It's the 'S' word for better education

Jun 30, 2012
 
LETTER FROM LONDON
 
By Teresa Lim FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

SUDDENLY, the name of our Republic is popping up in newspapers here with a disconcerting frequency. For a change, it is not in sneery accusation (for being bourgeois, or politically uptight) but in praise.

British Education Secretary Michael Gove has been working hard to upgrade the British education system. About a week ago, there was the inevitable leak. There are more government policy leaks here than from a sieve, and they always find their way into the newspapers. This time, it was the Daily Mail.

Mr Gove was duly summoned to Parliament to say if it was true he was planning to scrap the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) by 2014, and to explain why.

This is what he said: 'We would like to see every student in this country able to take world-class qualifications like the rigorous and respected O levels taken by Singapore students.'

For years I have been telling my two incredulous sons that my results as a 16-year-old an unmentionable number of years ago are worth more than theirs. Now I have the British Education Secretary on my side.

It is a bittersweet victory as it also means I have to confront the idea that they might not be as well-schooled as I was. In fact, they have each had an excellent education. The difference is, mine was free. Theirs has been extremely expensive, and yet they still use calculators for simple sums for which long division or multiplication might do the trick.

[So in Britain, the parents are lamenting that children today can't do simple math that the parents were taught in school years ago. Here in Singapore, parents are complaining that kids today are doing math in primary school that their parents had trouble with in Secondary school! Which problem would you rather have?]

So to the 'S' word again.

'The way that they teach mathematics in Singapore is brilliant - both in theory and in practice.' This is the Daily Telegraph a week ago, quoting Dr Martin Stephen who until last year was head of one of the top boys' schools in Britain, the private St Paul's which is based in London.

This national newspaper has been campaigning for recognition of what it calls 'the mathematical crisis' facing Britain.

But mathematics does not seem to be the only thing in trouble here. England's teenagers are near the bottom in Europe with foreign languages. They have problems even with their own. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment's latest country profiles are for 2009. These show that in the nine years from 2000, Britain slipped from seventh place to 25th for literacy.

Mr Gove rightly senses that it is education overall that is in crisis. One problem is simply structural. Incredibly, in Britain, there are three awarding organisations for A-level and GCSE qualifications, at least one of which stands to benefit financially from more schools subscribing to its tests because it sells the teaching resources and textbooks.

Reportedly, representatives from some of these boards do the hard-sell on their qualification by assuring schools that their tests are extremely easy to pass. Mr Gove calls this 'the culture of competitive dumbing-down' with examination boards vying with one other to make their exams the least difficult.

I do remember helping my younger son three years ago with his GCSE revision. I was sure I had misunderstood one of the past papers. After all, the answer seemed to have been given in the question - only to be reassured by my son: 'Yes mum, it is that easy!'

But Mr Gove is facing resistance to his overhaul of the current GCSE system. Already Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, is said to be livid at Mr Gove's proposals, which have not yet been discussed within the Cabinet.

Mr Clegg is upset at the prospect of a two-tier education system being brought back. GCSEs replaced O levels and the more vocational Certificate of Secondary Education 24 years ago to provide a comprehensive examination everyone could take.

In fact, the GCSE system is already two-tiered. There is the higher tier, where students can achieve grades from an A-star down to an E, and there is the foundation tier with pass grades of C down to G. Foundation-tier students with an 'F' or a 'G' would have failed by the standards of self-respecting school systems elsewhere, but in Britain, they have passed.

Mr Gove is right to rail against a system that flatters to deceive because it lets children down. But he is going to have to convince those who worry that the reintroduction of any O-level equivalent is elitist, disadvantaging those who do not qualify to do it. One way must be to bring up the quality and value of a vocational education.

In Singapore, O levels are the national curriculum, unlike in countries where it is offered only by private schools. Mr Gove recognises that ours is the gold standard for the qualification. His challenge, when forging something similar, is also to introduce back to Britain a culture of respect for learning, for moderate discipline, and for methods of teaching which may include some traditional rote learning.

How interesting that former premier Margaret Thatcher should have observed 27 years ago on her first official visit to Singapore: 'Each time I come back, I marvel at the pace of change, and at the confidence with which you undertake enormous investment. I like to think that once you learnt it from Britain. And now we are re-learning it from you.'

So it is with O levels. The only irony is that GCSEs were introduced under Mrs Thatcher in 1988, three years after her speech.

The writer is a Singaporean living in London.

Outgoing Singapore Envoy to US - Professor Chan Heng Chee

Jul 1, 2012

When US noticed the 'little country that could'Outgoing envoy to the US Chan Heng Chee recounts her 16 years in Washington

By Tracy Quek

In a town where politics and policy are the raison d'etre for many of its residents and networking is an art form, Singapore's outgoing Ambassador to the United States Chan Heng Chee is a diplomat who appears to be very much in her element.

In her 16 years in Washington, Professor Chan, 70, has come to be noted for her 'salon dinners' at the Singapore Embassy, gatherings that bring together Washington's strategic thinkers, media personalities and policymakers to discuss hot- button issues of the day over a good - often Singaporean - meal.

In love with the little red dot

Jun 29, 2012
 
THE LONG INTERVIEW | CHANGE-MAKERS

Ten years after giving up Belgian citizenship to become a Singaporean, Singapore Diamond Exchange chairman and Singapore FreePort co-founder Alain Vandenborre tells Susan Long why he is more smitten than ever with Singapore.
 

AS THE euro crisis deepens, Mr Alain Vandenborre's European friends, who once asked why in the world he would renounce his Belgian citizenship to become a Singaporean, are now seeking his help to relocate here too.

At least half a dozen have called him this past year and these include top-brass finance professionals who sit on global boards.

'Nobody questions any more, 'Why are you doing this?' Instead, they are all asking, 'How can I become a citizen?'' says the 51-year-old venture capitalist and entrepreneur, who has lived and worked in six countries, including Germany, Holland, France and China.

Each time, he hangs up the phone and 'smiles a little smile' to himself.

Love, he believes, has led him to all the right places. It was love, not low tax rates or 'any business consideration', he maintains, that made him apply for a chilli-red passport.

He first arrived here in 1995, on a short working trip as head of international development of French multinational GDFSuez. He was so smitten by the people, culture and values that he brought his family here to live in 1997.

After much soul-searching, deep discussions with Singapore's politicians and senior civil servants, reading all the seminal local history and policy books, and sitting in almost every parliamentary session for three years to understand the system up-close, he made up his mind.

He renounced his loyalty to Belgium and, with tears in his eyes, took up Singapore citizenship in 2002. He has since penned two books on why he took the plunge.

The first book, Proudly Singaporean, published in 2003, details his love story with Singapore and quotes chapter and verse from various ministers' speeches on the country's trials and triumphs.

His second, The Little Door To The New World, published in 2005, is a reply to his Western friends who told him he had 'made the wrong bet' and that Singapore would disappear with the ascent of China and India. It is a treatise on how Singapore will survive as long as it represents stability in a volatile world.

Of course, his great love exacted a cost.

After he traded nationalities, his son from his first marriage, who was then 15, gave him the cold shoulder. That was 10 years ago. Today, the 25-year-old is an aspiring politician who works for the Belgian Senate in Brussels. He was inspired to study political science, after sitting in the public gallery of Parliament with his father whenever he visited Singapore during his holidays. Every Aug 9, he now hangs the Singapore flag on his window.

'Like most young Europeans now, he is thinking whether he should move here for work,' says Mr Vandenborre, who also has a daughter, 22, from his first marriage, who is studying in Liege.

For the past 20 years, he has been married to Laurence, an art therapist and permanent resident here with Belgian citizenship. They have two sons aged 15 and 16 attending United World College here.

He will leave it to them to decide whether to do national service. 'We are a very democratic family. We try not to impose on our children our own systems and beliefs,' he says.

But for himself, he no longer 'feels safe' on the streets of Belgium or France. Recently, he was in Brussels, waiting for a meeting in a bank, and after 10 minutes of reading news ribbons on the Bloomberg screen - on job cuts, plunging stock prices, bank defaults and political impasse - he felt so depressed, he just wanted to get back on a plane home.

'I think that's what some people have lost in Europe now - a sense of belonging to their country because the system is falling apart.'

Luring the ultra-rich

OVER the past 10 years, he has put his money where his heart is. He is constantly thinking of new ways to draw the world's wealthy - many of whom park their money here - to Singapore's shores to 'interact with the system and values' he so adores.

In 2010, he unveiled the Singapore FreePort, a sleek, state-of-the-art steel, glass and concrete high-security facility, which looks like a setting for a sci-fi movie, in Changi North Crescent.

Modelled after the Swiss freeports in Zurich and Geneva, it offers wealthy collectors tax-free storage, as well as a place to display and sell their art, jewellery, antiques, vintage cars, carpets, wines, cigars and other collectibles. The 250,000 sq ft facility operates in its own duty-free zone next to Changi Airport, where the ultra-rich jet in, then pull up in chauffeured cars to 'visit' their Picassos.

It was built as a monument of his love for the little red dot, which he wants to propel beyond being just another offshore financial centre. Its intent is to attract a steady flow of the mega-rich, who would 'otherwise have little reason' to come to Singapore.

'Singapore has had too many wealth managers but too few wealth creators. It can't be a permanent magnet for wealth unless it has wealth creators and physical things that attract the wealthy,' he says, partially quoting one of his mentors, ex-permanent secretary Ngiam Tong Dow.

He notes that the difference between Hong Kong and Singapore, as far as wealth management is concerned, is that Hong Kong - a gateway to China - is comfortable with just being a large financial centre. 'In Singapore, we try to get people to come here and interact with our system and economy. It's not good enough to park funds to be managed here. We want you to invest in the economy and send your kids to school here,' he says.

'The FreePort concept helps because if you have money that is being remotely managed in a bank here, you might not come. But if you have a collection of artworks here, you will.'

At the end of last year, he took things up a notch and said it with diamonds.

Together with a few American and Israeli partners, he started an exclusive tender house, the Singapore Diamond Exchange, to get high net-worth investors with at least US$250,000 (S$322,000) to bid for the sparkling stones.

He is banking on the price of diamonds doubling over the next 15 years or so, because demand is growing at double digits annually, especially in China and India, but no new mines are being explored.

'It is a tangible asset and much less volatile than any other commodity or the stock markets,' he says, noting that nobody has succeeded yet in building up the precious stone as an investment product. 'It is a tremendous opportunity for Singapore to become the first market to do this.'

Over the past three years, he has also been working with government agencies here to transform an 'iconic heritage building here into a public art space', but is unable to say more till plans are firmed up later this year.

Living laboratory

FIFTEEN years on, he remains as 'driven by passion' and more besotted with Singapore than ever. It remains his muse and the ultimate 'living laboratory' to him. 'There is a mindset to look at every little idea as something with the potential to become a breakthrough,' gushes the man who was involved in the 2003 Economic Review Committee.

He cites himself and his wife, who have separately pioneered projects here, as 'living examples' of that. His wife has been a volunteer art therapist at Changi Prisons for the past 10 years, giving inmates an outlet of expression to deal with anger management and self-esteem issues.

They are now about to launch the Red Pencil, an international humanitarian art therapy foundation here which will help fund, train and deploy art therapists to Singapore hospitals to help long-term hospitalised or abused children, as well as attend to traumatised children in regional natural disasters together with the Singapore Red Cross.

This would have been tough to push through in the moribund Europe they left, with its crumbling welfare system and political deadlock, which 'has become heavy luggage to carry', he says.

But is his success because he has the ear of those in high places here? 'It's probably easier for me as someone new who comes from outside to be heard than a Singaporean voice,' he admits.

But he recounts how, when he first mooted the FreePort idea in 2005, his good friends here told him 'it will never happen'. He was requesting landmark concessions - land on the airport, free-trade zone status and simplified customs procedures for his high net-worth clients - from the Government. To his surprise, it listened, and agreed.

'So I think if you really come with an innovative idea, whether you're a new citizen or one born here, it doesn't matter,' he says. 'No one should believe I can cross every door at any level in the political sphere just because my name is known.'

But what he does loathe is the term 'foreign talent'. One of the reasons he took up citizenship was to stop that label being pinned on him. 'If I am a talent in any way, I am a local talent. I never liked this concept because it undermines the mindset of the people of Singapore,' he says.

Serial entrepreneur

HE OFTEN carries a little stone in his pocket which his Mum, now 77, who lives in Belgium, gave him. She had two rounds of brain surgery after an accident and recovered within three months through sheer willpower.

'When she was in hospital fighting for her life, I was sending her my mental energy through the stone,' he says. And when he feels down, he touches it to remind himself to 'think positive'.

At 15, the younger of two children of vegetable shop owners in Belgium lost his father to a traffic accident. Henceforth, he had to take care of himself and fund his own studies, which built up his adversity quotient. His hands bled from trimming trees as a forestry worker and waiting tables, which were his weekend jobs.

At 17, he went to the University of Liege where he studied astrophysics and won the National Young Scientist Award for developing a system that transmitted the Fifth Beethoven Symphony through a laser beam in 1977.

He went on to earn degrees in telecommunications engineering, finance and business administration from the universities of Brussels and Paris, with the help of scholarships.

In 1986, he started his first microelectronics company at 26, developing new laser direct writing technologies, sold it by 1990, then worked 10 years for various large multinationals overseeing banking and financial services operations in Asia, as a corporate strategy adviser and later chief financial officer.

After living here three years, he was inspired to return to his entrepreneurial roots. Among his successful ventures, he became a business angel to the late Chinese classical painter Chen Yifei in the China fashion market, and co-founded the private art dealership Ravenel Art Group based in Taipei, Hong Kong and Shanghai. But he confesses he has taken some big hits too and seen at least four companies go bust.

As such, his one criticism of Singapore is that it's not a forgiving country for those who fail. They become 'poster boys for the wrong reason'. But the keen equestrian has this advice: 'No matter how many times you fall from the horse, get back up as soon as possible so the fear of failure will not impede you.'

suelong@sph.com.sg

A little inequality is a good thing

Jun 30, 2012
 
politics 360

It provides a spur to work harder, but must not get in the way of social mobility
 
By ROBIN CHAN

THIS may not sit well with many, but some inequality is good for society.

Inequality keeps a people striving to improve their lot in life. Sometimes too little inequality, with too many benefits, can be a disincentive to try harder.

Some have held up the Nordic countries as models of how economic dynamism and equality can go hand in hand.

But others disagree.

A study in 2006 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that higher unemployment benefits and higher taxes led to higher rates of unemployment.

Sweden's relatively more generous unemployment insurance benefits for low-income workers, who draw 80 per cent of their last salary, have also led to longer unemployment spells for these workers than in neighbouring Norway.

And what does it do for motivation when the more skilful architect makes only $2,000 a month more than the garbage collector?

Could these policies have had an impact on the youth unemployment rate in Sweden, which at 28 per cent is the second-highest in Europe, after Spain?

That is why Sweden's government has embarked on policy reforms to incentivise work by reducing income taxes, and to disincentivise unemployment by cutting back on the amount of time for which unemployment benefits are paid out.

American historian Tim Stanley of Oxford University says economic inefficiencies due to the pursuit of equality are real.

'We might speculate that a society that squeezes out personal ambition in favour of societal cohesion is bound to undermine a person's sense of autonomy and freedom,' he wrote, arguing against those in Britain and the US who have called for higher taxes and more social spending, like those in Nordic countries, to mitigate growing income disparity.

He added: 'The sad fact is that sometimes, the relentless pursuit of fairness in outcome imperils the creation of an atmosphere of opportunity. None of the (Nordic) countries are defined by the rags-to-riches meritocratic idealism that America aspires to.'

Singapore's political leaders have issued similar warnings. In his Budget speech last year, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said: 'The over-generous social entitlements (of developed countries) have progressively reduced the work ethic over time. Some of these developed countries are now undertaking painful reforms to gradually recover their economic dynamism.

'Our approach must, therefore, remain centred on opportunities, not entitlements. This is why we are focusing on helping the low-income group through education, employment and home ownership.'

While it may be easy to dismiss Mr Tharman's words as political rhetoric to justify lean fiscal spending, the evidence does back him up.

The key point here is the choice between equalising outcomes and opportunities. Which socio-economic system does Singapore value more?

Singapore's approach so far has been much closer to that of the US than the Nordic countries.

As an immigrant society, Singapore's history is one of men and women who arrived here with very little and laboured to make good.

One quality many Singaporeans seem to share is a desire to chase a higher status in life, resulting in a culture of 'keeping up with the Tans' perhaps.

But underlying any system must be a balance between equity and aspiration. For most of its short history, Singapore has managed to find that balance.

The concern now is that in the last 10 years, inequality has risen to such an extent that it may be hurting the ability of people at the bottom and the middle to move up.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has sounded a warning of the same trend in the United States. In his upcoming book The Price Of Inequality, the Nobel Prize winner says too much inequality leads to a perception that the system is unfair, and to widespread mistrust of a government.

In Singapore, the Prime Minister himself has red-flagged social stratification as 'sharper than before', observing that 'the children of successful people are doing better, the children of less successful people are doing less well'.

The Government has moved to address the growing income gap through new measures to raise incomes at the bottom. These include higher income supplements and training support for low-wage workers, permanent help through GST vouchers and more health-care subsidies.

There is room for more to be done, but the experience of Sweden should give us pause, in view of the complexities of increasing benefits and equalising incomes.

While a government should certainly be compassionate, it should not take upon itself the role of equalising outcomes. The link between rewards, effort and talent needs to stay. It is what keeps members of a society competing and striving to improve - qualities that have helped Singapore to stand out.

What a government needs to do is to keep finding ways to provide opportunities so that members of every generation have a chance to move up.

I do not doubt that Singapore can both grow the pie and strike a better balance in sharing it. But it requires immense political and social will to keep experimenting, and to keep seeking better solutions even as there is fallout from mistakes that may be made along the way.

Just as Sweden has continuously improved its model, so must Singapore continue to evolve its own.

chanckr@sph.com.sg

The unhealthy politics of healthcare

America Divided

by Clive Crook

Todayonline Jun 28, 2012

Respectable opinion takes it for granted that you cannot have too much politics. The model citizen of a healthy democratic nation is above all "engaged" - informed, with strongly held views that he or she advances at every opportunity. Less politics means a passive, apathetic electorate. More politics must be good.

The United States, if you ask me, casts doubt on this truism.

Here is a country divided. The split is not just between Democrats and Republicans, between centre-left and hard right. The US is also divided between a political class and an apolitical class.

On one side, opinion shapers, policymakers and party disciples, engaged to the fullest; on the other, the bored and disenchanted, who have looked at the deeply committed and given up on Washington and all its works.

Here is the point, though: The sickness in US democracy lies less with the disengaged, whose boredom is forgivable, than with the model citizens who are all politics all the time.

As a practical matter, the disconnect is aggravated because American politics goes beyond Congress and the White House.

The civil service is also thoroughly politicised. Political appointees go several layers down across every agency of the executive. Even US courts are politicised.

This week, the highest court in the land - four conservatives, four liberals and a swing vote - will pronounce on the design of the country's health-care system.


POLITICAL TECHNOCRATS

Compared with that of other advanced nations, US civil society has a relatively shallow layer of non-aligned technocrats.

Its think-tanks, its economists, its scientists, its Supreme Court justices, almost everybody in the news media, almost everybody with an opinion about anything, take sides.

Any member of the political class with a firm view on campaign finance will probably have one on public borrowing, stem-cell research, incarceration, climate change, states' rights, you name it - and, strangely enough, all these views will probably conform to one of just two available conceptions.

Tell me whether the individual health insurance mandate is permissible under the Commerce Clause, and I'll tell you what you think about fiscal stimulus.

Total engagement, you could call it - and the result is total paralysis.


WEAKNESS OF THE SYSTEM

Of course, engagement did not have to mean faction, a distinction that the country's Founding Fathers understood very well.

But faction, sorting by party, is what we have got, and how. That is what political engagement means in the US. It has permeated every fibre of government and it is making the country ungovernable.

Granted, this pessimistic line of analysis has to contend with the standing of the US as the richest and most powerful country in the world. Maybe there is something to be said for all politics, all the time?

Actually, there is: That kind of government, together with a constitution that disperses power, either achieves dull centrist compromise or fights itself to a standstill - and in ordinary times, government limited by factional dispute and institutional friction works pretty well.

Moreover, since the Civil War, American patriotism has always united the country at moments of real peril. When this country aligns its efforts and resolves to do something, watch out.

The weakness of the system is in facing issues that are less dramatic, slower-acting and more complicated - but nonetheless capable of undermining the country's success and threatening its long-term prosperity. Healthcare, for instance.


CRIPPLING BURDEN

The US healthcare system is a disaster. It fails in basic respects and at the same time is a crippling burden on the economy.

It costs nearly a fifth of the country's entire output - vastly more than what any other advanced economy spends. Yet, it cannot even guarantee coverage for all its citizens.

The Obama administration was absolutely right to confront this issue, and to make universal coverage the principal goal of the reform.

In my view, the Affordable Care Act takes big steps in the right direction.

I hope the Supreme Court upholds the law. But whatever the court decides, the reform is far from the whole answer.

Incentives in the proposed new system are still grossly misaligned. The measures to control costs are too timid.

In this case, you cannot say a more centrist approach would have worked better. President Barck Obama's reform is centrist to a fault. Its most controversial element - the mandate requiring people to buy insurance - is a Republican idea.

The complexity of the plan, which is its chief weakness, arises from the administration's goal of leaving existing insurance arrangements mostly in place. The President's pledge not to raise taxes was also intended to reassure.

In effect, Mr Obama promised historic reform without perceptible change. If voters found that prospectus hard to believe, you cannot blame them.


DISINTERESTED ANALYSIS NEEDED

The problem was not too little centrism, it was too much politics - in the following sense.

Reforming healthcare self-evidently involves intensely political choices, but the issues are not exclusively political.

Getting to grips with such a complex issue also demands a widely accepted body of analysis. Never in control, but somewhere in the picture, must be the trusted non-aligned expert.

In this respect, the popularity of Mr Daniel Patrick Moynihan's saw that "everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts" is all too revealing. There is more to knowledge than facts, and more to wisdom than opinions. Those two categories do not exhaust the intellectual space.

Getting to grips with a policy question - especially one as complex as healthcare - requires not just facts and opinions, but also a body of agreed knowledge, of findings and understandings, to serve as a basis for discussion of choices. It requires disinterested analysis.

In the US, I am wondering, does any such thing still exist?

Ultimately, fixing the healthcare system will require a supporting consensus among the public. Without that, even if Mr Obama's reform is not repealed outright, it risks being strangled by a hostile Congress.

If the reform was popular in the country, it would have bipartisan support in Washington, and the Supreme Court would not even be thinking about overturning it.

Persuading the apolitical is vital, but it will not be easy as long as every expert is a partisan, every guide to policy an activist, every judge a politician and every pundit a team player.

Memo to the American political class: For democracy's sake, let us have a bit more thinking and a bit less engagement. BLOOMBERG

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg View columnist.

The Rise of Popularism

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
June 23, 2012

The New York Times

TRAVELING in Europe last week, it seemed as if every other conversation ended with some form of this question: Why does it feel like so few leaders are capable of inspiring their people to meet the challenges of our day? There are many explanations for this global leadership deficit, but I’d focus on two: one generational, one technological.

Let’s start with the technological. In 1965, Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder, posited Moore’s Law, which stipulated that the processing power that could be placed on a single microchip would double every 18 to 24 months. It’s held up quite well since then. Watching European, Arab and U.S. leaders grappling with their respective crises, I’m wondering if there isn’t a political corollary to Moore’s Law: The quality of political leadership declines with every 100 million new users of Facebook and Twitter.

The wiring of the world through social media and Web-enabled cellphones is changing the nature of conversations between leaders and the led everywhere. We’re going from largely one-way conversations — top-down — to overwhelmingly two-way conversations — bottom-up and top-down. This has many upsides: more participation, more innovation and more transparency. But can there be such a thing as too much participation — leaders listening to so many voices all the time and tracking the trends that they become prisoners of them?

This sentence jumped out from a Politico piece on Wednesday: “The Obama and Romney campaigns spend all day strafing each other on Twitter, all while decrying the campaign’s lack of serious ideas for a serious time. Yet at most junctures when they’ve had the opportunity to go big, they’ve chosen to go small.”

Indeed, I heard a new word in London last week: “Popularism.” It’s the über-ideology of our day. Read the polls, track the blogs, tally the Twitter feeds and Facebook postings and go precisely where the people are, not where you think they need to go. If everyone is “following,” who is leading?

And then there is the exposure factor. Anyone with a cellphone today is paparazzi; anyone with a Twitter account is a reporter; anyone with YouTube access is a filmmaker. When everyone is a paparazzi, reporter and filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure. And, if you’re truly a public figure — a politician — the scrutiny can become so unpleasant that public life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Alexander Downer, Australia’s former foreign minister, remarked to me recently: “A lot of leaders are coming under massively more scrutiny than ever before. It doesn’t discourage the best of them, but the ridicule and the constant interaction from the public is making it more difficult for them to make sensible, brave decisions.”

As for the generational shift, we’ve gone from a Greatest Generation that believed in save and invest for the future to a Baby Boomer generation that believed in borrow and spend for today. Just contrast George W. Bush and his father George H.W. Bush. The father volunteered for World War II immediately after Pearl Harbor, was steeled as a leader during the cold war — a serious time, when politicians couldn’t just follow polls — and as president he raised taxes when fiscal prudence called for it. His Baby Boomer son avoided the draft and became the first president in U.S. history to cut taxes in the middle of not just one war, but two.

When you have technologies that promote quick short-term responses and judgments, and when you have a generation that has grown used to short-term gratification — but you have problems whose solutions require long, hard journeys, like today’s global credit crisis or jobs shortage or the need to rebuild Arab countries from the ground up — you have a real mismatch and leadership challenge. Virtually all leaders today have to ask their people to share burdens, not just benefits, and to both study harder and work smarter just to keep up. That requires extraordinary leadership that has to start with telling people the truth.

Dov Seidman, the author of the book “How” whose company LRN advises C.E.O.’s on leadership, has long argued that “nothing inspires people more than the truth.” Most leaders think that telling people the truth makes that leader vulnerable — either to the public or their opponents. They are wrong.

“The most important part of telling the truth is that it actually binds you to people,” explains Seidman, “because when you trust people with the truth, they trust you back.” Obfuscation from leaders just gives citizens another problem — more haze — to sort through. “Trusting people with the truth is like giving them a solid floor,” adds Seidman. “It compels action. When you are anchored in shared truth, you start to solve problems together. It’s the beginning of coming up with a better path.”

That is not what we’re seeing from leaders in America, the Arab world or Europe today. You’d think one of them, just one, would seize the opportunity to enlist their people in the truth: about where they are, what they are capable of, what plan they need to get there and what they each need to contribute to get on that better path. Whichever leader does that will have real “followers” and “friends” — not virtual ones.

Comparing apples, oranges and S'pore

Jun 24, 2012

 
By John Lui

Whether the issue is the culling of wild boars, or the falling birth rate, or whether Sticker Lady is an artist or a vandal, or if the capping of mobile data usage is fair to users, there is a type of statement that is becoming much too familiar.

'This is why Singapore will never breed true creativity/a Steve Jobs/an artist like Banksy/ an affinity for nature. Our nation will never be a centre for excellence in high tech/the arts/making babies,' says the Angry Bunch.

And inevitably one or both sides use a uniquely Singaporean rhetorical tool: Comparing Singapore with another country.

Whenever I read that, I weep manly tears.

In a battle of wits, throwing out a national comparison is like flicking peanut shells at someone charging at you with a billiard cue, because there is a chance he may drop dead from a fatal allergic reaction. It is not an effective weapon.

For example, one side may say: 'Save the wild boars. In other countries, these animals are respected. Nay, loved!'

When I read that, I think of various unkind responses, among them, 'Why not you move there?' to 'In one country, they thought Kim Jong Il was a great leader and a snappy dresser' to 'Give those wild boars passports and get them to the airport, pronto!'

And that is just the least of it. At worst, you could end up scoring an own goal.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) wrote to The Straits Times Forum page recently to explain that it does not interfere in commercial decisions, such as the one made by SingTel (and later, StarHub) to limit the amount of free data on mobile price plans. The IDA said that what SingTel was doing was part of a 'growing trend... by operators worldwide'.

Yes, it really makes me feel good to know that I will be soon enjoying the same amount of pain as users in the United States. Here I was, feeling really left out of the party!

Another reason why comparing Singapore with another country hardly ever works as a tool of persuasion is that it causes a lively debate to degenerate into the dullest social anthropology lecture ever.

One side will sell the virtues of another country's public transport or economic system. The other side will reply with the thing that kills a great, entertaining argument stone dead: statistics. A dull parade of numbers will be trotted out to show how that country's system could never work here.

Because countries tend to be large objects with long histories, containing many people doing different things, both sides will be able to find and fling statistics and facts at each other ad nauseam.

If that kind of debate were held in a hall, the audience members would have by then taken out their phones for a quick round of Draw Something.

But it can get much, much worse.

Someone will make a connection between a country doing Y, which resulted in X. According to my own meticulous statistical research (i.e. I Googled it), people who see cause-and-effect links between two national-scale events tend to be wrong 96.8 per cent of the time.

Saying that Singapore will never produce a Banksy because of harsh punishments for vandalism, or that we will never cure the problem of the low birth rate because of a lack of workplace benefits is a bit like saying that unless we make a ritualistic sacrifice of a cow now, the sun will not rise tomorrow.

Just because X follows Y, it does not mean that Y caused X to happen. Before we can say whether the Singapore environment can produce a Banksy or a Steve Jobs, do we even know what it is that gave Jobs his 'Jobsness', or gave Banksy his 'Banksiness'? Unless we can define their X factor, how can we hope to nurture it in people?

It is the same with encouraging a higher birth rate. Some think we will be awash in babies if we hand out days off like chicken wings at a barbecue. Two hundred years ago, my female ancestor in China probably gave birth to another ancestor, her 24th child, then awarded herself a sinfully extravagant two-hour vacation before picking up her shovel and going back to the rice fields.

Let's accept that Singapore is unique. We are not one race, our most spoken language comes from across the ocean and when we are stuck in a motionless blacked-out train carriage, we sit quietly texting our bosses that we may be a bit late. We are better than unique. We are weird and wonderful. So why compare?

johnlui@sph.com.sg