a group project. The room grew eerily quiet. Now, all the students had stopped working to listen to our conversation.

The next morning Trump surfaced again in the homeroom of a group of 7th graders I'd been asked to cover. A couple of upperclassmen spoke to the kids about a new mentoring program. Each 7th grader was asked to stand up and talk about something he liked.

"I'm Suzie Chang, and I like pizza," one girl said. "My name is Joey Lim, and I like football," another added. Toward the end of the activity, a boy jumped up and exclaimed, "All the way with Donald Trump!"

I doubt if any of the children could have told me the name of a single candidate in any other upcoming election on the face of the Earth, and yet this 13-year-old boy knew about The Donald, a candidate spreading his message in a country 10,000 miles away.

Perhaps, it's due to the boy's parents, or the boy is an avid cable television watcher, but either way, there's no denying that Trump is now both a national and international force that can't be ignored, a political phenomenon that isn't going away, much to the chagrin of the Republican Party elites.


Note: Picture used with permission from Wikimedia Commons. Author: Darron Birgenheier.