What Singapore has accomplished in the past five decades in
terms of extraordinary change is truly amazing.
The Singapore experience might be termed the
"Miracle of the Pacific" as it is one of the most significant Pacific
Basin ports and is the headquarters for Apec, the AsiaPacific Economic
Community forum.
In the 1950s, Singapore was characterised by political
instability, large slums, and an active communist insurgency. Under the dynamic
and honest leadership of the brilliant Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore rose to become
one of the world's most modern and wealthy countries and a city teeming with
vitality.
Today, its income per capita stands at $62,100, making it
one of the world's wealthiest countries (No 5), well above the US. Being a
citystate with a population of only 4.7 million, it has generated currently
$225.7 billion of foreign exchange reserves, almost double that of the US with
its over 300 million population! In rankings just released, Singapore is No 2
in the world in terms of economic freedom.
How has a new nation that came into existence in 1965, with
no natural resources, achieved such dramatic economic success? Three key
factors have been:
1 strategic location (it is within a seven hours flight of
2.8 billion people),
2 leadership, and
3 education/human resource development.
In this column I will focus on the latter and the key
distinctive features of Singaporean education.
The first and most basic characteristic of Singaporean
education is its Confucian character and value system that emphasises respect
for education and teachers and high motivation of students. Singapore pays its
teachers extremely well and has a new major initiative to make the teaching
profession even more attractive. This factor has contributed importantly to the
overall high quality of Singapore education.
The second characteristic relates to Singapore's status as a
multicultural and multilingual society. Currently, there is intense interest in
the EU in the relationship between the multilingual mind and creativity. If
this link does exist, then that augurs well for the future of Singapore. Its
current policy is for all its students to be competent in both English and
Mandarin, the world's two most important languages. Many Singaporeans also have
command of other languages such as Malay, Tamil, and Teochiew.
A third characteristic is pragmatism. Singapore has
emphasised academic fields with high economic payoffs such as science,
information technology, business, and economics. Also it chose to send many of
its students overseas to utilise the excellent higher education infrastructure
already built in the US, Europe, and Australia.
A fourth characteristic related to pragmatism is the
country's stress on multiple postsecondary paths for students and recognition
of diversity of talent. Singapore has created strong polytechnic universities
to meet the needs of students preferring that kind of skill set and training.
A fifth element has been the stress on the development of a
knowledge economy reflected in former PM Goh's aspiration to have Singapore
become the "Boston of the East". Boston is known as a higher
education centre (presence of Harvard and MIT) fostering innovation and
entrepreneurship.
A sixth element is a focus on globalisation and the
development of Singapore as an international education, finance, tourist, and
communications hub. Malaysia and Thailand have similar aspirations. Singapore's
key advantage is that its people have the best English in the AsiaPacific
region. Thailand's big advantage is that it has much lower costs than Singapore
and its tourist attractions are much more diverse and "exotic".
Finally, at the moment in Singapore, there is a new thrust
on the development of character and citizenship education. Also there is the
goal to broaden Singapore education beyond its narrow pragmatism with the
development of a new liberal arts college in collaboration with Yale
University, called YaleNUS College.
The Singaporean story is an amazing one demonstrating the
compelling necessity of achieving both highquality education and honest,
creative leadership.
Gerald W Fry
Distinguished International Professor
Department of Organisational Leadership, Policy, and
Development
University of Minnesota
gwf@umn.edu
