SINGAPORE IN 20 YEARS: A meritocracy of equals

Ask DPM Tharman

SINGAPORE IN 20 YEARS: A meritocracy of equals

The fifth most popular question was on the future. “In 20 years’ time, what kind of Singapore do you hope for your four children” readers wanted to know. Hear DPM Tharman talk about creating a society where everyone is treated with equal respect.

TRANSCRIPT

ST: In 20 years’ time your children will be aged between 37 and 42, if I am correct, what kind of Singapore do you hope for them?

A: Well, I hope it’ll be a Singapore where we treat each other as equals, we treat each other as equals, which is I think a different type of meritocracy. We’ve had a working meritocracy, it has brought us quite far, it’s allowed for a tremendous amount of social mobility in our first 40 years, but I think it has to evolve.

It starts from young. I think we have students who go through our education system, those who are doing well, who are very aware of their strengths and achievements but not sufficiently aware of their weaknesses and not sufficiently aware of the strengths of others.

That’s one group. We have another group that goes through the system very aware of their weaknesses so that, you know, they got into a certain stream or didn’t get into a school of choice, they’re very aware of what they didn’t achieve, but not enough of them have discovered their strengths. And I believe very strongly that everyone has a strength.

Very few people are strong in everything and very few people are weak in everything, everyone has a strength.

So how do we evolve our system to keep it meritocratic, but broaden it, make it more flexible and very importantly allow for more mixing? There’s nothing like mixing, there’s nothing like mixing where as part of your day-to-day activity, what you go through from primary school through to Sec 4, you interact with people who are different from you.

That’s the only way in which, over time, quietly, without realising it, you recognise the strengths of others and you also know your weaknesses. So I think that’s a society I would like to see.

We are moving in that direction, we’ve made significant changes in the last decade but I think there are still more changes required. It’s not just education, it’s the way we treat blue collar workers generally, ordinary workers whether it’s in restaurants or when you’re taking transport or everywhere.

We are still a little too much of a hierarchy based on what happened to you at age 18, what scores you had, what qualifications you had, which course you could go to. So we are a meritocracy that’s still a bit too much defined by what happened in your school years or your post-secondary years. There are some societies which are not meritocratic enough in the school system.

I mean the US is a good example, public schools in very bad shape, giving a very bad deal to ordinary kids and then they’ve got private schools that are very well endowed, providing a very high quality of education, not meritocratic and they have bad outcomes for average folk.

But there’s something about their workplace culture that I think we can learn from both in the US and in Europe where they are very respecting of people in different vocations. They treat each other a little more as equals and I think that’s a very important culture to have and they rarely look at what happened to you 20 years ago.

It’s always about continual improvement or what I call a continuous meritocracy. So we’ve got to be a broader meritocracy recognising different strengths in different individuals but also a continuous meritocracy where it doesn’t matter so much what happened when you were in Sec 4 or JC 2 or when you finished your Poly or ITE, but what happens after that.

Are you continually improving, are you developing mastery? Regardless of where you start we have to recognise what you have achieved to develop mastery in what you are doing.

ST: Do you think there is a sense of entitlement among the successful in Singapore when you talk about how there’s this category of people who only recognise their strengths and are less aware of their weaknesses? Is that something that you worry about?

A: It is, it is, and you can’t correct it simply through tax policy and fiscal policy. It’s about changing the way we think about responsibility to society. And it’s not just a matter of being patronising, you know – I want to help someone who’s less advantaged. It’s also recognising the role that everyone plays in keeping the society going. Every job counts and improving on every job is what this is about. Respect mastery in every job, respect hard work in every job – that has to be our culture.

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SINGAPORE IN 20 YEARS: A meritocracy of equals