The Sunday Times, Jun 09, 2013
Society needs to move away from a one-dimensional view of success and recognise people with a different range of abilities, Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said yesterday.
“There is a great worry that when people just go for a qualification without looking at their interests… a lot of time, energy and resources are wasted,” he told a youth audience from a self-help group, the Singapore Indian Development Association (Sinda).
Mr Heng spoke of a recent appeal by a father keen to secure a university place for his daughter.
The man felt that his child had no future without a degree and suggested a spot in an engineering course.
“I asked, more importantly, what is your daughter interested in doing?” said Mr Heng.
“The father said he did not care as long as she gets a degree.”
The minister fielded several questions from the audience of about 60 young people during the Sinda youth club’s distinguished speaker series.
They triggered discussions on a range of topics, from how to encourage the youth of Singapore to appreciate education to whether a degree from a local polytechnic is relevant for students who want to work abroad.
But the main focus of the two-hour session was the need to “recognise people for who they are, not necessarily just their achievements”.
Mr Heng said he hoped the assumption that the Institute of Technical Education and polytechnics were less prestigious would change.
He added that it was important for the economy that “we do not go on one track”.
Pointing to high youth unemployment rates in countries such as Spain and Greece, he said there also needed to be job opportunities for those with degree-level qualifications.
“If not, the end result is going to be a lot of misery for a lot of people.”
The minister pointed out that countries such as Switzerland and Germany, which have a strong focus on vocational and technical education, help their students to amass skills that can be applied on the job.
“Look at what you are interested in doing, build up skills… keep learning. (Do this) rather than think, ‘If I have a degree qualification, I will be made for life’,” he urged the audience.
Mr Heng responded to a question on why the Government had stopped naming top students by explaining that doing so reinforced only one dimension of success: academic excellence.
“I thought that it was time for us to signal a change,” he said. “The whole purpose is really to get people to stop, start and think about recognising success in all its different forms.”
Sinda was set up in 1991 to address educational and socio-economic issues facing the Indian community in Singapore.
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