How S'pore can stay 'Forever Young' opinions

Source of article: http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20100406-208780.html

First, a strong culture of education and learning.
A lot of effort has been put in improving and sustaining the high standards of education in Singapore. Continuing education has been put in place too, apart from school education.

Implemented policies so far are excellent, but focus on the general well-being of staff and students of learning institutions may be compromised.

An attitude to learn and teach has to be supported with favorable circumstances such as adequate rest. Huge amounts of workload and examinations in secondary schools and higher level institutions mean that both teachers and students may feel mentally strained in their duties to teach and learn , respectively. As such, the quality of education may be higher but the mental breakdown and dropout rate rises too. Better balancing of school workload is needed to achieve a more sustainable education system.

Moreover, the education system could be enhanced with a more flexible curriculum, one that shares frequent relevance with daily life and practical situations. Singapore has been frequently accused of embracing rote learning(memorization by repetition).

Instead of teaching students straight from the textbook, teachers could offer scenarios to let students use their knowledge on (eg. The correct and polite way to ask for directions in a foreign country).

Second, a culture of seeking knowledge, innovation and ideas.
In addition to innovation and knowledge creation, observation, querying of pundits from specialized professions and risk-taking is also needed to stay young, as those are characteristics of a young person.

Observation means globally taking currently active and past case studies to examine, finding relationships and disparities, applying in the context of Singapore, and store the information for future research.

Querying of pundits from specialized professions is essential to build critical infrastructure and other industries as no nation has the most brilliant ideas for every aspect of society.

Furthermore, just plain querying may not be efficient enough, it is best that there is a committee to discuss the most critical policies to implement.

Risk-taking is a very important part of 'being young'. Singapore is well-known for being pragmatic, but aside from taking the most obvious routes to take, like creating a Research and Development (R&D) hub, Singapore could do something unprecedented to increase its prominence in the R&D industry. An example would be implementing R&D as projects in learning institutions, for their own usage.

Three, for Singapore to be a vibrant global city - a city where people want to live, work and play - it also has to be an environmentally sustainable city.
Crowding and environmental problems are indeed potentially harmful for Singapore's city development plans. A recent article Is Singapore the worst environmental offender?' on Asiaone.com explains the environmental harms that urban development has brought Singapore.

Places to improve on would be more friendly bonding activities for city people to enjoy, religious gatherings.

One key trait of Singapore being vibrant and young is that Singaporeans have to see themselves as one nation, embrace helpful foreign factors and be more happy. Thus, aside from National Education and persuasion to welcome foreign workers and settlers, rules and regulations could be made more flexible, and quality of helplines and counseling services raised.

Four, a magnet for talent
Talent can be based on various abilities, come in the form of ideas, or inspirational roles. While it's essential to bring in talent that fulfills Singapore's obvious needs of political, business and sports talents, it is important to source for people who can inspire ordinary workers to work harder.

Being 'young' means that discrimination should be removed among foreign entities and the word 'talent' be as diversified as possible. Subsidies and aid should be given to foreigners who have a need, to encourage them to work strive for Singapore's future together.

Five, a strong and forward-looking leadership.
Leadership can be enhanced at lower levels before further developing it on the national level, which has been incorporated into the education system.

What is still lacking is the mild atmosphere of the political scene. Leadership should be reinforced by not only similar and agreeing opinions but opposing ones as well. No leader is perfect, and thus leadership includes embracing various viewpoints from all sectors of the economy.

Finally, the way in which leadership is replaced by another person/ committee should not only be based off the top rung of society, but also be subject to the opinions of the minority and all parts of the society.



Being 'Forever Young' is possible, but much depends on both internal and external circumstances. One wrong step may result in catastrophes, what matters is our response to it.
By Kwee Peng