Education dominates Singapore's 'different' culture
cleveland.com
cleveland.com
I would.
Singapore is what it is because of their strategic placing in the wold today. The only reason the English decided to convert this tropical island in the commerce nucleus it is.
People always rationalize how when something good happens to them it is always because of their merit alone.
Spain discovered America because it is on the extreme of Europe and not in the center, Germany is an Industrial nation because it has so much water and coal, and is very cheap to transport things and USA has the bigger and most fertile plains in the world for a very small population.
Now ask an American, German or a person from Singapore what is the key of success and they will tell you hard work of course, but they don't work harder than people from Central African Republic(I had been there, very beautiful and rich but in the middle of nowhere, with no infrastructure, and very poor).
Even making this assumption, the bulk of the gap in educational outcomes between the US and Singapore is probably not due to education.
The US 8th grade PISA score is 495, whereas that of Singapore is 540. But Asian Americans have a score of 535. Several American states have Asian students who even exceed Singapore, specifically NY, TX and CT.
http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...
If education were the primary driver of educational outcomes, that shouldn't happen. So we should reject education as the primary driver of educational outcomes.
However, the article also suggests a cultural explanation: "it's built into our [Singaporean] culture to study all the way through school". If Asian Americans share this trait but non-Asian Americans do not, this is certainly consistent with the data.
It doesn't strike me as very persuasive though. For instance, here's a map[1] of ports and harbors in Malaysia. There are a lot of them. How come Singapore has almost the GDP (239 billion) of all of Malaysia put together (278 billion)?
Another comparison: the GDP of the NYC metro area is $1.28T [2]. The GDP of Texas is $1.3T, Florida is $0.754 and CA is $1.9T.
You are probably right that location doesn't explain Singapore's wealth. But education probably doesn't either - I don't see any reason to believe NYC has a better education system than NY - NYC, CA, TX or FL.
The simplest explanation is that when a city becomes a regional hub, it generates disproportionate amounts of wealth. In the case of Singapore, the city also just happened to be a country.
[1] http://www.housingnyc.com/downloads/research/pdf_reports/ia1...
[2] The metro area is NYC + commuter suburbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City
[edit: B -> T for NYC metro GDP]
Good comparison between the SE Asia situation and New York. I think it paints an accurate picture of what's going on. My beef with the parent is this line, "Singapore is what it is because of their strategic placing in the wold today." Personally, I think a more accurate way to put that would be "because of their strategic place in the world and merit." Singaporeans had something to do with Singapore becoming a regional hub (the second time, at least) and they should get credit for it.
I definitely don't think education alone explains Singapore's wealth. Just because I disagreed with one of the parent's points doesn't mean I disagree with everything he said.
Natural factors play a role, but only so much. IMHO, you are rationalizing. There are many places in the world that are strategically located and resource rich, but they didn't grow as much as Singapore did.
In Asia, if I was a villain, I would put my lair in Timor (if I wanted an island) or New Guinea (if I wanted land) - just between India, Australia, Japan, etc.
Water and coal are abundant in many places. Argentina has great fertile plains and a lower population. Coal was first mined in China, and in the UK which also had IIRC more coal and water than Germany.
Hell, following your explanation about the new world, Portugal and Ireland are even more at the extreme of Europe- they should have discovered America! They didn't (I know the story about Vinland, the vikings an so on - but they didn't do as much as Spain did)
It we are talking about geographic distance, southern Morocco or Senegal would have been at an advantage - but they didn't do it.
It's too easy to rewrite history. Education and investment are clearly driving growth.
Show me a country that is betting big on education and pushing for investment (preferably local, from savings), even if it has not much politically stability it is a country with a bright future.
Besides India (who will certainly be the next big thing after the US - not China IMHO), I'd put my chips on countries like Estonia, Kenya, Uruguay.
Historically that is not true. Countries which increased their investment in education tended to have (slightly) slower economic growth, at least in the period 1960-2000.
Paper: http://econ399.atwiki.com/file/open/21/Where+has+all+the+edu...
Blog post with key graph: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/did_nations_tha....
It could be another Leontief-like paradox, ie discarding the education efficiency.
I would be curious to know if such results hold when only STEM education is included (no humanities), and if there appear difference between pre-university and university education (I would expect raising the population literacy to have less effects - ie starting from a lower education might require more investment in education) once corrected by emigration (brain drain- remittances will help, but we're looking at something else)
But at least I now have learn something interesting - it has been disproved that only increasing education length had any effect of growth.
Education policy has long been a research topic for me, and it is the topic that drew me here to Hacker News.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123
The quoted statement is where equating "spending taxpayer money on schools" to "investing in education" leads to some odd policy conclusions. A friend of mine (a man in my generation, a policy analyst for the United States federal government) showed me that blog post the day it was posted (I think he is a regular reader of that blog) and asked me to comment about it. If the factual question is, is spending-as-such strongly correlated with results from a country's school system? we already know from multiple lines of evidence that the answer is no.
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/49685503.pdf
But what is remarkable about Singapore is that even when it didn't have the economic development yet to spend much on schools it was already spending wisely and otherwise getting good results for all aspects of its national investment, financial and nonfinancial, in education.
http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf
I'm even more familiar with the situation in Taiwan than I am with the situation in Singapore, and EFFECTIVE spending and management (not lavish spending, and not school-favoring management) of the public education system there has to share part of the credit for the transformation of Taiwan in my lifetime from a wretchedly poor country to a prosperous country on track to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world in my old age.
http://www.globalpost.com/globalpost-blogs/southeast-asia/si...
I have seen the textbooks from both countries (especially from Taiwan). They are less expensive to produce, and thus less of a cost burden on the school system, than the textbooks used in the United States. But the textbooks are of much higher quality, especially in mathematics. In two generations, we have seen those countries transform into countries such that many foreign observers assume that people are "naturally" smart in those countries. I know enough people from enough strata of society and a broad enough age range from each country to know that today's appearance that east Asia and southeast Asia are full of smart people is because of smart policies that helped the two most recent generations in the top-performing countries gain exceptionally good educations at reasonable cost. Yes, some countries could spend less on their schools and do better than they do now, if only they would spend more wisely.
That's quite interesting - education efficiency (or effectiveness as you say) seem to matter a lot.
The Pritchett study reported by yummyfajitas (which is someone I highly regard, for his post are generally spot on and instructive) adds to this that increasing education duration has been disproven to have an efficiency on growth (which complements the Romer/Lucas models of growth I'm learning)
You further that by disproving the relation between spending and school system results.
The conclusion seems to be that while money and time might not be important, the educational content is more important, and country even with few resources or teachers could focus their effort on the right content to maximize their results.
Very interesting indeed.
Curious, Can you expand on this?
It only needs a manufacturing sector to be the next #1. Considering how manufacturing is spreading in SE asia (Thailand and HDD for ex) it might happen soon.
I've been in Singapore for 1 year as an exchange student. While I managed to cope well, many slightly less talented students suffer from the great workload and have almost no free time. In a middle class secondary school, about 95% of the children need tuition to keep up with school. Weeks or even months before their exams, all free time is eliminated and dedicated to studying.
The learning itself isn't perfect either. It's heavily focused on memorization and involves no oral participation. Foreign languages are almost never taught; math and natural sciences matter the most. Competition is promoted instead of teamwork (not only amongst students, but also amongst teachers and civil servants in general). The teachers are ranked according to their students' results, which does work as a motivator, but discourages them to explain any background information or topics that are not required from exams.
Parents urge their children to get the best degree they can in order to be able to take up the best paying job they can find. Money is the measure and not personal satisfaction. Arts, therefore, are not very popular.
I'm highlighting here all negative aspects to contrast the posted article; of course it is good that Singapore does promote education and the education system certainly works better than the ones of most other countries. Also, this is not directly related to Singapore, but represents the Confucianist mentality that one can find to a lot extremer extents in Japan, China and Korea.
> I'm highlighting here all negative aspects
It does not look like negatives to me, but a recipe for success - ie focus on the important and cut the useless.
(And in a country with as many immigrants as Singapore, I'm sure the issue of foreign languages is self solving :-)
And there are enough statistics out there to prove that money is far from leading the list of things that matter most to the happiness of humans.
PS: (And in a country with as many immigrants as Singapore, I'm sure the issue of foreign languages is self solving :-)
The three ethnic groups in Singapore get in touch with each other quite well, that's true, but contact with any other culture such as European ones is rare (expats just stay amongst themselves). Furthermore, learning a language requires more than just knowing native speakers.
Money is indeed just a way to carry out one's dream, but without this way, dreams will in fact remain dreams.
Personally, I would disregard cranky statistics or ranking such as the highly subjective Happiness Index where the US get the last place, which does not match the data since many people want to immigrate to the US (and not so much want to flee that Berlin-wall style fences had to be erected to protect Mexico from the hordes of US emigrants)
I'm sorry if this is offensive, but there are plenty of statistics, yet I like it better when statistics match the actual facts like decision made by humans beings who want to immigrate to another country.
[IIRC, there are other indexes which gives points by default, like based on longitude of the country (for the climate), etc. I guess Canada won't win on them :-)]
I've heard this from colleagues who've worked in Singapore. Teamwork and collaboration don't appear to be cultural norms. I remember during my degree there were always one or two hyper competitive individuals who would deny having any knowledge of a problem when asked for assistance. They seemed to think helping others would adversely affect them in some way. The reality is that explaining concepts to others reinforces your own understanding, so you both benefit.
My biggest gripe with Singapore's state as it is (and why can't we criticize it?) is that while Singapore does have a stronger emphasis on education (GREAT!), it still falls behind in knowledge.
Singapore has no natural resource, and thus no natural export. Its main exports (other than "tourism" which doesn't count) is through secondary products like petroleum, and through its workforce, considered high-value by companies around the world.
Its workforce, being a resource, is therefore treated like a resource. And resources must always be more readily available, more efficiently farmed, more accurately quantified. The only way to survive in this country is to go through the gauntlet, and get stamped with a quality grade like beef.
My personal hope for the future of Singapore is to slowly make the transition away from treating its humans as a workforce resource, and to start treasuring their humans as a knowledge bank. Indeed, I believe Singapore has realised this, with its growing bio-technology sector, A* etc. However it is a race against time; unlike other resources, its workforce can turn against it.
No I'm not really speaking about revolution etc. But years of being a resource has put a toll on the population... just as a engine that is run in overdrive for too long wears out. Many of the Singaporeans who can afford to find a better life elsewhere, where their knowledge is valued higher, are doing so. Those that do not have that knowledge are simply resigned to being the nation's workhorse, and take no effort to seek it themselves (or perhaps they cannot afford to).
This puts Singapore in a weird position. It is suffering from "brain drain". And the current remedy for it is importing knowledge from elsewhere. Unlike regions like the US, EU, AU, where populations are made up of many varieties of cultures, Singapore is a young country with only 3 major ethnic groups, and outsiders are viewed as such. This further axacerbates the feeling that local workers are just their workers.
Anyway, after that long blob, my 2nd personal hope is I may be able to return to my country and contribute back, not through workhours, but through knowledge.
Disclaimer: this is all my views and intuition, I don't have any links or numbers to back things up.
http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC121029-0000030/A-les...
featuring quotations from a speech by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore as a possible response. It does appear that people respond to incentives, and the Singapore education system has set up pretty good incentives for one set of behaviors, with an ongoing debate in that slowly democratizing society about what behaviors to encourage for the next stage of Singapore's development.
AFTER EDIT: I just reread all the other comments in this thread, in light of what they are saying in response to one another. I should respond to a couple that come from someone evidently much younger than I am, who has spent time in Singapore as a foreign resident (with what language background?).
At the top comment level:
Foreign languages are almost never taught
Grandchild to that comment (from same HN participant):
The three ethnic groups in Singapore
As a member of the older generation, I can remember when Singapore had a lot more than the current "three ethnic groups" (that would be Chinese, Malay, and Indian, by the reckoning of Singapore) as an actual linguistic matter. To both points, by the Singapore government's own statistics,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Singapore#Langu...
as recently as 1990 there was no one language of the four languages that are official in Singapore--Malay, (Modern Standard) Chinese, English, and Tamil--that was even spoken at home in the majority of homes in Singapore. School instruction has been in English since independence in 1965, but only a tiny minority of the population spoke English at home in my generation. I would have to consider a country that has four official languages from four different language families, NONE of which the plurality of the population spoke at home just a generation ago, a very successful country in teaching second languages. And if today people in Singapore think that "Chinese" is one ethnic group, they have forgotten a lot of ethnic division between Hokkien speakers and Hakka speakers and Cantonese speakers (who speak mutually incomprehensible Sinitic languages, all of which I have studied in addition to Mandarin) that is also very recent history in that country and other parts of the Chinese-speaking world.
Some thoughts for HNers and their future attempts at educating others in this forum:
The comment threads are here for conversations and the exchange of thought, not for the assignment of homework in the form of white papers/books. Mentioning your sources I'm sure is always welcome, but many seem to assume that anybody who hasn't read the same material as themselves is somehow incapable of contributing to a conversation on the subject at hand. That is an egregiously poisonous mindset.
If you want to make the most of your time on HN have more respect for others and synthesize your knowledge. Let a conversation happen.
By all means link your sources, but say what you're going to say and don't assign homework.
Contextual synthesis > PDF
That's my $0.02 (not denominated in Verizon-units).
--- With that out of the way ---
More related to the article, I've visited Singapore and know a few Singaporeans. One of the main takeaways was that they're hyper-competitive and aggressive in ways I'm not sure US gov'ts/voters would ever really countenance for the sake of progress.
The article is rife with Orientalist gawking and murmuring of approval. Typical for the current mode of reporting on how Asia does things differently than the West. (Cf. Friedman's absurd pseudo-capitalist posturing on China)
Mentioning the chewing gum ban, seriously?
Money quote: "But it's really more about discipline than intelligence."
It's superficial, to be sure, but at least it lets Singaporeans speak for themselves about the cultural difference. The true purpose of the article seems to be to say some things about Cleveland that can't be said directly, so a more nuanced take on Singapore might be beside the point.
I can hardly believe anything more than a tiny fraction of HN readership is familiar with the situation there either, so I have to go with the more obvious parts.
I'm not an English Lit major, I'm not super-interested in deep meta-analysis of author intentions.
Pardon my French, but WTF?
In the first place, the majority of Singapore's successes is largely due to a pro-business policy which has attracted massive amounts of foreign direct investment.
In the second place, my observation is that in general Singaporeans are well-schooled, not well educated. As Mark Twain put it, there is a difference.
And there is also the uglier side of a hyper-competitive system which darylteo has pointed out. And then you ask yourself, where do the "losers" of this competition end up?
The challenge at this stage is to ensure we move our lowest gear up - and I can assure you, our lowest gear is pretty low. Unfortunately, unless the technocrats get mind-transplants from the people who did the Finnish or Danish model, I don't think its going to change.
Where do they end up?
The biggest different I would say is that Singapore education churns out book-smart students. These are the people who are best at following instructions, steps, and established methods. We're very good at following and reinforcing the paths well trod.
Coming to North America, while I did far better than my peers in strict academic settings, they would constantly do better in things such as dealing with people, creative activities etc. People here have a better sense of adventure and are willing to challenge themselves/the status quo to experience the world.