So LKY admitted that the bilingual policy was a mistake. How did he find out it was a mistake? Only because, it seems, he learned from his daughter “late in [his] life” that “language ability and intelligence are two different things”.

So we can conclude that:

1. The early bilingual policy was made on the assumption that language ability and intelligence are the same thing.
2. This assumption was not questioned until the Dear Leader’s daughter informed the Dear Leader otherwise.

(2) is shocking. We seem to make major policy decisions without carefully verifying the empirical claims behind them. And we seem to judge that these are “mistakes” on the basis of what one influential neurologist tells her powerful dad.

In any case, I do not see what the mistake has got to do with whether intelligence and language ability are the same thing. Even if they are the same thing (whatever that means), there are still going to be people who are less intelligent and hence less able to learn languages, so despite the policy, not everyone is going to be bilingual. How does the fact that they are “different things” change this outcome?

Perhaps it’s not the policy of bilingual education per se that he’s saying is a mistake, but the practice of streaming by bilingual ability. In that case, the idea that they are “two different things” is relevant since it tells us we should not label people as lacking overall academic potential just because they do badly in languages. But LKY seems to be explicitly referring to the policy of bilingual education, and not that of streaming by bilingualism.

This statement must surely elicit hysterical laughter from the many Singaporeans now waiting in line for their “affordable” public flats:

HDB flats will remain affordable to the vast majority of Singaporeans.

Also:

HDB flats are not merely roofs over one’s heads, but also comfortable homes that we can raise our families in as well as a valuable asset which can contribute to our retirement needs.

How can it contribute to your retirement needs if you have nowhere to stay after you sell your flat? Oh right, I forgot — you’re supposed to move in with your children. Yeah, HDB flats certainly are ‘assets’ if you’re willing to downgrade your living conditions.

Next, compare

We must also be mindful to be cost-effective when designing and building our flats.

with

Residents can look forward to resort-style housing

Should HDB be in the business of providing “resort-style housing”?

Am I the only one who finds JTC’s housing scheme that is “specially for foreign talents” offensive? Why should locals who are just as talented and just as willing to pay for such housing be excluded?

An astute commentator on Twitter spotted this rather odd question posed by Goh Chok Tong:

How do we bond students going abroad to Singapore, physically if possible, and if not, at least emotionally?

As the astute commentator remarks, there’s something not quite right about the order in which the ‘bonding methods’ are proposed. Before considering how to inculcate in Singaporeans an intrinsic desire to stay in Singapore, Goh considers how to physically confine people to Singapore. What are the possible reasons for this? A few possibilities:

1. An assumption that few would want to stay in Singapore of their own free will; that this is an irremediable situation.
2. An assumption that physical bonding is easier/cheaper than any attempt to win people’s hearts.
3. An authoritarian outlook that sees people primarily as untrustworthy and needing strict control; unwillingness to trust mere psychological incentives.

Accompanying the State’s Times feature of Goh Chok Tong’s warning against “religious enclaves” is a list of the “Ten challenges ahead for S’pore”. Second on the list is “How to convince Singaporeans their lives will get better?” Anyone find this a little strange? Why is it not “How to make Singaporeans’ lives better?” Why is this ‘challenge’ purely about persuading people of the truth of something that may or may not be true?

Is the government assuming here that Singaporeans’ lives will get better, and that it is a failure of public education that most Singaporeans don’t believe that? But if it is so obvious that their lives will get better, why do most people not believe it?

Or is the government itself unsure if their lives will get better, but it nevertheless wants people to believe they will?

Minxin Pei in Think again: Asia’s Rise:

Even when you look at autocracies credited with economic success, you find two interesting facts. First, their economic performance improved when they became less brutal and allowed greater personal and economic freedoms. Second, the keys to their successes were sensible economic policies, such as conservative macroeconomic management, infrastructural investment, promotion of savings, and pushing exports. Dictatorship really has no magic formula for economic development.

Many Singaporean students shy away from studying the humanities and social sciences because of the perceived lack of financial returns in doing so. Another push factor is the perception that those are the less ‘prestigious’ options — that only those whose grades weren’t good enough to get them into other streams or courses end up studying the humanities or social sciences (yes, I know economics is an exception). Thus there is a certain pressure not to be seen as one of those who ‘couldn’t make it’ into the more prestigious options.

It recently struck me that there might be another major reason why Singaporeans shy away from the humanities and social sciences. Perhaps there is a fear of dealing with issues with the following characteristics:

• Not easily quantifiable
• Invites critical examination of one’s own value system
• Raises problems that cannot be solved algorithmically but requires thinking of a less constrained sort

Certainly, many of my JC classmates really disliked being handed problems, even in mathematics, that could be solved only by a method that they had not been ‘taught’ in class. They wanted to ’solve’ things for which they knew the set procedure for solving. They were also extremely uncomfortable in GP lessons when encountering values different from their own. Mere discomfort on its own may not be a problem, but they actively avoided discussions that involved clashes of values. They did not even want to attempt to resolve such clashes or find out more about why they exist (reminiscent of the government’s warnings that racial or religious controversies should not even be discussed). In short, the preference of students for tasks with standard operating procedures may predispose them to avoid the humanities and social sciences, independent of the already existing financial and social disincentives.

MP Lim Biow Chuan:

Are we happy with the values of the young Singaporeans who have gone through the school system? Do they bear the positive traits that we want to see in the future generation of Singaporeans? Are the scholars that we produce, the GEP students, the top tier students in the IP schools, our university and polytechnic graduates - Are they humble, considerate, kind, grateful, compassionate, willing to help others? Do they appreciate all that Singapore has done for them and the many opportunities that they have been given compared to other third world countries?

My problems with this:

1. The assumption that gratefulness is a good thing. Now, it is clearly a good thing for people to be grateful to those deserving of their gratefulness, say people who have done them significant favours. But it is also clearly not a good thing to be grateful to people who have, say, harmed you. We would say there is something terribly wrong with the sexually abused child who is grateful for being sexually abused. In implicitly praising gratefulness Lim fails to delineate the conditions under which he thinks gratefulness is desirable. This primes his audience for the next rhetorical trick:
2. He then asks if students are grateful for what Singapore has done for them compared to other third world countries. Having been primed by his previous laundry list of ‘desirable’ values, the audience is asked if young people lack gratefulness for a particular thing. They are supposed to assume that young people should feel grateful for this particular thing. But it’s not so clear that one should be grateful as long as one’s living standards, opportunities etc. are better than those in third world countries. Furthermore, the MP had to throw in an ‘other’ there, as though Singapore is still a third world country. So there are two levels of framing going on — firstly, framing the issue as though gratefulness in general is a good thing; secondly, suggesting that Singapore is part of the group of countries we think of as third world countries, and hence that the latter is a fair group of comparison.

That’s the message I get from how the Citizenship and Population Unit is rewarding foreigners for giving their opinions on life in Singapore.

The Citizenship & Population Unit, Prime Minister’s Office (CPU/PMO) is conducting an e-survey for A*STAR’s foreign researchers to know you better and introduce global talents like yourself to the various aspects of life in Singapore through their privileged events. The e-survey will also help CPU/PMO to plan their upcoming events based on your feedback. These events are specially organised only for CPU/PMO’s partner organisations which include A*STAR.

The survey should take less than 10 mins to complete and they are giving away a stored value coffeebean card to every respondent. You may click on the link to start the e-survey.

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GREETINGS!

We are from the Citizenship and Population Unit (CPU). We hope to get to know you better and introduce global talents like yourself to the various aspects of life in Singapore, so as to enhance your living experience here!

I wonder if the CPU (oh, what a cute acronym) is also supposed to help decrease emigration. Going by their website there’s some mention of engaging overseas Singaporeans (in addition to the usual suspects of babies and immigration), but none on engaging disengaged citizens who live in Singapore.

To all the Singaporean students out there who might want to do a PhD:

You should be aware that it is actually possible, and, if you aim low enough, not terribly difficult, to do a PhD in a US university without having to pay anything out of your own pocket. In the sciences and engineering, it’s not difficult to get a funded PhD offer even if you have an undergrad degree from a local university, so long as your grades and research record are good. (In the social sciences and humanities, it may be rather more difficult to gain admission — although once you are admitted, you are typically fully funded. The reasons for this are a bit complicated — feel free to contact me directly if you really want my take on this.) I feel that I had to say this somewhere public, because I’ve recently been encountering a fair number of students in JC or university (or in between) expressing surprise when I told them this. I have to say, I find it shocking that some of their so-called “mentors” in the local universities perpetuate their students’ ignorance of this fact by not informing them of it and instead encouraging them to take up PhD scholarships offered by government research agencies. Given that there are such “mentors” around, I thought I’d offer this small bit of countervailing opinion, however little read it turns out to be.

It’s not just PhDs — there are funded Masters courses in the US, even in the humanities. Please, before you sign any binding contract, talk to people in the field, and talk to as many people as you can find, not just your so-called advisors.