Kuik Shiao-Yin
Singapore
“Northlight's model contains so many wisdoms and insights that mainstream schools can learn from and it is a beautiful symbol of what is possible if we care enough to make things happen not just for ourselves but for others who we do not want to leave behind. 2.25 pm”
“Currently, there is no requirement for a company to accommodate the employee’s changed situation, such as redesigning a job or offering an alternative role.”
“I think the United Kingdom (UK) manages that by saying that leave should be taken in weeks rather than days. Similarly, the same amount of adoption leave that is available to mums should be available to dads. Or alternatively, a longer quantum of gender-neutral adoption leave can be offered for parents to share as they wish.”
“That certainty can only come from the promise of a new story, a story of a "Who" and a "Why" that is bigger than the sum of all of our fears about "What's" and "How's". Our youths need to hear the greater story of all the things that we want to do for love, not just fear.”
“I want to say that I see the heart of the Minister for Finance for the people. I believe in his openness to find new ways forward and I trust his courage to make hard choices.”
“I guess we may differ in our thinking about how much is enough help for people. I speak especially for children with single mothers and foreign mothers. We have talked a long time in this House about the differences of views about why they cannot get adequate housing and all that. I think more help could be given.”
The complete record
Every one of 212 lines we hold for Kuik Shiao-Yin, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 5.
“Trust the people to decide and take a risk on us. Next, promoting inclusivity. The Deputy Prime Minister emphasised that Budget 2015 is not based on a Robin Hood mentality that robs the rich to give to the poor, but a mentality of collective responsibility that leads to sustainable generosity. That is not a minor quibble but a key distinction I agree is important to make. The Robin Hooding is based on an exclusionary impulse that believes the rich are evil and unworthy and they deserve to be robbed for everyone else's sake. And this sentiment, while it secretly pleases our middle-class hearts, really just promotes even more disdain among the classes. Collective responsibility is a far better impulse because it is inclusionary. It emphasises that we are all not only equally worthy of being cared for, but are equally worthy of being fellow contributors to the common good. There is no value that speaks louder to this generation of young people than inclusivity. We all want to live in a Singapore that includes and embraces all. And, deep down, we all want a Singapore that is full of grace, that perceives every single person that shares this island as worthy and accords the same level of respect and dignity to the strong as well as the weak, because, if it were so, then it is a safe place for all of us to be. We all want to feel that no matter who I am and how far I have fallen, this country will always have my back. And that is why so many young people pay close attention to how the state talks to and treats its weakest and is so critical of any sign of inconsistency. They take it personally as a Page: 119 sign that, someday, that could be how the state will talk to and treat me.”
“So, when schools plan in silo, too many of their Community Involvement Projects tend to go down the safe but ineffectual route of painting murals and picking litter by the beach. If schools could engage with civil society to explore what are the most impactful solutions that all that energy and money can be channelled towards, I think we could see a spark that encourages the next new social innovator to Page: 118 emerge. SkillsFuture is potentially a big game-changer, in my opinion, to inject a spirit of innovation back into Singapore, if we let it be so. It could be a significant call of action for Singaporeans to unlearn the old learning habits and take their own education and future into their own hands. But SkillsFuture must not hamstring itself by only allowing us to spend our credit on a safe but limited range of pre-approved courses by pre-approved vendors representing only pre-approved industries. Outside of the WDA and MOE, there is a radical new world of learning out there, multiple platforms, crazy formats, unpredictable teachers, a diversity of skills that nobody can predict could be useful or not useful to a person's development. Who would have known that letting Steve Jobs study calligraphy in his 20s would give him the aesthetic sense that distinguished Apple from every other technology company in the world? A Singaporean would have said, "Study calligraphy got money meh?" and stopped him in his billion-dollar tracks. So, please let us use SkillsFuture to learn whatever we want, however we want, wherever we want. Of course, put down rules like accountability and all that, but recognise that many of us were already forced to study one way in the education system, give us the freedom to study in our own way outside of it.”
“So, from 1992 to 2012, we saw an 80%-90% drop in students taking a subject that some Silicon Valley technology company CEOs are now saying is one of the most useful for training creative and thoughtful communicators that know how to navigate the ambiguity and complexity of 21st century business. Literature majors could just end up being the next great hire in the global market and we happen to be fresh out of them. The good news is that for innovation to flourish, I do not think it is about pouring even more resources the way our schools and organisations do, although that would always be greatly appreciated. In fact, innovation sometimes thrives best in situations where there are insufficient resources. The difference is freedom. What puts people in the space of innovation is the emotion of freedom, not a destructive freedom that exists because we are indifferent, but a fruitful freedom that was given wholeheartedly in trust. Mdm Speaker, what I am suggesting is that to jump-start a culture of innovation in Singapore, perhaps what we need to budget for are more freedoms rather than just more resources. What freedoms do our schools and SMEs really need to enjoy to become more innovative? That is the bigger question. For example, does the retail scene need freedom from REITs? Would that really help everything? There are two wonderful opportunities for innovation that Budget 2015 opens up. One is in the decision to give every school a big sum of money to donate to an IPC of the student's choice. I would really hate to see all that money spent on projects that look great on the news but have negligible social impact.”
“Innovators sometimes look crazy and innovations do take a long time to bear fruit. But rewarding innovation makes all the difference in bolstering public confidence that we are serious about supporting innovation. It will always feel safe to reward according to old performance indicators and that is why we tend to stick to that formula. But if we continue rewarding mere performance, we will create what we hate and get exactly what we reward, which is a nation of performers who just know how to play the old game, rather than innovators who rewrite the rules and create their own game. Page: 117 If we are hedging our bets on innovation as the key to securing Singapore's future, then let us re-examine and change what we measure and reward at the national level. Schools, for example, are still currently ranked and rewarded most significantly for academic performance over everything else. So, we should not be surprised if we still produce teachers, parents and young people who prize mastery of examination technique over mastery of life-skills. We know one famous resultant effect of that. Over 10 years, one entire generation of young people was discouraged from studying English Literature because it was considered too challenging to teach and too unpredictable to ace. The humanities are notorious for having no perfect answers. So, schools did not encourage it because they were scared of risking their ranking. Parents did not encourage it because they were scared of risking their kids' perfect result slip that would place them in that perfect Junior College.”
“They rarely dole out resources for potential new projects. They stick to what has worked in the past. It may seem strange for leaders to downplay innovations, but that behaviour is often a result of the most important form of communication in an organisation: reward." "In many organisations, managers and executives are rewarded based on the performance of their business unit. Because many innovations fail or take a long time before they are profitable, it is almost always in the best interests of individual leaders to support incremental changes to existing products rather than to swing for the fences on a daring new initiative. When leadership does not reward innovation, then everyone in the organisation quickly realises that spending time pursuing innovations is not worthwhile. More importantly, situations like this undermine people's trust in every pronouncement by the company's leadership. Eventually, people may stop listening to what company leaders say altogether. That means that it is crucial to align the words you use with your actions and your rewards." Madam, this sounds like very tough feedback for business leaders and I am a business leader and I flinched when I read this. But what he said about corporations is true for countries as well. If we say we want innovation in Singapore, then we must be courageous and consistent in rewarding it. So, practically, it may look like clearing bureaucratic red tape for the guy trying to pioneer food trucks as a new way forward for an F&B industry crushed by rising rental or it may look like rewarding a diploma-holding civil servant with daring ideas more highly than a degree-holding civil servant who wants to just maintain the status quo. Rewarding innovation is not easy and it is risky.”
“I believe if the state commits itself wholeheartedly to encouraging innovation, promoting inclusivity and empowering identity, we would be on the right track to creating the kind of Singapore many of our young people would buy into – a Singapore that balances both material and immaterial needs. Budget 2015 already touches on innovation and inclusivity, not so much identity. I will just raise some concerns and suggestions with three themes. First, encouraging innovation. The Government has long recognised how crucial it is to invest in innovation and has always followed through with a slew of policies and generous outpouring of resources every year to promote it in our schools and organisations. I think the tough question to ask ourselves is: so, what is still stopping this culture of innovation from taking root? Please let me read an excerpt from a recent Fast Company article by cognitive scientist Prof Art Markman that explains it better than I can. He is quite blunt but he is insightful. I quote: "It is easy to make pronouncements about directions and vision. For people to trust what you say, though, it is important to recognise that you communicate in three ways: through what you say, what you do and what you reward. And each form of communication Page: 116 on this list is more important than the last." "As an example, consider what happens in many companies around innovation. Innovation has become such a tired buzzword that every organisation feels like it has to innovate to succeed. So, leaders from the C-suite on down will often talk about the importance of creating a culture of innovation in the workplace. However, the same leaders who preach the importance of innovation are often critical of new ideas. They react conservatively to new proposals.”
“Madam, thank you for the chance to participate in this debate. I also thank the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance for a Budget that, I think, takes really significant steps towards growing Singapore's desire for innovation, learning and compassion. Page: 115 Our choice to embark on a more progressive tax system, like our decision to embark on universal health insurance, I know would have been fought to the death elsewhere, so I am really grateful for how peaceably we have gone about this. These are fitting decisions to make in our Jubilee Year. So, no matter what our political differences are and no matter how stupidly difficult it is to balance competing demands of limited resources, I hope we will always see Members of this House helping and not hindering each other in the common goal of making sure that, every year, we see fewer and fewer people getting left behind in this city. I thought about what unique value I could add to the debate happening today and I figured since I am the second youngest Member of this House, I shall speak for the youth and with some informality so that they will understand. Not many Singaporean youths will pay attention to Budget 2015 because, frankly, it is very boring stuff to them. But if I was in my classroom right now, I would tell them, "Wake up and pay attention because this is actually more important than your examinations. Your city will grow according to where the money flows. Understand the Budget and you will understand more about the Singapore to come and your place in it." Our country spent the first 50 years of our history getting rich and I would love to see us spend the next 50 years learning to become truly wealthy.”
“I believe parents would love it and I believe early exposure to the complex reality of the workplace is one of the best ways of helping young people discover for themselves the value of soft skills, nurturing a deep respect for all forms of work – and Page: 89 gaining more insight into what type of work actually suits them later on in life. My third recommendation is: do not just educate the youths in "career and industry awareness" – educate the parents and teachers as well. Parents and teachers are key influencers in any youth's career decisions. They form the ecosystem of advice and support surrounding young people, and they need just as much continual exposure to changing industrial trends and learning about where the world is going. If these adults themselves are still stuck in old narratives about what makes for valuable work and do not keep up with global market trends themselves, they may still pressure our youths to make archaic career choices that even the youths themselves do not believe in. In conclusion, Mdm Speaker, Member Denise Phua's speech raised the crucial question, "How long does it take to change a culture?" If we take her answer of 10-20 years, then I suggest that there is no better time than right now to take the bold and visionary steps needed to free our children and our children's children to discover a stronger and more compelling narrative about work – that all Singaporeans can do work that is meaningful for ourselves, matters to our community and makes life worth the living and learning from. With that, I support ASPIRE's recommendations. 5.52 pm”
“Those in the arts scene will share the same observation as those in the corporate world of the results of raising less literary-minded youths – many young Singaporeans today are not strong in the soft work skills of communicating ideas deeply, analysing character behaviour objectively and understanding deep complex narratives about themselves and society. The late Steve Jobs created the world's most valuable brand, Apple, because he was equally developed in the seemingly unlinked skills of electrical engineering, calligraphic design and narrative construction. What exciting intellectual property we might have seen created in Singapore if more young people were given the full freedom to play with the subject combinations they want, regardless of their ability to score well in them? The second thing I would recommend is to give our youths early and extended exposure to all forms of work. I believe we should bring work-and-study, Place-and-Train programmes in some form even to younger students as part of examinable curriculum. In 2012, Raffles Institution introduced an innovative Gap Semester where 16-year-olds were given nine full weeks after their Year 4 final examinations to pursue non-academic interests and to make presentations on what they had learnt to their cohort. I do not see why this innovation cannot be introduced in other schools in some form. Imagine if every Singaporean teenager, from every kind of school, were given the blessing by their school system to take nine weeks off every year to intern in various industries, to consciously experience all sorts of work – blue-collar and white-collar, corporate and creative – and to earn a small allowance while they are at it.”
“The same youths who could not see the Rwanda of 2014 that positions itself as "The Singapore of Africa", with some of the fastest economic growth rates in the developing world, do eventually grow up into the adults who will miss out on the best business opportunities that Africa has to offer. So, if we are serious about building a culture that seeks mastery of skills, pursues relevance and loves life-long learning, we have to go upstream and seriously commit to recalibrating our education system away from rewarding mere examination excellence to rediscovering – and rewarding – a genuine love for life and learning again. Page: 88 I would like to offer three possibilities of how we can intervene earlier in education to help ASPIRE succeed in serving our youths and, in turn, our city. Firstly, we should protect our youths' freedom to pursue whatever path of Knowledge that is meaningful to them. When we rob our youths of their ability to choose what they want to study based on our own adult assumptions that it is "too hard for them to score" or "will bring down our school ranking" or "will not earn you enough money in life", we teach them very early on that no matter what people say, our society will only accept a certain pathway to success and you have no choice but to take it to its bitter end. Trying to convince them otherwise later down the road at an ITE, Polytechnic or University stage becomes extremely difficult. In 2001, 16,970 students took pure Literature at "O" Levels. In 2013, only 3,000 did. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it was the desire to maintain school rankings based on "O" Level results which led to some schools dropping Literature or actively discouraging students from taking the subject because they could not score high in it.”
“For the past 12 years, I have been in both the position of an educator of youths as well as a director of a collective of businesses, and, thus, an employer of many degree and non-degree holders, both young and old. From what I have seen, I believe there is a great need to help all students discern better career choices, deepen their skills and discover more pathways to success – as ASPIRE recommends. Every year, I ask each new batch of 17 to 18-year-olds that I teach whether they enjoy school, understand not just the "what" but the "why" they are studying and whether they look forward to entering the working world. My focus group may be small and not representative of the whole but I am concerned that, over 12 years, I have never had a batch of students where there was a majority who readily said yes to all of the above. I discovered that most of their lack of enthusiasm about the working world was rooted in cynicism about what control they had over their choices, as well as a careless ignorance about the dramatic changes happening in the real world. Anything outside of the narrow constraints of examinable school curriculum was dismissed as irrelevant to their future. It is a running joke among General Paper (GP) teachers in Singapore that the Cambridge GCE "A" Level examiner reports constantly chide Singaporean students for writing year after year that "Africa is a country" rather than a continent, and apparently one full of nothing but starving children and AIDS epidemics. Many of these students continue to memorise the Rwanda of their seniors' outdated examination notes still stuck in the 1994 genocide and failed to perceive how dramatically a country could change in 20 years.”
“Mdm Speaker, thank you for allowing me to join in this debate. I support the ASPIRE report and I believe its recommendations are timely and welcome. So much so, that like several speakers from yesterday, I find myself wishing that the recommendations could have been extended beyond just ITE and Polytechnic students to all students in Singapore as a whole – JC, University and, even to some limited degree, Secondary and upper Primary. If I have one key concern about the ASPIRE report, it is that its recommendations may not go upstream enough to make the impact that we all hope to see for the generations to come. Yesterday, some Members raised concerns that ASPIRE's ability to succeed depended greatly on today's culture of employers, teachers, parents – and youths themselves – being ready and open to a major paradigm shift. This is not a minor concern. The fear to lose – the "kiasu" syndrome that we laugh about – runs long and deep in our city's children and adults. It is this fear that gives birth to our neurotic obsession with status. It is this fear that displaces Page: 87 our faith in our children's unique strengths and interests and compels us to put our trust instead in excessive private tuition, examination results and paper qualifications as the best indicator and guarantee of future career success. So, it will be this fear that will hold many of us back from choosing ASPIRE's new way forward despite all indications that clinging onto the cultural excuse of kiasuism has been and always will be toxic for all of us. Something is wrong when some of our University graduates still feel compelled to put their PSLE results on their work resumes as if it mattered that much to an employer.”