C.V. Devan Nair
Singapore
“Mr Speaker, Sir, may I make a most unusual request? I know I am supposed to be the first to speak today, but the Prime Minister has successfully pre-empted my speech by touching on my own subject and in a much better way. So I will require some time to think of something else to say.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, is the Minister aware that for Singaporeans who do not understand Hanyu Pinyin, the name of the new town which reads "Hou Gang New Town" could mislead some Singaporeans into believing that it is a new town of gangsters headed by our Hon. Minister of Defence who is also called "Howe".”
“I hope the Ministry of Education will seek the views of the various parties concerned so that before the curricula are implemented they would have been given careful study, review and close scrutiny so as to avoid the old mistake of merely treating the symptoms of the ailment.”
“I ask for your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir. While we are on the subject of occupational health and safety, I wonder whether the Minister for Labour could also bring under his purview the occupational health of working Members of Parliament.”
“Sir, there was one point which the Member raised but was not referred to in the reply. That was the instance given of employers taking down the names of workers who went in to vote. Surely that is reprehensible and the Ministry could do something to persuade such employers not to indulge in such un-Singaporean practices.”
“May I repeat that the governments of the developing countries will sooner or later be compelled to develop common and effective counter-measures against the ITF brand of protectionism, if our sea and air transport workers are to keep their jobs. Much obliged, Mr Speaker, Sir. 3.50 p.m.”
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“Mr Speaker, Sir, may I make a most unusual request? I know I am supposed to be the first to speak today, but the Prime Minister has successfully pre-empted my speech by touching on my own subject and in a much better way. So I will require some time to think of something else to say.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, is the Minister aware that for Singaporeans who do not understand Hanyu Pinyin, the name of the new town which reads "Hou Gang New Town" could mislead some Singaporeans into believing that it is a new town of gangsters headed by our Hon. Minister of Defence who is also called "Howe". NEW PUNGGOL FISHING PORT AND MARKET (Building of) 7. Mr Ng Kah Ting asked the Minister for National Development, now that the land on which Kangkar Fish Market stands has been compulsorily acquired, when and where the new fish market in Punggol will be built and what is the cost of construction.”
“It is this economic value of the English language that has made most parents regard it as an important language and want their children to learn it properly so as to afford them better employment prospects. On the other hand, Chinese is looked upon as a language of culture and tradition, and up to the present moment, it has not got very much economic value. Many are doubtful that had it not been for the requirements stipulated by the Ministry of Education, how many pragmatic and utilitarian-minded parents would have encouraged their children to learn Chinese language, or for that matter, the pupils themselves would have taken on the serious study of the language of their own volition. We must realise that in the 80s, if we lose our mother tongue language, what we will be losing is not just a language but all the culture and values that go with it, not least the self-confidence and self-respect of a people. Nation building is not the mere task of decades, but an on-going, never-ending process. Moreover, a nation cannot be built on an economic foundation alone. There are other factors that go to form a nation, such as the nurturing of national consciousness, the morale of the armed forces, social cohesiveness and traditional virtues of loyalty, filial piety, kindness and love as well as respect for the elders; all these are not to be bought with money nor obtainable with material means. I hope all Members of Parliament, all far-sighted and knowledgeable people, the newspapers and mass media and community organisations, will cooperate and help persuade and convince parents and members of the public to attach importance to mother tongue education. 3.37 p.m.”
“He said that certain Ministers have proposed legislation to enable the parents to force children whom they have brought up to look after their parents (Sin Chew Jit Poh of 4th February, 1981). Some people think that income tax concessions should be given to encourage taxpayers to look after their parents. This is another manifestation of utilitarianism. Does it mean that without tax incentive, we do not have to look after our parents? Are we degraded to such a level that caring for the aged parents has become a burden? What a pity! Must we legislate to get our children to look after their parents? Legislation would not help to turn the tide. We are now striving to promote mother tongue education, hoping that we could inculcate in our students good oriental traditions and ethical values through it. Each race has its own mother tongue or dialects. As the Chinese have numerous dialects, we are promoting Mandarin as the mother tongue for the Chinese in Singapore. However, from the reaction and response from members of the public and from the feedback from the teaching circles, it seems that the learning of Chinese language is because of the requirement that second language must reach a certain grade for admission into the pre-university class or university or because in the PSLE, marks for languages are given double weightage, and not for the sake of inculcating certain cultural or traditional values through that language. This is also indirectly evidenced from readers' comments to the press on Secondary 1 streaming. Because of our demographic structure, economic and geo-political factors, the bilingual policy of our Government is correct and logical. English is the language of our Economy, Science and Technology.”
“We have achieved much in this respect for all to see. All these great achievements have been obtained under the leadership of the PAP Government. We shall strive further in the coming years to restructure our economy, to enhance our technological and scientific levels and to raise our productivity in order to ensure our continued economic prosperity so as to maintain our people's high level of living standards. However, in entering the 80s, we face a now situation. Let us look back on what had taken place in the past. In those years, in the process of our speedy economic development, did we as a people and as a nation lose something? An obvious trend has been an increasing quest after material enjoyment and the manifestation of down-to-earth utilitarianism of the people. Another trend has been the mani- festation of individualism and pervading self-interest with hardly any regard or consideration for others and the community. Perhaps this is a by-product of our meritocracy system. However, the influence of Western lifestyles and fads or fancies imported through travel, studying abroad and the mass media, seems to have been the more important cause. With this prevalence of materialism, utilitarianism and individualism, our Asian traditions and values are being challenged and eroded. Just to name a most obvious example: filial piety, for instance, has been a cardinal virtue of the Chinese people preserved over the past several thousand years, but now we have people not wanting to shoulder the responsibility of looking after their parents. Some have even chucked away their parents or grandparents in the homes for the aged, not caring a hoot for them. The Prime Minister has made mention of this in his Chinese New Year message.”
“The emphasis is on the work attitude of the workers, stressing that the workers must be loyal and diligent. I personally feel that to build this new labour-management relationship, although it is important to have good labour attitude, we must also view it from another point of view. First, every member of the team must be able to share fairly the fruits of labour. The fruits are not just monetary rewards, but should also include the management's appreciation and recognition of all the participants' efforts. "Whenever there is work, I am remembered; whenever there is reward, I am forgotten". This is most demoralizing. Secondly, the management must pay more attention to the welfare of the employees. This will include not only the safety of the work site but also the provision of opportunities for training, skill upgrading and career development. Thirdly, all staff, whatever their position and rank, should be accorded proper respect for only then can job satisfaction and respect for the job become prevalent. In this respect, the quality as well as the attitude of personnel manager or person in charge of personnel matters towards the employees is of utmost importance. Talking about labour-management relations, the Japanese example has always been quoted. There are two characteristics in the Japanese labour-management relationship. One is permanent employment and the other is the seniority system. These two have their cultural background and traditions, not just economics. Let us look at o6rselves: Do we have such a cultural tradition? For the last 20 years, for the sake of survival, we have been striving hard to build up our national economy and promote economic development in order to meet the basic needs of our people and to raise their living standard.”
“Needless to say, less haphazard and more stringent criteria to govern the selection and training of teachers will have to be developed. And the teaching profession itself must be socially upgraded and revalued, not necessarily in monetary terms. Desirable professional goals, the widening and deepening of professional values and standards, cannot be attained through decrees issued by the Ministry of Education. They will require a total commitment on the part of teachers' organisations in our Republic. Please let me make it clear that I do not suggest that machinery for processing the claims, grievances and grouses of teachers should be dispensed with. But what I do think is crucial is the transformation of teachers' organisations in Singapore into primarily professional bodies, much more concerned than they are today, with formulating, monitoring and promoting the range of professional interests, standards and values of our educators. If they do show such a transformation, I am certain that there will be no problem of inviting them to sit on the Schools Council. I commend this for the serious consideration of the teaching profession and of the Ministry of Education. Much obliged, Sir. 3.28 p.m. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Education (Dr Ow Chin Hock)( In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Motion thanking the President for his Address on 3rd February at the opening of our Fifth Parliament. In his Address, the President mentioned that there must be a new relationship of cooperation between management and labour in order to meet our future economic difficulties. In recent months, we have often heard of talks stressing the importance of team work and team spirit.”
“(I do not include the Member for Moulmein.) I do not envy the First Deputy Prime Minister or the Minister of Education. They have been entrusted with the holy task of unscrambling an unholy mess. My sincere condolences. Returning to the Addendum on Education, the promise of a new and more significant order in the education system is contained in the proposal to set up a Schools Council, and to venture into the areas of moral education and comparative religion. I hope these proposals are more than merely tentative gropings in the dark towards decentralisation, towards re-personalising our schools, actively involving our principals and teachers in the process of policy-making, and towards inspired motivation of the Singaporeans of tomorrow. If these proposals presage an intelligent and determined effort in these directions, as I believe they do, the teachers' unions in Singapore will need to perceive their roles in an altogether new light. For nothing is more important than producing the rounded, balanced and motivated Singaporeans of tomorrow, which can only be the result of conceiving the educational process as an integral body-mind-spirit affair, involving a creative and continuous inter-action between students, teachers, the Ministry and the community at large. A Canadian educator, presumably of British extraction, once asserted that the goals of education must be three-fold: liberation, integration and commitment. Liberation from ignorance and negativism; integration of perceptions into a nationally-valid framework of thought and ideas; and commitment to a rational and moral purpose. Such a conception of the goals of education will call for professional skills of a very high order.”
“It is this crucial aspect of education which is at long last beginning to get the attention it deserves, judging from the Addendum to the President's Address under the impress of the First Deputy Prime Minister. In the early years of the PAP Government, top priority was understandably given to providing universal education. A whole lot of new school buildings rose all over Singapore. And to meet the universal demand, we mass-produced teachers. But worse still, in the process we also mass-produced students, including an incredibly large proportion of so-called "drop-outs". There was little talk in those early days of quality control, curriculum development, slow-starters, quick starters, non-starters, and so on. The Ministry of Education, and I have pointed this out before, ruled through circulars - whole piles of them! The late Francis Thomas, former Principal of St Andrew's School, once told me that he expected to die from a surfeit of Education Ministry circulars. He was just one of the many good teachers whose character and talents went unutilised, if not misused or abused. Those were hey-days for the administrators. In fact, for professionals turned administrators - a more terrifying breed! Apart from some sturdy mission schools, which quietly ignored Ministry circulars, all other schools were depersonalised. And principals, teachers and students were reduced to statistical digits, to be juggled about with by a faceless and mysterious bureaucracy which walked the corridors of power in Kay Siang Road. One of the consequences of all this was that the teaching profession itself suffered social devaluation. The Member for Moulmein suffered social devaluation. And persons entirely devoid of any sense of vocation found themselves as teachers.”
“And, as I realised later, neither was the communist united front worth preserving. A good deal of what we saw around us in the late 40s, in the 5Os and early 60s, merited destruction. And in order to create the Singapore we know today, my generation set about destroying what had to be destroyed. But today, as a nation which has come into its own, with honest government, a stable polity, and spectacular achievements in the fields of housing, health, sanitation, education (with some qualifications), economic and industrial growth, our young people will inherit a society which is the envy of less fortunate countries - a nation and a people worth cherishing, worth preserving. The promotion of skills and knowledge, in and by themselves, will not protect, promote or enhance this inheritance. A premise so shallow and so arbitrary will pronounce on itself its own sentence of insufficiency. But, if accepted, it will also pronounce sentence of death on the Singapore of tomorrow. Our schools and other institutions of learning must, therefore, be seen as more than merely knowledge and skill factories, able to certify levels of knowledge and skills attained, but unable to certify or even indicate the quality and motivation of the human beings they churn out. Knowledge, like money, is not an end in itself. Rightly regarded, money is merely a means to an end - of more and better production for instance, of self-fulfilment through social fulfilment. But certainly not an end in itself, for pomp, show, self-gratification and self-aggrandisement. In other words, knowledge, like money, is not static. It has to be dynamic in action, and directed towards enhancing the quality of life of an entire nation and people. A well educated people are at once a well motivated people.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, if the Minister of Education is successful with his education policy, there will be no need whatsoever to resort to the horrendous possibility of genetic engineering mentioned by the hon. Member for Kim Seng. The Minister for Health, please do not think about it. Allow Singaporeans to produce our own children without intervention by genetic engineers. As a nation, the prolonged neglect of the larger, wider and deeper aims of our education policy can and must gravely impair the quality of the lives of our people. The purely functional and utilitarian aims of our education system are no doubt of cardinal importance. Our manpower planners require so many engineers, scientists, technicians, doctors, lawyers, economists, accountants, social scientists, skilled workers (but no genetic engineers, please), and so on. The maintenance and enrichment of our cultural and educational infrastructure will call for so many teachers, language specialists, arts graduates, philosophers (God bless them!), musicians, artists and the rest of the cultural brigade, who are also vitally important, not in terms of material production but in terms of what may be called the non-material motivated productivity of our people. An ever-increasing GNP is nothing to snigger about. Indeed, even our philosophers will have little to snigger about if the reverse were to be the case. For it is easier to philosophise in a comfortable armchair in a well-lined parlour, well-carpeted. The alternative is the philosophy of violent revolution, which is what persons like me started out with. For 20 or 30 years ago, we did not see much around us worth preserving. Colonialism, corruption, racialism, poverty, unemployment and squalor were clearly not worth preserving.”
“We have a common concept and a very strong sense of belonging to our Republic of Singapore. Singapore's prosperity and stability are linked with those of ASEAN countries. We have human resources. That our national economy can continue to grow is due to the patriotic spirit of our people. International military, political and economic scenes are changing swiftly. Yet, in the midst of these changes, we are still able to step steadily forward, We were able, time and again, to overcome various problems. Today, our people are enjoying a better livelihood. This is the result of the good leadership of our Government and the people's great love for their own country. Our people have been working hard day and night to create a better life and home. Our young people, full of enthusiasm, serve keenly in the national regular defence force or are in national service receiving stringent military training in order to defend our own country. All this goes to show that we have cultivated a national consciousness and identity among our people. Our entire people are imbued with the patriotic sense of "to be born here and to die here" and the will to strive hard together for the building of a more prosperous and a more stable Republic of Singapore. 3.45 p.m.”
“Just two months ago, my son got married to a Chinese girl in a Hindu temple and to make doubly sure of insurance coverage in the beyond they also took the precaution of getting married in a christian chapel. I do not know whether they have any plans for conciliating the Chinese Gods as yet. But that kind of thing can only happen in Singapore. But we might take this occasion, Sir, to say a few words to all those Singaporeans who flock to Kallang and indulge in what the press has called the "Kallang roar" and ask them to bear in mind that human beings do not roar. Only animals do. The right attitude towards sporting competitions is to applaud, whatever team it may be, for the merit of its performance. I am afraid our football fans have to become a bit more civilised and not to lose themselves in narrow sentiments. That Kallang roar is essentially an idiotic roar. I would hope that our soccer fans and all those who watch sporting competitions develop the true sporting spirit. Please applaud competing teems on their merits and not on the basis of the nationality they belong to. For if they do not do so, they are not sportsmen or appreciators of sports but people who bring about misunderstanding and a bad reputation for this country. It is to be hoped that community loaders, Members of Parliament, all of us who are in a position to do something, should bring to beer whatever influence we can to get our crowd to behave in a more rational and civilised manner. Mr Tan Cheng San (Paya Lebar)( In Mandarin): Sir, the Ministry of Culture has an important role to play in the inculcation of a national identity. Our society is a multi-racial and multi-cultural one. All of us are closely linked together in a common destiny.”
“Sir, when the Senior Vice-Premier of the People's Republic of China visited Singapore, it was politely but emphatically brought to his attention that we do not like to hear the term "overseas Chinese" in Singapore, for there are no overseas Chinese in Singapore. If there are a few, they ought to get back. Neither are there any overseas Indians in Singapore. If there are, they can take a free one-way ticket back to India. And there are no overseas Malays in Singapore. There are only Singaporeans. The Senior Vice-Premier of China got that message. I know several Members of this House of ethnic Chinese origin have visited China, and they have returned as even more patriotic Singaporeans. I know the Member for Khe Bong, for example, prefers life in Singapore, and if he does respect certain aspects of life in China he prefers to respect China from a very safe distance. I admire the spiritual riches of India, but I like to d9 so from a very safe distance. Among other reasons, I like modern sanitation. One wonders whether international sporting competitions make for international harmony or international disharmony. I think the English writer, George Orwell, was the first to write very convincingly of the dangers of international sporting competitions. Far from increasing international understanding, very often they tend to arouse not international harmony but narrow national passions. For the leader writers, reporters and correspondents who have been writing recently in the Indonesian press, I will give them one illustration. This kind of thing can only happen in Singapore.”
“I want my facts, figures and statistics. I will go elsewhere for my poetry. 3.16 p.m.”
“I hope that our writers and artists are patriotic. But it requires more than patriotism to produce good prose and poetry. For good literature in all languages, while it may have a local content, colour and flavour, must yet have a more than local and, if possible, a universal significance. That is why I am suspicious of some writers who appear to suck up to authority in their writings, in the hope of securing official approbation. I personally would not trust them, either as writers or as patriots. I might conclude, Mr Speaker, Sir, that often it is our technocrats, economic planners, and entrepreneurs themselves who draw upon their heads the contumely of the arty-crafty. For several of them are also guilty of a snobbery in reverse. You mention art, music, poetry or literature, and they snigger, and you can almost see them making a mental note to the effect: "This chap must be soft in the head." Such an attitude betokens an absence of culture and is the sad result of excessive specialisation enforced by the demands of modern disciplines in our tertiary institutions. It would therefore be a healthy development for Singapore if our technocratic elite attempt to widen and deepen their awareness of matters cultural and literary. By the same token, some of our writers could benefit from a heavy dose of the economics of development. It would be a pity if we developed too many Singaporeans with capsule minds, effectively, insulated against exposure to other fields of human experience and knowledge. As far as possible, we should aim at what I might call "the rounded Singaporean". And a rounded Singaporean will not be an ugly one. Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, may I assure the Finance Minister that I for one would not want him to present his next Budget in poetical form.”
“Our major preoccupation therefore is to ensure the secure livelihood of our people, including the literati and members of the English department, in conditions conducive to continued political stability and economic progress. But the best answer ever given to the growing number of artistic and literary refugees from reality, both in Singapore and elsewhere, was one given by the great American architect, philosopher and futurist, Buckminster Fuller. He once told an audience of culture-vultures in America, who looked down snootily on mundane and unspiritual things like technology, as follows: "Throw all the technology into the ocean, and millions will starve. Throw all the philosophers into the ocean, and nobody will starve!" And Singaporeans ought to know, especially our students, that if we throw our Government Front benchers, our Back benchers, our top civil servants, our technocrats, systems engineers, entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and managers into the ocean, there will not be any Singapore. But throw these arty-crafty reality-dodgers into the ocean, and you might get a bit more literary and spiritual realism. You might even conceivably get a better poetry corner in the Sunday Times. There are some people who seem to think, I am told in the University, that the official establishment in Singapore will look with favour on poetry or prose writings which have a propagandistic content. This is utter rubbish. I do not know anybody in the Singapore Government who believes in the communist theory of socialist realism in literature, initiated by the late and unlamented Josef Stalin and his cultural henchman, Zhdhanov. If there are any, they must have escaped the eyes of our ISD and should not be anywhere in the Government.”
“Our Deputy Prime Minister, for instance, has drunk deep of Plato, Aristotle and the classics, quite apart from his mastery of Adam Smith and the classical economists. I have heard our Prime Minister discuss the development of Shakespeare's dramas over lunch. Our Foreign Minister, as everyone knows, is a walking library. Rumour has it that even his toilet is a mini-library! And I will take a dim view of anybody who thinks poorly of Dostoevsky, Marvell or Wordsworth. So let us tell these ladies and gentlemen, do not try to give the misleading impression to our students that those who sit on the Front and Back-benches of this House are a bunch of cultural and literary morons. What we do object to is not Western culture and civilisation, or English culture and literature, but the yellow pop culture and the cheap literature churned out by the pulp mills of the West. Not only of the West, we also get pop mandarin and pop culture through Taipeh and Hong Kong. If we were against English culture and literature, our senior lecturer in the English Department would not have a job, for there would be no English Department. Although I do not personally subscribe to any institutional religion, I would not object if anyone described me as somebody who values things spiritual. And I know a number of Members of this House who, in their different ways, are deeply religious men. But it is not with the empyrean that we in this House are busy. Rather it is the opposite end of things that engage our attention. And, quite rightly, for ladders to Heaven for earth-bound mortals like us must yet be rooted on firm ground. As an Indian scripture put it: "The earth is our footing".”
“" Use the expressive power of the English language, in the way some of the Presidents and Prime Ministers of broken-back societies elsewhere use their own languages, to treat their people to hock, platitudes, political chants - anything else but the truth, the hard facts about the state of the economy, the geo-political changes for the worse, etc., etc. And our Minister for Finance! When you present next year's Budget don't you dare use statistics! Present your Budget in English verse, with appropriate rhythm and metre. Otherwise, the poor chaps in the English Department would not be able to under- stand you, with your poor powers of expression in the English language. Another speaker in the forum worked herself into a lather over alleged remarks about Western values and chauvinism. A succeeding speaker goes on to make the astonishing assertion that Singapore is probably guilty of cultural protectionism. He says, and he is an expatriate: 'Dostoevsky, Marvell and Wordsworth are not relevant, maybe, but in the larger sense they are somewhat insidious. I resent this belief... '. Now, what in heaven's name are these learned blather skites blathering about? Mr Speaker, the Oxford Dictionary defines the word "blather" as "loquacious nonsense". If there is one place in the world where there is no cultural protectionism, it is Singapore. Who in Singapore is against Western culture or English culture, or for that matter against any culture, be it Chinese, Indian or Malay? The present generation of leaders are persons reared, among other things, on English literature. Indeed, some of the values we cherish and admire are British values, which seem to be going out of fashion in Great Britain itself. But that is not our fault.”
“He will not be mechanical, for he probably does not even know what machines are - let alone poetry! I remember the Prime Minister had given the rationale behind the decision to lower standards of admission for teachers in the early 60s. But there is no mention of this. However, the senior lecturer is absolutely right in at least one respect. We did assemble a number of incorruptible people, a number of resources, and organised a hard-working population, and hey presto, something did happen - the swamps of Jurong gave way to an industrial estate, the slums of Singapore gave way to our numerous townships - and hey presto, we have got the Singapore of today. Only, we did not bargain for this senior lecturer in the Department of English. I will continue with the quotation from this inspired senior lecturer: 'The other point I want to make is about the style of the leadership. If you look at the speeches, they always bring in statistics. We must be about the only country where the Prime Minister releases a sat of tables with his text. Every National Day speech contains productivity figures and projections of trade figures, GNP, and so on. So one does not really need great expressive power'. Our PM has no expressive power as you all know! And the same kind of mindless gibberish goes on and on. This is the kind of intellectual food served to our students in the arts and humanities departments. So what does this mean? We tell the Prime Minister, "Please, Mr Prime Minister, in your next National Day speech, leave out facts, figures and statistics.”
“And our vapid poets (not all of them, please!) with their anaemic, neurotic and erotic verses, cannot even in their most vivid imaginings, capture the drama, the pain, passion, courage and sometimes sheer heroism which formed the warp and woof of the lives of the founding generation of Singaporeans. And yet, the very uniqueness of Singapore is now used as a stick to hit us with. Here is a prize piece of nincompoopery. I quote from a forum on English language and literature in Singapore, published in the last issue of Commentary, a quarterly journal of the University of Singapore Society. The speaker is a senior lecturer in the University's Department of English. I quote: 'Quite unabashedly and without apology, the Prime Minister has said, if I remember correctly, that in the 60s, the early 60s, when there was a baby boom, the Government lowered standards of admission for teachers and they just admitted anybody, [including daily-rated labourers!]. And he took it as an accepted fact that we had to do this. The result has been a decline in standards of English, mainly or partly because of the decline in the quality of teachers. But the PM's remark points to something: in Singapore the solution is always mechanical. Numbers all the time. We think that once we assemble a number of people, a number of resources, and so on, hey presto, something will happen.' More about this person later on. So our Prime Minister is too mechanical. Remember the passion I referred to? But no, the Prime Minister is devoid of passion. He is a robot. His solutions are always mechanical. So we had better have an artist as our next Prime Minister. He would not be mechanical. Perhaps we might try out the chap who writes that poetry corner in the Sunday Times.”
“What were some of the crucial collective experiences which went into the making of this generation? They were children or adolescents during the great Wall Street collapse of the early 30s, followed by the Great Depression. I remember that as an eight-year old boy, my unemployed father with my mother and seven of us children (There was no Lee Kuan Yew then to say "Only two", and a decent interval in between. There was hardly any interval between us.) were forced to live for nearly two years in a dilapidated garage near Muar. And we did not have meat or even fish for weeks on end. Others fared much worse, sleeping on five-foot ways and tin shacks. Then came the maelstrom of the Second World War, the unrelieved horrors, the massacres and tortures associated with the Japanese occupation. The end of World War 11 and the British re-occupation did not bring with it peace and tranquillity. On the contrary, members of that generation found themselves caught up in a swelling, impetuous and irresistible tide of anti-colonialism which was to irrevocably change the political face of Asia. There followed rapid political changes, accompanied by social turbulence, riots, strikes, arson, bomb explosions, and the like - which Singaporeans of today are strangers to. And many a time it was a touch-and-go affair in successive and often simultaneous confrontations with the colonialists, the crooks, the communalists and the communists - the four C's if you prefer. It was no ordinary generation, both leaders and led, which between them forged this nation into being, for they went through a fiery baptism which we sincerely hope that our children will be spared. Many of them are with us no more, and with every passing year, the relentless attrition of time will remove more of them.”
“But this may be because with increasing age, some of my glands do not function as efficiently as they used to. Along with our writers, there have also emerged the literary critics. Here, there appear to be two schools, one a club of mutual masturbators, who are constantly praising each other's works, and the other of critics who use hatchets with great vigour to chop up matchsticks. In this connection, Mr Speaker, Sir, may I toll the Minister of Education that I was alarmed to learn that in our secondary schools, a number of our local poets are read during appreciation of poetry sessions. I am alarmed, Sir, because I know a number of them who ought not to be read at all. I would submit that until such time as we develop in Singapore nationally as well as internationally credible standards of literary criticism, it would be safer to introduce our children to English poetry through universally acknowledged models of poetic content and diction like Wordsworth, Shelley, Milton, Shakespeare, and so on. I mean this seriously, for if I find that my daughter who is in secondary school now, develops depraved tastes in poetry, I may feel obliged to sue the Ministry of Education. I will now say something about the credentials of the generation which made the Singapore of today, which the next generation will inherit. We must give these credentials, so that the arty-crafty dodgers of reality are not allowed to denigrate the virtues and, if I may say so, the passion, which went into the making of modern Singapore. The Singapore we know today, warts and all, and are justifiably proud of, is not the product of our sins. It is the product and image of the virtues of a whole generation of people.”
“In doing so, I know that the position I will take will be shared by the generality of Members in this House. I am ignorant about Singapore writers who use Mandarin, Malay or Tamil as their means of expression. But I have gone through a good number of those who offer their literary creations in English. A surprising number of them write well, and deserve praise and encouragement. No society is complete without its literati. So may they increase in number and flourish! But what some among the literati do not seem to appreciate is that no literati will be possible, without the rest of society, including our much-maligned entrepreneurs, technocrats and other "materialistic" types who are responsible for the foundation of material well-being in our society, and for the solid material launching pad from which our literati are able to shoot up into their ethereal spiritual orbits. A good number of our poets, for instance, have managed memorable lines, and some even memorable verses of a sustained high quality. But alas, an equal number of them have also produced execrable stuff which they attempt to palm off as poetry. These are the confidence tricksters of literature - apes of style, barren of substance, and devoid of sincerity. And they exist in all societies. Only, we seem to have more than our fair share of such posturing humbugs. We could do with less. I would not mention names, but those who squirm when they read this in the papers tomorrow, will know whom the cap fits. I might confess that I am temperamentally incapable of responding to some kinds of poetry, and the fault may be my own lack of receptivity. For instance, verses which offer me the erotic ecstasies which the poet has experienced, leave me unexcited.”
“On the contrary, according to the snooty arty-crafty chaps, even the word "technocrat" is a term of abuse. And mere politicians like all of us in this House, from the Prime Minister downwards, belong to a lesser breed, people who think in mechanical terms, and are completely divorced from the rarefied worlds of art, music and literature in which these higher spiritual beings float about. They even turn down their lofty spiritual noses on something which we lesser breeds desperately seek for the physical survival of Singapore - technology. Fortunately for Singapore, these bogus mystics of the spirit are in the minority. And they let off their verbal blasts against the materialistic and mechanical types like us, without taking the trouble to do their homework. Equally fortunately, because of the hard-nosed sophistication of our electorate, any one of these loafers of the spirit would lose his deposit if he stood for election. However, because of their glibness and their great capacity for verbal gymnastics, they do have a capacity to mislead those of our young people who take the arts and the humanities as their field of study. The scapegoat seekers I have in mind come from the now breed of writers in Singapore. Not all of them, mind you, but at least some of them, especially those whom I have called the arty-crafty types. I know at least one of them, a Singapore citizen, who goes into raptures when leader writers of the Manchester Guardian take one of their regular, vicious and ignorant swipes at Singapore and our Prime Minister, but maintains a morose and sullen silence when Singapore speaks out against its foreign detractors. Before I wade into these gentlemen (and ladies!) I might offer my own credentials.”
“Let our budding breed of new writers, poets and "back to the Beyond" philosophers also chew on the fact that foreign investors come to Singapore with their technology and their marketing skills, not because of the quality of our poets and philo- sophers but because of the quality of our social and economic infrastructure, the skills of our workers, and the assurance of a healthy return on their investments. Let everybody also be assured that nobody in the political leadership regards affluence and economic well-being as ends in themselves but as the necessary material foundation for the development of higher intellectual, cultural and spiritual appetites in our people. Some distinguished modern spiritual leaders, in both East and West, have affirmed that the higher things of life cannot exist or develop on empty bellies, on poverty and squalor. If the PAP Government had started off with poetry and philosophy, none of our poets today would be able to poetise the way they do, none of our liberals to liberalise the way they do, and none of our philosophers to philosophise the way they do. One would have thought that all the simple basics I have listed are accepted as axiomatic in Singapore. They are not, and I will explain why. One of the less desirable by-products of our increasing affluence and better education are the snooty arty-crafty types, who denounce materialism and materialists. And when they refer to materialists, they are not merely thinking of our Foreign Minister's "Ugly Singaporean" whose religion is moneytheism, who sees wealth as an end in itself, who is completely self-centred with no social concern whatever, and whose tastes in music, art and literature are vulgar in the extreme.”
“Beginning May 1959, when the PAP first took the reins of power in Singapore, they grappled with economic realities, not with ideological or metaphysical abstractions. From the word "Go", their primary preoccupation was how to generate wealth, and how to garner and use wealth productively for social, educational, housing, health, cultural and developmental ends. In order to do this, they developed a realistic respect for wealth-generating factors, including the wealth generators themselves. And they never regarded profit as a dirty word, as something sordid and unspiritual. The healthier the profit position of an enterprise, whether private or public, the better for the workers, for the public exchequer, and therefore for Singapore as a whole. Profiteering is a dirty word, but not profits. And that is why the NTUC founded CASE and the Government helps to fund it. Also vitally important to economic progress was the fact that neither the political nor the trade union leaders subscribed to the imbecile egalitarian creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. Societies which adopted this creed are today the broken-back societies of the Third World, but it would be invidious to name them. In Singapore, both the individual and the notion as a whole must earn their keep. Performance, merit, productivity, the international and national market value of the skills or expertise involved - and not the rules of the lucky draw - determine a person's earnings.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, the Budget session is always the season for scapegoats - a hunting spree which inspires enthusiasm on both Front and Back Benches, but perhaps a bit more on the Back Benches. We might start by asking what the origin and meaning of the "scapegoat" is. It derives from ancient Hebrew. Among the ancient Jews, a goat was sent into the wilderness on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, bearing the iniquities of the people which are symbolically laid on its head by the High Priest. I have not been able to discover what happened to the goat thereafter. But we might reasonably suppose that at least some of the crowd, both priestly and profane, must have followed the poor goat, thus burdened with the sins of the community, into the wilderness, chopped its head off, feasted on the mutton, and felt purified until such time as they became sufficiently defiled by the next Atonement Day, when they would look for another goat to bear their sins and to feast upon. There is one particular scapegoat (or scapegoats) I am interested in; not in pursuing it into the wilderness and to feast upon the mutton. On the contrary, I am interested in taking a long overdue swipe at those groups in our society who have been saying unkind things about these scapegoats. For if they are sent into the wilderness, Singapore would perish. I refer, Sir, to our entrepreneurs, technocrats, professionals, skilled workers and political leaders who have between them securely laid the material foundations of our social and economic well-being. Sir, the Minister was able to present the kind of budget he did because the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues never allowed themselves to live in cloud-cuckoo land.”
“I hope the Ministry of Education will seek the views of the various parties concerned so that before the curricula are implemented they would have been given careful study, review and close scrutiny so as to avoid the old mistake of merely treating the symptoms of the ailment. What the Report proposes is a general outline and a blueprint for education. The implementation of these recommendations which cover an extensive scope will involve a lot of people and it will have far-reaching consequences. It can be seen from the Report that human factor is the main factor determining the success or failure of this new system. I hope all education personnel and the officials in the Ministry would understand the aims and objectives of this Report, so that when they carry out the implementation there will be no dislocation or deviation. I fully support the Motion. 3.49 p.m.”
“From the many instances of well-educated and professional people who were convicted in court for various crimes, it seems that we have to pay attention to moral education and character training. There is cause for concern over trends of development in the society. If we are not careful, our society can degenerate into a philistine and mercenary society, obsessed by short-term considerations, and the people become snobbish. We do not expect to see every student squeezing himself into the top 8% or 15% group and forgetting to acquire good character traits. Making a child concentrate on a few examination subjects and neglect or disregard the cultivation of basic moral concepts is a great defect in our education. Moral education in all classes in all streams will help reduce the undesirable phenomenon of the pursuit of material comforts, irrespective of the means employed, as evident in the society. All these propositions are in the initial stage and the take-off is usually very difficult. This is particularly so in education which is a long-term and difficult process. It is not easy to see the effects of any education reforms. In the past, measures and implementation had been forced at too great a pace, so much so that orders issued in the morning were only to be changed in the evening. In the end, there was confusion galore. Hence, it led to this Report. I hope the new recommendations will be gradually adjusted and implemented so as not to repeat past mistakes. The compilation and the teaching of the syllabuses for the three sub-systems will be major problems hereafter.”
“Only then can we correspondingly reduce the attrition rate in our education system. According to the principles suggested in the Report, our education system is to be divided into three sub-systems. This new system will be better than the single system that we have hitherto because it is broader in scope and more practical in application and takes into consideration the potential and the pace of learning of our students. We all know that students vary in intelligence, development, and capacity. Their home environment is different too. Some are late developers; some might be very bright when they are young but not so bright when they grow up. It is not easy to stream them into the various sub-streams with any degree of exactness. But, as pointed out in the Report, if adjustments are made whenever necessary it will help correct any deviation. In order to make this system successful, we need the cooperation of the members of the public in all ways. Education is to meet the needs of the society, including that of parents. No parent will admit that his child is inferior to other children. Every parent hopes that his child will become a dragon. Therefore the aspiration of parents exerts great pressure on the children and the school. We must launch a social education programme so that parents will recognise the capacity of their own children and should not demand too much from their children. They should leave it to the schools to take care of the pace and learning capacity of each child. Only in this way, can we avert disappointment and agony caused by tOo high an expectation demanded of by the parents.”
“Therefore, how to nurture and educate our next generation in order to avoid unnecessary attrition is a problem that concerns both the Government and the parents most of all. For the past few years, Backbenchers have commented and criticised in this House certain measures of the Ministry of Education. Judging from the Hansard, it seems that despite such criticisms, everything remains as it has been. Had this Report been published a few years earlier or had administrative officials in the Ministry been more frank, humble and were prepared to face reality, to accept criticisms and to consult the views of the parties concerned, we would have been in a better position today. The Report indicates that we have a very high attrition rate in our education. The probable causes for this phenomenon were that, firstly, the system itself was irrational. Secondly, the administration had been faulty, and thirdly, the curricula were inappropriate. If we had not considered whether or not the pupils have the potential to cope with the demands and the situation, but force them to adapt to these questionable administrative setup and curricula, then they would have to be sacrificed. We will not be doing justice to their parents. We have to further investigate out of this high attrition rate, how many students did not complete their education, not because they lack innate ability but because of other factors. Only then can we find the correct remedy to reduce the attrition rate, so that we can educate our next generation in a better way. Paragraph 3 of Chapter 6 of the Report says that it is most important to give our children the best learning environment so that they can adapt to it and develop their potential.”
“However varied our endowments, our capacities, our stations in life maybe, we belong to each other, and to the nation. You may have noticed pillars in Hindu temples, of varying heights and thicknesses - but they all support the same temple. Or we may liken ourselves to an army, which fights better, because of the sense of solidarity which binds officers and men in a common loyalty, to a common nation, for the preservation of a way of life which all cherish equally. Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, Whip or no Whip, the Motion by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education has my support. It has my support because it recognises that the recasting of our education system into a new and more socially efficient mould cannot be done overnight. It recognises the need for flexibility in implementation in order to accommodate the wishes of parents. And it gives assurance of a pragmatic approach by recommending periodic adjustments and changes to the revised structure which experience and advice of principals and teachers show to be desirable. Much obliged, Mr Speaker, Sir. Mr Yeo Choo Kok (Delta)( In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, Sir, the 1978 Report on the Ministry of Education bluntly points out three main areas. Firstly, the defects of the education system for the last few years, Secondly, the weakness and the inefficiency in the administration of the Ministry of Education. Thirdly, the restructuring, the strengthening and the new developments in our education system. The fact that this Report is published and the fact that we have an open debate here on this Report show that the Government is prepared to face reality and to shoulder full responsibility on this matter. Human resource is our only resource.”
“This did me harm, but paradoxically, it also did me some good, because I found a quiet determination forming itself within me, to the effect: "I will show them!" Without going into autobiographical details, suffice it to say that show them I did. However, one cannot generalise from one's own experience. But in this connection, I would recommend to the Hon. Minister of Education that when streaming pupils for the four-year and five-year 'O' levels, they should not be sent to separate schools, whatever the professionals in his Ministry might opine. Political considerations, let alone moral or spiritual considerations, would dictate the wisdom of having in one school both four-year and five-year 'O' level streams. We can thereby avoid the stigma that would be attached to a particular school because it deals only with the five-year 'O' level stream. Another considerable advantage of doing this is that the brighter students and the average ones, although they are in different classes, are yet in the same school, and will rub off on each other, to their mutual benefit, in the playing fields, and in all extra curricular activities. And there will arise a spontaneous and ungrudging acceptance of the fact that endowments and abilities naturally vary, and must therefore be variously provided for. And we also avoid the rigid and horrible classification in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, between the separately and differently programmed Gammas Deltas and Epsilons and so on. What I suggest is something like what we are trying to do in the NTUC. Our bright young MPs are invited to sit in union Committees, to serve the workers, and to identify with them. In the process, both workers and the bright MPs benefit, for they become aware of a fundamental truth.”
“In the cities of the world, there may be found any number of street Arabs, and even plain criminals, with an IQ as high as that of our Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister. But there are other qualities besides their IQs which make the PM and the DPM the kind of men that they are. On the other hand, I have known an illiterate gardener, who turned out to be one of the finest human beings I knew, characterised as he was by a calm gladness of mind, gentleness, silence, a superiority to the small and petty reactions which plague lesser men, and a pair of calm serene eyes which surveyed the world around him without perturbation. He did not have an international market value, nor even much of a domestic market value, but he won my reverence. I would therefore urge care and caution on the Minister of Education, when conducting the streaming of our school-going population, according to ability, performance and potential. Labels can be grossly misleading, and I am glad that he has assured us of wise and prudent flexibility when it comes to implementing the streaming process. Talking about slow learners and slow starters, I remember that in my own case, my parents and teachers had serious doubts about whether I would ever start at all. I got through standard 5 of Rangoon Road Primary School by the skin of my teeth. And in those days the feeder primary schools (Rangoon Road, Outram, and so on) passed on all the average and below average students to Victoria School, while all the brighter sparks were despatched to Raffles Institution. My two elder brothers made the grade to Raffles Institution. Inevitably, a stigma came to be attached to Victoria School, and my parents. and elder brothers looked down upon me with more than a little disdain.”
“Manifestations of selfishness on their part could turn the ground irretrievably sour. It would therefore be chastening for the meritocratic elite to observe that elites elsewhere in the world, who forgot what they owed to the ground, had brought the whole social system crashing down their ears. I remember the ground level reaction when medical students created a fuss last year over being bonded for service to the state. We were told in this House last week by the Minister for Health that they finally signed their pledges of service, but with reluctance. These students would have been usefully shocked if they knew that our workers, several of whom accepted bonding arrangements after they had gone through apprenticeship and other training schemes, regarded them with utter contempt. It was a potentially dangerous gut reaction. Indeed, some trade unionists seriously contemplated a public demonstration against the medical students, I recall telephoning the Minister for Health about this, and I was advised that he would deal with the medical students in his own way, and there was no need for trade unions to embark on a public demonstration of ground level feelings. The Prime Minister has repeatedly reminded us that intelligence is inherited. All the experts agree. But what has not been sufficiently emphasised is that character, wisdom, motivation, and desirable qualities of mind and heart, are not necessarily inherited. These are largely acquired, through our life experiences, our interaction with our fellow men and women, the manner in which we meet and deal with happiness and grief, pleasure and pain, success and failure, victory and defeat, fame and obscurity, and all the other multitudinous dualities which constitute the stuff of life experience.”
“So a comprehensive education must aim, not merely at academic achievement which is important, but also at developing qualities of mind and motivation, the cultivation and refinement of the emotions and of taste, in a sound and healthy body. The IQ of a student is certainly important, and nobody need quarrel with the aim of providing the best possible conditions for the extra-bright minority to scale the highest heights of academic attainments. Our society would be the richer thereby. Egalitarian societies which have sought to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator have invariably come to grief. Thus it is that even in a professedly egalitarian society like the Soviet Union, special schools are provided for the exceptionally gifted and talented, in the spheres of music, art, mathematics and science. My colleagues and I in the NTUC have had no difficulty in satisfying the working class on the ground that talent and ability must be assessed and paid for at their market value, and sometimes at their international market value. For example, if the emoluments and perks of our brightest civil servants did not match those of the private sector, our Government ministries, departments and statutory boards would not be able to maintain the quality of their services to the public. Our port would deteriorate, our communications system would break down, and when we pull or push the handle, the toilet flush system might work in reverse. But nonetheless, the excellent chaps who constitute our meritocratic elite must never forget that the rewards of their excellence and high performance are ultimately justified only by the quality of their commitment and service to the general social good.”
“There are the quick ones who manage to scale the academic peak in a short time. There are the slow starters, who take a longer time to scale the same peak. I told the Deputy Prime Minister this. Last December, I went mountain trekking in Nepal, with a Gurkha guide and two Sherpas. Our destination was a height of 12,500 feet. The last 500 feet I found excruciatingly difficult. The Sherpas made it in 45 minutes. I also managed to reach the top but it took me 4 1/2 hours. I believe the same thing applies to those who attempt to scale academic heights. The majority make it only to the foothills. A small number remain permanently on the plains. For the first time, our education policy makers are seized by the vital social and political importance of providing credible programmes for the majority of those who will only attain the foothills of academic achievement, as well as for those who will remain permanently on the plains. Sir, I believe in an egalitarian society, if what we mean is equality of opportunity for everyone, regardless of ethnic origin, social class or creed. In this sense, we have long been an egalitarian society. But in the very nature of things, there cannot be equality of achievement. All of us are not equally endowed - whether mentally, emotionally or spiritually. One of the besetting sins of most education systems in the world is the almost exclusive stress placed on intellectual and academic excellence. We therefore often allow ourselves to forget that the rounded and complete human being and citizen which the Prime Minister referred to is not merely a cerebral box. Each individual student, whatever his IQ level may be, is a body-mind-spirit complex. All of us are similar conglomerates.”
“There is one more principle, Sir, of the new education policy which it would be useful to expand upon. To allow each pupil to study at a pace suited to his learning capacity and which will make him as bilingual as he can be, is simple commonsense. But commonsense, Sir, is, in fact, quite uncommon, considering that nobody thought about this in all the years since 1959. In any school-going population, only a small percentage make it to the tertiary level. The majority do not make the academic grade. If we want our working population to be appreciating assets, not depreciating ones, then it is clearly necessary to give very special attention to the needs of the majority. In this regard, the proposals made by the Deputy Prime Minister make eminently good sense. One of the most execrable terms ever coined was the term "drop-outs", to describe the unfortunate majority who could not make the PSLE, or who failed to secure their 'O' levels. We might as well condemn square pegs as "drop-outs", because our attempts to fit them into round holes failed, quite forgetting the fact that square pegs have their own inestimable uses. Sir, I have made the point several times outside this House. Today, I am privileged to make the same point inside this House and it is this. Apart, perhaps, from the congenital criminal, or those with an incurable mental derangement, nobody can be a "drop-out" from society. You drop out of society only when you kick the bucket. What happens when you really drop out, and whether you will have company when you pass over to the other side, I do not know. We will have to find this out for ourselves. Our classification is not complete when we talk about the academic minority and the non-academic majority.”
“There is therefore no need for anybody in the Ministry of Education to wallow in self-pity, for the good reason that everybody must learn from past mistakes. Mercifully, we have learned in good time. There are other countries, with citizens and governments, who obstinately refuse to learn from experience. Since they cannot help themselves, one can only pray that at least God might help them, in His own mysterious and inscrutable way. But we have learned because, as a nation, we do not belong to the category of slow starters. We happen to be quick learners. I might now return to the unease I mentioned earlier. I agree with the Prime Minister's observation that the principal value of teaching the second language is the imparting of moral values and understanding of cultural traditions. Chinese, Malay, and Indian stories, myths, mythology and folklores are the stuff and substance of the cultural subconscious of the three great cultural traditions which we rightly seek to make part of the mental and spiritual make-up of our young people. But here we must utter a word of warning to parents as well as to Chinese, Malay and Tamil civic and cultural organisations. The exposure time to the second language in primarily English-medium schools will have to be substantially reinforced in our homes, and by the various Chinese, Malay and Tamil civic and cultural societies. A mere textbook acquaintance with the second language, which is the most we can expect from our schools, will prove a dismal failure, if this is not supplemented by opportunities for the actual use of the second language, as a living and not as a dead language, in our homes, and through the provision of a variety of cultural and literary programmes by civic and cultural organisations.”
“And it gladdens one's heart to know that many of our younger MPs, including Senior Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries, are diligently pursuing courses in Mandarin, Hokkien and Malay. I do not know whether the Members for Kallang and Kuo Chuan are doing anything to improve their level of Tamil. The Report on Education concentrates, quite rightly, on the children of today, who will be the men and women of tomorrow. To them, we must do justice - maximum justice. And I am seized by more than a twinge of regret because less than justice was done to the young people who went through our school system in the last ten years. But this was unavoidable, for we were all prisoners of the emotionally volatile political milieu which preceded the more rational political climate which prevails today. There were therefore unavoidable errors of conception and execution - errors which have been exposed with unflinching honesty by the Deputy Prime Minister and his Study Team. But I would plead with the officials (some of them) of the Ministry of Education not to go about whining and whimpering because they imagine that the strictures in the Report are levelled at them. I did not read the Report that way. I saw it more as an admission of the fact that we were all victims of the climate and circumstances of our political past, a phase which today we have left behind us. The possibility that the Deputy Prime Minister's Report offers is to become the determining masters of our future circumstances, rather than the hapless victims we were in the past. This is the qualitative evolutionary leap we have achieved, and which I referred to earlier.”
“And there must be numerous other parents like me, from Chinese-speaking, Malay-speaking and Tamil-speaking homes, who feel the same unease. It must therefore be the responsibility of this House, the Government and, in particular, the Ministry of Education, to lay this unease to rest. I believe it can be laid to rest. They have done it in Switzerland, where most people are effectively bilingual, and not a few are even trilingual. But the sense of Swiss nationhood is strong, whether the main language spoken is Italian, French or German. People of my generation are already grandfathers, or are well on the way to becoming grandfathers. Whatever our main langauge may be, and whatever our value systems may be, we must remain what we are. At our age, we cannot be un-made in order to be re-made. It is no use my regretting, for example, that under a different education system from the one I was brought up in, I might have acquired a bit more Malayalam or Tamil, or that I might have usefully delved into classical Sanskrit, which has so profoundly influenced Indian culture and the Hindu ethos. When the British colonial government enrolled me, forcefully, into St. John's Island University in 1951, I undertook a course in Malay, which has stood me in good stead since then. My Chinese fellow detainees even taught me some 1,000 Chinese characters, But because I subsequently failed to use them, today I can recognise no more than 15 or 20 Chinese characters. These are regrets which will die with me. Very few grand-fathers of today will make it as the great-grandfathers of tomorrow. The intolerance of time will leave us with relatively few tomorrows to bother about. The men of today are more educable. They have a good way to go before they become the grandfathers of tomorrow.”
“The very fact that the Report on Education before us has been approached by all the newspapers in our Republic - Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil - in a spirit of calm and unemotional realism, is proof enough that a Singapore national identity is no longer a merely constitutional fiction, but a living, pulsating, political reality. As the Prime Minister put it, a generation of Singaporeans has come of age. In short, as the Report shows, and even more, as the popular media reaction to the Report reveals, the generality of Singaporeans has come to terms with the economic, political, and cultural realities of the very difficult world in which we have to make our living as a people, aided by nothing more than our own efforts and also, hopefully, by a hitherto beneficent Providence. And coming to terms with these realities involves the inescapable recognition that without the English language, our children will be denied entry into the world of modern science and technology, into institutions of higher learning here and overseas, and into the kind of jobs we would like them to have. In short, practically everybody recognises today that without English, our children would be woefully ill-equipped for the 21st century, which is just a mere 20 years ahead. If at all there is any unease, it is certainly not about the proposals on education policy before us, but rather a barely perceptible, an almost secret and gnawing unease, about whether or not the policy of bilingualism will effectively enable our children to preserve the best of their cultural past, and to continue to draw nourishment from their ancient cultural roots. I frankly confess to this unease myself.”
“As I scan the decades I have lived through, 46 years ago in 1933, when my parents came to Singapore from Malacca and dumped me into Standard 2 of the Rangoon Road English School, confining me in a closed world entirely divorced from the majority of the population who lived in a bewildering variety of closed worlds of their own; and as I range over the intervening years, the great depression of the 30's, through the Japanese Occupation, the struggle against colonialism, self-government in 1959, the struggle against the communists and the communalists, our brief sojourn in Malaysia, our speedy eviction from Malaysia, the grim battle for economic development and survival, the victory and, above all, the daunting and often intimidating task of building a nation out of diverse linguistic, cultural and ethnic strands - and as I struggled to find a word or words to adequately describe the significance with which the Report before us is charged, the inevitable descriptive word came to mind. It is a Latin word which I had long ago come across in a book describing the evolutionary process. The word used was saftus - a qualitative evolutionary leap into a completely new dimension of being and awareness, which would have been unthinkable 15 or 20 years ago. There were few real Singaporeans then. Most of us were Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, and so on, who had been flung together on a small island by the accidents of history. Indeed, if a report of this kind had been produced some 20 years ago, the Government would have been turfed out of office by a mutually hostile combination of language chauvinists from all the various ethnic groups.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, when two minds of the order of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and the Prime Minister have set down their findings and thoughts on the ends and means of education policy in our Republic, one might reasonably wonder whether there is anything fundamental left for anybody else to contribute. Nit-pickers galore there always will be. And there is nothing wrong about nit-picking because there will always be nits to pick, even in the best run of societies or education systems. But we can safely leave this occupation to those who derive a special pleasure from it. What one might usefully do is to elaborate or emphasise some of the principles, whether implicit or explicit, in the Report of the Deputy Prime Minister's Study Team on Education. And these are principles about which I have very strong feelings. But first, some general observations about the Report. In his moving letter to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, the Prime Minister has described the publication of the Report, and the exchange of letters, as "a watershed in our history". But even the word "watershed" falls short of capturing in its entirety the significance the Report and the proposals before us, has for me personally.”
“Sir, here I might give a tip to Backbenchers, many of whom quite sincerely believe that Members of the Cabinet generally have thick hides, impervious to the sharpest and most pointed of their barbs. One way out of their problems on the question of pensioners, why not recommend to the Pensioners' Association that they ought to put on their board of trustees pensioners like the Minister for Finance, the Minister of Defence, the Minister for National Development. Then these worthy Gentlemen would come to appreciate the problems of pensioners. I hope the Pensioners' Association will take that tip. The special committee which drafted this Co-operative Societies Bill had a healthy respect for the fact that neither the Deputy Prime Minister, nor the Minister for Law, are persons who can be taken for a ride. They were therefore obliged to produce a draft Bill, which was at once sensible and hard-headed because we knew who our examiners were. There are provisions which provide for the proper regulation of co-operatives, and for the regular monitoring of their performance. However, since this is a Bill which covers new ground, and has developed new concepts of the role and potential of co-operatives in our Republic, we should welcome the decision to refer the Bill to a Select Committee, so that the views of members of the public and those of interested organisations may be taken into account, before the Bill is re-submitted to this House. Much obliged, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir.”
“In order to exercise the ghosts of the Rochdale pioneers, as well as the African sprites, goblins and spirits, out of the expert's draft Bill, the Minister for Social Affairs wisely decided to set up a special committee, a Singapore committee, to revise the draft Bill, under the chairmanship of Mr Sat-Pal Khattar, a Director of INCOME, and comprising representatives of the Singapore National Co-operative Union, the NTUC, the Registry of Co-operatives, and the senior legal draftsman in the Attorney-General's Chambers. The revised draft Bill prepared by this committee was submitted to the Cabinet. The Cabinet's own load (burden) in considering the need and implications of this Bill was thankfully lightened by the fact that some senior Ministers, including the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Law, the Minister for Labour, the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Communications, had direct experience of the restraints and inhibitions under which the NTUC co-operatives are obliged to operate at the moment, by virtue of the fact that they either head or sit on the Boards of Trustees of our co-operatives. The hard-headed wisdom with which they have guided the development of our co-operatives proved to be of great value. In addition, the NTUC's wisdom, some have called it cunning, in inviting Ministers to become trustees of our co-operatives has paid dividends, in terms of Cabinet Ministers who have thereby acquired an objective appreciation of the social potential of co-operatives in Singapore and, as a corollary, a critical appreciation of the basic defects in our co-operative laws.”
“The ILO sent us a good man. Indeed, in many respects he was a good Owenite. He therefore proved to be the wrong man. For he too was possessed by the ghosts of the Rochdale pioneers. An added disqualification was that he was an expert on African co-operatives. One would have thought that the Singapore experience would have been of far more significance to Africa than vice versa. Anyway, the expert came, and he put up a draft Bill, many parts of which the NTUC rejected as grossly unrealistic. The expert's own concepts were strongly coloured by his African experience, and he had difficulty accepting the modern-day successful co-operative in Singapore as coming within his narrow definition of a co-operative. When the expert discovered that the institutional trade union co-operatives of the NTUC had won international recognition and approbation as being bona fide co-operatives, he reluctantly agreed to allow them to be treated as co-operatives by the exceptional exercise of a discretion by the Minister. This again was objectionable. After all, the whole purpose of the exercise was to give trade union co-operatives a legal validity and existence of their own, as co-operatives. But here was an expert who seriously suggested that trade union co-operatives should be allowed to exist, but only on sufferance.”
“The results we have achieved in Singapore prove beyond a shadow of doubt that modern trade union co-operatives can and ought to play a much wider and more useful social role than could possibly have been envisaged by the Rochdale pioneers in their own more restricted times. However, the Minister does not have powers under the current Act to exempt us from all the restrictions of the present law. I might list a few of these here. (1) Millions of dollars belonging to workers are invested today in trade union co-operatives. But however successful our co- operatives may be, our trade unions and their members are restricted by law to a maximum return of 6%. On the other hand, union funds invested in fixed deposits can earn interest of at least 7% annually. The Bill before us removes this outmoded restriction. (2) Unrealistic restrictions on control of even well-run and business-oriented co-operatives, which are and indeed have to be properly run, and are governed by their own laws, e.g. INCOME being strictly subject to the Insurance Act. (3) The absence of a clear provision limiting the liability of members to their subscribed capital in the co-operative. This has been a cause for concern, especially for committee members. What I have stated are examples only and they are by no means exhaustive. We therefore made representations to the Government for the repeal of the present Act and for the enactment of a new and more comprehensive Co-operative Act, which would discard outmoded, obsolete co-operative concepts totally irrelevant to modern societies, and would accommodate and deal with the modern-day institutional type of co-operative which has a wide membership base. The Government responded by engaging the services of an International Labour Organisation (ILO) expert.”
“The first major departure effected by the trade union co-operatives was to provide, not only for ordinary individual membership, but also for institutional membership. The NTUC, its affiliated unions, as well as existing co-operatives, were thereby enabled to become institutional members of our co-operatives. And since institutional members, between them, possess a wide membership base, as well as greater financial resources, it was possible to inject sufficient capital in order to launch economically viable co-operative ventures. 5.40 p.m. [Mr Deputy Speaker in the Chair] The second major departure was the provision of sound modern management structures and practices which enabled our co-operatives to secure highly qualified professional management expertise. This was crucial for the success of our co-operatives. For we recognised that while the average co-operator may, like Robert Owen, possess a highly developed soul, nonetheless, like Robert Owen, he is usually grievously deficient in management expertise and capability. The third major departure from the Rochdale Principles was that co-operatives like WELCOME, INCOME, FAIRDEAL, COMFORT and DENTICARE catered to the requirements not only of their own members but also of the public at large. INCOME does not sell life insurance only to trade union members. Nor do WELCOME, FAIRDEAL and the SILO supermarkets sell foodstuffs or school textbooks only to co-operative members. And our dental co-operative, DENTICARE, is ready to pull out the teeth of members and non-members alike, with equal impartiality. And if COMFORT accepted the fares of only union or co-operative members, our owner-drivers would not be able to make a living.”