A look inside a Singaporean company.

I was speaking to a friend who works in finance recently. I won't give too many specifics, lest he be identified, but he is not, originally, from Singapore. He has, however, many years experience of living and working here. He had some interesting things to say about how Singaporean finance workers do their job.

Firstly, he noted that they were always at a loss when asked to do something new from scratch. It seems that their "wonderful education" hadn't prepared them for this. What they would always do when asked to do anything, was to go searching for something or someone to copy. Sometimes, this would work out OK, if they chanced upon the right thing to copy. However, it was not infrequent, that they would find the WRONG thing to copy and completely screw up the task. It was quite beyond them to think for themselves, from the beginning, how to approach the problem and solve it independent of external models. Thus, their only choice was to copy.

He also noted a herd mentality in financial analysts originating in Singapore. Well, there is a good reason for this: they are NOT actually analyzing things for themselves but have simply copied the person they think is the best/most respected in the field. They do this for two reasons: firstly, they are not very good at thinking or analyzing for themselves - and secondly, they don't want to stick their necks out and venture an opinion of their own. They want to be able to say that: "Well, the best guy in the field thought the same thing, so you can't blame me for getting it wrong, too." They see this as a failsafe way to make a living. Tasked to analyze they will just copy the best and use their copying as their best defense against charges of incompetence that might come later, if they prove to be wrong.

Well, my friend, who is a very senior financial person had a solution to this problem of Singaporeans copying all the time. He didn't hire them. He hired an office full of Malaysians instead. Apparently, this was somewhat of an improvement.

So, this brings me back to my primary worry here, regarding Singapore: what exactly is the education system making people into? It seems, from examples from the workplace, that I have encountered, that it creates people unable to think for themselves, unable to create, unable to express an opinion of their own - or unwilling to do so, which amounts to the same thing - and only able to do one thing: copy someone else. To my mind, that doesn't make much of a worker, nor much of a contribution to the world. However, the economy has managed to come this far, based on this way of doing things (though we cannot know how much of this was due to external input from imported talent). Yet, I think there is a severe limit on how far a nation can go when all it is doing is copying other nations, other people and other things. To copy, the object, person or idea must already exist - which means that Singapore can only be second in everything, at best...and that makes for a second rate nation, not a first rate one, as the powers-that-be would have locals believe.

How can this be changed? Well, it would have to start in the classroom but extend throughout the whole culture. The idea that copying is acceptable must be thrown out. It must be discouraged...banned even. Until then, everyone here will take the intellectually lazy way out - and copy their way through working life.

Personally, were this change implemented, I think it would be a great improvement, however I am under no illusions: even if the system was completely overhauled today - it would take DECADES for the way of this place to change. Those who are already adults will not be able to change - it is too late for them. We must look to those who have not yet begun their schooling. So, it would be at least two decades before anything positive could come out of it.

There is one political problem, of course: I don't think that the present government wants a thinking population - and so may very well continue with the present system, indefinitely, for it ensures one thing very well: that people just can't think. Perhaps, that is, in fact, the whole purpose of the education system here. Maybe the output - people who can't think for themselves - was, in fact, the INTENDED product. What a thought. I just hope it is not true. Yet, we are left with two choices: either the education system is competent and has produced its intended output - unthinking, some say robotic, people - or the education system is incompetent and has failed to produce what it wishes to: "creative productive adults" - as they sometimes say they want.

I will leave it to you to consider: is the education system competent or incompetent? Is the end result desired or not? In my view, neither situation is a good one - because the output is not ideal. There are better ways to live, than to live a life of copying. I wonder how long it will take before that is realized around here?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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