Vivian Must Be Annoyed

ST Aug 30, 2008
I'm sorry, Singapore
By Lin Xinyi & Terrence Voon

'I SINCERELY apologise.'

Ms Lee Bee Wah, the president of the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA), had those words for the country last night.

Her comments last weekend, that she would replace the Singapore table tennis team manager, unleashed a storm of criticism and calls for her resignation.

In a quavering voice, she said sorry for souring the country's brightest sporting moment in almost half a century.

Facing a throng of close to 30 journalists at a press conference last night, she said: 'It is regretful that this situation happened and turned out the way it did.

'I had made comments which had been misunderstood and had upset some Singaporeans. I sincerely apologise for causing any grievances and any stress.'

She also said: 'Our action has dampened the celebration mood of our fellow Singaporeans.'
With that, she brought to a close one chapter of an episode that sparked unhappiness from all quarters.

Since last weekend Ms Lee, an MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, has been criticised by many for spoiling the party mood after the country's first Olympic medal in 48 years.

Just five days after the women's table tennis team took silver at the Beijing Games, she revealed that team manager Antony Lee's services were no longer needed, and that national head coach Liu Guodong's fate would be decided by a coaching committee.

She had been angry after Singapore No. 1 Gao Ning found himself with no coach for his third-round men's singles match and crashed out to a much lower-ranked Croatian.

Ms Lee took over as table tennis chief barely two months ago, on July 4. Though many called for her to step down, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan made it clear last night that she will stay, but she needs some time to get results.

Last night's press conference, held at the STTA's headquarters in Toa Payoh, also made clear that head coach Liu is in talks with Ms Lee to negotiate a new contract.

But team manager Lee will leave the STTA. His secondment from the Singapore Sports Council to the association will be extended by three months beyond the end of this month. He will then join the Singapore National Olympic Council.

Silly Bee Wah. Such an unnecessary fracas. Simultaneously, her severe lack of political finesse is exposed and revealed to her political bosses.

If Bee Wah had really wanted to get rid of Lee, she should have simply waited a few more weeks or months. Then the public excitement over the Olympic silver medal would have died down, and she could have garnered a few plausible reasons, and sacked Lee then. Without all this sound and fury.

No, instead Bee Wah had to do it straight after the Olympics, and in such an ugly fashion - making it public, without even personally telling Lee first. Leading to an entirely predictable backlash from the public. Now the Minister himself has to step in personally, and repeatedly, to manage the show and stop it from spinning out of control.

Doesn't Bee Wah UNDERSTAND what Vivian needs? The success of our imported foreign sporting talent is not merely for the sake of the sporting scene in Singapore. No, their success is important for convincing the masses that in general, foreign talent is good, valuable and beneficial for Singapore, in every sector.

In other words, the Olympic silver medal is an important showcase for the PAP government's broader foreign talent policy. The greater the public euphoria over the silver medal, the better!

But now that Bee Wah has gone and mucked it all up. No, her political bosses won't be pleased at all.

Regarding the table tennis part, the damage is done. Lee is going, and who can blame him? People have pride, especially people who are good at what they do. Lee's main satisfaction in this matter would be that before leaving, he did manage to get Bee Wah so thoroughly and publicly embarassed.

And besides, for him, there will always be other options. Any other countries out there, which would like a table tennis coach for the 2012 London Olympics?

Life As A Competition

From the Straits Times of 25 August 2008, an article by 22-year-old Christine Chong.

Why must life be a competition?

I ONCE met a trumpet player from the United States and asked him which competitions his school band had taken part in. Stunned, he replied: 'Not everything in life is a competition.'

It was inconceivable to me that students would participate in school bands and other CCAs out of pure interest, and not for points.

It is a tragedy that many Singaporeans believe exams, rankings and stress are necessary evils on the long and winding road to success.

The mantra that 'Your studies should be first priority' is never far from our parents' lips. 'Don't waste too much time on other activities' and 'This is a very important academic year' are close seconds ....

Coincidentally, I was having lunch with a friend yesterday and this topic came up - why are Singaporeans choosing not to have babies?

The interesting answer - it's the result of a collective herd mentality instilled by the education system. Back in the school days, the mentality could be expressed like this: "Your studies should be first priority; don't waste time on other activities." This got imprinted into the minds of the entire generation.

Fast forward to adulthood, and the same imprint is still there. It's just that it has adapted into a new form for those who have finished school: "Your career should be first priority - don't waste time on having children."

In the psychological landscape of Singaporeans, parenthood has become the equivalent of "CCAs". It's the thing you might really, really love to do. But your kiasu instincts are telling you that you can't take the risk; you might not have the time; you might not have the money; and it's much safer to just concentrate on your homework job. (Yup, the same job that you don't love, but chose for practical reasons).

Christine Chong posed a good question - "Why must life be a competition?". The problem with competitions is that they have rules, and the rules were made by someone else, not you.

It's okay to compete for a while, and it might even be fun. But you should pick and choose your races. You should also bear in mind that it's all just mind games and you always have the right to refuse to play.

If you don't see that, and you simply live your life as one big, endless competition, then in all likelihood, you'll simply end up living your life, according to someone else's rules. Not your own.

A reader, Kelvin Ng, emailed me last week. He was trying to locate one of my old posts - where I had written something about "life audits". A "life audit" is a time I set aside to reflect, feel and think about how & what I've been doing; and what I want to do next; and why.

It's not about how my peers are living their lives. Or how my boss thinks I should be living mine. Or how my mother would like me to do (which includes buying landed property). Or what society in general might be expecting me to do.

It's about how I want to live my own life.

Here, Kelvin - the link. Try it out. Because in the long run, life just isn't very fun, if you have to keep playing by someone else's rules.

Suffering and Struggle As The Hallmarks of A True Singaporean

Last Tuesday, the ST Forum featured a letter on the topic of citizenship and Singaporean identity. The letter referred to the Olympic silver medal which our foreign-talent imports had recently won for Singapore. The writer, Mr Mark Wong, made his key point as follows:

"We have every right to celebrate our paddlers' success in the Olympics and they duly deserve it. But despite all the controversy surrounding the origins of our players, one cannot deny that it would have been a more empathic celebration if Singaporeans brought home the medal rather than Singapore citizens."

Mark drew a distinction between being a Singapore citizen, and being Singaporean. He tried to say that citizenship is just a kind of formality, consisting of official paperwork and the issuance of a pink card. In contrast, a genuine Singaporean identity is something more profound, more important, and relates to a deeper sense of belonging:

ST Aug 19, 2008
Singaporeans and Singapore citizens: There's a big difference

IT IS time to put forth the argument that being a Singapore citizen is not the same as being Singaporean. One can be born here but one's heart is not. If the only thing linking someone who spends most of his life in another country to his birthplace is his relatives, then there is little meaning behind his national identity. People talk about 'true-blue' Singaporeans but are usually stumped for words when one asks them to define the term.

A feeling of identity is defined and nurtured by one's social affiliations, having immersed in its culture, history and people. I consider myself Singaporean for the following reasons:

- Having friends who suffered with me during national service.

- Having friends who struggled with me under the education system.

- Eating, celebrating, talking, learning, suffering, serving and being served by Singaporeans around me ....

I understand Mark's point, but I could not help but see some sad, unintended irony in his letter.

Mark gives three main reasons why he considers himself Singaporean. The first reason has something to do with "suffering". The second reason has something to do with "struggling". And the third reason, like the first, also has something to do with "suffering".

We might summarise as follows - the hallmarks of a Singaporean are suffering and struggle.

That sounds quite unappealing, to me at least. If Mark's definition is correct, then I would really prefer not to be a true Singaporean. Being a Singaporean citizen will be fine. By nature, I'm just not masochistic.

School, Memory and Real Life

My memory is tremendous. For example, suppose I go to a party, where I know no one except the host, and the host then spends a few minutes quickly introducing the other 20 guests to me. Immediately after that, I can remember every name mentioned, and link it to the right face.

Next example. Suppose you recite to me a list of 20 completely random words - "love, Toyota, radio, blog, snake, Mexico, hurricane, hairstylist ..." and so on. Immediately after that, I can recite back to you all those words, without missing a single one. Furthermore I can recite them back to you ... in the exact order that you had told them to me.

In my previous post, I had said that rote learning plays an inordinately large role in our education system. You might be thinking now that since my memory is so good, I must have found school very easy. Unfortunately, my memory wasn't so good when I was a student.

My memory became so good only much later, when I had already finished school. It all started when I chanced upon a few books on memory techniques, the back cover of which typically made rather outrageous-sounding claims.

For example, the book might claim that you would be able to remember up to 100 items in perfect order, and it will take you no more than 20 minutes to do this. And the items could be names; addresses; telephone numbers; important historical dates; key points from your science textbook etc.

In fact the claims are not outrageous. They are genuine. You don't have to be a genius either. You just have to put in the effort to understand a few key principles and practise the special memory techniques - one famous one is the Roman Room method.

And hey presto, with a bit of practice, indeed you will have a memory that's simply phenomenal, compared to the average person.

You can see these memory techniques taken to their extreme, at events like the World Memory Championships (the mind equivalent of the Olympics). Here's one of their events - Random Words. Each contestant has to memorise 400 random words, organised in 20 columns of 20 words each. And how much time do they have to memorise? Just 15 minutes.

One might believe that a highly powerful memory is extremely useful in life. I don't really agree. It's good not to be absent-minded, but it's very easy to over-estimate the practical value of a highly powerful memory. I would say that a powerful memory is extremely useful, if you are a Singapore student. However, today I honestly have very little use for my memory techniques, powerful though they may be. Let me explain.

If I want to go shopping for groceries, I still make a written shopping list. Why? Well, the very process of writing out the list helps me to work out what I need to buy. And once I've written out the list, why should I bother to memorise it? I can just put the list in my pocket and take it with me to the supermarket. That takes no effort at all.

Suppose someone gives me his handphone number. I could memorise the number, or I could just store it in my own handphone. I choose the latter approach. Why? Because both approaches take the same amount of time - a few seconds - and if I store the number in my handphone, later I can speed-dial the number straightaway (no need to manually key in all 8 numbers).

At work, there is a set of standard legal documents which I constantly need to refer to. They relate to standard terms used by the international financial markets for trading in foreign exchange, commodities, credit risk etc. And each document consists of many pages of technical definitions and legal jargon, basically a lot of small print.

If I really wanted to, I could use my memory techniques to memorise the clauses. But why even bother? I can just put the documents at the side of my desk, within easy reach (and in fact, that's where they are). Whenever I need to, I can just reach out, take the right document, flip to the relevant page and check whatever I want to check.

I mean, I'm working. This is real life, not an exam. I don't score any extra marks for memorising documents that are already sitting on my table.

By now, you will see that in real life, a highly powerful memory is not that important. It's very valuable only in school, and that's because many things in school (especially Singapore schools) are accomplished by rote learning.

In real life though, rote learning is largely irrelevant. Because in real life, you don't waste time memorising information that's easily retrievable from your handphone, hard disk, emails or hard-copy files. You could also just open a textbook - and read it. Photocopy a page, if you need to. No need to memorise at all.

Education and The Great Pain of Rather Useless Things

An article about PM Lee's National Day Rally speech:

ST Aug 18, 2008
Let Kids Learn At Own Pace

PARENTS who complain that the education system here is stressful for their children should look at other Asian countries where it can be worse.

In South Korea, there is a school where students can snatch only a few hours of rest each day, are not allowed to make friends or keep items like magazines in their bags.

It is like a prison, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally speech on Sunday night.

'We are not like that. We have some stress but we should manage it, we should take it in our stride,' he said.

He referred to the South Korean school when highlighting to parents that some stress in school was inevitable.

But he reminded parents that they should also let their children grow and learn at their own pace.

He noted that parents push their children further by sending them for extra enrichment lessons.

And during examination, they would ply their children with chicken essence.

Singapore's competitive school system has been named as a culprit by couples who choose to have no or few children.

But, Mr Lee said: 'I think some pressure is inevitable. It is part of Singapore's competitive spirit.

'Other East Asian societies are even more ruthlessly competitive.'

I like the general theme of PM Lee’s speech, but I think he still missed the point. Frankly I do not care whether our schools are more or less stressful than those in Korea, or Japan, or anywhere else.

Here’s the more important question. After all that stress, what do our students actually get out of it?

In my own school days, I spent many hours memorizing the structure and details of the Periodic Table in chemistry. From Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I memorized large chunks of verse, word for word, line by line, because that was the way to score an A1 for Literature. In mathematics, I learned to do complex calculations involving an imaginary number called “i”.

None of the above knowledge is relevant to my life now. After junior college, I’ve never had any reason to look at the Periodic Table again. Macbeth was enjoyable, but it would have been much more enjoyable if I didn’t have to spend dozens of hours committing it to memory. And as a matter of fact, the last time I used an imaginary number was during the very last maths exam of my life – nowhere else, since then.

Most of the substantive formal content we learn in school ultimately has no relevance to the rest of our lives. This isn’t such a bad thing, if in school we just had to walk through the substantive content, gain some understanding, grasp the key principles and move on. We never really know what we might need to know, later in life (I might have become a chemist, an actor or an imaginary mathematician), but if we do understand the key principles, we'll be able to figure our way through.

Unfortunately, I think that our education system still heavily emphasises regurgitation over real understanding. Our schools still require tremendous volumes of rote learning. This is where most of the stress arises. In the typical Singapore school, we do not merely miss the wood for the trees. Instead, for the sake of our exams, we desperately memorise the bark, the twigs, the useless fallen dead leaves - and we will be punished for failing to do so.

Our students suffer great, continual stress, as they strive to master things that will have absolutely no relevance to the rest of their lives.