Meritocracy In Singapore Schools: Can It Breed Inequality? | Measuring Meritocracy | Full Episode

Summary

This episode explores the meritocracy in Singapore schools and its potential to foster inequality. The idea of meritocracy, where success is based on talent, achievement, or effort rather than family background, can unintentionally entrench privilege. The narrative discusses the history of meritocracy, its impact on social mobility, and the advantages it can pass down through generations. Public concern is growing over its shortcomings, highlighting issues of inequality, elitism, and mental health pressures linked to a system driven by academic success.

Highlights

• Meritocracy risks becoming a hereditary system. 🎭
• The system may justify disadvantage, leading to public resentment. 😡
• Education is framed as a chance to escape poverty. 🎓
• Initial meritocratic fairness may be undercut by generational advantages. 🔄
• Elite institutions and education create networks that perpetuate privilege. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Meritocracy was meant to level the playing field but might entrench inequalities. 🤔
• Educational achievements are increasingly linked to family resources. 📚
• The meritocratic race begins early, with preschool and primary school admissions. 🏃‍♂️
• Streaming and high-stakes exams contribute to inequality and stress. 🚦
• Initiatives like subject-based banding aim to reduce stigmas and promote varied talents. 🌟
• Global awareness is growing around the need for more inclusive educational strategies. 🌍

Overview

In Singapore, the concept of meritocracy has been a cornerstone of the educational system, designed to reward achievement and effort regardless of one's background. However, as the system matures, this ideal is under scrutiny for potentially entrenching inequality. This episode examines how meritocracy, initially a fair system, might inadvertently become a barrier to equal opportunity.

The discussion delves into how educational success in Singapore is not solely about individual ability but is increasingly influenced by socioeconomic factors. Families with more resources can afford better educational opportunities for their children, such as tutors and elite preschool programs, potentially setting different starting lines for students.

Recognizing these issues, Singaporean policies are evolving. Efforts are being made to ensure more inclusive and flexible education, like subject-based banding, which allows students with different strengths to learn together, fostering a more holistic educational environment. The episode emphasizes the need for continued reforms to maintain the fairness and effectiveness of meritocracy in Singapore.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Introduction to Meritocracy The chapter discusses the concept of meritocracy in Singapore, emphasizing the risks of it turning into a hereditary system where one's birth conditions determine life outcomes. It highlights how meritocracy might entrench privilege and inequality, as those who succeed on merit can pass advantages to their children, potentially leading to a caste-like system. The system not only creates structural disadvantages but also attempts to justify them.
• 02:30 - 09:00: The Origins and Historical Context of Meritocracy The chapter discusses the concept of meritocracy and its historical context, focusing on the disadvantages it has created for certain groups. It highlights how these disadvantages have led to resentment, populism, and uprisings against the elite. The narrative suggests that there is growing public concern over the shortcomings of the current system of meritocracy, and emphasizes the need for courage to reset and address these issues, citing it as one of the most critical issues of our time.
• 09:00 - 18:00: Meritocracy in Singapore: Perspectives and Impacts The chapter provides an exploration into the concept of meritocracy in Singapore, delving into its origins, how it has been implemented, and its broader societal impacts.
• 18:00 - 27:00: Inequality and the Education System The chapter "Inequality and the Education System" begins with the mention of the term "meritocracy". The narrator recalls a teacher emphasizing the importance of doing well in life and achieving success, which is often associated with pursuing merit and academic accomplishments. The recurring theme presented revolves around the pressure exerted on individuals to strive for excellence by acquiring qualifications or 'chasing paper', highlighting a commonly held belief in educational success as a path to achieving life goals. This opening sets the stage for a discussion on how meritocracy plays a role in inequality within the education system.
• 27:00 - 34:00: The Role of Preschool and Primary Education The chapter discusses the role of meritocracy in education and career outcomes. It starts by highlighting the perceived benefits of meritocracy, where students who perform well advance to better schools and obtain higher-status jobs. However, as the narrator grows up, they begin to question the fairness and outcomes of such a system. Meritocracy is described as a societal system where progress and economic rewards are based on talent and achievement.
• 34:00 - 42:00: Challenges in Meritocratic Systems This chapter discusses the concept of meritocracy, focusing on how it emphasizes individual effort over family background, connections, or social class. It highlights the rise of market meritocracies over the past century or two, where success is typically measured by academic accomplishments and subsequent contributions to the labor market. The true goal of meritocracy, as outlined, is to provide equal opportunities for individuals to advance based on their own efforts.
• 42:00 - 52:00: Streaming and Its Reforms The chapter discusses the concept of meritocracy in Singapore, emphasizing equality of opportunities for individuals regardless of race, language, or religion. It mentions how this approach integrates society by breaking traditional aristocracies, which were seen as unfair and ineffective. The chapter also references the historical context of the exam system in Imperial China, initiated during the Sui Dynasty by the emperor to establish a separate power base.
• 52:00 - 55:00: The Importance of Emotional Intelligence The chapter discusses the significance of emotional intelligence, highlighting how it enables the selection of capable individuals in leadership roles, beyond traditional aristocratic and elite backgrounds, to form a meritocracy. It references 19th century England, where the concept allowed for advancement through organizations like the British East India Company.
• 55:00 - 65:30: Meritocracy and Social Mobility The chapter discusses the introduction of reformative civil service exams in the 1860s during Queen Victoria's reign. Prior to these exams, senior civil service positions were often filled through nepotism or purchased by individuals, a system deemed unsuitable for a modern democracy. The reforms aimed to promote meritocracy and were a step towards enhancing social mobility by requiring educational qualifications for these jobs.
• 65:30 - 74:00: Conclusion: Reevaluating Meritocracy This chapter delves into the historical context of elitism and its transition through colonial influences, specifically focusing on Singapore. It discusses the introduction of the Queen's Scholarship in the 1880s, emphasizing the move towards a standardized examination system designed to identify and select meritorious individuals perceived to have the most potential within Singapore and the broader region. The chapter critically examines how these meritocratic processes were influenced by old nepotistic elites, highlighting the complex dynamics between traditional power structures and emerging systems of merit-based selection.

Meritocracy In Singapore Schools: Can It Breed Inequality? | Measuring Meritocracy | Full Episode Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 meritocracy in Singapore must not oscify into a hereditary system by the condition of your birth determine the outcome of your life of your life meritocracy quit and trench uh privilege and inequality because there would be people who within the system succeed on Merit but in turn they're able to pass on some of the advantages to the children we can move very quickly to a kind of a caste system meritocracy doesn't Just Produce structural disadvantage but it purports to justify
• 00:30 - 01:00 that disadvantage that leads to forms of resentment it leads to populism produces uprisings against the elite order there are many people taking to the streets because they believe that they have been The Losers of a system we can see growing public concern about some of the shortcomings so we must have the courage to reset it is probably the most critical issue of our age
• 01:00 - 01:30 [Music] foreign [Music]
• 01:30 - 02:00 [Music] measuring meritakushi take one the first time I encountered the word meritocracy was teachers saying I must do well and life can go far we are made to chase that paper we are made to chase
• 02:00 - 02:30 that result students to do well go on to the better Schools jobs of higher status or better paying jobs meritocracy seems to be something that is good but then again as I grew up I kind of question the outcomes of the system foreign ocracy is a society or system where advancement and economic rewards according to Talent achievement or
• 02:30 - 03:00 effort rather than one's family background connections or you know social class the meritocracies that have swept the world in the last 100 or 200 years have been market meritocracies and those are meritocracies in which what counts as an accomplishment tends to be doing really well at school and then taking your skills and talents to the labor market to work well the intent of meritocracy is to actually allow for everybody to progress suddenly in
• 03:00 - 03:30 Singapore regardless of race language or religion so it was a concept that would definitely integrate because it guarantees the equality of opportunities meritocracies were everywhere embraced to break aristocracies that had increasingly been viewed as unfair incompetent Frozen sclerotic in Imperial China the exam system was first created in the sui Dynasty largely because the emperor really wanted a separate power base from
• 03:30 - 04:00 the aristocracy he wanted to be able to select a capable people to work for him and his government who are not just from the usual aristocratic families and the elite that you build is the most capable because it's drawn from the largest pool of contenders this is what happened in England in the 19th century when English meritocracy came to allow people to advance through in particular the British East India Company at the time when we go back in Britain to the
• 04:00 - 04:30 reforms of the 1860s in Queen Victoria's time when we introduced exams for senior jobs in the Civil Service previously these jobs had often been arranged through nepotism people had literally bought the job or they were given the job because one of their relatives had a high position in the organization now that obviously is not a sensible system in a particularly in a modern democracy so you know we needed exams we needed Mass higher education to challenge the
• 04:30 - 05:00 old nepotistic Elite now some of these ideas also carry over into Colonial office and the whole idea of how Empire is being governed perhaps in the Singapore context we could think about the introduction of scholarships the Queen's scholarship is one way and this occurs around the 1880s that we begin to see a standardized exam used to select what were considered the best and brightest those were the most potential within Singapore and the street
• 05:00 - 05:30 settlements for them to have the opportunity to go and pursue further studies in the UK just as in Imperial China you now have a prize that families can can Target you can imagine that if a really lucrative scholarship is being offered and that this scholarship essentially translates into mobility and to an elevated status when you return that many local families would start saying hey let's not Overlook the young
• 05:30 - 06:00 Chinese for instance within the first couple of years of the scholarships being awarded some of those names appear Western but then very rapidly you begin to see more and more Chinese names in particular appearing we are Asians and a majority of the people living in Singapore of Chinese descent Chinese confusion ideas are in society and they do make a difference to the way we react for instance through our meritocracy the colonial government was giving out these scholarships obviously in order to build up a generation of a local Bond people
• 06:00 - 06:30 who are going to be loyal to them to the Empire they weren't too concerned when it comes to offering education to all state funded Mass education is really an industrial age a phenomenal but prior to that it's really not within the capability of typical states to be able to provide Mass education for a big part of the population it was a very uneven policy if we think about Colonial Singapore that some English language schools or English medium schools were
• 06:30 - 07:00 given funding there were Mission schools that were quite important in providing a level of education but there were other schools which were classified as vernacular schools which were operating in various languages so Chinese is one example these were quite often left to the communities to fund and it's only really when you're approaching that period of self-governance the 1950s you begin to have a much clearer articulation of what it means to have an educated populace and to create a
• 07:00 - 07:30 minimum standard of Education in education the policy of the government is to aim at equal treatment for all schools and all teachers in those schools the foundation stone of the policy will be a six-year course of free primary education for all children if you have mass education you have an educated Workforce they're also thinking in terms of uplifting the masses and of course on top of this you also have the desire to of the Civil Service to select
• 07:30 - 08:00 the best and brightest if we look back in history in 1955 the labor front government introduced free education for all and this effort really stepped up following the PHP government as well in 1959 in terms of improving the excess and quality of Education the first half of the 1960s saw a massive School building program and efforts to enroll as many children as possible especially at the primary level and by 1966 Universal provision of
• 08:00 - 08:30 primary education had been achieved so a generation of leswell of singaporeans really benefited from this free education and were able to you know move up in the careers and in life in my days it was even before Singapore became independent in 1965. obviously and there are a lot poorer people a lot more people humble background than you find today many times I go to school I have
• 08:30 - 09:00 no money to buy food but I cannot I cannot show my MD box to my friend not very nice my father was a taxi driver my mother was a teacher I grew up knowing I would not be able to go to university if it were not for scholarship we doing the first taxi driver's son who called the President's Scholarship it's beyond anything anybody had there to think about I'm a beneficiary from a system of which chooses people according to their
• 09:00 - 09:30 capacity rather than financial resources the system give us the opportunity although just based on studies get out of poverty and and get a better job education was seen and today still is in many ways the most important level that everyone should be given the opportunity to develop their talents and abilities the best way possible in Singapore the
• 09:30 - 10:00 meritocratic system may be very fair when everybody in 1965 and those early years were equally poor but after the first round and certainly after the second round of a meritocratic system where people are sorted based on their grades the academic achievement those who have done well in the first and second round will be in positions of advantage and will have lots of resources to ensure that their children do better and so the Trap is first of
• 10:00 - 10:30 all that while meritocracy was invented as the engine of opportunity and equality of opportunity it becomes a block to a quality of opportunity Singapore is a meritocracy and these men have risen to the Top by their own Merit meritocracy cannot be left to its own devices this is fundamental to maintaining Singapore as an open meritocracy we cannot abandon meritocracy but I believe we can improve
• 10:30 - 11:00 it meritocracy is one of the key pillars of Singapore's governing philosophy and it has been so for probably about 60 years or so and we can see growing public concern about some of the shortcomings it has worked well for many years but the dangers occurred keep people in Social stratification and so it's something that we need to continually work at and to see people's burden on how to reform the meritocracy
• 11:00 - 11:30 to keep it relevant and to keep it fair for singaporeans foreign [Music] particularly for Asians over time those who have made good in the meritocratic system in the early years are able to
• 11:30 - 12:00 give their children a better starting point than those who haven't and this is of course Very worrying for all of us because it threatens the ideals of meritocracy in Singapore the method of transmission of privilege down through the generations of a family is no longer breeding and titles instead it's training it's just that the rich out Train everybody else they pay much
• 12:00 - 12:30 more for schools they hire tutors and when that generation competes meritocratically for places at universities lo and behold the richest kids who had the most expensive educations do the best and then they get the best jobs and the cycle continues through each generation I came from a lower income family group and I believe this group mostly spend a lot of their time not in school or not at school work but wealthier family Beyond money these
• 12:30 - 13:00 students have more time better subjective well-being strong Network affluence they give them a better Head Start compared to the rest it is also about the influences around them even what they talk about drives a certain kind of mindset and mentality there is a very strong consensus that family background does have an influence on types of goals and the types of aspirations and where students eventually end up in students coming from poorer families are more than four
• 13:00 - 13:30 times more likely to be low performance compare with more effluent peers young children of University educated parents hear Millions more words spoken at them before they reach the age of two or three then young children of parents with less money in education that influences language acquisition it influences certain kinds of skills acquisition in preschool and then preschool starts as soon as any kind of
• 13:30 - 14:00 schooling gets going the elite again dramatically out competes the rest of society there's growing research evidence from around the world that high quality preschool education is very vital in terms of nurturing a child's learning potential and that's why many parents spend a great deal of money in pursuit of what they perceive to be high quality preschool education
• 14:00 - 14:30 inside here Alicia my daughter is excelling within the preschool environment the curriculum obviously they focus on a lot of academics but at the same time it branches out to other areas of development [Music] our fees are around a 2000 per month and that includes all of our specialist
• 14:30 - 15:00 enrichment programs and music is the conduit that connects all these key parts of literacy [Music] I do believe preschool is important because it helps them to be prepared for you know further education down the road for example for our new school preschool
• 15:00 - 15:30 helps them you know with social skills with how to hook themselves up and then you're interacting with other people and being an environment where you know they're supposed to know how to sit still and learn and so on and so forth for many decades preschool education was left almost entirely in the hands of private for profit or not for profit operators there's a great deal of diversity and in terms of affordability teaching methodologies plus size and this started to change about a decade
• 15:30 - 16:00 ago when the early childhood development agency was established and what's happened since then is government efforts to improve the accessibility the affordability and the quality of preschool education [Music] we support families from diverse backgrounds and among the school of
• 16:00 - 16:30 parents that we support there are some that will have financial needs because they come from low-income backgrounds [Music] my first daughter Nursery in different schools the fee is quite expensive so I even cannot afford to pay that's why after I came here they said they will try to help me for the financial help and parents will need different support at different stage so what we have is a group of child enabling Executives who work closely with the families to see
• 16:30 - 17:00 the support that they need for the third pillar we have the learning support we look at areas such as language learning as well as numeracy I hope that when when they grow up they not do be like me like because I well last time I in school I don't listen to teacher that's why right now I'm not good in English or some words that I
• 17:00 - 17:30 don't know so I want my kids to depending on his own that he can grow up in the future that they can work as what they want if they can study hard also in future also I hope probably I will help you too we do have children from less privileged families who may only join or restart the formal education only at primary one I didn't attend kindergarten actually I attended primary one street like fresh from childhood of Happiness into a microcosm where you have to
• 17:30 - 18:00 follow a certain order a certain system I was lost when the results came on mid-year exams from year one I was number 38 out of 42 so that shocked my parents that was my first shot facing meritocracy why not make pre -school education compulsory as well because recognizing that already at primary one some people already have a starting line which is further ahead than others because of their families affluence
• 18:00 - 18:30 social network ability to provide enrichment classes even when they are young from two years old or even one year old the arms race intensifies when it comes to gaining admission to Primary School we've heard of parents who for example move to particular parts of Singapore in order to be preferentially considered students can secure spots in schools within a one kilometer distance
• 18:30 - 19:00 rule so if they live close to a school they would have priority for entry the same time we know that many of the popular or brand name primary schools they also found in private residential areas where property values are higher so this could inadvertently give a further legal to the more well-off in terms of gaining admission to these schools historically many of what we understand our lead schools are sort of based along a certain strip bukatima road we look at the advertisements for
• 19:00 - 19:30 for houses for sale invariably they mention the names of elite schools within that vicinity so this itself is a reflection of let's say socioeconomic status which the school has over a period of time come to come to represent so for Evan or the boys they are in ACS Junior through staying with the word care and Katie is in Singapore Chinese girl school scjs for KT because everyone says Dragon year right a little bit
• 19:30 - 20:00 harder so I actually volunteered myself with the community there are also parents who have signed up as Alumni Association members or as school Volunteers in order to gain strategic Advantage for their children if we examine most of the admission criteria they have nothing to do at all with the individual child's Merit as it were but instead have everything to do with the child's family background some of course believe that going to a good
• 20:00 - 20:30 school you have good Network you have better teachers you have better programs they're also chasing after the prospect that if they are not already alumni their kids can be alumni and therefore be part of a special Club then I realized actually if you go into these good schools here in Singapore it's not just about the environment but also the connections you make in those schools you probably are studying with a Minister's son or the CEO of a business you know daughter in that same school as
• 20:30 - 21:00 well long and short of it is that social networks do matter for good jobs progress in one's career there's been growing public concern of whether there is sufficient social interaction among students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds within our schools I went to a Raffles institution then Raffles Junior College yeah I guess we didn't really look at each other's social economic backgrounds as friends but I didn't know that a number of my friends did stay in private housing an
• 21:00 - 21:30 elite school had positive connotations at one point in time but I feel that over the years people start viewing the word elite as akin to elitism arrogance you know a little bit more haughty not everybody who goes to Rebels Associated would be standing like that no this is our misinterpretation I mean what would Raffles say if you come back alive what are you doing to my name just go to the school don't use in my name to say that you're Elite right I think
• 21:30 - 22:00 there has been some confusion between education and sort of social networking and elitism in a sense in the sense that schools are places of teaching and that's what we should be focused on perhaps um we should but better look at what alternatives they are for us to better build our Network without fixating our schools being the only way to get my children into you know any and that's what Elite Network horrible word meritocratic Elites for all sorts of reasons um have a tendency to reproduce themselves they have access to networks
• 22:00 - 22:30 and mentoring and often themselves follow their parents footsteps into the top universities and so on and so forth I think you are finding in Singapore that this process is now beginning to set in from the outside Britain is often seen as a not very meritocratic country partly because we have private schools which have an outsized influence on the elite we need to democratize the elite and exam systems were one way of doing that
• 22:30 - 23:00 foreign meritocracy it is a formula of IQ plus effort equals success which is why our schooling system the parents everyone is really hell-bent on maximizing grades [Music]
• 23:00 - 23:30 parents and Society are already bringing pressures to bear on the tiny Minds to excel the foundation being laid must be good because in a few years they will be graded and slaughtered according to their abilities when I was in Primary School we were streamed according to our results and I managed to get to the A-Class and it was really competitive because you see students who had tuition
• 23:30 - 24:00 for almost every subject UC students who are competing with you the moment they see that you are ahead a little bit you know they will like look at your table and they will try to compete with you and I didn't quite like it I was just learning because I need to get good grades streaming first began at the end of 1979 it came about as a government commission report identified several major shortcomings in Singapore's education system which included High
• 24:00 - 24:30 failure and Dropout rates and the report recommended therefore that streaming be introduced to provide students with different learning abilities a more differentiated pace and also different terminal examinations in Singapore the Primary School Leaving examination is a key sorting mechanism determining access to diverse Secondary School Pathways the psle is the first high-stakes National
• 24:30 - 25:00 exams I would say that it's understandable why parents are a little bit uptight and worried about the psle because it really sets the path that the child can take in his or her live later on [Music] Evan who is uh 12th this year and he's in his PSL year with Evan in his help in every way so we have of course tuitions
• 25:00 - 25:30 to help him along for every subject I need to go through his Corrections and I need to make sure that he understands his daily routine as school home training tuition sometimes and then at night we'll spend a little bit of time doing some self-work especially to months leading up to psle the Ministry of Education has for over two decades now been actively encouraging greater parental involvement in the children's education what a good phrase that you
• 25:30 - 26:00 can use this has contributed to the growing unevenness of the playing field for children out there when my Elder son entered from B1 you know the education system has evolved so fast not not as easy as what we thought yeah as well as the peer pressure the students competitiveness so I decided to start to sign up in terms of enrichment classes or tuitions to Aid them so for
• 26:00 - 26:30 my second son Brennan which is primary six this year so actually I bring him across all subject tuitions English Chinese math and science so by having all the four subjects you should know there are still a average student so I was thinking what if I pull out the tuition or they feel there should be equal opportunities for all and that the current system of meritocracy really benefits those who can afford to more tuition more classes more and you know just more of everything and that really
• 26:30 - 27:00 disadvantages those who can't afford to pay for it parents who may find it difficult to be able to engage a tutor or put their children to tuition they hope that there could be other means you know that's where the schools can come in through remedial lessons through enrichment classes in school another way in which we can help support children from less privileged families is through our self-help groups they're already providing Vision classes enrichment classes that can help them prepare for the examinations of the psle in particular
• 27:00 - 27:30 the psle now instead of having the a-star a b c grid we have the different achievement levels so if you get your first object set al2 L3 el4 and el5 then you add up two three four and five and that gives you your overall points because we are looking at a specific score we also want to be to be assured that he actually gets within the grades which is um an al-13 but I told Evan that we should aim for an 11 to 12 because then you are guaranteed a place
• 27:30 - 28:00 there 98.4 of primary six students who sat for Singapore's Primary School Leaving examinations this year can go on to Secondary School my friend was like oh you should bring your mother and I was like yeah I agree so after that he gave me your results lit and then I was like Mommy I got air 16 but then actually it was like just
• 28:00 - 28:30 kidding and I took out to sleep and then I showed her I got air 11 and then she was like oh my gosh and then she shouted so loudly so I think that was that was a memorable moment we are really glad we worked really hard and um yeah I guess you read what you saw and then we finished our PSL UAE yes it was like so now so nerve-wracking Yeah man so how how do you like about your results I was super happy when I saw my results yeah as well as me I think he has tried his very best and he's did his
• 28:30 - 29:00 very best and this is actually what he wants we must really celebrate in life you know celebrate success [Music] there is that danger that academic sorting for a meritocratic system is more reflection of Parental resources than the students ability and effort if that sorting is done all too early both my parents were not really involved in
• 29:00 - 29:30 my education or any involvement generally in my education in my school work my mom has two jobs my father was generally not around I did not prepare much for my pre-sla from what I remember I did very badly and I went to normal technical stream and I think my aggregate was about 100 points when I first got the idea about streaming I just know that um you know that the smarter one will go to a better class the not so smart one will go to a class
• 29:30 - 30:00 that is full of people with troubled situation one of the key problems associated with streaming at both primary and secondary levels was that these sorts of biases and stereotypes began to take root in the popular Consciousness you know some of my good friends they were in normal stream and then I went to express and then they begin to okay we're not going to mix around with you because you express you're the smart kid you know it creates this wall during
• 30:00 - 30:30 my time as a teacher I did notice that you know the stream actually does affect the students I have had students tell me that in certain classes they feel like they're treated in an inferior manner some of them actually sometimes even decide to just go with the stigma and that affects their performance as well so after a level I actually went to IDE I honestly felt a bit discouraged every time where the uniform to school because I do have parents when they are
• 30:30 - 31:00 with their kids boarding at us again saying things like if you don't study well this is what you're going to become because they knew that clothes was from ite and that's something pretty sad to you know go through yeah I couldn't understand the fact that if you are in the technical stream you are considered the students who are weaker back in the day and because I really love technical my dad was a carpenter and I spent my weekends at his Workshop learning carpentry but because of of the system
• 31:00 - 31:30 such a peer pressure and everything I was kind of pushed to go into the science stream the Ministry of Education began in the 2000s to reduce some of the adverse effects engendered by streaming from 2024 with full subject B spending in secondary schools students will have greater flexibility to study more subjects at different levels that suit the interests aptitude and learning
• 31:30 - 32:00 needs there will no longer be separate Express normal academic and normal technical courses and students will be in mixed form classes where they can interact with peers of different strengths and interests I think that's a good step to making sure that our students in most of our mainstream schools are not pigeonholed I was really good at accounting so maybe I could take like the best subject band class for that and then when it comes to mathematics or maybe even science I can
• 32:00 - 32:30 go to like the weakest subject-based banding classes for that as well and in that class I might meet someone who's really good in English or really good in mother tongue so yeah as compared to a one size fits all for everyone right yeah by recognizing students proficiencies across the swim subjects they are more likely to develop interests curiosity and learn outside the classroom the motivation behind the subject-based banding program is that we want students to intermingle more we want students to learn from each other the different types of experiences in
• 32:30 - 33:00 working together I think at least initial results seems to be quite promising so having this new policy I guess it will greatly increase the cohesive test within the society then there will be more more empathy more understanding more tolerance more inclusion and more diversity I feel every problem may not be so much in the streaming system itself but that we only seem to Value one kind of intelligence which is
• 33:00 - 33:30 IQ and we completely ignore emotional intelligence there's certain people who will have other different forms of intelligence other different contributions that also should be validated we have seen official efforts to try and broaden the definition of Merit we have a system called the direct School admission which can draw students because they have a special ability in hockey or dance so Evan has got a DSA offer to acsi to
• 33:30 - 34:00 squash so that's a sports that he loves and I gave Evan lessons in squash because we thought that that would probably be a good spot for him to help him focus it was really more Leisure than anything and he worked really hard and he finally got into the National Junior training team again we want to examine if that special ability is very much a question of the investment of resources
• 34:00 - 34:30 in nurturing that talent and ability because of parents resources or because the national school system has given everyone a fair shot at surfacing and nurturing that talent I have not signed up about my children for tuition because I want them to have a childhood you know I wanted to learn to play and to discover their own passion and interest and if you're in enrichment classes back to back then you're not allowed to explore to discover your own interests so for me I'm tiger parent but my
• 34:30 - 35:00 passion on my interests are not towards his grades as to what's his passion andness and his interests [Music] meritocracy allows those who have the means to game the system but what happened to the children whose parents don't have the means they get left behind to me it is not a problem if the parents are able to transfer their privilege down to their children it is
• 35:00 - 35:30 how then the children use this privilege it can go in that direction where it will breed elitism or it can go to another Direction where this privilege can be shared with those who are less well to do there's a great deal of tension between satisfying individual parents preferences and promoting the greater common good foreign system one thing that's particularly
• 35:30 - 36:00 challenging is that some of the best schools or the elite schools are those that are steeped in Chinese culture I actually went to a primary school that is founded like that my primary school Natural Foods here was one of four primary schools that was founded and run by the Hawking who iguan actually the special Assistance Plan schools are what we normally call the sap schools to even enroll in a sub School you must take Chinese as a mother tongue language so
• 36:00 - 36:30 that is already a very strict Criterion I think our political leader at that time had the foresight to see China as a superpower in the makings and if we do not have enough people enough people in the workforce were conversant and strong in Mandarin then we would be a disadvantage when China comes up that's why they introduce the sap stream in 1978 and it came to effect in 1979. I remember that when I was in primary school I had Indian and Malay
• 36:30 - 37:00 classmates actually they came from families where they thought that they already really good with the languages and they want their sons and daughters to actually receive a Chinese education there are Indian students there are Malay students who take Mandarin as a mother Thai language I mean yeah fine but how many actually do that it's a very small group it becomes very racially homogeneous very very few who are non-chinese who are in the school then what happens to the issue of diversity I have friends who are from
• 37:00 - 37:30 sap schools and when we go to school together in uni or in JC they are not aware of certain things about their Malay friend or their Indian friend and that to me was a culture shock because how could you not know that Muslims need to eat halal food that level of lack of understanding is quite mind-boggling for a Singaporean we're not saying that the sap schools should cease to exist but what we do one to call out for is that
• 37:30 - 38:00 for the schools to be a lot more inclusive inclusive in the sense that it can allow students who do not take Chinese as a mother tongue language to enroll in the school there's all these sort of little nuances to our meritocratic system which should be reviewed from time to time and see whether there are ways in which to make them more inclusive the day May really come where we no longer draw those lines where we say that we are just one Singapore there is no longer Singapore Chinese Community or Singapore Malay Community do I foresee this day coming
• 38:00 - 38:30 anytime soon the answer is no all right but in the meantime since it's not here yet I think it's very important for each of the communities to make sure that its own members are cognizant of what goes on in the whole Singapore and in the other communities another way in which segregation has come about perhaps because of the way we practice meritocracy and you go to better universities and you are part of the so-called cognitive Elite of Singapore globally and you access better jobs the
• 38:30 - 39:00 Admissions Office at Harvard Princeton Yale Stanford MIT a small handful of other schools in the United States effectively decides who gets ahead in America at Oxford and Cambridge and the Russell group universities in the UK the same thing is true in Singapore the question of who gets into Elite universities determines a great deal about the structure of the Singaporean Elite and Singaporean Society and inter-university Survey released in June found Singapore undergraduates feel there is a deep seated and unhealthy
• 39:00 - 39:30 obsession with greats and that they have to perform well to get their foot through the door in job applications I think it stems from a lot of us students and a lot of us Singaporean students being indoctrinated from Young on how getting good grades is your ticket to success I'm a design tutor at the National University of Singapore whenever we give them a set of requirements they'll ask all the questions are leading up to how can I
• 39:30 - 40:00 get an E from it somehow when I was teaching in nus in Singapore the first question is how many words teacher how many words you want me to write 800 words 900 words rather than like actually grappling with first principles and getting creative I'm beginning to see more and more students coming in the University being a little just a little bit more obsessed about their grades compared to say five or ten years I think attending these Elite schools and reputable universities we would
• 40:00 - 40:30 naturally just compare ourselves to one another I don't feel that it adds a lot of stress and anxiety to someone's uh mental Wellness psychologists for example have surveyed and found that there are Elite schools in which over half of the class has clinical symptoms of anxiety or depression foreign professional it's quite heartbreaking seeing of young people facing such immense pressure I run a social service
• 40:30 - 41:00 agency that serves young people who are struggling in mental conditions called campus PSI uh in trial it's called campus space support for use some of the top concerns is of course I think academic stress it might cause severe anxiety if it's causing dysfunction in their daily lives then they would have to seek professional help yesterday's session was about how do you recognize signs symptoms of someone who is troubled and may be thinking about suicide that's a very difficult topic we
• 41:00 - 41:30 will be actually training and equipping this Secondary School students and Pongo with basic mental literacy and peace support skills so that they can better support their PS1 distress students support leader sometimes when I have Anonymous confessions on my Instagram page I get your next secondary school kid telling me that they're very stressed in school they're not performing well they feel like they let down their parents I relate to that a lot and I just tell them how I feel and that your grades are not the be-all and
• 41:30 - 42:00 all here in Singapore and I hope one day when I say this phrase nobody will scoff at me saying this our grades are very important of course but not more important than their Mental Health meritocratic competition doesn't end with school it continues into the workforce so meritocratic workers even those inside the elite are under a constant pressure to continue to succeed to continue to out-compete others the
• 42:00 - 42:30 way my generation of students look to beef out their resumes it's mostly going to be very experienced and qualifications based during the summer break they will find an internship during the winter break they'll try to find internship these qualifications and internships would serve as evidence of their so-called ability well we see that parents mobilize their social networks to help their kids secure meaningful
• 42:30 - 43:00 valuable internships now let's just think then about students in our universities in Singapore who are going to be the first time graduates in their families they're not going to have similar opportunities as the students who have parents in the professional class and sort of management level of industry and know their peers in Industry so can we actually think about how meritocracy needs to be complemented by other methods and programs so that
• 43:00 - 43:30 these kids gather the right work experience gather the useful context so that when they finally graduate they have as much chance this is important for society because we need to know we will have different starting points from one another I need to know that I still have the chance and opportunity despite my starting point
• 43:30 - 44:00 I'm currently mentoring I.T graduates we are working together on the operation work and managing areas different offices that we have okay [Music] so maybe we can say this is not the right it's very easy to connect vendors because we go through the same thing in it a few months ago and I really wanted to give up on this program I felt very
• 44:00 - 44:30 stressed so I thought unless I want to give up his response to me was what are you giving up on yourself when I haven't given up on you which makes me feel that he cares and value me as a as a internal mentorship has come up as a very important support for students at across many levels we are students basically if if they had a non-parent mentor who guided them in their career choices about life problems and in front of the students who had better Clarity had
• 44:30 - 45:00 worked with a mentor people do need a helping hand what we would call Compassionate meritocracy rather than while you're down you're out you're out for good we have to remember that meritocracy is fun fundamentally a very individualistic model of achievement and there's also this tendency within a meritocracy to believe that your success is entirely your own doing so Elites are
• 45:00 - 45:30 sort of trained to be proud of themselves for winning in a genuine competition which is not a Fair competition and they're proud on account of the genuineness but insufficiently aware of the unfairness we need to show empathy and compassion towards us because not everyone will have the kinds of opportunities or privileges that some of us have I think our meritocracy served well for that period that we were developing and needed to get to a certain point being a newly independent
• 45:30 - 46:00 country but moving on from there we do have to re-look what this meritocracy teaches our citizens and what kind of values it inculcates there's every threat that the concept of meritocracy will cause those who progress to be puffed up and to say we deserve our position and why can't everybody else put in the same effort as I did to arrive where I am but our concept of meritocracy and
• 46:00 - 46:30 simple has to be different from that we're actually too small to afford this kind of division and this kind of arrogance and from a bottom up any kind of Envy the smaller we are the more we should realize we need one another so much more [Music] [Music]
• 46:30 - 47:00 thank you [Music] foreign [Music]