REVISED STRUCTURE OF EDUCATION - (Paper Misc. 3 of 1979)
I am sorry. Thank you. There is a Senior Lecturer. So we have Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor and Senior Professor. The intention behind this system was good, namely, the University was losing too many staff and therefore greater pay should be given to the teaching staff. However, if we look at the actual promotions, we find that people like doctors, Business Administration lecturers, lawyers get promoted more rapidly, not because they are intrinsically better in terms of education and educational value but because their market value is higher. This is one more example to illustrate this problem. The Member for Anson recognises this problem, Sir, and emphasised that we should look for quality of commitment and, I should add, professional excellence, academic excellence. Titles matter to people. Professionals are not so much concerned with pay if they are accorded proper status, proper respect. But if teachers and professors do not get the social esteem which they think is their due, then they can only feel aggrieved that they have lost out somewhere along the line. And if we add to this the huge discrepancies in pay between the civil service and the teaching profession, then I think the discontent gets all the greater. I think what is important for us to realise, Sir, is that from the point of view of new graduates, what are the inducements for them to go into a particular profession or career? In other words, the concept of opportunity cost is more important than market value. What has the person got to give up to pursue a University career, to pursue a career as a teacher? Just the other day, one Institute of Education official complained to me that their lecturers were being paid no better than teachers themselves. These lecturers are teachers to teachers. If the morale of these lecturers is low, then they can only present glum faces to the teachers who will, in turn, present glum faces to the pupils. Now, what about the so-called brilliant 8% that the Report extols? Here, I think there is a danger that because they are recognised as brilliant, we might overload them. The proposal to introduce a third language at some stage is one which I would not support. What about the values and attitudes of these people? Having the bilingual capability, having eight distinctions and so on do not necessarily make these people good leaders. If I may quote from one Minister whom I overheard in the Member's Room, he said, "What good is it to me to have a First Class Honours Permanent Secretary if that fellow is not practical?" He has a point. Another person in an exalted capacity said, "Under the new system, I would not have survived. I am a monolinguist." How many people in this Chamber would have survived? Do we make enough room? In other words, is there a necessary correlation between intellect and linguistic ability? And if there is none, is there sufficient leeway in the system for transference or for emergence of the brilliant monolinguist, or even the above average monolinguist? I have trouble as I read through the Report on streaming. To go from the higher step down to the lower step, yes, it is very easy. It is like falling off the ladder. To climb up the ladder, both primary and secondary, the language is quite a barrier. I think the Education Ministry should look more carefully at this problem. On the flexibility which is given to parents, it is a good gesture. But at the same time I am just wondering what the end result would be if the parents all sign for their children to be admitted to the higher streams of education. Is there indeed sufficient room for the late developer? Let me get down to the objective of education. The Goh Report simply puts it that the basic objective is to achieve literacy in at least one language. The Prime Minister is more ambitious as usual. In the second paragraph, he says: 'It was, and is to educate a child to bring out his greatest potential, so that he will grow up into a good man and a useful citizen.' I have no quarrel with either the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister on the stated objective. I would just like to emphasise a few points. One is that from my observation, even university students do not know how to think for themselves. It is a surprising statement but it is a statement of fact. Because they have been programmed right throughout the school system to be recipients, to be like a computer taking in some input and providing some output. When students organise seminars nowadays, they turn to lecturers and also to people outside, established in their fields, to come and speak. In my time when we organised seminars, we were the ones who were the speakers at the seminars. When we had debates, we thought through the ideas ourselves. I took part in many debates. We thought through. We did not go up to lecturers to ask for ideas. But now the university teams come up to us and say, "Can you give us ideas on this subject because, if you don't, the other team will win because they are approaching Professor so-and-so." It is something serious for us to think about. Here, I go back to my good friend Confucius, and I quote him in CL3 (Chinese as a Lower Second Language): xue er bu si ze wang ( ) si er bu xue ze dai ( ) "He who learns without thinking is lost. He who thinks without learning is in great danger." I might add, "dangerous to others and to society as well," Our students also need to have the ability to select. Singapore is a small open economy. For all our educational efforts, unless the proper values and attitudes are instilled in the students, these efforts can be undone through the TV, through magazines, through the movies, through contact with tourists. Let me turn to The Analects of Confucius, page 206. This time I will quote in EL2. Master Kung said: 'Highest are those who are born wise. Next are those who become wise by learning. After them come those who have to toil painfully in order to acquire learning. Finally, to the lowest class of the common people belong those who toil painfully without ever managing to learn.' I quote that, Sir, not to discourage the working class but tO show that not all Confucianist values and ideas are valuable. We have to be selective. Do we know, for example, that in the Confucian scale of hierarchy, the scholars and officials are at the top followed by farmers, artisans and merchants. In a developing society, we value the entrepreneurial class. The status must be there. But in a Confucianist system, his class is at the bottom. That is obviously not what we want. In our society, we need to have much respect for technical and physical or manual labour. But the Confucianist value system relegates them to the bottom. Sir, I quote this because, as high a regard as I have for Master Confucius, we need to be selective in adopting values either from the East or from the West, or both. Thirdly, Sir, our students should have the ability to cope with stress that comes with competition, rapid change, and the stress that comes from the compact living environment. It must be a great sense of tragedy to us to read from the newspapers from time to time of young students committing suicide on the eve of an examination. Are we giving them sufficient to cope with such stresses? Then our students have to be tolerant of others, but most important they have to be cultured individuals, not people who look towards a philosophy of crass materialism, not people who eventually assume positions of power and exercise power in petty fashion. Above all, students must be moral beings. Here, there is a dilemma of a secular state where we cannot teach religious values. We have to take ethical values distilled from various religious systems. The Ministry of Education should set a good example. I have here some problems with the English. On Chapter 1, page 2, in the middle of paragraph 4, there is a sentence which reads as follows: "The retention being between 2-5% in most cases." It is a sentence that does not have a verb. In Chapter 1, page 5, line 4 of paragraph 3, the sentence reads: "But in Singapore, much of the problems ...". It should be, "But in Singapore, most of the problems ...". In the fifth line of the last paragraph of page 5, Chapter 1, it reads: "One way to overcoming the dangers ...". Not only is the word "overcoming" spelt wrongly but the proper word is "overcome". Sir, we are all human. So perhaps we can be forgiven. We make mistakes but God does not. May I be permitted just to end by quoting from the Book of Proverbs, Chapter One. 'The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: That men may know wisdom and instruction, understand words of insight, receive instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; that prudence may be given to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth - the wise man also may hear and increase in learning, and the man of understanding acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.' Amen. 3.18 p.m.