Interesting comment about doers vs thinkers .... from Mr Ngiam.
Hot off the press - from
http://www.straitstimes.com/Spread scholars across schools: Ngiam Tong Dow
PRIMARY school pupils who shine should be spread across a range of secondary schools, rather than the two or three elite institutions usually reserved for scholars.
This would ensure Singapore's brightest are equipped with a wider range of thinking skills to tackle today's complex issues, former top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow said on Friday.
He suggested, for example, that those educated at Chinese schools here in earlier years, tended to have more 'guile' as a result.
Most education is in English nowadays, but in previous decades, a number of schools taught classes largely in Chinese. That led to a distinction.
Speaking at a Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) lunch, Mr Ngiam said Chinese-educated Singaporeans generally have more guile and cunning than their English-educated counterparts.
They also tend to be more 'doers' than just 'thinkers', which is an important trait that Singapore's scholar-dominated civil service needs to cultivate, said Mr Ngiam, chairman of Surbana Corp.
He was speaking to 150 attendees at SCCCI's biannual Distinguished Speakers Lecture series at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia hotel.
In his half-hour speech, Mr Ngiam discussed how Singapore can maintain a First World 'state of mind' by being a society with equal access to education and 'driven by passion'.
He also raised the question of whether there was a divide between the English-educated and Chinese-educated in Singapore.
Mr Ngiam, who attended an English medium school, recalled 'a famous speech in the 1960's' made by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then Prime Minister, now Minister Mentor.
Mr Lee had described English school students 'as gold fish swimming in an ornamental bowl'. In contrast, Chinese-educated students were likened to 'piranhas in the wild'.
Read the full report in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.Here are excerpts from the speech, thanks to ST / Sat 8 Sep.
Musings of a Singapore administrator
The following is excerpted from a speech yesterday by retired permanent secretary Ngiam Tong Dow.
The address was part of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Distinguished Speakers Lecture series.
IN THE 1950s, Singapore was the archetypal Third World city. Unemployment was over 10 per cent. There were thousands of hawkers eking out a living on the streets.
Hygiene conditions were appalling. Some may remember tucking into prawn mee on Hokkien Street, oblivious to the rats scurrying around in the open drains. Or enjoying the best satay in the world amid the fumes of the Tay Koh Yat buses at their Beach Road terminus. Indian rojak tasted divine in the back lanes of the Rex Theatre. Or they might remember dancing under the stars at West Point in Pasir Panjang for the price of a soft drink.
Singapore is a young country. Political independence was fortuitously thrust on us on Aug 9, 1965. We separated from Malaysia, hardly two years after we joined. Fortunately for Singapore, we were led by an able, driven and incorruptible prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
In the first decade of economic development, our industrial strategy was light manufacturing. Separation from Malaysia forced us to abandon the protective import substitution development policy advocated by Third World economists. It was just not feasible for Singapore to adopt this, as our domestic market was minuscule. We had no choice but to embrace a totally export-oriented policy, competing against the best and most competitive economies of the world.
By 1972, Singapore was able to achieve full employment. How did we do this?
It was largely because we adopted a pragmatic, not a doctrinaire, approach. In the initial years, the EDB scoured the world for companies that would employ our young and old. There was no minimum-wage legislation. Nor did we sniff at low-tech jobs. In fact, any job was welcome - high-tech, low-tech or no tech.
Our early industries were in labour-intensive manufacturing, such as garments, hair wigs, toys and assembly of radio and TV sets. Breaking up of old ships for their plates to be melted down and rolled into steel bars for building construction was also an early industry that mopped up unskilled manual labour.
Though it was tough for us at the time, separation from Malaysia and the withdrawal of British forces from bases in Singapore was a torrent of ice-cold water bracing us for global competition. We persuaded American, European and Japanese multinational companies to partner with us in training our eager young workforce in the higher skills required by the precision engineering and process plants they were moving into Singapore. Our wage rates weighted by skill levels were lower than in their home countries.
A strong civil service
IF YOU were to ask me to identify the knowledge domain that Singapore is most competitive in, without undue modesty I would say it is public administration. While the sine qua non of good government is incorruptibility and integrity, it is good administration that will deliver the public goods and services.
Without claiming that the Singapore Civil Service is perfect - no administration is - over the years we have integrated our knowledge and experience in the planning, design and construction of HDB new towns and industrial parks. My own company, Surbana Corporation, is developing three new towns in Chengdu, Wuxi and Xi'an, which will provide condominium-class housing for the rising Chinese middle class. Similarly, Ascendas, of Jurong Town Corporation parentage, is building new-generation industrial parks in China, India and Vietnam.
Besides being a premier transportation hub, Singapore is now exporting its logistics expertise to build or upgrade new ports and airports in the two emerging Asian giants of China and India, and soon further afield in the Middle East, South Africa and as far away as Central America. Our major statutory boards - HDB, PSA, CAAS and JTC - have commercial offshoots exporting both hard and soft knowledge to a globalised world where competition is knowledge-based.
The classical factors of production - land, labour and capital - are no longer enough. Knowledge is the new frontier of competition. Knowledge goes beyond science and technology. Knowledge may just be timely information. It may also be mined from operating data. Market research is not merely a random walk in the park. It probes what a customer really wants in a product or service.
In our field of competition, Surbana integrates its knowledge and experience in urban planning, architectural design, engineering network and, most critical, accurate reading of income levels of prospective buyers, so that commercially we can cost and price to sell. We do not speculate.
Tie-ups with private sector
IN 1959, the economy dependent on entrepot trade was stagnating. Singapore's merchant class were essentially traders. They were adept and agile in trading rubber, sugar and rice. They lacked the knowledge and technology in manufacturing, transportation or managing five-star hotels. In critical areas, the state had no choice but to co-invest with private entrepreneurs, providing risk capital and access to technology.
The very first ground- breaking ceremony at the green field Jurong Industrial Estate was that of the National Iron & Steel Mills, or Natsteel, a rolling mill using steel scrap obtained by breaking up old ships on the beaches of Pasir Panjang.
The EDB also took stakes in the Mandarin and Shangri-La hotels and Jurong Shipyard, established by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries of Japan. Keppel and Sembawang Shipyards were established directly by the Ministry of Finance. So was Singapore Airlines, the flagship of state entrepreneurship.
The Singapore Government did not start off wanting to own business enterprises.
But when the risk is too big for the private sector to bear, the Government is prepared to share the risk, partnering private businessmen. In certain situations, we had no choice but to start industries and businesses on our own, such as the Singapore Technologies group of defence companies.
Whether partly or fully owned, the Ministry of Finance leaves management of the enterprises to professional management and independent boards.
Background in trading
BEING traders, the forte of private Singapore business entrepreneurs lies more in commodities trading, banking and finance, taxis and bus companies. Even in banking, our banks in their early years financed mainly trade, not industry with their long gestation periods.
Starting off as building contractors, the dream of every young Chinese entrepreneur in the 1950s was to become a property developer. He reaches the apex of business success when he garners enough capital to qualify for a banking licence.
In banking, too, we are comfortable at the retail end of the business in housing and car loans and credit cards. Corporate lending is to small and medium-sized enterprises rather than to large multinational companies.
Though Singapore is rated the fourth largest forex centre in the world, our banks do not have the treasury capacity to do megadeals. The large multinational banks in Singapore dominate forex, including trading in the Singapore dollar.
Though I am a passionate advocate of growing our own timber, Singapore could not have developed to be what we are today without being open and welcoming of both foreign talent and enterprise.
Ruled by reason, driven by passion
MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, in the second part of his memoirs, wrote of Singapore's journey from Third to First World. Those of us who are of the pre-1965 generation know very well what a Third World Singapore was like. We still shudder at the memory of having to share communal kitchens, bathrooms and toilets. When we moved from unsewered kampongs to HDB flats with running water, flush toilets and electric bulbs, it was like getting into paradise.
We now aspire to be First World.
Do we know what it takes to be First World? Is it just gleaming condominiums, state-of-the-art transport systems, the Esplanade concert halls, superb congestion-free highways, top schools and universities, excellent medical care and enjoying a lifestyle that even our neighbours talk about?
Being First World is not a permanent state. We learn from history how great empires have risen and fallen, how great cities have blossomed and decayed. Even as individuals, we begin to be aware of our human frailties as we age.
If it is inevitable that a human mind atrophies over time, can a state like Singapore avoid atrophy? What can we do as parents and grandparents to ensure that there will be a strong and prosperous Singapore for our children and grandchildren in the next 50, 100 years?
It is all these and more.
To me, being First World is a state of mind. We have to be a society ruled by reason and driven by passion.
I didn't know of "anime" till I heard my colleagues/friends talking about it, and of how they stay up to watch it over cable TV. Must be very captivating, to stay up to watch it.
