Comment by ewolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ewolf | Hacker News Reader

This is a very simplified view of the education system in Singapore. Of course education should be important, but it can also go too far.

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.

Competition is promoted instead of teamwork (not only amongst students, but also amongst teachers and civil servants in general).

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.

> (competition, no foreign languages, science first) > 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

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 :-)

You are making the BIG assumption that foreign languages, the humanities, teamwork, and learning other than rote memorization are useless. It takes more than knowing a lot of facts and being able to crunch numbers to be successful in a career, even in technical ones like science and engineering. Successful scientists and engineers not only have strong technical skills, but also strong "soft" skills, like the ability to effectively communicate ideas and work in a team.

That's a very narrow-minded way of looking at success. The success of a state is much more than just attaining wealth — it's about serving the people and giving them all possible opportunities to pursue their dreams and live a happy life. Money is just a means to be able to carry out these tasks.

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.

I admit my way is narrow minded, but it is also the currently admitted way of looking at success - attaining wealth to maximize intertemporal consumption.

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 :-)]

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