新加坡奖学金得主与新加坡的第四代领导人
花生豆 • • 11311 次浏览这是今天在本地投资圈看到的一篇文章。是一名新加坡奖学金得主匿名发在 quora 上的。
Do you think an overhaul is needed in the Singapore civil service in how we select our leaders (government scholarship)?
As a government scholar, I feel it is important that I echo my thoughts on this.
I attended the Integrated Programme at HCI, and proceeded on an SAF scholarship to read PPE at the University of Oxford. I then completed an MPhil in Economics at the University of Cambridge.
TLDR: Government scholarships in Singapore do a good job at identifying administrators; but administrators are not leaders, and should never be mistaken for leaders.
Scholars in Singapore are chosen at a very young age. I would hesitate to say that A-level performance is correlated with how competent you will be as a person because as many people who have went through the process know very well, you can do pretty well if you were born to a good family.
From the age of 7 through when I graduated from Hwa Chong Junior College, I was waited on hand and foot by at least 4 different tutors every week, usually in more than 4 separate two-hour sessions. In JC, I averaged one two-hour session a day, which cost an average of around $80 per hour. If you run the numbers, that’s $1120 a week, $4480 a month, and $53,760 a year. A lot of Singaporean households do not even earn $50,000 a year to be spent on tutors alone.
Because I was under such strict supervision, at no point in my pre-university academic journey have I felt that I lagged behind. In fact, I have perpetually felt that I was very much ahead of my peers. This is the privilege I was awarded for having tiger parents, and as such, I suffer from one disadvantage that many scholars will never admit to because of their inferiority complex—I cannot deal with situations in which parameters are not explicit. In other words, I panic when it comes to dealing with atypical problems.
The Singapore government scholarships reward pre-adults in Singapore who have been able to be very consistent at achieving their annual KPIs. There are benefits to identifying those who can perform well in clearly specified tasks, which are what academic examinations are, the main of which is you get good workers.
The methodology of academic testing is simple—you attend school for a period of time to learn a particular set of topics based on an explicitly described set of syllabi. The examinations at the end of the term check that you have made consistent progress in understanding the material. There might be a few trick questions which would require some level of creativity, but while these questions take you outside the box, you are still pressed right up against it. This is the same for all aspects of school-based achievements, such as CCAs, competitions, community service, etc. The very best students in Singapore are basically very good at checking off items on a list.
Public administration is mostly about carrying out government services in a way that ensures the least disruption to the livelihoods of the people you serve. i.e Trains should not fail, passports should be issued promptly, roads should be maintained, trees trimmed, etc. When you deputize people who have been able to perform tasks with well-defined parameters to complete tasks with well-defined parameters, they do well. This should be the intent of government scholarships—to identify these people such that they minimize the frustrations of the public with regards to public infrastructure and services.
What should not be the intent of government scholarships is to be of the impression that these scholars have what it takes to perform adequately as leaders in any organization. This is a flawed impression that is only getting worse from generation to generation because of the elitism that we have fostered in the civil service. The idea that scholars are the cream of the crop of every imaginable domain is poisonous, and symptoms of this hubris have started to manifest in the PAP over the past few years of leadership transition. We now have textbook teacher’s pets occupying ministerial positions; I know one when I see one because I am one. Trust me, you don’t want them as your leaders.
Who then should lead?
Lee Kuan Yew, while a remarkable student in his own right, had other qualities that made him a great leader. The qualities that made him a great student were not always the qualities that made him a great leader. I stand firm on this position.
Great leaders are resilient. They are able to think of solutions to problems with an overabundance of unknown parameters. They are able to perform well in the most complex and messy of situations; not because they can do no wrong, but because they have the gumption to get it right, even at the end of many wrongs. Make no mistake, the one thing that defines a great leader is failure; not success. And I think we, in Singapore, chronically get this upside down.
Our merry band of scholars and 4th-generation leaders may be of the impression that they share the spirit of that which underpinned the transformation of our country; but the reality is none of them have faced rock bottom in their lives. Sure, they may have botched a smattering of projects, but this is nothing compared to when your life is literally falling apart and you have to muster strength and grace in those situations in order to turn things around.
Why do top American schools produce so many inventive thinkers compared to top schools in other countries? Why have the founders of companies whose products have revolutionized the way we live, Facebook, Apple, Tesla, IBM, Microsoft, Uber, Google, Amazon, all been from top American universities? If you attribute it to the quality of education at these universities, you will be wrong. There’s nothing intrinsically superior about the education received at Harvard or Columbia compared to the education you receive at NTU or NUS. You attend lectures and take exams just the same at Harvard as you would at NUS. The difference is (and always has been) the ability of top Ivy League universities at identifying leaders of tomorrow.
Contrary to how most universities that we are accustomed to choose their students, American universities have a very different guideline. They are interested in who you are as a person, rather than just your test scores. They appreciate those who take bold risks, those who do things differently, those who overcome adversities, those who are street-smart, those who see the world for what you can do; rather than what you can’t.
In Singapore, we glorify the student who gets 9 distinctions at A-levels, and we ignore the athlete who competes every year but wins nothing. We award scholarships to those with a perfect record, but the student who achieves a 2:2 degree while battling cancer is a mere footnote.
We have talent in Singapore. We have people who have done amazing things with their lives, people have gone through incredible journeys, people who have learnt far more about this world than that which can be put from pen to paper for a letter grade. We keep telling ourselves that we need more talent, but have we ever stopped to ask ourselves, what is talent?
Do we stop giving out scholarships then?
No, we will always need public administrators. But we should start by acknowledging that public administrators are administrators, first and foremost. They have been administrators from the start and you are not going to find a Steve Jobs in Ng Wai Teck from Raffles Junior College. Give them a task and they will do it well, but in nation-building, it is easier to do the actual “building” than to think of “what to build.”
We have a lot builders in the country, now what we need are architects.
We, as a society, need to learn to harness the energy of the many Steve Jobs that we have collectively decided to be talent-free. In the next 50 years, we are going to have to deal with a lot of problems in our country that cannot be solved merely by a team of yes-men. We could do that before because we have just been meeting the basic requirements of life. Scholars are good with meeting requirements.
Our “leadership” love to make sweeping statements that we do not have enough talent and creativity in this country; which is why we need to bring them in from abroad. I have nothing against talent from abroad. They make us stronger. But perhaps we have to ask ourselves the fundamental question—how are we suppose to find talent if we do not provide incentives for talent to manifest?
Leaders do not have to know how to do everything. They just have to know who can. For that, you do not need someone who has all A’s, you need something that is far more precious—imagination.
We now have new needs that will continue to be unmet if we keep on thinking that old formulae will keep being applicable. If we insist on having builders to do the job of an architect, all we will get will be square houses. Functional, but of little value. It is not easy to separate the leaders from the best workers, but we have to start somewhere; and we can start by rewarding those who have overcome repeated bouts of absolute failure, rather than those who have had it together since day one.
As a scholar, I acknowledge my weaknesses. It is the very existence of these weaknesses that make me a good student. I do not challenge the norm, I am detail-oriented to a genuine fault, I do what is required, I will go the extra mile to get the extra points. These make me a very good worker. But as a result, I chronically miss the bigger picture. Do I deserve to be fast-tracked in the public sector when I actually perform best when doing tasks at lower-levels? I don’t think so.
Many of our civil service leaders with pristine, unblemished scholar backgrounds would be far more valuable to this country if they were workers. By that I mean, if they were led, rather than if they are forced to lead. I say that categorically. Put them in a management position and they become flustered, and they often start raising their voices, or pulling rank. I have seen too many of them in the civil service.
A good leader never becomes flustered or nervous regardless of how much unexpected and downright stupid problems exist in a project. In fact, they love when things turn completely on their heads. Do we have such people in our political leadership? Maybe. But based on the many parliamentary sessions I have watched over the years, most of them do not have a modicum of the composure that top leaders in the private sector whom I have worked with exhibit. Many (I would even say most) of the best leaders in the private sector whom I’ve become acquainted with were middling students in school.
One person who definitely has the composure to be an excellent leader is Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
We need to change our system and we need to change it now. We need send the message to parents that says, “look, you can keep sending your children to tuition but he’s not going to get a scholarship; but you know what, let him build that app he’s been talking about. Get us a prototype and we will fund it.”
Once we start rewarding our kids for who they are, not what they know, we can build a country that all of us are proud of. When you create a macrocosm of the classroom where you make the teacher’s pet class monitor, you make people hate him more. Where there is hate, there is conflict; where there is conflict, there is unrest; and where there is unrest, people are going to get hurt.
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#1
沙发 目测新加坡奖学金得主不见得会比路人政治智慧高
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#2
这个还是挺中肯的,但并不是奖学金得主都会成领导人啊如果只是会读书考试完成指定任务的“执行者”肯定不适合做领导人。聪明的人不一定适合做领导人,但蠢货肯定更不行,看看川建国...
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#3
我不记得第四代领导人都是奖学金得主而且反过来说,作者自己不适合当领袖人物,为什么就能推断出其他奖学金得主也不适合当领袖?
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#4
华人论坛贴一大篇英文,不懂说的啥。但觉得川普不错。像普京习主席一样,不是以前那些温温吞吞,唯唯诺诺,张口结舌,毫无主见,他们都是开拓性的领导,敢于走和前任不一样的路线。
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#5
神烦这种自己不行就出来讲别人也不行的文章·整天拿美国的人才库和小坡比,讲创新言必steve jobs.然后就是小坡的教育不行。可笑得可爱。
领导人就要像老李这样的领导人?
其实领导人和老李一样的领导人有本质的差别。奖学金得主本来就是出来做管理者。
奖学金制度就是为这些管理者而设的。一点问题也没有。
讲句实话,作者自己烂就算了。靠补习而来的好成绩算了毛!还要出来诋毁别人。诋毁奖学金制度。
真心的瞎扯淡。 -
#6
懂王比这里的人都成功上百倍千倍,你居然说他是蠢货?
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#7
这些补习补出来的,除了瞎扯淡还能干啥?相信那些总统奖得主,李显龙何晶没有一个是靠补习的。
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#8
就事论事,正常人不会让民众注射饮用消毒剂漂白水治新冠
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#9
盛世需要干吏,乱世才出英雄Oxford的PPE叫你客观思考,结果以果为因
英雄是打仗干出来的,
坡坡现在太安逸,精英太嫩,暴力政治斗争太少了,
回到1965 种族动乱,干掉政敌的年代自然 英雄,下个LKY就出来了
呵呵,看看现在对付工人党的妇人之仁, TOP2 去牛剑的精英不会打仗呀 -
#10
非常同意你。自古以来,中国有魄力大刀阔斧,开创新局面的领导,没有一个是读很多书的。成吉思汗朱元璋,近代就更是这样毛泽东,邓小平,习近平。那些相对平庸的反而都是正经名牌大学
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#11
毛和邓都是国外留学过的高材生啊老者也是高材生啊
就是现在的那位初中生,一说小学生的 -
#12
这个作者补课也补得太夸张了真正聪明的学生有哪个会这样补课的
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#13
trump经常乱说话但是他一点也不蠢,该转风向的时候绝对不犹豫。像obama那种只会打嘴炮的怂货才是垃圾总统,BLM也是他搞出来的
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#14
非常不同意。我学历不高,读书可不少啊。老毛,一个图书管理员哪上过什么留学啊?
老邓在法国纯粹是打工,他会说法语吗?难道留学的课程都是用四川话讲的? -
#15
太祖没留学过吧还是我记错了?
不过同意楼上的观点,靠补习来的好成绩没资格说上面的那些话。 -
#16
这也行 ? 层主ID平安
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#17
你基本上翻译了这篇英文作者大致也是这个意思,补习出来的奖学金获得者不适合当领导者
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#18
关键问题是补习出来的和正常学习的,你怎么区分呢?除非彻底把补习给禁了以前我们学习的时候,那些能上清北的,学习算用功的,但是绝非补习能补进去的。所以我觉得补习是学渣的专利。
但是,现在好像风向变了,衡水中学毛坦厂中学这种的,每年竟然也有不少能上清华的,这就让人迷惑了,看来补习的威力不可小视。 -
#19
秀才想造反?填鸭填出来的精英,遇到事就怂了
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#20
别的奖学金得主接触的不多PSC和MOE奖学金得主接触的还是不少的,基本没有填鸭补习出来的,能力和见识都不错,只能说作者只能代表自己
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#21
非常同意你。这些精于英文的人根本靠不住。另一楼的帖子里,居然还有一个网名拼音叫破人体的,说什么融入了就得说英文。这见识也太短了!我们老板说他见过很多本地顶级富豪,都是只会说中文和福建话。
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#22
没法区别补习出来的和正常学习的,yes但是补习出来就是靠别人喂食的,像这样长期被人喂食者虽然从成绩上看不出,但是和自学者在能力上的区别差得太多。
从他对自己的补习沾沾自喜上就可以看出这智力。 -
#23
听得出来你想从那些领导代入你自己既然你觉得学历不重要,外语更不重要,那你有没有想过为什么大多数领导都送子女出国留学?甚至从小就在外国语学校就读?
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#24
自古都是这样开国皇帝从尸山血海爬出来上位,但是没听过也会用同样的方式来培养接班人的。相反,都是很注重皇子的学习的。
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#25
那是为留条后路转移资产
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#26
这玩意还是靠天生的成分多不然曹操怎么会说生子当如孙仲谋,刘景升儿子若豚犬耳。
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#27
是孙策 孙权的料子,再险恶也能脱颖而出要是刘禅的料子,卧龙当老师都白搭
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#28
这就是幸存者偏差了有这种素质的料子不少,但是最终成了的是极少数。能走到最后的,天时地利人和一个都不能少。
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#29
看怎么偏差法了古代一个王侯将相的若干子女,接受差不多的教育培养下,有些资质很好的能脱颖而出,而更多的是平庸的,甚至很差的。
其实这个从小就差不多能观察出来了。 -
#30
这个就别出来秀了吧太祖从来没有留过学,小平同志是留学法国
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#31
把补习禁了显然不是个好办法。那是不是学音乐,美术,体育的找私教都应该禁止[…]呢?本禁了显然不是个好办法。那是不是学音乐,美术,体育的找私教都应该禁止呢?本坛时常有网友因为觉得工作中英文不够好而问哪里有学习班,是不是也不应该呢?寻求外力协助提升自己的技能本身没问题。问题是用某个考试成绩作为单一考核标准。国际级的知名大学早就不是看单一的考试成绩了。ACSI今年的网上开放日请了一个前两年毕业的校友。小伙子是学校游泳队长,学生会主席,IB考试满分,不管他有没有补习私教,能把这些都做到这个程度说明有相当能力。本文作者虽然拿到政府奖学金,看起来后面的发展不是很如意,从一个角度说明筛选还是发挥了功能。
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#32
游泳队和学生会主席,这就算是全面发展有能力?是不是对全面发展有什么误解?
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#33
选拔人才的确是难题唯分数论吧,容易出书呆子。
看重社会活动吧,这就对寒门子弟不公平了。例如有钱可以跑去非洲搞个什么关爱饥民的活动,或者参与个门槛很高的运动,例如马术,媒体报道一下,好像很屌,其实有钱谁都能做得到,和能力没有任何关系。 -
#34
科举制度毕竟给了寒门进阶的希望,对于社会阶层的进步功不可没,
不过总觉得新加坡这边的大学提倡全面发展没有得到美国大学的精髓,在校期间的各大社团就觉得中英文辩论队不错,有些社团参加的时候就觉得是在浪费时间。 -
#35
也不知道他们这些人是否看了文章,人家作者的意思就是现在所谓政府奖学金得主看着德智体全面发展,但实际上因为不知道人间疾苦,没有steet smart,所以领导力欠缺。
人家作者写的和你们的理解是一样的,为啥还在一直跑题说作者补习的事情?
人家作者也是在深深检讨补习这件事情呀 -
#36
不觉得这样说太武断了吗?在你的认知里国家领导人送子女出国都是为了转移资产?
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#37
你说的顶级富豪是海底捞老板吧?
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花生豆 楼主#38
【少儿不宜】新加坡奖学金得主与新加坡的第四代领导人
这是今天在本地投资圈看到的一篇文章。是一名新加坡奖学金得主匿名发在 quora 上的。
Do you think an overhaul is needed in the Singapore civil service in how we select our leaders (government scholarship)?
As a government scholar, I feel it is important that I echo my thoughts on this.
I attended the Integrated Programme at HCI, and proceeded on an SAF scholarship to read PPE at the University of Oxford. I then completed an MPhil in Economics at the University of Cambridge.
TLDR: Government scholarships in Singapore do a good job at identifying administrators; but administrators are not leaders, and should never be mistaken for leaders.
Scholars in Singapore are chosen at a very young age. I would hesitate to say that A-level performance is correlated with how competent you will be as a person because as many people who have went through the process know very well, you can do pretty well if you were born to a good family.
From the age of 7 through when I graduated from Hwa Chong Junior College, I was waited on hand and foot by at least 4 different tutors every week, usually in more than 4 separate two-hour sessions. In JC, I averaged one two-hour session a day, which cost an average of around $80 per hour. If you run the numbers, that’s $1120 a week, $4480 a month, and $53,760 a year. A lot of Singaporean households do not even earn $50,000 a year to be spent on tutors alone.
Because I was under such strict supervision, at no point in my pre-university academic journey have I felt that I lagged behind. In fact, I have perpetually felt that I was very much ahead of my peers. This is the privilege I was awarded for having tiger parents, and as such, I suffer from one disadvantage that many scholars will never admit to because of their inferiority complex—I cannot deal with situations in which parameters are not explicit. In other words, I panic when it comes to dealing with atypical problems.
The Singapore government scholarships reward pre-adults in Singapore who have been able to be very consistent at achieving their annual KPIs. There are benefits to identifying those who can perform well in clearly specified tasks, which are what academic examinations are, the main of which is you get good workers.
The methodology of academic testing is simple—you attend school for a period of time to learn a particular set of topics based on an explicitly described set of syllabi. The examinations at the end of the term check that you have made consistent progress in understanding the material. There might be a few trick questions which would require some level of creativity, but while these questions take you outside the box, you are still pressed right up against it. This is the same for all aspects of school-based achievements, such as CCAs, competitions, community service, etc. The very best students in Singapore are basically very good at checking off items on a list.
Public administration is mostly about carrying out government services in a way that ensures the least disruption to the livelihoods of the people you serve. i.e Trains should not fail, passports should be issued promptly, roads should be maintained, trees trimmed, etc. When you deputize people who have been able to perform tasks with well-defined parameters to complete tasks with well-defined parameters, they do well. This should be the intent of government scholarships—to identify these people such that they minimize the frustrations of the public with regards to public infrastructure and services.
What should not be the intent of government scholarships is to be of the impression that these scholars have what it takes to perform adequately as leaders in any organization. This is a flawed impression that is only getting worse from generation to generation because of the elitism that we have fostered in the civil service. The idea that scholars are the cream of the crop of every imaginable domain is poisonous, and symptoms of this hubris have started to manifest in the PAP over the past few years of leadership transition. We now have textbook teacher’s pets occupying ministerial positions; I know one when I see one because I am one. Trust me, you don’t want them as your leaders.
Who then should lead?
Lee Kuan Yew, while a remarkable student in his own right, had other qualities that made him a great leader. The qualities that made him a great student were not always the qualities that made him a great leader. I stand firm on this position.
Great leaders are resilient. They are able to think of solutions to problems with an overabundance of unknown parameters. They are able to perform well in the most complex and messy of situations; not because they can do no wrong, but because they have the gumption to get it right, even at the end of many wrongs. Make no mistake, the one thing that defines a great leader is failure; not success. And I think we, in Singapore, chronically get this upside down.
Our merry band of scholars and 4th-generation leaders may be of the impression that they share the spirit of that which underpinned the transformation of our country; but the reality is none of them have faced rock bottom in their lives. Sure, they may have botched a smattering of projects, but this is nothing compared to when your life is literally falling apart and you have to muster strength and grace in those situations in order to turn things around.
Why do top American schools produce so many inventive thinkers compared to top schools in other countries? Why have the founders of companies whose products have revolutionized the way we live, Facebook, Apple, Tesla, IBM, Microsoft, Uber, Google, Amazon, all been from top American universities? If you attribute it to the quality of education at these universities, you will be wrong. There’s nothing intrinsically superior about the education received at Harvard or Columbia compared to the education you receive at NTU or NUS. You attend lectures and take exams just the same at Harvard as you would at NUS. The difference is (and always has been) the ability of top Ivy League universities at identifying leaders of tomorrow.
Contrary to how most universities that we are accustomed to choose their students, American universities have a very different guideline. They are interested in who you are as a person, rather than just your test scores. They appreciate those who take bold risks, those who do things differently, those who overcome adversities, those who are street-smart, those who see the world for what you can do; rather than what you can’t.
In Singapore, we glorify the student who gets 9 distinctions at A-levels, and we ignore the athlete who competes every year but wins nothing. We award scholarships to those with a perfect record, but the student who achieves a 2:2 degree while battling cancer is a mere footnote.
We have talent in Singapore. We have people who have done amazing things with their lives, people have gone through incredible journeys, people who have learnt far more about this world than that which can be put from pen to paper for a letter grade. We keep telling ourselves that we need more talent, but have we ever stopped to ask ourselves, what is talent?
Do we stop giving out scholarships then?
No, we will always need public administrators. But we should start by acknowledging that public administrators are administrators, first and foremost. They have been administrators from the start and you are not going to find a Steve Jobs in Ng Wai Teck from Raffles Junior College. Give them a task and they will do it well, but in nation-building, it is easier to do the actual “building” than to think of “what to build.”
We have a lot builders in the country, now what we need are architects.
We, as a society, need to learn to harness the energy of the many Steve Jobs that we have collectively decided to be talent-free. In the next 50 years, we are going to have to deal with a lot of problems in our country that cannot be solved merely by a team of yes-men. We could do that before because we have just been meeting the basic requirements of life. Scholars are good with meeting requirements.
Our “leadership” love to make sweeping statements that we do not have enough talent and creativity in this country; which is why we need to bring them in from abroad. I have nothing against talent from abroad. They make us stronger. But perhaps we have to ask ourselves the fundamental question—how are we suppose to find talent if we do not provide incentives for talent to manifest?
Leaders do not have to know how to do everything. They just have to know who can. For that, you do not need someone who has all A’s, you need something that is far more precious—imagination.
We now have new needs that will continue to be unmet if we keep on thinking that old formulae will keep being applicable. If we insist on having builders to do the job of an architect, all we will get will be square houses. Functional, but of little value. It is not easy to separate the leaders from the best workers, but we have to start somewhere; and we can start by rewarding those who have overcome repeated bouts of absolute failure, rather than those who have had it together since day one.
As a scholar, I acknowledge my weaknesses. It is the very existence of these weaknesses that make me a good student. I do not challenge the norm, I am detail-oriented to a genuine fault, I do what is required, I will go the extra mile to get the extra points. These make me a very good worker. But as a result, I chronically miss the bigger picture. Do I deserve to be fast-tracked in the public sector when I actually perform best when doing tasks at lower-levels? I don’t think so.
Many of our civil service leaders with pristine, unblemished scholar backgrounds would be far more valuable to this country if they were workers. By that I mean, if they were led, rather than if they are forced to lead. I say that categorically. Put them in a management position and they become flustered, and they often start raising their voices, or pulling rank. I have seen too many of them in the civil service.
A good leader never becomes flustered or nervous regardless of how much unexpected and downright stupid problems exist in a project. In fact, they love when things turn completely on their heads. Do we have such people in our political leadership? Maybe. But based on the many parliamentary sessions I have watched over the years, most of them do not have a modicum of the composure that top leaders in the private sector whom I have worked with exhibit. Many (I would even say most) of the best leaders in the private sector whom I’ve become acquainted with were middling students in school.
One person who definitely has the composure to be an excellent leader is Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
We need to change our system and we need to change it now. We need send the message to parents that says, “look, you can keep sending your children to tuition but he’s not going to get a scholarship; but you know what, let him build that app he’s been talking about. Get us a prototype and we will fund it.”
Once we start rewarding our kids for who they are, not what they know, we can build a country that all of us are proud of. When you create a macrocosm of the classroom where you make the teacher’s pet class monitor, you make people hate him more. Where there is hate, there is conflict; where there is conflict, there is unrest; and where there is unrest, people are going to get hurt.
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