Is meritocracy an illusion?

zanadu SG

The US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice once said that in the US, race matters (she was then referring to her admission to a top University in the US).
Well, in Singapore race matters too. Every form that I remember filling in Singapore has a column on race.
While Make fair hiring practices the norm (ST, Sept 7) is a bold step in the right direction, the question remains, can there be true meritocracy when race matters? Can we have a Malay general in the SAF ?
Unfortunately, meritocracy without diversity in multiracial society is only an illusion.

OO_OO_OO SG

there're many factors which can lead to the fall in meritocracy.
asides from the race issue, theres also nepotism. such factors are difficult to detect..

robertteh SG

For so many years, people have given feedbacks to the Feedback Unit that the government's promotion of meritocracy has not really brought about much benefits to the ordinary people as many with practical non-academic talents have been bypassed or neglected to the detriment of our entrepreneurship development and economic competitivenss.

As events later turned out recessions hit Singapore very hard and ministers found themselves totally unable to depend on the scholars to upgrade the economic competitiveness to value-adding model.

In many seminars people have pointed out the need to encourage growth of entrepreneurs and not too many scholars or academic talents who often could not do much except to occupy high paying jobs in public sector and waiting to be employed in comfortable jobs.

Meritocracy has become a convenient tool of government to use scholars and academicians to control and maintain its grip on power instead of benefiting all.

Broad-based education imparting practical skills useful to economic competitiveness is the better and more competitive education model for Singapore but the over-selling of meritocracy to produce too many academics has caused a big vaccuum in creating practical talents needed to man industries and technology start-ups.

This is one of government's biggest mistakes in education which was realised only very late after two serious recessions.

So EM2 and EM3 are now being treated with a little better respect as from these groups many of our entrepreneurs are groomed to be benefits of all.

So assumption about the benefit of meritocracy has been over-exaggerated by our leaders. Many of our best graduates in computer science and robotics and automation who did not have all the connections with the public sector could not even land suitable jobs in Singapore. But they are more important than all the top graduates and top scholars as these graduates could produce economic upgrading whereas all the scholars could only ask for top jobs without contributing to the upgrading of the economy.

Facts are always different from policy assumptions. Assumptions are not facts and people are easily taken in by all the make-belief and assumptions and rhetorics.

outofcontrol225 SG

What a great deduction. If every form also need your address, then maybe Bedok have more placements than Ang Mo Kio?