Education Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen is now singing a different tune
from his foreigner-obsessed colleagues in the government. Instead
of aiming to increase Singapore’s population to 6.5 million people,
Dr Ng now says “Singapore does not need to keep growing as fast in
the coming decade.”
“Rather, it must be the quality, and not the quantity of the
population that will drive economic growth. Singapore has high
averages, he said, but we need ‘high peaks’, or strokes of genius,”
he said during a dialogue session organized by the National
University of Singapore Society (NUSS) on Friday night.
He said: ‘We need the same people who launched eBay, Google, and
Facebook. It is not high averages that got you these innovations.
If you couple episodic peaks with a high base rate, then you can
move.”
Dr Ng does not seem to appreciate the fact that free minds
require a free society to nurture them and geniuses will not thrive
under a repressive regime like ours nor will they be attracted to
come here.
Singapore students generally excel in their academic studies and
regularly triumph over their U.S. counterparts in Mathematics and
Science competitions, however we produced far less innovators,
scientists and entrepreneurs per 1,000 population than them.
Neither has Singapore produced a Nobel Prize laureate after so
much money is invested in education, research and development.
The Singapore education system which emphasizes on rote learning
and academic grades stifle the creativity of developing young minds
which need to be constantly challenged.
Freedom of information is critical to foster a thinking
citizenry – the nursery for geniuses to grow, develop and fulfil
their potential to the fullest.
In Singapore, the flow of information is strictly controlled by
the ruling party – only news which are favorable to them are
allowed to be published while those who portray them negatively is
censored completely.
Furthermore, the heavy involvement of the state in the economy
via the two gigantic sovereign wealth funds and a host of
state-linked companies kills off innovation at the level of the
SMEs which are struggling to compete with them.
Google will never be able to survive in Singapore, let alone
take off because it will have to be subjected to a whole range of
regulations by Media Development Authority (MDA)
Is it a surprise that Singapore’s only internationally
recognized brand name, Creative Technologies was founded in the
United States, and not in Singapore itself?
The “tops-down” approach adopted by the ruling party is
reminiscent to the central-planned economies of the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe which all crumbled eventually in the face of
market forces and globalization.
This archaic, monopolistic and anti-competitive economic model
serves only one purpose: to control the lifeline of the nation to
prevent the emergence of an alternative center of power to
challenge its political hegemony like former Thai Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra.
Dr Ng should realize that the ruling party is a huge part of the
problem we are facing now. Without political autonomy, the people
will remain enfeebled and subjugated or in the words of Senior
Minister Goh Chok Tong – a flock of hapless sheep which have to
depend forever on “lions” for guidance.
Unfortunately, Singapore does not have any “lions” leading the
sheep now, but a pack of hungry jackals which are merely there to
milk the system for their own selfish interests.
