Curiosity Helped the Cat

A New Year and a New Decade has started and the most significant moment of the first working day of this new decade came from the online or in Singapore speak – the “Naughty” media, which found that Singaporeans ranked as one of the most ignorant people on the planet. The news story can be found at:

https://goodyfeed.com/sporeans-ranked-one-ignorant-people-world/?fbclid=IwAR3_IRFx2vy_77dQZKrWNXJHXnWaNzYBz4NudG8xG5clOcADuPdBAWMkEy4

The point of this whole story was the fact that it found that Singaporeans were generally ignorant about their own country. One of the examples given was the fact that the average Joe on the street did not know the difference between a Prime Minister and a President. Lee Kuan Yew as the say, was our first Prime Minister, not our first President.

While it may upset a few people, I’m inclined to agree. One of the most shocking areas that my fellow citizens lack in, is in basic geography. I’ve had Saudi’s tell me that they were asked “Which of Dubai do you come from,” (Saudi Arabia being many times bigger than Dubai) and the most infamous one was the fact that most Singaporeans think that Sikhs come from Bengal (there’s a very large distance between Bengal and Punjab). One of the more recent ones I encountered was someone who said, “Aren’t Hong Kong and Macau the same,” (No they’re not – at the very least you should know that Hong Kong was the British Colony and Macau the Portuguese one.) I’ve heard one Singaporean tell off an Indian worker for not understanding Tamil because, well all Indians Tamil (fact – the official language of India being Hindi).

What should be particularly shocking about this level of ignorance is the fact that we are an “educated” society. Singapore proudly announces to the rest of the world that we’re a “highly educated” society and when we talk about being “educated” we’re not talking about people having basic literacy as is the case in most of Asia. When Singapore talks about being “Educated” we are talking high-level, cutting edge educated. In Singapore, we’re talking about making “education” an export industry – “Singapore Math’s” – our text books are admired throughout the world. Whatever you think of our Prime Minister, he is regarded as a “mathematical prodigy” by Cambridge University. When it comes to education and getting the people educated, Singapore stands out as a shining example.

So, how is it that we’ve produced a nation of highly educated people who are highly ignorant, especially about the little things in their own backyard All the examples I’ve provided a moment ago, came from people who graduated from respectable universities and in some cases had furthered their studies with professional qualifications. I think of my ex-wife, whom my mother delightfully reminds me, couldn’t answer a single question in a game of Trivia Pursuit and she’s a graduate (University of London External Degree).

I guess you could say that the problem in our system is not that we don’t teach the technical skills in life but we fail to instill the purpose the spirit of learning. When I went to university in London, we were told that getting your PhD was all about realizing how much did NOT know and wanting to devote your life to knowing more about a particular subject. Here, for most people, it’s a case of earning bragging rights that you have this and that qualification from this or that university. Our system produces very good technical people. If you put our people in any workshop or any office, they’ll do an amazing job.

However, if you put them in a situation that requires a bit of imagination or a bit of awareness of what’s going on outside their own narrow field, they will probably fail. Like it or not, there is a reason why all of our top politicians and civil servants are….educated elsewhere.

To be fair to our people, the system is designed for them not to need to know so much about how the world beyond their little area functions. As long as you can acquire enough skills within a certain area, you can end up doing quite well. The point was brought home to me when a young trainee lawyer (Oxford graduate non the less) told a former journalist he was having lunch with, “I don’t see what is Dr. Goh’s (Goh Keng Swee, our former Deputy Prime Minister and the man who built our institutions) life story has anything to do with me.” Apparently that young lawyer is now doing very well financially.

There is, as they say, no need to be curious. I remember facilitating a lecture by a Bloomberg Columnist for a class of journalism students. The columnist made the point that all you needed to succeed as a columnist was a bit of curiosity and Google. He made the point that thanks to the internet, we have more information available at our finger tips than our ancestors had in numerous libraries and all we had to do was to find it. His only comment on his students was “Curiously uncurious.” You would expect aspiring journalist to be busybodies – well, that is unless you’re talking about Singapore.

The problem with Singapore’s system is that its been successful. The young trainee lawyer that I mentioned is now making more money than he’s ever dreamed of. The young journalists are all probably doing well too. Not giving two hoots about what happens outside your own little hole hasn’t harmed people.

However, things are changing. The days when we could be a cheap manufacturing centre for the Western world are gone. We need people who know how to operate outside their own little hole or at least are curious enough to want to try to operate outside their little caves. The consequences are being seen on the streets. The local population complains that its being displaced by people from elsewhere because the people from elsewhere have the capacity to want to know things beyond their little hovel. The future belongs to the intellectually curious and you secure it by making minds curious not by shutting them off from the outside world.