This is what happens when we do cut-and-paste policy-making
http://yoursdp.org/news/this_is_what_happens_when_we_do_cut_and_paste_policy_making/2014-10-11-5889
Added on: Saturday, 11 October 2014
by the Singapore Democrats
In his 1997 National Day Rally, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong pointed out that Singapore needed more undergraduate students. He said: “In fact, we are short of students who can meet the entry grade of NUS and NTU.”
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong now persuades Singaporeans not to “go on a paper chase for qualifications or degrees.”
It is this kind of confused approach to education that does so much damage to the country. Through the decades the PAP has used education as a tool to achieve its economic and, most unfortunately, political goals.
A snip here and some glue there has been the guiding principle of education policy formulation with the end-result that we now have to import foreigners in massive numbers without which, in Mr Lee Kuan Yew's words, Singapore will fail.
Fortunately, Singaporeans have become more discerning (and bolder) and are pointing out the shortcomings, and even hypocrisy, of the Government when it comes to educating our children.
For example, Ministers run the line that all our schools are equally good. This earned the rebuke of Jurong West Secondary School Vice-Principle Pushparani Nadarajah who said: “How many of our leaders and top officers who say that every school is a good school put their children in ordinary schools near their home? (Only) until they actually do so are parents going to buy (it).”
The truth is that the PAP does not know how to take our education to the next level because it does not have a clear grasp of what education is and what an educated person looks like. Its cyclical pattern of making patchy revisions to our education system will lead us nowhere.
http://yoursdp.org/news/this_is_what_happens_when_we_do_cut_and_paste_policy_making/2014-10-11-5889
Added on: Saturday, 11 October 2014
by the Singapore Democrats
In his 1997 National Day Rally, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong pointed out that Singapore needed more undergraduate students. He said: “In fact, we are short of students who can meet the entry grade of NUS and NTU.”
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong now persuades Singaporeans not to “go on a paper chase for qualifications or degrees.”
It is this kind of confused approach to education that does so much damage to the country. Through the decades the PAP has used education as a tool to achieve its economic and, most unfortunately, political goals.
A snip here and some glue there has been the guiding principle of education policy formulation with the end-result that we now have to import foreigners in massive numbers without which, in Mr Lee Kuan Yew's words, Singapore will fail.
Fortunately, Singaporeans have become more discerning (and bolder) and are pointing out the shortcomings, and even hypocrisy, of the Government when it comes to educating our children.
For example, Ministers run the line that all our schools are equally good. This earned the rebuke of Jurong West Secondary School Vice-Principle Pushparani Nadarajah who said: “How many of our leaders and top officers who say that every school is a good school put their children in ordinary schools near their home? (Only) until they actually do so are parents going to buy (it).”
The truth is that the PAP does not know how to take our education to the next level because it does not have a clear grasp of what education is and what an educated person looks like. Its cyclical pattern of making patchy revisions to our education system will lead us nowhere.