Education dominates Singapore's 'different' culture

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/11/education_dominates_in_singapo.html

by tokenadult • 14 years ago

31 39 14 years ago

codewright2• 14 years ago

Hacker News clearly has a strong interest in education, I find this interesting because I see misguided attempts in trying to educate the masses on HN. The tone comes off the wrong way and it hurts the substantive content coming from the knowledge many HN contributors have to offer.

Some thoughts for HNers and their future attempts at educating others in this forum:

The comment threads are here for conversations and the exchange of thought, not for the assignment of homework in the form of white papers/books. Mentioning your sources I'm sure is always welcome, but many seem to assume that anybody who hasn't read the same material as themselves is somehow incapable of contributing to a conversation on the subject at hand. That is an egregiously poisonous mindset.

If you want to make the most of your time on HN have more respect for others and synthesize your knowledge. Let a conversation happen.

By all means link your sources, but say what you're going to say and don't assign homework.

Contextual synthesis > PDF

That's my $0.02 (not denominated in Verizon-units).

--- With that out of the way ---

More related to the article, I've visited Singapore and know a few Singaporeans. One of the main takeaways was that they're hyper-competitive and aggressive in ways I'm not sure US gov'ts/voters would ever really countenance for the sake of progress.

The article is rife with Orientalist gawking and murmuring of approval. Typical for the current mode of reporting on how Asia does things differently than the West. (Cf. Friedman's absurd pseudo-capitalist posturing on China)

Mentioning the chewing gum ban, seriously?

Money quote: "But it's really more about discipline than intelligence."

dkarl• 14 years ago

The article is rife with Orientalist gawking and murmuring of approval. Typical for the current mode of reporting on how anybody in Asia does things.

It's superficial, to be sure, but at least it lets Singaporeans speak for themselves about the cultural difference. The true purpose of the article seems to be to say some things about Cleveland that can't be said directly, so a more nuanced take on Singapore might be beside the point.

codewright2• 14 years ago

It's better than others I've seen, for sure. I'm just not familiar enough with Cleveland (other than knowing it's a disaster zone) to really know how this article is supposed to reflect upon circumstances there.

I can hardly believe anything more than a tiny fraction of HN readership is familiar with the situation there either, so I have to go with the more obvious parts.

I'm not an English Lit major, I'm not super-interested in deep meta-analysis of author intentions.

newman314• 14 years ago

"Orientalist"

Pardon my French, but WTF?

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

"And no one would dispute that the key to all this success has been education."

I would.

Singapore is what it is because of their strategic placing in the wold today. The only reason the English decided to convert this tropical island in the commerce nucleus it is.

People always rationalize how when something good happens to them it is always because of their merit alone.

Spain discovered America because it is on the extreme of Europe and not in the center, Germany is an Industrial nation because it has so much water and coal, and is very cheap to transport things and USA has the bigger and most fertile plains in the world for a very small population.

Now ask an American, German or a person from Singapore what is the key of success and they will tell you hard work of course, but they don't work harder than people from Central African Republic(I had been there, very beautiful and rich but in the middle of nowhere, with no infrastructure, and very poor).

ewolf4• 14 years ago

True, the article certainly leaves out a lot there. I would, however, attribute Singapore's success to their own good leadership. The Brits certainly were not the ones who developed it to what it is today.

yummyfajitas4• 14 years ago

I would dispute that education is the key to all this success as well. Let us assume that educational outcomes (i.e., human capital as measured by test scores) are the driver of this success.

Even making this assumption, the bulk of the gap in educational outcomes between the US and Singapore is probably not due to education.

The US 8th grade PISA score is 495, whereas that of Singapore is 540. But Asian Americans have a score of 535. Several American states have Asian students who even exceed Singapore, specifically NY, TX and CT.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...

If education were the primary driver of educational outcomes, that shouldn't happen. So we should reject education as the primary driver of educational outcomes.

However, the article also suggests a cultural explanation: "it's built into our [Singaporean] culture to study all the way through school". If Asian Americans share this trait but non-Asian Americans do not, this is certainly consistent with the data.

seagreen2• 14 years ago

Your hypothesis that Singapore's done so well because of its location is certainly a common one and puts you in good company.

It doesn't strike me as very persuasive though. For instance, here's a map[1] of ports and harbors in Malaysia. There are a lot of them. How come Singapore has almost the GDP (239 billion) of all of Malaysia put together (278 billion)?

[1] http://www.worldportsource.com/ports/MYS.php

yummyfajitas4• 14 years ago

Lets ask a different question. Why does NYC have a GDP of $544B [1], which is nearly as large as that of the rest of NY State ($611B)?

Another comparison: the GDP of the NYC metro area is $1.28T [2]. The GDP of Texas is $1.3T, Florida is $0.754 and CA is $1.9T.

You are probably right that location doesn't explain Singapore's wealth. But education probably doesn't either - I don't see any reason to believe NYC has a better education system than NY - NYC, CA, TX or FL.

The simplest explanation is that when a city becomes a regional hub, it generates disproportionate amounts of wealth. In the case of Singapore, the city also just happened to be a country.

[1] http://www.housingnyc.com/downloads/research/pdf_reports/ia1...

[2] The metro area is NYC + commuter suburbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City

[edit: B -> T for NYC metro GDP]

guylhem8• 14 years ago

[Disclosure- my best friend immigrated to Singapore after his PhD in Europe]

Natural factors play a role, but only so much. IMHO, you are rationalizing. There are many places in the world that are strategically located and resource rich, but they didn't grow as much as Singapore did.

In Asia, if I was a villain, I would put my lair in Timor (if I wanted an island) or New Guinea (if I wanted land) - just between India, Australia, Japan, etc.

Water and coal are abundant in many places. Argentina has great fertile plains and a lower population. Coal was first mined in China, and in the UK which also had IIRC more coal and water than Germany.

Hell, following your explanation about the new world, Portugal and Ireland are even more at the extreme of Europe- they should have discovered America! They didn't (I know the story about Vinland, the vikings an so on - but they didn't do as much as Spain did)

It we are talking about geographic distance, southern Morocco or Senegal would have been at an advantage - but they didn't do it.

It's too easy to rewrite history. Education and investment are clearly driving growth.

Show me a country that is betting big on education and pushing for investment (preferably local, from savings), even if it has not much politically stability it is a country with a bright future.

Besides India (who will certainly be the next big thing after the US - not China IMHO), I'd put my chips on countries like Estonia, Kenya, Uruguay.

slurgfest• 14 years ago

If you go to an underdeveloped country and see people working really hard, that's not a rationalization. It's a counterexample to the implied thesis that economic development is a matter of hard work.

yummyfajitas4• 14 years ago

Show me a country that is betting big on education and pushing for investment (preferably local, from savings), even if it has not much politically stability it is a country with a bright future.

Historically that is not true. Countries which increased their investment in education tended to have (slightly) slower economic growth, at least in the period 1960-2000.

Paper: http://econ399.atwiki.com/file/open/21/Where+has+all+the+edu...

Blog post with key graph: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/did_nations_tha....

ramgorur2• 14 years ago

yes indeed, India is the country of the future, and the fact here is - "It always will be".

rkwz2• 14 years ago

>Besides India (who will certainly be the next big thing after the US ..

Curious, Can you expand on this?

ewolf4• 14 years ago

This is a very simplified view of the education system in Singapore. Of course education should be important, but it can also go too far.

I've been in Singapore for 1 year as an exchange student. While I managed to cope well, many slightly less talented students suffer from the great workload and have almost no free time. In a middle class secondary school, about 95% of the children need tuition to keep up with school. Weeks or even months before their exams, all free time is eliminated and dedicated to studying.

The learning itself isn't perfect either. It's heavily focused on memorization and involves no oral participation. Foreign languages are almost never taught; math and natural sciences matter the most. Competition is promoted instead of teamwork (not only amongst students, but also amongst teachers and civil servants in general). The teachers are ranked according to their students' results, which does work as a motivator, but discourages them to explain any background information or topics that are not required from exams.

Parents urge their children to get the best degree they can in order to be able to take up the best paying job they can find. Money is the measure and not personal satisfaction. Arts, therefore, are not very popular.

I'm highlighting here all negative aspects to contrast the posted article; of course it is good that Singapore does promote education and the education system certainly works better than the ones of most other countries. Also, this is not directly related to Singapore, but represents the Confucianist mentality that one can find to a lot extremer extents in Japan, China and Korea.

guylhem8• 14 years ago

> (competition, no foreign languages, science first) > Parents urge their children to get the best degree they can in order to be able to take up the best paying job they can find. Money is the measure and not personal satisfaction. Arts, therefore, are not very popular.

> I'm highlighting here all negative aspects

It does not look like negatives to me, but a recipe for success - ie focus on the important and cut the useless.

(And in a country with as many immigrants as Singapore, I'm sure the issue of foreign languages is self solving :-)

zhemao• 14 years ago

You are making the BIG assumption that foreign languages, the humanities, teamwork, and learning other than rote memorization are useless. It takes more than knowing a lot of facts and being able to crunch numbers to be successful in a career, even in technical ones like science and engineering. Successful scientists and engineers not only have strong technical skills, but also strong "soft" skills, like the ability to effectively communicate ideas and work in a team.

ewolf4• 14 years ago

That's a very narrow-minded way of looking at success. The success of a state is much more than just attaining wealth — it's about serving the people and giving them all possible opportunities to pursue their dreams and live a happy life. Money is just a means to be able to carry out these tasks.

And there are enough statistics out there to prove that money is far from leading the list of things that matter most to the happiness of humans.

PS: (And in a country with as many immigrants as Singapore, I'm sure the issue of foreign languages is self solving :-)

The three ethnic groups in Singapore get in touch with each other quite well, that's true, but contact with any other culture such as European ones is rare (expats just stay amongst themselves). Furthermore, learning a language requires more than just knowing native speakers.

MrScruff• 14 years ago

Competition is promoted instead of teamwork (not only amongst students, but also amongst teachers and civil servants in general).

I've heard this from colleagues who've worked in Singapore. Teamwork and collaboration don't appear to be cultural norms. I remember during my degree there were always one or two hyper competitive individuals who would deny having any knowledge of a problem when asked for assistance. They seemed to think helping others would adversely affect them in some way. The reality is that explaining concepts to others reinforces your own understanding, so you both benefit.

jasonjei• 14 years ago

I wonder, though, if there is a software business in Singapore that is on the same level as Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Google, Apple, VMware, etc, as well as the Linux foundation and FSF being present in Singapore. The US may not have the best education system, but I wonder if it is the lax education that has fostered the software industry (as well as engineering, HP, anybody?) in the US.

ewolf4• 14 years ago

While Singapore may not foster a startup culture as it can be found in many parts of the USA, a population of 5 million (with 1/3 immigrants) is certainly hard to compare to 308 million.

aen• 14 years ago

We're extremely good at some things but at the expense of everything else. Thus our lives generally aren't very interesting. I'm a pretty smart guy (140± IQ) who dropped out of the system when I was 15 and went through non-systematic but relentless self-education. The learning habits formed in school helped. But I was 'free'. My point is whatever the status quo, there will be a minority that will abandon the system taking along with them only the good parts and then become interesting. So with a bigger population, you get more of such minority which causes Microsofts, Googles and Apples to happen.

darylteo• 14 years ago

Singaporean here.

My biggest gripe with Singapore's state as it is (and why can't we criticize it?) is that while Singapore does have a stronger emphasis on education (GREAT!), it still falls behind in knowledge.

Singapore has no natural resource, and thus no natural export. Its main exports (other than "tourism" which doesn't count) is through secondary products like petroleum, and through its workforce, considered high-value by companies around the world.

Its workforce, being a resource, is therefore treated like a resource. And resources must always be more readily available, more efficiently farmed, more accurately quantified. The only way to survive in this country is to go through the gauntlet, and get stamped with a quality grade like beef.

My personal hope for the future of Singapore is to slowly make the transition away from treating its humans as a workforce resource, and to start treasuring their humans as a knowledge bank. Indeed, I believe Singapore has realised this, with its growing bio-technology sector, A* etc. However it is a race against time; unlike other resources, its workforce can turn against it.

No I'm not really speaking about revolution etc. But years of being a resource has put a toll on the population... just as a engine that is run in overdrive for too long wears out. Many of the Singaporeans who can afford to find a better life elsewhere, where their knowledge is valued higher, are doing so. Those that do not have that knowledge are simply resigned to being the nation's workhorse, and take no effort to seek it themselves (or perhaps they cannot afford to).

This puts Singapore in a weird position. It is suffering from "brain drain". And the current remedy for it is importing knowledge from elsewhere. Unlike regions like the US, EU, AU, where populations are made up of many varieties of cultures, Singapore is a young country with only 3 major ethnic groups, and outsiders are viewed as such. This further axacerbates the feeling that local workers are just their workers.

Anyway, after that long blob, my 2nd personal hope is I may be able to return to my country and contribute back, not through workhours, but through knowledge.

Disclaimer: this is all my views and intuition, I don't have any links or numbers to back things up.

tokenadult2• 14 years ago

A Singaporean friend of mine just saw my posting of the same United States editorial on my Facebook wall, and she suggested the 29 October 2012 article "A less exam-centric approach to build character, creativity,"

http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC121029-0000030/A-les...

featuring quotations from a speech by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore as a possible response. It does appear that people respond to incentives, and the Singapore education system has set up pretty good incentives for one set of behaviors, with an ongoing debate in that slowly democratizing society about what behaviors to encourage for the next stage of Singapore's development.

AFTER EDIT: I just reread all the other comments in this thread, in light of what they are saying in response to one another. I should respond to a couple that come from someone evidently much younger than I am, who has spent time in Singapore as a foreign resident (with what language background?).

At the top comment level:

Foreign languages are almost never taught

Grandchild to that comment (from same HN participant):

The three ethnic groups in Singapore

As a member of the older generation, I can remember when Singapore had a lot more than the current "three ethnic groups" (that would be Chinese, Malay, and Indian, by the reckoning of Singapore) as an actual linguistic matter. To both points, by the Singapore government's own statistics,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Singapore#Langu...

as recently as 1990 there was no one language of the four languages that are official in Singapore--Malay, (Modern Standard) Chinese, English, and Tamil--that was even spoken at home in the majority of homes in Singapore. School instruction has been in English since independence in 1965, but only a tiny minority of the population spoke English at home in my generation. I would have to consider a country that has four official languages from four different language families, NONE of which the plurality of the population spoke at home just a generation ago, a very successful country in teaching second languages. And if today people in Singapore think that "Chinese" is one ethnic group, they have forgotten a lot of ethnic division between Hokkien speakers and Hakka speakers and Cantonese speakers (who speak mutually incomprehensible Sinitic languages, all of which I have studied in addition to Mandarin) that is also very recent history in that country and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world.

smirksirlot• 14 years ago

I grew up in Singapore and went through the education system there before moving to North America at 16. Singapore isn't really the "education heaven" that it is made out to be.

The biggest different I would say is that Singapore education churns out book-smart students. These are the people who are best at following instructions, steps, and established methods. We're very good at following and reinforcing the paths well trod.

Coming to North America, while I did far better than my peers in strict academic settings, they would constantly do better in things such as dealing with people, creative activities etc. People here have a better sense of adventure and are willing to challenge themselves/the status quo to experience the world.

balsam• 14 years ago

What percentage of successful HN applicants are Singaporean? I know at least half (he was born there), but it could be a interesting number to know.

yzhengyu• 14 years ago

Singaporean here. The article is a typical outsider view of our system, which isn't as perfect as it sounds.

In the first place, the majority of Singapore's successes is largely due to a pro-business policy which has attracted massive amounts of foreign direct investment.

In the second place, my observation is that in general Singaporeans are well-schooled, not well educated. As Mark Twain put it, there is a difference.

And there is also the uglier side of a hyper-competitive system which darylteo has pointed out. And then you ask yourself, where do the "losers" of this competition end up?

The challenge at this stage is to ensure we move our lowest gear up - and I can assure you, our lowest gear is pretty low. Unfortunately, unless the technocrats get mind-transplants from the people who did the Finnish or Danish model, I don't think its going to change.

rkwz2• 14 years ago

>And then you ask yourself, where do the "losers" of this competition end up?

Where do they end up?

ramgorur2• 14 years ago

A very nice read. But are "a good schooling" and "a good learning" same? I have seen many folks with good schooling and with perfect GPAs, but most of them are only good at sitting and scoring in exams :-S.

Education dominates Singapore's 'different' culture

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