The hunger controversy

While Lee Shulin isn't getting cancelled when she remarked how employers prefer to let go Singaporeans over foreign hires because the latter are 'hungrier', it was the trigger for a much needed conversation about the job market and matching talent with needs.

A lot of the vitriol came from the misunderstanding of what Lee meant by 'hunger', and to be fair, she did not define it either. Possible, she made an off-the-cuff utterance, but it was enough to become the focal point of the larger discussion that was on CNA.

'Not hungry enough' is a triggering phrase. Especially for young job hunters looking for first time employment, they see themselves as being at the bottom of a grand hierarchy, being paid the minimum of wages to do the maximum amount of labour. After all, that's what starting at the bottom means. To suggest that they aren't hungry enough sparks the response: 'I'm already doing so much--what more do you expect me to do? And you're not paying me enough to boot!'

I appreciate the Singaporean work ethic. I see it in the classroom all the time. They will work their butts off on a graded assignment. Full concentration, busy, and most tellingly, silent. But it's an entirely transactional kind of engagement. Non-graded assignments are f-all, minimum effort, distracted and lower quality than they can actually deliver.

What we have here is an employee mindset. Will do whatever you tell them to, but only if it is directly paired with commensurate reward. I suppose it's realistic. Young workers have expenses and if they spend too much time at the office and being paid scraps for the effort, and barely paying off their personal bills, it's hard to think of a future when they'll need to pay for dates, a wedding and support a family later in life.

Thinking this way, Singaporeans are always going to be hungry, always subsisting on not enough. So, when a job recruiter says they're not hungry enough, wow. Cue torches and pitchforks.

But that's not the hunger Lee is talking about. It's not about the work. The employee only does what they're told, however unreasonable, as long as the reward follows. Finish the job, get paid, go home, enjoy what little work-life balance there is left to enjoy. But ask them what the work meant, and most would not be able to say. The paycheck was the objective, nothing more.

If the money is all they are working for, then they are completely replaceable.  Not to mention foreigners, AI already is a hugely viable substitute. Like the Singaporean employee, AI does what it's told, but does it faster, mostly accurately, doesn't complain, and doesn't even need to be paid. And most like the Singaporean employee, AI doesn't really know what it's doing other than executing a set of instructions, and doesn't care what effect or impact the work has on the business as a whole. At the end of the string of instructions is the end of the day and the only difference is that the Singaporean employee has to go home for a few hours before they're ready to start the next day all over again. That's not hunger, that's routine with a trigger-warning.

Perhaps Lee used the wrong vocabulary when she said 'hunger'. I believe she meant 'ownership'. Like you understand the business well enough, and own the job to the extent that you don't require instructions from a supervisor to perform what is needed. You're observant, constantly thinking of the processes that keep the business flowing, and you're already there where things have slowed down before a bottleneck occurs. You're constantly thinking of new and better ways to keep the flow going. Most importantly, the objective isn't the paycheck, but the person at the end of the line who is delighted with the product or service they received that you, in your own little way, helped to deliver.

Singaporean employees seek work, but start at the wrong end. If the money is the most important thing, then they're prepared to suck it up, get the job done for the paycheck--and complain later over coffee and Reddit. Their work ethic is admirable, but since so many are like that, their employers will be searching for viable replacements at the earliest opportunity.

What's the right end, then? It's fit. To know yourself well enough to develop your own weird and wonderful way rather than blindly follow the crowd. Create a niche for yourself with definable, yet flexible borders so that you can offer more than just 'I'll do whatever you tell me'. Rather, offer a role that will both meet the business objectives by performing your particular set of skills, while simultaneously learning the business by practicing its routines. And care about the end-user. You and the organisation you work for exist only because someone needs you to.

Hunger isn't about personal survival. The hunger is for organisational survival. When you have this hunger, you are no longer a rogue cell easily sloughed off when you've outlived your usefulness. Instead, you've become an integral part of the overall structure. Who knows, mitosis could possibly happen, when you've outgrown the business and are ready to branch out on your own.

Be an informed voter

Today is Nomination Day for the General Elections on 3 May. Gen Sec Wong is right about this one being a much closer contest than before. Mr Wong represents a new leadership, and though I wouldn't say is untested, it is a moment of passing the torch to leading a people who are much better educated, more vocal, and more aware of their rights. We have more diverse opinions and are willing to stick to our guns fighting for what we believe is right, even if it is over values that we once held dear but are now more open for debate.

These are troubled times for the world, and we Singaporeans used to take strength in uniting as a voter base to elect a decisive and nimble government that could move fast in adapting to rapidly changing circumstances, without being bogged down by opposition voices seeking more debate before action. The will of the collective served us well in the past and got us to where we are today.

But by today, we have also seen how a house dominated by a single party that runs unchallenged can be self-serving, cowed into submission to a self-styled despot, lose friends and allies, and squander a whole lot of goodwill and trust built up over two centuries of previously solid, dependable global leadership. Just like that.

What lessons the electorate has learned from recent events and will learn from the upcoming campaign rallies will play a significant role in the outcome of GE 2025. Eyes and ears open, people! Be an informed voter: vote for the party, the values, and the platform you actually support, not against those you don't.

Shut down, go home -- or "current affairs" in Singapore politics

 

Bonus! 2 YouTube videos featuring the current talk of the town. The popcorn buckets are out in full force as the nation observes slack-jawed as our once-incorruptible policy-makers on both sides of the House fall from grace. Let's call it 'looking for love in all the wrong places' (Johnny Lee).

The question of whom we can trust, if our leadership cannot set the example of propriety and adherence to a strong moral code that upholds the integrity of the family unit, now often comes up in local conversation. How will these scandals affect how in upcoming elections, voters evaluate the incumbents, and the party that we have given our collective Opposition trust to? But these questions are not my topic today. To me, it doesn't matter which party is being represented. The common factor in both cases is the human factor, nothing more.

If anything, these incidents are more of an indictment against the work culture we have here. Both illicit couples comprised pairs of people who worked closely together, probably spending long hours solving problems that really helped their constituents, and feeling elation at the completion of several jobs well done day after day. Many times, those days would have grown into nights, and this is true for most jobs here too, not just those of professional politicians. There's nothing more attractive than a strong, capable person, dedicated to their mission, who is obviously being thanked over and over again by grateful, otherwise helpless people. And if they go celebrating mutual successes together often enough, there's a trigger for biology to kick in.

The people we spend the most time with are the people we grow the strongest bonds with. So what is keeping us at the office, when the people we are meant to be closest to are at home? Perhaps we have a strong sense of mission, that the job always comes first. This idea could become an obsession when the job comes with an equally strong sense of accomplishment. You make people happy: you've saved their lives, their livelihoods, their children, their homes, their parents, their health, their sense of personal safety, whatever. It's these triumphs that keep us feeling like we're really making something of our lives, that keep us taking case after case, and we don't want to let anybody down. One last person in the queue? Let's not disappoint them. They need my help, and I've got nothing else to do. But you do. At home.

Work at home is a very different ball game. The tasks are menial and manual. They are recurring in that the same problem arises not long after you've dealt with it already. Nobody is grateful. They are jobs that simply need to be done. There are no awards, no recognition to be earned, and everyone just looks tired, sweaty and at their most unattractive when that last checkbox is finally ticked. Meantime, the children haven't stopped screaming. And sex is far from the mind, given that the risk of yet another banshee inadvertently popping out is still fairly high despite multiple layers of material or chemical prevention, like the last time.

Like it or not, we need to be with the ones we love at home if we want to avoid opportunities for scandals to evolve. It's not a failure of morals or values, but simply a matter of time, and whom we choose to spend it with. When I refer to 'work culture' I don't necessarily mean that our office requires our presence, but rather our sense of self-importance that keeps us there. The common mantra here is that we should never do tomorrow what we can do today. Our problem is that we do today what we could instead be doing tomorrow. No. When the clock reaches 5-5:30 p.m., shut down, go home. Superman/woman/person is needed there too.

377A, the potential political hot potato nobody wants

So in the National Day Rally 2022, PM announced that Section 377A is finally being repealed. It's been a slow, gradual process laying the groundwork for the dissolution of a legacy law that we inherited from the Brits, made in times long past from which society has grown and changed. To put it simply, 377A criminalises the act of sex between men, and in these more open times is seen as an oppression of homosexuality, although the same law makes no provision for lesbian sex.

Despite times being more inclusive, there are still strongly vocal components of our society who believe same-sex sex is unacceptable, hence the need for years of groundwork: discussions, consultations and reassurances that all interested parties on both sides of the divide will get a fair hearing. For a time, the status quo held that although the law exists, it would not be enforced. But now, this archaic law is about to become moribund, with the compromise that only heterosexual marriages will be recognised and protected by our Constitution. One step forward, and one step back.

But is it, though? Because what I see is a mistaken conflation between the repeal of a defunct law and the implied support for the group the law penalised. The next step on this slippery slope would be that if this once-penalised group has gained even implicit support from the authorities, then the upholding of its asserted rights (in this case to marriage) should follow. That is not what's happening here.

Repealing 377A has nothing to do with supporting homosexuality. Rather, it simply gets rid of a potential political hot potato that creates unnecessary division between people who feel they must draw a line in the sand over the issue. As long as the law exists, no matter how much it is promised to be 'unenforceable', at any time, any zealot from either side wanting badly enough to make a statement could make a big enough fuss over an incident, and demand prosecution. Given how divisive the issue is, and that there are respectable, contributing members of society on both sides of the fence, any decision the courts are forced to make is bound to favour one side over the other, splitting society over a rift of no return.

To repeal 377A is nothing more than a pragmatic decision. It is a recognition that whatever goes on sexually between consenting adults in private is their own business, and not the government's. If someone gets injured, or dies during the act of whatever variety of sex, there are laws that deal with assault or murder. If a sexual act is done in public and is complained about, there are laws governing public nuisance. With 377A gone, anyone charged with such crimes makes for a clearly criminal case, instead of being charged with a law designed to target a specific group of people, raising accusations of unfairness, repression and the violation of human rights. For a Democratic society, such repercussions can be severe and difficult to recover from.

The LGBTQ+ community are disappointed that their right to marriage remains denied to them for now. But this discussion is for another time and cannot be a logical follow-through from the decision to repeal 377A.

Don't wanna go back to school!

To Liu who wrote:

Globalisation could negate efforts in skills upgrading

From Liu Rijing -

October 6

I refer to The Big Read article “Despite being vulnerable, few PMETs heed call to learn new skills” (Oct 1) and wish to raise a few points.

First, threats to jobs come not only from technological change but also globalisation.

So how can we be sure that learning new skills will ensure we do not lose out to global competition when companies relocate owing to cost considerations?

Second is whether a new skill one picks up would still be in demand after one has spent time and money to complete the training.

Third, when companies can choose to outsource professional work to a worker based in a foreign country with a lower salary, how can skills upgrading help then? (Today Online)

If you are looking for assurances, there are none. Sorry. But if you don't want to undergo skills upgrading, that's fine. When enough of us refuse to do so, there will be more opportunities for overseas companies to outsource their crappy, low-skilled, underpaid, exploitative, dangerous jobs to us. That should put your overarching fear of unemployment to rest.

10 cents for career counselling, thanks!

Wanna bet?

People are understandably concerned about the legalization of online betting in S'pore within the next month or two. Going online makes it more convenient to place bets via mobile app than having to trudge down and queue up at the corner betting store. But will convenience alone cause a spike in gambling as our concerned citizens fear? I doubt it.

This convenience comes with a price: the ability for the authorities to identify individual bettors, track how much each is wagering per transaction and establish their betting patterns over time. Cross-referenced against personal incomes, disproportionate or suspicious spending on bets can be flagged out for intervention if necessary.

If I were a betting man, I'd still go to the corner shop and place an anonymous bet with less-traceable cash. Only if I win big will the world know who I am. Until then, how I bet and what I bet on is nobody else's business. And as a non-betting man, I see more disincentive than incentive to start.

Who's an unhappy camper?

S'poreans show their unhappy side again, this time with their employment situation. That is, compared across the board against our South-East Asian counterparts, our employees are the most unhappy.

I wonder what we would see if we cross-reference our job happiness index against a corresponding survey on general income levels? My guess would be that S'poreans are educated, and have expectations of higher income and better job prospects that are set somewhat above realistic; whereas our neighbours are happy to have a job that puts food on the table for their families.

This observation is intended to be neither snarky nor mean. It's probably a human trait that when we have more we make ourselves unhappy by wanting even more; conversely when we have but a little, we are happy being grateful for that little.

We also seem to be looking at the wrong things to be happy about:

Singapore respondents felt that getting a new job (30 per cent), a higher salary (19 per cent), or receiving recognition from the company (9 per cent) would help increase their job happiness.

These perks offer immediate gratification. But they don't come around too often, and when they do, they usually also come with more work, more responsibilities, and more time spent in the office -- side-effects that make us more unhappy in the long run. We accept them anyway, in order to justify the happiness we feel from achieving these very temporary rewards.

We actually have a good problem. To be able to have and want more is a good thing. But it means that if we also want to be happy, all we need to do is realise that happiness is a choice we make for ourselves. Choose wisely!

An afterthought: perhaps the jobs of Management and Middle-management are inherently unhappy? Managers neither own the company nor do much of the actual production work, so they are sort of in-between, easily replaceable and sometimes even an obstacle to getting real work done. Who'd be happy in a job like that?

Orientation

With all this angst and rage over university orientation programmes leading to a full-on ban on orientation this year, I recall my own experience as a frosh during orientation week.

Every activity was voluntary. The ones I remember were a lunchtime concert by a homegrown band called 'Nacho Cheese' which never made it to big time; an evening double-bill movie screening of A Clockwork Orange and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (an experience of which I have never seen the like, and have not yet found found possible to duplicate); and a serious talk about responsible drinking on campus. There was a social tea event for scholarship students to meet each other and key faculty members as well.

I think it was Prof G who observed that orientation at York was much tamer more mature than most of the other Us in the province -- mainly due to our student population's average age being 25, including a large proportion of grad students. Sure, mature and dignified. That's us.

Cut off

What the cutting off of civil service computers from the Interwebs really means is that the Gahmen is tired of providing free surfing privileges for us. Now if we want to surf, we have to pay for it from our own pockets. We buy our own workstations and subscribe to our own mobile hotspots. Guess the era of free Internet is over.

Edit 01:
Except for us in the education fraternity. Phew!

Being qualified vs being educated

First off, as an industry insider, I don't believe that our ever-improving exam results is in any part due to grade inflation. If the letter writer is concerned that we are handing out cheap As, it isn't true. We and the kids really do work our collective butts off to achieve those results.

What our industry is highly proficient at is quality control, emphasis on control. We have identified the factors that make the 'A' grade and distilled them into a system that, if followed as prescribed, will give the student every chance of success for a desired outcome at the exams. It's a system that handsomely rewards the obedient student -- the one that does what he is told to the letter. Study this. Do it this way. And when everybody studies the same material and does it the same way, the As come pouring down like manna from heaven. Our children are nothing, if not obedient. And as far as tangible indicators go, the industry has achieved its highest criterion year after year. Everything is transparent and fair, and the customer is more than satisfied.

But if our new acting co-CEO is going to get his way, This system that we've so studiously developed over the years will to have to go.

What Mr acting co-boss has identified is that there is a huge difference between being qualified and being educated. The industry is excellent at qualifying our students. Every factory follows a uniform standard of teaching, learning and assessment, each product follows a uniform assembly-line process and passes through stringent quality control checks before being certified fit for the next level of processing.

The good thing is that the system ensures very little waste. The dropout rate is low, and there are learning and career opportunities available for everyone who leaves the system without necessarily following it through all the way to the end. The not so good thing is that at every level, each individual product is barely distinguishable from another -- being mass-produced within predetermined specs. Totally obedient, but empty; non-functional until programmed, or at least given very specific instructions. And it isn't their fault if something screws up, because you didn't give clear enough instructions. Yes, in the end, the qualified student is very good at taking orders, not half so good at giving them, and hopeless when working unsupervised. Just ask local employers.

The industry hasn't quite figured out how to educate students quite as well as how we qualify them. Education occurs in a much more chaotic environment than we are used to. It requires lots of space and time for unsupervised creativity; for failure; for mistakes; and for problems to be solved by the kids themselves. Not hypothetical problems in class, but real ones in life. Messy problems involving emotions, issues with peer socializing and personal safety which we adults are too anxious to step in and take over before the poor delicate things hurt themselves. Minor bumps, bruises, scratches, blood, mud and tears are part and parcel of the hard knocks of education, and we adults must learn to deal with these problems in proportionality to their occurrence. But as we industry employees have now been made aware, every ounce of prevention is far better than a lawsuit.

We need our future adults to exercise human judgement. We need them to be innovative and adaptable. We need confident decision-makers, who can work with and identify relevant partners in the pursuit of new opportunities. We need brave adventurers who explore unfamiliar paths and rugged individuals who can work around and through obstacles to attain their desired outcomes (preferably legally permissible ones). In order to get such people, they cannot be handed everything they want on a plate when they are young. We can't say to them, if this is what you want, then this is how you're going to get it. Instead, we have to follow them on their own path, help them up when they fall (or fail), discuss with them their learning points, and then let them go again. It'll be one horribly messy school system, but the average grade will be back to a more realistic 'C' since most kids won't be spending their time cramming for the sake of cramming any longer, but rather on their own interests and pursuits, many of which are ungradable except to their own standards of personal engagement. Education can't be manufactured. It's a craft.

For now, it looks like the boss is asking for a paradigm change in the industry-wide mission, and as a result, a major overhaul of our systems. It's a much needed change, but I wonder if we can use the momentum we've already achieved and just change track at the next switch, or whether we have to hit the brakes, come to a stop and completely reverse the train in the opposite direction. Either way, like it or not, change has to come.

Looking back at the results of GE2015

Woke up to clear white skies with just a tinier patch of blue than before. Against expectations, the incumbents took a larger share of the popular vote at GE2015 than earlier indications seemed to suggest. It looks like beyond the raucous rallies and the social media frenzy of support for 'alternative voices' in parliament, the sleeping giant of the silent majority only made a noise where it counted the most: at the polls.

Looking back at how this apparently out-of-the-blue support for the incumbents might have reached landslide proportions, we need to see what the electorate did NOT vote for:

Clearly, the electorate did not want the incumbents to lose its 2/3s majority in parliament. Given that all constituencies were once again being contested, voters took no chances and chose conservatively. Having said that, it is telling that the blues kept their strongholds while the other oppo parties were quite let down at the polls. It could be said that the blues did not fight to win big at this elections but rather strategized to not lose its major symbolic territories. Letting the other oppo parties become the distracting sideshows that they were actually made the blues look good in comparison, and keeping 6 elected seats in parliament is still better than losing them all. The voters win, the blues win, and the other oppo parties win because they still keep an 'alternative voice' in an otherwise all-white government, 'moving forward'.

Even before Nomination Day, the voters could see the infighting, dissent, tantrums and rage quits that showed the different oppo parties not quite getting their act together. If that was what the campaign was going to look like, the electorate could not stomach that lot in parliament where actual decisions are being made about real lives and real livelihoods over the next 5 years to come.

The biggest losers are the Independents because if no one wanted them to join a party... 'nuff said.

The party that was obviously running a poorly-disguised racist platform got few votes because the electorate had already left ethnically-based politics behind decades ago, knowing that a country divided along such lines will absolutely ruin what has gone right for this country for the last 50 years.

The party that promised to TAKE money out of voters' pockets and give it to the poor and needy elderly cardboard collectors union of Singapore found little support for its well-meaning humanitarian social-welfare platform.

The party that stood for Democracy over Action found out that the electorate, though relishing a good debate, is still fundamentally pragmatic and is swayed more by results than a dramatic chin-and-finger-wag.

The People's party found out that after all, only one Person ever mattered, and that without him, they had become the who-are-you party. Which was probably the same case for the remaining oppo parties which ran equally forgettable platforms and candidates.

What the electorate DID vote for was a calm, dignified, matter-of-fact, results-orientated tone of voice. Non-reactionary, non-sensational, ultimately boring and occasionally foot-in-mouth in presentation, perhaps overly-highly paid but at the same time has done nothing to damage the reputation; infrastructure; and standing, trustworthiness and respect of the country on the international stage.

In fact, GE2015 turned out to be little more than a municipal election in which all contesting parties, including the incumbent who went along and played the same game, were only vying for a town council seat. The electorate instead decided to vote for a Government -- the one that was already there in the first place.

Rising above merit

Meritocracy is a great idea to build a society around. It upholds the ideal of equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of social background; ethnicity; creed; or any other impediment that might hold an individual back from doing better in life. Our country is built on the idea of Meritocracy. Those who prove they can, deserve the biggest rewards is what we believe. Unfortunately for us, that's not how Meritocracy works. I'm not saying that our version of Meritocracy doesn't work, I'm saying that the mechanic of a meritocracy in general does not work the way we think (or wish) it would work.

The central tenet behind Meritocracy is "the best man (or woman) for the job". True. Whomever has the ability will also have a job. But no one said the job had to pay well. Meritocracy works fine in determining an individual's starting point. The transition between schooling and getting employed is certainly determined by the merit of one's academic qualifications, no question there. Entry-level requirements and starting pay can be said to follow along a merit-based scale. So it's no lie to tell the kids to study hard to get a good [entry-level] job.

But once in a job, merit is acquired by meeting job requirements, and sometimes taking up higher education is part and parcel of those job requirements at higher levels. So far, that's what we do understand of how Meritocracy works. What we haven't quite grasped yet is that being competent in one's job is not commensurate with the expected rewards that go with it. So when we berate our overwhelmingly well-paid top policy-makers for not being competent at solving the problems they are being paid to solve, what we fail to comprehend is that they are not actually being paid to solve those problems.

Let's talk about 'competence' first. Being competent means to do one's job well. It's a matter of training, a little aptitude, and a whole lot of experience in order to be competent at one's job. The longer one stays in a job, therefore, the more likely one will become increasingly competent in it. This is especially true if the job is a safe, normal job that many other people are doing and thus it is easy to benchmark one's 'competence' against an industry average. If the job we are competent in is a job many other people are also doing, that's a job that isn't likely to be well-paid because everybody's doing the same thing.

So how do some "lucky" people wind up with the jobs we know are better paying? The better paying jobs are the ones that have few common equivalents. These are the jobs that shoulder huge risks, or are so incredibly difficult that no one knows how to do them properly -- or what 'properly' even means in this context. At these levels, people are rewarded, not because they are competent but because they are willing to take on those risks. We're talking about the risk of epic failure; of losing big and committing career suicide; of facing daily public ridicule and disparagement; of losing fortunes, family reputations and possibly their personal freedom if their failure is somehow interpreted as a criminal act; of letting down lots of people who depend on their continued success (which no one has guaranteed). In short, these people are not being paid for being competent, but for their gumption and audacity to take on these risks which we ordinary folk would never dare to even consider.

Ironically, while the top paying jobs are the jobs we prefer not to do, the least paying jobs are also jobs we would rather not do. The "sandwich class" is stuck being competent in our little fish-bowl world.

It's easy to be competent swimming in a little fish bowl, not so if we choose to swim in the ocean. There is potential for much reward out there in the ocean, but it's safer in our fish bowl where we get three square meals a day -- that's it. Maybe we are so competent we can actually solve those big problems we complain about every day, but unless we are willing to take that plunge from frying-pan into fire, don't count on those well-paid people to solve them for us. It really isn't their job to do so.

In short, the way to the best rewards in a Meritocracy is to say "yes, I'll do it!" and take responsibility in situations we have absolutely no experience in; to tackle problems no one (not even ourselves) knows how to solve; and to basically make people believe the impossible can happen. If we don't get it right, or if we screw up, say we are learning from our mistakes and we'll do better next time. It's either that or face the consequences and die.

The Meritocracy our society is today was envisioned by our late former PM, Mr Lee. We are fortunate that when he stepped up to the plate, he faced the impossible and made it happen. Although we paid him well for his efforts, we all firmly believe that he didn't do it for the money. His life was exemplary -- someone who made huge waves abroad, yet kept a humble, frugal, incorruptible personal life at home. He did what he had to because he believed in us. He fought for us; played hard-ball for us; he WAS us to the end.

With his passing, the mantle has firmly fallen on us, the next generation to continue where the previous generation has left us. Now we will we find out if our generation is made of the quality of steel he and his generation were made of. Will we discover that the meritocratic state that hems us in and determines how we are to live does not actually define us? Like him, can we rise above Merit and just do what needs to be done, do whatever it takes because the bigger picture means more to us than our individual whims and fancies? I don't know, but I will say that Mr Lee was an extraordinary gentleman, and  -- I hope -- the likes of whom we will see again in this present generation.

An appeal for normalcy

No, the education system does not need a major overhaul. What does need an overhaul is the mindset that anything less than an 'A' grade is an Asian fail. This mindset is killing everyone: kids; parents; teachers and so on up the food chain.

It is an unrealistic expectation of what it means to be 'normal'. In statistics, what we understand as 'normal' bunches up in the middle, tapering off at both extremes. When we take extreme position 'A' to be 'normal', the whole distribution shifts to compensate when the frequency of 'A' does indeed increase because now, 'A' has become too frequent to be 'normal'.

Many factors could account for the shift towards more kids scoring'A's. The biggest factor is probably the availability of after-school tuition. But while it does give a boost to the individual kid, the system suffers because too many kids sacrifice too much time on developing themselves into what they (and their parents) think is academically 'normal', and not enough time on developing their other facets that will make them well-adjusted, really normal people. And in the meantime, their collective academic achievement turns up the pressure on the next cohort to do just as well if not better, because if your older sibling could do it, why can't you? But the fact is, yesterday's goalpost has shifted further and smaller because too many goals were being scored, making the game unbalanced and unrealistic.

Some people see this continual raising of standards as 'progress', but in fact, just because more kids are acing their exams doesn't mean they have learned anything apart from how to score in their exams. Exams, after all, are games with rules, and once we understand the game of exams, we learn how to game the exam. Everyone out there in the marketplace, and frequently in the schools themselves, offers tips and tricks; methods and strategies; and game-breaking techniques that with enough drilling and when applied properly are likely to score the aspiring student the sought-after 'A' without needing to understand the subject even at the foundational level. And because the end result is an 'A', no one questions if any real learning has taken place or not.

The way back to sanity is to regain our respect for the 'C' grade and to stop disincentivizing failure. Once we allow our kids to bunch up at 'C', it does not mean we are settling for mediocrity, but rather we are accepting normal for what is realistic, and therefore putting an end to academic curriculum escalation. Exams can carry on as they have for centuries and still continue to deliver what they have been always supposed to deliver: providing a hypothetical controlled environment in which a student puts into practice what he has learned in order to demonstrate mastery of the subject being tested and to receive correlated feedback therein. If there's any competition in the system, it is against one's previous efforts and not against a fellow learner. Accepting a 'C' grade tells the student that there is more to achieve, a further step to take. There is forward movement when you dangle a carrot in front of a donkey, and none when the carrot is already in its mouth.

The main concern we have today is how to tell if an 'A' grade a student has scored is the result of real learning or just from gaming the exam. A simple rule of thumb is to ask how the student acquired the knowledge. If it was acquired without question, it was probably taken as doctrine, memorized, rehearsed, rehashed, and learned for the sake of the examination. If the student questioned the material (you can always check the quality of questioning); failed it often and showed slight increments in progress over time (big jumps do happen, but they are rare), most likely we are looking at a student who really does know his stuff.

Because questions are such a big part of the learning process, we teachers, too, have to be mindful that in our eagerness to teach, we do not anticipate questions and provide answers before the kids ask them. One sure-fire way to kill curiosity is to over-inform -- which we tend to do a lot -- and take the mystery out of life, leaving them jaded and think they already know-it-all at such a young age. And also to not shoot down questions, assuming the kids haven't been listening (whomever can listen and get it right the first time?) when we have a curriculum to cover.

Exams are necessary to school-based instruction, but they need to be taken in the right spirit. The overhaul being asked for is for us all to put exams back in their proper place. To hold exam results as a predeterminant of human lives and their future is asking a little much from a measly scrap of paper that gets replaced by another over time in a person's life.

Pioneer Generation

It's good we can recognise our 'pioneer generation' with some kind of tangible tribute. What the old folks went through, and what they had to be prepared to do to put us where we are today was no mean feat. They deserve what we taxpayers are awarding to them, all $8 billion of it, so that they can have a better life in their twilight years.

What I worry about is that we start thinking of that generation as the only pioneer generation. That today, because of their efforts and their sacrifices, we have it made. We haven't. Every generation has its share of struggles, and especially for our little island, every generation is its own pioneer generation.

The generation we hail as 'Pioneer' is the generation of immigrants that made our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural fabric work. They created a sense of belonging by embracing and cooperating with each other. It was a sense that they, regardless of ethnicity, background, or opportunity belonged to the place.

If we really want to honour our 'Pioneer Generation', the money is good -- but it's more important that we don't undo the good they did by turning it around and start acting like the place now belongs to us.

The Singaporean dream

According to the kids, the Singaporean dream goes like, study hard; score straight As; land a good job; make lots of money; and you'll never have to work another day in your life. Obviously, there's some screwed-up logic going on in the conclusion, But they believe it -- it's the lie we tell them. 'Cos as far as schools go, we're only interested in the part up to the 'score straight As' bit. Mission accomplished!

Now, I wonder where their sense of entitlement comes from?

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No martyr

So, someone lost their job over their beliefs. If he had so many problems with his CPF, I guess now that he isn't getting it any more he's got a lot less to worry about. Anyway, I'm sure he could just as easily crowdfund his monthly maintenance from now on. Lots of disgruntled S'poreans would gladly continue funding a martyr for their cause.

I'm no martyr, however. I'm not about to die for my beliefs, but would rather live for them. If they want me to roll over, sink into depression and fade out of sight, I'm sorry to disappoint them. I'm coming back swinging.

Helpful advice

For everyone who's all jacked up about the whole CPF thing, if you wanna stop worrying about it, be a CEO, don't be an employee.

This. Ain't. Sparta!

Meh. It certainly wasn't the best two years of my life, and there isn't anything I remember fondly about it. But then, I don't believe I was supposed to enjoy the experience, anyway. So I say just suck it up and do your national duty.

Video link here in case the embed doesn't work: click.

Tainted honour

It's hard not to get all emotional about the charges laid against the NSF who blew the whistle upon witnessing animal cruelty in his army camp. His dad is apparently so upset, he posted his outrage against the army for disciplining his son for what should be seen as a heroic act. "There was no honour [Facebook login required] in the way this situation was handled by the Singapore Armed Forces", he complains bitterly to the online community.

While I am against animal cruelty (barring the cruelty done to animals that provide nice, juicy steaks; sausages; bacon and other yummy stuff, the origins of which we'd rather remain blissfully ignorant of) this entry is not about that. It's about how the concept of 'honour' has been twisted into a bad argument posted by the distraught dad above in commenting on his son's plight.

The boy is being charged on two counts: shooting photographic images in a location that prohibits photography; and providing information to a party who has no privilege of access to such information.

Security of information is a key protocol which the military will rabidly uphold. Wars are won and lost over control of information. Dad's argument is that the content of the information provided by his son would not have compromised military security and therefore should not constitute a breach of security protocol in both the acquisition and the delivery of said information to the third party.

Dad is wrong on both counts. The law prohibits the action regardless of the sensitivity of the information breached. The charge is therefore against the action, and only in deliberating mitigating circumstances will the content of the information in question be considered. Hence the organization is not conducting itself dishonourably in prosecuting someone who has clearly broken the law.

But on the other hand, did the son act honourably in doing what he did? There is honour in standing up for one's convictions. His act was noble in intent, and for that he deserves credit. But an individual's honour goes deeper than that. Honour is in upholding the law of the land first and foremost. If one's personal convictions necessitates the breaking of the law, that does not absolve one from facing the consequences of one's actions. Given this untenable situation, the honourable thing for the son to do is to acknowledge that in order to do the right thing, he had to do the wrong thing, and accept the punishment for it. Colloquially, he did the crime, so he must do the time. In principle, two wrongs do not make a right.

The other factor to consider is if the son's actions were, in fact, necessary. Did he have to shoot video, and did he have to pass the video on to a third party, and did he know she would likely have politicized it the way she did? Was it his intention, in the first place, to politicize the information he passed on? The video is now for public viewing here [also requires Facebook login]. What it shows is a dog tied up by its neck, its head suspended by the tautness of the rope. Its weight is supported by the floor, so while it may look uncomfortable, it isn't being deliberately strangled unless it struggles against its bonds.

Clearly the boy had already decided to disobey orders by shooting video and distributing it through unauthorized channels. If he was going to disobey orders, then wouldn't it have been more necessary at the time to place the dog in a more comfortable position by re-tying the rope that held it? Did he leave the dog that way the whole night after he shot the video? In other words, if he wanted to alleviate the suffering of the dog, there were more immediate and practical options than turn to his phone-camera for a more sensational solution.

Of course, this is the army we're talking about. This is the kind of social organization that makes a business out of treating people worse than animals, so its approach to perceived threats to its operational capability usually leans towards the brutally effective. If the boy intended to instigate an investigation and force a change in tactics by eliciting public awareness and opinion, he's done a great job. The strays will probably be treated better now. So he should complete his honourable act by taking his punishment like a man. Much respect if he does; no respect if he attempts to squirm his way out of it.

And, Dad, your son's actually a grown man. He made a mature decision, so stop embarrassing him with your overprotective indignation. You should be proud of what he did, and not undermine his heroism by sending the wrong message that whistleblowers should be exempted from prosecution if in blowing their whistle they break the law.

Poor choice of words

So a fella gets ripped a new one for posting insensitive comments online. The fact that he is a foreigner is not a factor in this situation because anyone who posts stupid things online is fair game for trolls seeking easy targets to vent on.

The hypersensitivity of the overreaction is more fascinating to me. We are enraged for being labelled "poor". Um, so what? There is no shame in being poor. The vast majority of us do not drive around in Porches, but we still get around town and get our stuff done just fine, anyway. We're resourceful like that.

Besides, we even call ourselves "poor" and complain we can't afford fees, fares, housing, education and food. So we can label ourselves "poor" when it suits our arguments, but we can't accept the same label when it doesn't? Instead, in our online culture we take every chance to shame people who claim to be "rich". Essentially, we are telling people who own nice things to get off the Internet. That's not very nice of us, is it?

His second transgression was stating his desire to "wash [off] the stench of public transport" after his experience with it. We've all thought the same thing ourselves; we've posted the same thought online ourselves; and now we are excoriating someone for also posting the same comment in his own paraphrase? Everybody knows our public transport system is terrible. Online we're so vocal with our complaints about overcrowding; so many breakdowns; such frequent delays... That totally stinks and yet they keep raising fares! TMD!

So we all think the same thing, and we post our thoughts online though in different words, some more prosaic, some more droll, most just shoot from the hip. There is no need to take such huge issue with a "poor" paraphrasing of such a common thought. Let's just take a chill pill and give more room to nuance, off-colour humour, and multiple-entendre. And stop trying to police the Internet for politically-correct speech. Right now, online trolling is more a threat to our Internet freedoms than the MDA. Think about that.