Weiye Loh's Library tagged Singapore →  View Popular, Search in Google

the reporter Mr.Chua Eng Wee of LianHe  ZaoBao told me on phone in the evening of 19 May 2012 that someone from your group had called to SPH and requested to add in one sentence for their news report. On 19 May 2012 4pm, PM Lee and his team are all with your group together for the visitation. Thus, if you don’t investigate and clarify clearly, people may think it maybe PM Lee’s team who did it.

News Journalism Singapore Politics

Speaking to TODAY, PAP Member of Parliament Baey Yam Keng, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Information, Communications and the Arts, reiterated that "no one can control the media and any responsible media would want full editorial independence".

News Journalism Singapore Politics

Work Engagement Productivity Singapore

Feminism Family Singapore

if you're a senior scientist wanting to set up a lab in another institution, the first question you're going to ask is whether you're going to have good students (who of course do all the actual lab work). Unfortunately, Singapore seems to do a very good job of exporting its best students. They're sent overseas on fully-funded, prestigious scholarships to foreign institutions.

Science Research Community Singapore Scholarship

Service works by the gradual buildup of sympathy through failed attempted solutions.  If person X has told you to try something and it doesn’t work, person X feels slightly sorry for you.  X is slightly responsible for the problem now, having used up some of your time.  Person Y, however, is considerably less moved that you tried following her colleague X’s advice to no avail–even if it is the same advice that she herself would have given you had she been party to that earlier conversation.  That’s beside the point.  The point is that she wasn’t the one who gave you that advice.  So she is not responsible for your wasted time.

Services Singapore Customer Service

I passed through Singapore twice last month and that's why I read a few issues of The Straits Times. Readers are invited to write in to Singapore's English-language newspaper. The rules for doing so are set out in small type. Evidently, women must "indicate Miss, Ms, Mrs or Madam."

What the? Never mind that "Ms" was invented in order that the archaic "Miss" and "Mrs" may be consigned to the history books but, hey, the ladies in Singapore have another option just in case, you know, they happen to be in charge of a house of prostitution - or something.

But seriously, how can we expect men to take our titles seriously if we can't decide what's appropriate and what's not? Even if you remove "madam" from that robust smorgasbord of options from which people of the fairer gender may choose, it's kind of pathetic to have to decide between three different titles. Isn't it, ladies? Must we really cling onto relics from another era?

Language Feminism Singapore

These unemployed graduates have the knowledge and free time to plan revolutions. They would hang around in coffee shops and talk politics, and soon a revolution brews.

Recently, an Education Ministry official was reported to have told a US diplomat (source: Wikileaks) that Singapore did not plan to encourage more students to study in university, and the campus enrolment rate would stay at 20%-25%.

I wonder, if this is true, is it connected to concerns about the possibility of unmanageable unemployment among graduates here?

Education Politics Singapore

Singapore has historically been seen as a canary in the coal mine of the world economy, given its extreme vulnerability to the swings of global trade.

But now, analysts at one bank have raised concern about a data point not usually seen as a threat: social and political discontent.

Singapore Social Social Divide Income Inequality Globalization

One reason for this may have something to do with the distinction between history and heritage; and how citizenship as a state of mind or school of thought is often closer to the latter. Unlike history that requires facts to be winnowed to ensure there are scrupulously as close to the truth as possible.

Heritage is the direct opposite. Here there are no pesky historians or archivers sieving through facts to balance the accounts. Infact, it has carte blanche (every right) to side step critical scrutiny – it’s not open to critical challenge. For what makes heritage different from history is it’s intrinsic biasness – whether it’s the right of the English to recount Irish jokes to reinforce the impression everyone in Ireland has an IQ of 5 below idiot; or whether it’s us having the right to look down on Malaysians as a backward people, isn’t really the point here.

My point is, that is the essential purpose of heritage, it’s supposed to bend, exaggerate, confect and embellish the account to produce a story that satisfies our inner craving to feel validated – we need to believe, we are better than those who may come before us; we need to believe they can offer us nothing that we already do not have; we even believe we can wing it alone and like Frank Sinatra, “do it our way.” Hence when we speak about citizenship, it is precisely in these terms that we speak of it – not as a historical reference but as something belonging to heritage.

Heritage History Bias Singapore Citizenship

Some would say there’s nothing wrong with this Singaporean preoccupation with reducing everything to “utility; functional and practical” Black cat, white cat, what does it matter? Providing it can catch mice terms.

But I disagree, the real problem sets in when we may unknowingly apply too narrow a definition of what’s useful, worthy and of value – at some point, we all have to consider what’s the actual cost of pursuing this one way street logic?

Singapore Pragmatism

Singapore is finding out, it is not always hunky-dory when it comes to snagging some of the world’s ‘best’. Because just as the world’s supposed best may themselves be musing, the stakes for them too could pretty high when they are seen negotiating with a nation not well known for its political liberalism or tolerance of opposing viewpoints.
In interviews with newspapers the city-state’s Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam views the tie-up as a ‘cancelling’ the shortfalls brought on by Singapore’s exam-smart meritocracy vis-à-vis America’s talent-led meritocracy.
Shanmugaratnam minced no words over to which system he was seeking first and foremost.
Without acknowledging outrightly he let it be known that Singapore’s system of education has not been at its sterling best as it had has commonly touted to be as. In short it was not delivering!
The mere fact the nation has to continually look beyond its shores for talent despite a very stressful and rigorous system second only to Japan – the latest being the former chief of Malaysian state-owned oil company, Petronas, Hassan Marican – is but an indication its education system is quite not what it was cracked up to be in terms of unleashing creativity, drive and entrepreneurship and leadership qualities; character traits the nation needs so very vitally out of its young populace to continually to stay ahead of other regional economies.

Singapore Talent Meritocracy Liberal Academic Freedom

This morning, Today published an article both in print and online versions on the Yale-NUS saga.
They quoted a Kent Ridge Common article, Do We Need Yale?, and its author, Koh Choon Hwee.
Without bothering to contact us to confirm the gender of Koh Choon Hwee, they assumed that she was ‘male’, and referred to her as “Mr Koh“. Further, Miss Koh had written two articles (here and here) for Today newspaper before.
Secondly, while they took the care to name their sources in the case of Yale, as in – “ Yale Daily News – an independent newspaper published by Yale University students -”, they did not bother to name their source, Kent Ridge Common, but instead referred to it as “NUS’ student newspaper”.
We are not that vain or publicity-hungry, so the quibble here is less about the double-standards and hypocrisy demonstrated in the media coverage afforded to foreign, branded university student-run newspapers in contrast to that which is dispensed to local, obscure university student-run newspapers.

Journalism Singapore

Mr Brown asked:

"Is the Sun Xu lynch mob going to go after Lai Shimun too?"

I observed that they aready had, and also that nationalism is not a sacred cow here like race and religion are.

Racism Singapore Smell Objectivity Race

When Singapore became an independent, post-colonial country, in the early 1960s, supposedly at the same point on the development trajectory at which many of its admirers see themselves, it was already a highly developed, prosperous and sophisticated entrepôt. It was rather back when Sir Stanford Raffles founded his trading station in 1819 that the little island was not much more than a swamp. A century-and–a-half serving the trading interests of the hegemonic economic and political power of the day, the British Empire, turned that swamp into a thriving port and a bustling, prosperous multi-racial community. Singapore’s post-independence politicians can take enormous credit for steering their little island-nation to its present heights, but they did not inherit a Timor-Leste or Rwanda.

Indeed, it seems to me that Singapore’s very unusual history will be impossible to emulate or reproduce, and others should probably just quit trying, especially those who are trying in a hurry—say, within the political lifetime of a single “visionary”. One striking problem with their analogies is that Singapore’s workforce immigrated to this island on the straits, encouraged by the British rulers, solely to serve the interests of commerce. It’s no wonder that the country still tends to be rather good at it. Other crowded little countries will not enjoy this advantage. They can talk of Singapore as being a “hub”…but Singapore largely became so only as the gateway to the riches of old Malaya, with its legendary bounty of rubber, tin and copper. Other countries will not enjoy that extra-territorial advantage.

Singapore History Politics Discourse Narratives

the kids in the neighborhood schools are often rebels, especially those relegated to the Normal streams. They have been condemned by society, and yet, they still hold in them the potential to shine. These kids go against status quo. Instead of continuing to relegate them through elitist programs that ignores them, the government should instead refocus its efforts on promoting entrepreneurship to those kids, inspire them to follow a calling larger than themselves, and give them a useful avenue to vent their rebellious streak, harnessing their creativity away from destructive acts like vandalism to creating value for society.

Singapore Education Entrepreneurship

Despite all our achievements in education we have produced NO Nobel Prize winners. There is no such thing as a globally renown artist who was educated in the Singapore system. It's not just the multinationals that are run by foreigners. To get ahead in government service, you need to spend a stint of your education elsewhere. All three of our Prime Ministers have had to study elsewhere for a period of time. When Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's closest thing to an intellectual, encouraged Singaporeans to send their kids to our wonderfully good local universities, someone asked him where his daughters were studying. Mr Mahbubani suddenly became very silent on the topic.

Singapore Education

Supposedly students in Singapore are assessed with national tests every two years. Concurrently a teacher is assigned a class every two years. While some students will always come and go there will be a cohort of students who do not change over the two years. The normed average grades of those two years can then be measured and the percentage improvement (or decline) noted. Working on the famous Greek principle that victory has many generals but defeat is an orphan, the relative movement in the class average is deemed to be reflective of the quality of teaching the students have received. Not only that but the relative improvement can then be assessed against similar results for all the peers of the teacher for that year. Supposedly the top ten per cent of the Singaporean teachers are given substantial performance bonuses and earmarked for future promotion while the bottom ten percent are counselled and effectively told that if similar results occur again that they should look to another career besides teaching.

The silence of the Australians was by now deafening.

The Singaporeans then went on to point that before this system was introduced the best teachers would always try and get the best students because they could then brag about how many students they had in top 1000 performers etc. Now the best teachers would try and get the worst performing classes so they could get the greatest improvement. Thus the worst classes would get the best teachers and in that way the whole country's education system was lifted.

Education Objectivity Teaching Singapore Measurement

Singapore’s government, known to be meticulous planners, have responded to the index’s results, which they say are “biased against import-dependent, land-scarce, densely populated countries such as Singapore,” which by their nature and geographic location must rely heavily on imported resources like food and gas.

“As a city-state, it would have been more relevant if Singapore was benchmarked against other cities, which typically are also import-dependent for energy, food and water, rather than countries,” said a spokesperson from the country’s Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

Environment Measurement Operationalization Ecology Countries Singapore Sustainability

Competitiveness is a holistic concept. While economic size and growth are important and necessary, several other factors help determine a city’s competitiveness as well. For the purposes of this research, we define competitiveness as a city’s demonstrated ability to attract capital, businesses, talent and visitors.

Competitiveness Singapore Operationalization Measurement