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Prepare Our Children For The New Century: Teach Them Well
Singapore is at a cross-roads. As teachers, you are critical in influencing which road Singapore will take.
The post-independence generation of Singaporeans is coming of age. Those born after 1965 already form nearly half of the population (47%). But if we define the pre-independence generation as those who knew and understood the meaning of independence in 1965, they, the pre-independence generation of Singaporeans, are already in the minority. Singaporeans who were aged 15 and above in 1965 are now only a quarter of the population.
We must invest in our young. They are our future. We want to equip them to face the future, maximise their potential, shape their attitudes, so that when they grow up, they will take care of Singapore. This requires a two-pronged approach.
First, get them to understand Singapore’s constraints and vulnerabilities, how we got to where we are, and the values and strategies that will enable us to overcome great odds.
Second, give them knowledge, teach them skills, strengthen their character and instil in them the habit of life-long learning.
There has been much discussion recently about the importance of knowing Singapore’s history.
In July, The New Paper did a street poll and found that younger Singaporeans indeed knew very little of the events and issues surrounding our independence.
To verify this, in early August, the Ministry of Education asked some 2,500 students from primary and secondary schools, ITE, junior colleges, polytechnics and universities to take a surprise quiz on Singapore’s history. Four different test papers were used, the simplest one for Primary 6 students and the more difficult, open-ended ones for JC, Poly and University students.
Almost all the students knew that Singapore had been a British colony and that we were under Japanese rule during the Second World War. But they were generally ignorant about the state of Emergency from 1948 to 1960. Some thought the Emergency had to do with water shortage. They were also ignorant about the cause of the Hock Lee Bus riots. Many guessed that the riots were caused by a rise in bus fares and poor working conditions. Less than a third wrote that the Emergency was declared by the colonial government to fight communist subversion and insurgency in the Malayan peninsula and Singapore, and that the Hock Lee Bus riots were Communist-instigated.
The open-ended question on the reasons for the merger with and Separation from Malaysia, was badly answered.
Only a quarter or fewer of the Poly, JC and University students could give a relevant answer to why Singapore separated from Malaysia and became independent: reasons like racial riots or political differences over the practice of multi-racialism. The rest either had no answer or were off the mark.
The quiz for the older students contained two tough questions:
Neither of them were in the school syllabus. Only 2 out of 1,538 post-secondary students knew who was Plen - the Communist underground leader who contacted Mr Lee Kuan Yew to try to get the PAP to work with the Communists. One student even thought the Plen was Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
Dr Albert Winemius was the Dutchman who gave us valuable advice in our industrialisation and economic development, from the 1960s continuing right up to the 1980s. Only 3-4% of the JC and University students had heard of Winsemius. None of the Poly students had. One student said Dr Albert Winsemius was doctor who gave free medical services. He probably confused him with Dr Albert Schweitzer, who did humanitarian work in Africa.
The MOE survey confirms that younger Singaporeans do not know enough of Singapore’s recent history. They are more familiar with Singapore’s colonial past and the Japanese Occupation than our struggles for nationhood.
Not knowing the circumstances of Singapore’s birth is a serious gap in knowledge. But this ignorance is not the fault of our pupils or teachers. It is the result of political circumstances. At first, the memory of the events and issues that led to our independence was still fresh and raw. We wanted to look ahead, and put the recent past behind us. We assumed that all adult Singaporeans knew these facts of life, because they had lived through the events themselves. We blithely believed that the next generation would pick up the same understanding from their elders.
This might have been so at the beginning, but it has ceased to be so for at least 10 years. The political leaders have been slow to recognise this, and to adapt the contents of our school education to the new situation.
We cannot afford to have a new generation grow up ignorant of the basic facts of how we became a nation, and the principles of meritocracy and multi-racialism which underpin our entire society and political culture.
The history of our independence is a tumultuous and sensitive subject. But it is one which should bind all our communities together, not divide us. It is our shared past. The Hock Lee Bus riots and the racial riots were part of our history. We should understand why they took place so that we will never let them happen again.
If our young do not know our past, they will not understand how to hold multi-racial Singapore together, why we must give each ethnic community in Singapore an equal place, and why we must help one another to do better. They will take the peace and prosperity that they have seen all their lives to be the natural state of affairs, a given. They will not know how quickly things can go wrong, especially if there is a prolonged recession with deep unemployment, when everyone begins to fight for a piece of the shrinking pie, and cracks appear along racial lines.
National Education must be a vital component of our education process. We will revise the contents of Social Studies, Civics and Moral Education, and History, to emphasise nation-building. But National Education goes beyond book knowledge. It is an exercise to develop instincts that become part of the psyche of every child. It must engender a shared sense of nationhood, an understanding of how our past is relevant to our present and future. It must appeal to both heart and mind.
This is not easy. Today’s pupils have not suffered wars nor lived through political struggles, racial tensions, unemployment and deprivation. They must learn not only in classes and lectures, but also by the example of teachers and elders, through the discipline and rituals of school life, through the habits and values inculcated over the years.
It is critical that we succeed in National Education. Then when our pupils hear or read about warring in Bosnia, about the conflict in Sri Lanka, about the problems of Northern Ireland, about the many disputes and fights all over the world on account of race, religion or language, they will appreciate that these events in places far away are not irrelevant to Singapore. Rather, they are lessons for Singapore, for Singapore itself can easily slip into such a state. We enjoy peace and stability in Singapore because we work at it. We recognise that we are many races, many religions, many languages, many cultures. And we work consciously to make room for each other, to afford everyone opportunity to learn and to make good.
I am setting up a National Education Committee, chaired by Mr Lim Siong Guan, Permanent Secretary (Prime Minister’s Office), to steer this effort. It will draw upon resources from other Ministries, like MITA and Mindef. This is not a matter for the Ministry of Education alone.
National Education cannot be instilled in our students unless it is first instilled in the teachers. Teachers must feel passionately for the country before they can teach with conviction.
Most of our school leaders - our Principals and Vice-Principals - lived through the pre-independence period. They will remember those difficult times. But many of our teachers - as many as 40% of them - were either too young to remember those critical years or were born after 1965. They too must learn and acquire the sense of history and shared destiny that we have to inculcate in our students. We will make a massive effort to reach out to all our teachers. Our older teachers will themselves have to revive their memories of those tumultuous times and share them with their younger colleagues.
Let me come to the second prong on how we are to invest in the young. Besides imbuing in our young a deep and abiding sense of commitment to the nation and to one another, our schools must give them the knowledge, skills and ability to think creatively, in order to succeed in the competitive global economy.
We have a good education system. Our schools have motivated our young to study, raised their levels of achievement, and produced very high rates of passes and distinctions in examinations.
Teachers deserve full credit for our students’ achievements. You can be proud that your hard work and dedication have produced results for Singapore.
Now we need to look at the forces driving the future. We must make continual improvements to the education system, and where necessary bold changes, to meet the needs of the next 20 to 30 years.
Our future growth will be driven by knowledge and innovation. More than ever, our ability to succeed will depend on the adaptiveness of and ingenuity of our people.
The fastest growing industries in the world today are driven by knowledge. But the knowledge that drives these new industries becomes outdated very quickly. New ideas and technologies are being developed and applied so quickly that what was new yesterday has already become old today.
The Straits Times recently interviewed a 30-year-old engineer, Mr Ter Soon Kim. He is a manufacturing section manager in a wafer fabrication plant, making semi-conductors and computer chips. He said that one of the main challenges in his job is the constant learning. He said: "In this industry, there’s very little you learn directly from school. Some problems require creative solutions. There isn’t a readily available guide to all the problems that crop up."
Mr Ter’s experience will be typical of a large part of our future workforce. They will need a good foundation in the core concepts, but the knowledge they pick up from school could be obsolete within a few years. What will matter will be the ability to think creatively and to learn continuously, to generate new ideas and apply them quickly.
Last year, the Ministry of Education surveyed employers to obtained feedback on the quality of our school-leavers and graduates. The employers felt that our graduates are competent. They have good analytical abilities, and can reason logically. But they are not strong on creative and innovative thinking, and in dealing with problems that they are not well-defined. The employers felt that our school-leavers and graduates are hardworking and co-operate well as team members. But most required too much "hand-holding" and had difficulty working independently. They were also not strong on initiative and in persuading others to new ideas.
These strengths and weaknesses reflect the way our students learn. Our students focus single-mindedly on getting good grades in examinations. Many students practise and drill hard with old test papers, to score the maximum in ‘O’ and ‘A’ level exams. Private vendors do a lucrative business selling school test papers, sometimes without permission of the schools which originally set them.
Our examination-focussed system has its strengths. It rewards hard work and discipline. We should not weaken this competitive pressure, and let our children, especially the brighter ones, coast through school unstimulated and unchallenged, like students in some American schools.
Gregory Anrig, President of Education Testing Service in Princeton which runs the SAT examinations that most American universities use to assess applicants, said this about American high school students: "Our bright kids don’t know enough and don’t understand enough. We are expecting too little from them - and they are living up to that expectation."
We need to strike a balance. We should retain the fundamentals but change the way our students study and learn. Do students really need to take up to 10 subjects at ‘O’ levels? Do the exams sufficiently emphasise and test thinking skills and not just book learning?
MOE will trim down the heavy curriculum to give teachers and students more time to develop these thinking and process skills. The basic subject knowledge and concepts must still be taught - they are the foundation for further learning. But the curriculum and system will encourage teachers and students to have critical discussion and innovative thinking in the classroom. The Ministry will expand its Thinking Skills programme to more schools, reaching all secondary schools by the year 2000.
The Ministry will also improve the examination system, to test pupils’ ability to handle open-ended problems more. It is looking into giving more weight to school assessments based on project work, which is a better test of pupils’ ability to innovate and apply knowledge.
We cannot make these changes overnight. We have to give pupils, teachers and parents time to adjust to the changes. But over time, we must steadily improve our education system to keep up with the demands of the future workplace. We cannot afford to wait while the world moves on.
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At the National Day Rally, I spoke of our plan to bring the use of computers into all our schools. Computers are changing the way we work and the way we live. The use of information technology is transforming whole industries and creating new ones. In 5 years, never mind 20, today’s "leading edge" computers, software and applications will be a distant and faint memory of an obsolete past.
We will use IT to encourage students to learn more independently, to learn actively. They must learn to locate information in databases around the world, sieve through and analyse what they get, and apply it to their projects in innovative ways. These will be key skills for every worker in future.
The Government’s masterplan for IT in Education will cost $1.5 billion over the next 5 years, a worthwhile investment in our teachers and pupils.
We will make sure that students who cannot afford computers at home have easy and affordable access to IT. Every student will have access to computers and the Internet after school hours, whether in school or in centres near their homes.
Technology has great potential in schools, but the key is still the human factor. Computers cannot replace teachers. They are tools for the teachers. Every teacher will be trained to use IT to enhance teaching. I am told that teachers in our pilot IT schools have responded enthusiastically to the introduction of computers. Many older teachers have made the effort to learn how to use it, staying back after school hours and coming back during school holidays and enjoying it.
We want to make every school in Singapore a good school, one which imparts knowledge, builds character and develops a sense of belonging.
Our independent and autonomous schools show what good Principals, dedicated teachers and disciplined students can achieve with additional resources. Many of the neighbourhood schools have also done well. Some are among the top value-added schools in helping their students improve their performance. Others have made their mark by creating a special ethos among their pupils, building their character and giving them life-long values.
These schools provide good practices and set standards for the rest of our system. We will improve schools throughout the system so that all students will benefit.
We are giving schools more resources and more staff to relieve teachers of routine administration. We will also work towards giving Principals and teachers more say in the way schools are run, more leeway to innovate.
In 1988, we started converting secondary schools to single-session schools, to improve the quality of education. Half our secondary schools are now operating single-session. Single-session schools have proven their worth by giving Principals greater flexibility, by creating more opportunities for interaction among everyone in the school and by building a stronger sense of belonging.
We will extend the single-session system to all secondary schools by the year 2000. This means new schools to be built and even more schools as enrolment picks up in 4 years' time.
Extending the single-session system to all secondary schools will cost $1 billion. This is a big sum, but we will devote the resources to give our future generations the best education - more teachers, better teachers; better schools, up-to-date facilities; IT, latest multi-media resources; ample scholarships and generous bursaries.
Education is one of my key priorities. We have concentrated on building our economy and security. Now we shall invest more in the next generation.
Singapore's success in nation building over the last 31 years has rested on its exceptional leadership, the drive of its people, their willingness to live and work together in the collective interest. Our future will depend on the quality of the next generations, those now in our school and those who will come after them. Whether we succeed, survive and prosper as a nation after the pre-independence generation is dead and gone, will depend on the next generations - their commitment to country and community, their willingness to strive and excel, to stand and fight, their ability to think, to compete and to outperform others in whatever they do.
The task of moulding the next generation of Singaporeans rests on you. The government can set the direction, provide you with the best resources, and give you full support. But you are the educators and mentors, the transmitters of knowledge and values, the models for the students. Unless you are convinced of the importance of your task, unless you put heart and soul into your teaching and your pupils, all the billions of dollars will go down the drain.
How our young are brought up in the home and moulded in the school will determine Singapore's future. After parents, teachers are the most influential persons in the lives of the young. You leave your unique impression on your students, and cumulatively you shape the students' sense of what society values, and what society expects of them.
We must raise the moral authority and social standing of teachers in society. We cannot recreate the past when the teacher was among a handful of educated persons in society. Nor do we want to. Parents are now educated, and many are themselves professionals. But we can and have revamped teachers' salaries and opened up attractive career paths. Many more promising entrants have joined the Education Service this year since we made the changes. Teachers will only maintain a high social standing if talented men and women enter the profession, and capable, experienced teachers stay on to become Senior Teachers, Heads of Department, Vice-Principals and Principals.
Good teachers need not have straight As. Their character, dedication and love for their students are more important. When I think back to my school-days, the teachers I remember best, the ones who made an impact on me and my classmates, were the teachers who cared about values and standards of behaviour, set high personal standards for us to follow, and motivated us to do better.
Yours is a critical profession. You will shape the future of Singapore. You wild determine if the next generation is a resilient and cohesive community, and produces exceptional leaders to guide Singapore ever forward. You must do Singapore proud.
Let me end by telling you of a very different path taken by another country since its independence.
Recently, Mr David Ma, Head of our PS21 Office, visited Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. He had been invited there as a resource person for a workshop for Sierra Leone's Ministers and top civil servants. Sierra Leone has a population of 4.5 million. It was a British protectorate until 1961. Sierra Leone has a large, sheltered natural harbour, one of the best in West Africa, and is blessed with natural resources like diamonds and bauxite. You would expect it to do well as an independent nation, but it has not.
After his trip, David Ma wrote an essay recounting his experiences. It makes compelling reading. The arrival hall in the airport was no bigger than two HDB flats. His hotel - it must have been the best since it was hosting the workshop - was run down. There were only two television sets in the whole hotel. Guests could not make an international call from their rooms. Freetown, the capital city, was in a state of disrepair. There was no construction activity. Most of the roads were not paved, and the few paved ones were full of potholes.
Corruption was an emotional issue at the workshop. The civil servants agreed that corruption should be stamped out. But they thought that receiving gifts was alright, so long as they had not asked for the gifts, since their pay was so low. Civil servants had to take on additional jobs to survive. Permanent Secretaries earned US$50-60 a month, with subsidies for housing and a car.
There was no lack of entrepreneurial spirit in the markets and along the roads - women and children tried to sell what little wares they had. But the economy produced little, and its natural resources were mostly smuggled abroad.
Sierra Leone had not moved forward in 30 years. Its per capita income today is US$200 per year, just US$60 more than it was 30 years ago. In 1965 its currency, the Leone, was stronger than the US dollar - 0.71 Leone to one US dollar. Today the Leone has depreciated by more than 1000 times, to 755 Leone to one US dollar.
Singapore and Sierra Leone have taken two very different paths since independence. Singapore offers lessons for Sierra Leone. But Sierra Leone’s experience also tells us that Singapore could have easily gone the wrong way.
What Singapore is today is no guarantee that life will always be tranquil and pleasant in future. If Singaporeans do not bond together and make the extra effort to keep Singapore afloat, it will sink in the seas of economic competition and external uncertainties, or the whirlpool of internal dissension and disorder.
The reactions on the subject of remerger with Malaysia on both sides of the Causeway were instructive. As I have said before, remerger was never on my political agenda. Singaporeans have also signalled that they want to remain as Singaporeans. Malaysia and Singapore are two different countries, two different societies, and want to remain so. Both are successful countries with a bright future.
So, we are on our own: 650 sq kilometres, smaller than Pulau Bintan, 3 million people, no natural resources, no oil, maybe not even enough water.
These constraints and vulnerabilities were there in 1965. They are with us today and will be there in the 21st Century. But the difference is, we have more resources today than in 1965: man-made resources, not natural resources. Look at the homes, the schools, the factories, offices, MRT, LRT and the infrastructure. Look at your POSB and CPF accounts, the Edusave Endowment Fund, your shares. Look at the educational level of the people.
If we could succeed in the last 31 years, we should do even better in the next 31 years with the resources and people we now have. But this is provided the Singaporeans born after 1965 have the values and skills, and the commitment and determination, to take Singapore to greater heights.
The students in your hands are in their formative and most impressionable years. By nurturing your students you play a critical role in sustaining Singapore’s growth and prosperity. Do your job well, and we will secure Singapore’s future for many years to come.
[ Table of Contents || Introductory Address || Speech By Prime Minister || Sierra Leone ]
