Singapore's Intellectual Class.

Anyone who knows Singapore well will wonder how on Earth I could have written a title like "Singapore's Intellectual Class." Singapore doesn't really have an intellectual class...or if it does, those intellectuals were never in my class (when I taught).

Singapore's education system doesn't produce intellectuals, in my view of what an intellectual is. Singapore's "top students", are very good at passing exams and in telling you what the world already knows. However, what they are not good at...in fact, are hopeless at, is in telling you something you don't know. In other words, they are useless at independent, creative thinking. In other words, they are not truly intellectuals at all.

Now, I am not going to lay blame at the foot of Singaporeans for this. You see, it is difficult to know the cause of this lack of intellectual calibre. Is it genetic? Or is it the fact that the education system requires and trains parrots? Are they parrots by nature or parrots by nurture? I am not going to answer the question here. However, I will say this: I don't think that Singapore will ever have a truly intellectual class. There is too much momentum there, in the way things are done. Singapore will not change until it has died as a nation. Then, perhaps, something new will come of it.

Of course, there is, perhaps, a good reason why Singapore does not have a home grown intellectual class: intellectuals think - and this singularly single party state has never encouraged its people to do that. There is nothing more threatening to a monolithic state than someone able to think of alternatives. Thus it is that true thinkers are not only not found, in Singapore, but not desired, either. A true thinker is the last kind of person Singapore wants.

Given these considerations, I found it most interesting what Lee Kuan Yew had to say on the matter (for those who don't know...which is much of the outside world...Lee Kuan Yew is modern Singapore's iconic "founder" and lifelong effective leader). I say "founder" because, actually, Singapore was founded by the Brit, Sir Stamford Raffles, long ago, though Lee Kuan Yew took it in a different direction.

Lee Kuan Yew recently called for the import of an "intellectual class", specifically from China and India. He stated that this class would be three times larger than the present intellectual class. (Yes. I know. Three times zero is still zero.) He envisaged this intellectual class as being leaders in their fields and as bringing greater wealth to Singapore. This should not be much of a surprise, since wealth or "economic growth" is actually the sole consideration of Singapore's leadership. He then went on to disparage the Malays, by saying that immigrants from Malaysia were "not so bright" and that they only came to Singapore because it provided them with opportunities not found at home.

So, Lee Kuan Yew wants to increase the number of PRCs in Singapore despite the fact that it is already overflowing with them - and to specifically exclude Malaysians from this drive for an "intellectual class". Again, this is not surprising to anyone who has followed Lee Kuan Yew's past pronouncements, quite a few of which involve disparaging one race or another, directly or indirectly.

To my eyes, it is very revealing that Chinese and Indian "intellectuals" should be required and not those from elsewhere. You see, I don't think that such immigrants would be likely to "rock the boat". They are likely to be good little workers, who don't cause any kind of trouble at all. They will tend to keep their opinions to themselves, if they have any. They will just get on with their jobs, in a diligent fashion. As far as being an effective "intellectual class" that is just about the last thing they will be. China, for instance, is not famous for its intellectual class. China is about as good at making intellectuals as Singapore is. They create pretty much the same kind of hardworking, but not at all creative or independently thinking people, as Singapore does. Thus, in importing an intellectual class consisting of said "intellectuals", Singapore can hope to have a greater concentration of what it already has: hardworking, unthinking, servants of the state.

The big, unstated question, here, of course, is why Singapore feels a need to import an intellectual class at all. What happened to its own? Why can't Singapore make its own intellectuals? After all, every other country (apart, perhaps, from China...) does...

The answer, it seems, from our own experience of life in Singapore, is that Singapore does not WANT a homegrown intellectual class. It does not want a class of people with two attributes: 1) able to think for themselves 2) know Singapore well. The combination of those two attributes leads to the possibility of CHANGE...and CHANGE is what the arthritic system of the Singaporean state resists mightily.

What does Singapore do to its potential intellectual class? Well, I can only answer, from personal experience, about what it does to non-Chinese potential intellectuals. My eldest son is half-Malay...he is also Singapore's most gifted young scientist - or was, until he left. I say "most gifted young scientist", since there is no other candidate of his age, with his achievements, in Singapore...or elsewhere for that matter. Now, you would have thought that a country seeking to build an "intellectual class" would have looked after him well? But no...we faced opposition, every step of the way, in seeking a suitable education for him. What was offered by the Gifted Branch was pure tokenism - an attempt to make it look like they were doing something, whilst they actually did everything they could to delay his progress. It was immensely frustrating dealing with them. Then again, when we made our own arrangements, and progressed without their "help"...Singapore's media began to tell lies about our son, to attempt to diminish him and so, perhaps, spare themselves the embarrassment of what they had (not) done. I only hope that Singaporean readers are not so naive as to swallow what their mainstream media say without reflecting on it, themselves.

Anyway, how are we to interpret this? It does seem that Singapore certainly doesn't want a MALAY intellectual of any kind, to thrive. If it had wanted a Malay intellectual to thrive, it would have been more responsive where Ainan was concerned. No. Singapore wants its intellectuals to be non-Malay - even if that means having to import them.

Then again, there is my own experience of Singapore. I am a very creative person...but in Singapore that creativity was not best deployed. At no time, was I given an opportunity, there, to create in the way that I can, so easily. Instead, my energies were directed towards teaching students who would never, in a trillion years, ever possess one quark of my creativity. It was laughable. What kind of moronic nation cries out for an "intellectual class" - but then fails to recognize or value intellectuals within its own borders? It is hilarious, in its fundamental stupidity.

If Singapore really wants an intellectual class, it should have done everything necessary to allow Ainan to flourish. It should also have made available, to me, a position in which I could be free to think and create. It should also have repeated those steps, however many times are necessary, to accommodate all potential intellectuals - and actual intellectuals - within its borders. Were it to do so, there would be no need to import an intellectual class, because one would already have been fostered within it.

It seems, however, that both Ainan and I are the wrong race, to have been invited to participate in Singapore's "intellectual class". Neither of us is from China or India, after all. One of us even has those dreaded Malay genes...so God forbid however could he be an intellectual?

Yet, we are intellectuals. Singapore's failure to value that fact doesn't change it. The funny thing is that we are establishing ourselves as intellectuals in Malaysia, the country that Lee Kuan Yew disparaged so, in his recent speech. Here, we are valued. Ainan is being allowed to grow, intellectually - and I am working creatively as a research scientist. So, all is turning out well for us.

The question, now, of course is: how will it turn out for Singapore? Will its imported "intellectual class" actually be intellectual? Will the people of Singapore support this renewed influx of outsiders? Will these "intellectuals" actually come from China and India...after all, China is booming and India is growing fast, too...so for how long will Singapore seem an attractive prospect?

From here, in KL, the whole situation looks rather funny. You see, Singapore would already have an intellectual class, if only it had looked after its own people and their families. What kind of country so singularly fails to nurture the minds of its own people that it needs to import them, wholesale, from overseas to make up the lack?

Singapore is the kind of country that smart people leave...like we did.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
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The fall of the tower of Babel.

There are, according to UNESCO over 6,900 living languages today. Unfortunately, however, 2,500 of them are endangered. Both numbers surprised me, and the latter number, shocked me.

A language is more than a set of sounds. It is a way of seeing the world, a way of understanding the world, it is a codification of the world. Each language is a unique perspective. That 2,500 languages should be in danger of being lost, is terribly tragic. If unrecorded, each loss of a language is a permanent loss of a human perspective, of a world view that will never be, again. Each language is also part of the puzzle of how language came to be, to spread and to become so diverse. All languages are intertwined in one complex "evolutionary" whole. To lose one part of the puzzle is to make the whole forever more difficult to understand: it is to impoverish our understanding of what it is to be human.

Many languages are near their end, preserved in the minds of only a few people. One hundred and ninety-nine languages are spoken only by fewer than a dozen people. These include Wichita, spoken by just ten people in Oklahoma and Lengilu, spoken by only four people, in Indonesia. The deaths of a few people, will push these languages to extinction.

One hundred and seventy-eight other languages are spoken by between ten and one hundred and fifty people. Though somewhat safer, it wouldn't take much to extinguish these tongues either. Indeed, the last three generations of mankind has seen the loss of over two hundred languages - including Manx (from the Isle of Man) in 1974.

India stands to lose one hundred and ninety six languages; America, one hundred and ninety two languages and Indonesia, one hundred and forty seven languages.

With the death of the last speaker of these tongues, so too, dies the language, probably forever.

I do not know, as I write, whether efforts are being made to preserve these languages. If not, there should be. Linguists should be sitting down with these last speakers of exotic tongues and recording, in as exquisite detail as possible, each of these languages before they are lost. In some ways, the task is as urgent and as important as the preservation of species - for the loss of a language is as irreplaceable as the loss of a species.

I feel a certain ambivalence about this situation, for I know one cause of it: the spreading of global languages. I love English, and was born into it - but I would not that English bestrode the world and pushed every other language to extinction. That would be too sad. For though I appreciate English for what it is, I also appreciate that there is great beauty in all the languages I have never heard and never known - each is a world of its own and each deserving of conservation.

Philosophically I like diversity - in people, in ideas, in things. I am, actually, very uncomfortable with conformity. What greater conformity could there be than that all spoke one language? It is a hideous thought and I hope it never happens. I would like the world to continue to be a diverse place, with diverse people, thinking diverse thoughts and living in diverse ways. One of these important sources of diversity is the languages they speak. I don't want a world reduced to Mandarin, English, Spanish, French, Japanese and Arabic. That would be awful.

So, I would urge the nations of the world, to appoint sufficient linguists to capture the essence of every language now living, so that none is fully lost, when its last speaker passes on. As for the speakers of exotic tongues: why not teach it to others? Teach it to linguists if no-one else will listen...or better still, have a child, and speak to it in the crib, with the almost dead tongue you speak, so that one more person might live, to pass it on.

I do not want to see a future in which all Man's great diversity has been lost. All should be conserved...for we are all diminished by the loss of each type of diversity. When a language falls silent, Man has forgotten one way to speak about the world. In a sense, one whole world dies with each dead tongue.

Let not Babel fall, but let the world babble on, and be rich in its diversity.

(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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Singapore's Hospitals: a child's view.

Yesterday, Fintan went to hospital. Not to stay, you understand, just to be treated.

As is the way with children, Fintan invented a way to harm himself, yesterday, while playing in the swimming pool. It wasn't the obvious ways in which water is dangerous, but one characterized by unlikelihood. Somehow, Fintan managed to find something sharp in the swimming pool, and bump into it, with his head. It seems to have been a step on the way out, as he swam underwater. He is not entirely clear on the issue - and I can understand why, for the pool was rather crowded at the time. There was just too much going on.

He never noticed it, at the time. It was only as he rose from the pool to greet me that I caught sight of the unwelcome colour on the side of his cheek. There was blood pouring from his eye. I moved closer, in a calm hurry, to examine it more closely.

"Come Fintan, we have to go, now." I said, quietly, so as not to alarm him, overly, "You have cut yourself". There was what appeared to be quite a deep incision on the eyelid just next to his eye. It was about a centimetre long and gaped at me most discomfitingly.

He said nothing. He did not protest as he usually did, when asked to leave the pool (a process that can take some twenty minutes, some days). He must have realized something was wrong.

I was struck by his calmness. He seemed so mature in that moment. He didn't panic, didn't get upset, didn't make a fuss, he just came with me, blood streaming from his eye, as he walked.

We went home, where I had a closer look. It was definitely a matter for the hospital. My wife was on her way home, so I waited until she arrived and we went together.

At the hospital, the check in staff quietly looked at Fintan's eye and wrote "E" on the admissions paper, for "emergency". We were soon seen by a nurse, within a few minutes of arrival.

She was Indian. Fintan listened to her and answered her questions softly, with a very serious face.

She told me he wasn't to eat or drink until the doctor had seen him.

Before being allowed to see the doctor, we had to pay at reception for the treatment.

The receptionist was Indian, too.

A few minutes later, the doctor was viewing Fintan's injury.

"You are a very lucky boy." He observed. "A centimetre lower and you would have cut your eyeball."

"Close your eyes." He asked Fintan and Fintan did so, sitting quietly, without flinching, while the Doctor administered to his wound.

"You've got two cuts here.", he remarked.

He then began to clean the injury but what had, at first, seemed to be two cuts, resolved itself into one, the second being merely dried blood.

"Glue." He said to his assistant, who moved forward to get to work. He shook his head. "I'll do this one...", he stated.

"Super glue?" I asked.

"The same compound, yes...just longer molecules." he explained, "It takes longer to dry than the short ones used commercially."

He turned to Fintan and said: "This will hurt a little. Don't move. I have to get it to close up, well."

Fintan didn't flinch. He lay perfectly still.

He held the gash taut between two fingers and applied the glue gently, with what looked like a tiny pad or brush.

As he did so, he gave us aftercare instructions.

Throughout I was impressed with Fintan's stillness. He seemed so mature in his self-control. There was not a budge of any kind from him. His entire body was perfectly still. Yet, he is only four years old.

I think he is rather a brave little boy, in his way.

All was done. It looked a good clean job. Even with a narrow scar, it shouldn't be too visible, being as it is, tucked just above the eye. He was lucky.

As Fintan was leaving he turned to us and said: "I didn't get a sweet this time."

That was a reference to a time a year or two before, when he had been given a sweet by a nurse.

We both smiled...and bought him some chocolate.

As he left the hospital, he pointed up into the air, at a flag fluttering, from the side of the hospital.

"Why is there a Singapore flag?" he said, puzzled.

I looked and saw that it was indeed a Singaporean flag.

"Why isn't it an India flag?"

I laughed then, because I understood what he meant. Many of the staff in the hospital had been Indian. So, he thought that a better description would have been an Indian flag.

"Because it is Singapore, Fintan." I explained to him, but much preferring his view of the hospital. Indeed, there is often more truth to a child's view than to an adult's constrained perceptions. There DID seem to be more Indians working there, than others.

I patted his head, just glad that his eye was OK.

I rather hope that there are not too many more visits to hospital, in my childrens' childhoods.

It did teach me something about Fintan, though. He is very calm and collected in a crisis. He also exhibits great self-control - and he doesn't panic. Such qualities can be very valuable, in many areas of life. I wonder if he will ever get to use them?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and no months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and five months, and Tiarnan, twenty-two 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, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)