Why I disagree with Tan Jee Say

I have just read Tan Jee Say's facebook post, "Is Every School a Good School?" and I must say I disagree with him in two major areas.  First, this is what he says:

The widening gap between the top and other schools mirrors the increasing income disparity in Singapore. When wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, it reflects an unequal society that is harmful to its long term development. Similarly when talent is retained in just one or two top schools rather than spread among many schools, the development of our young becomes lop-sided and works against a balanced and holistic development of society.

He then goes on to say this:

The first step for the education minister to take is not to pretend that every school is a good school.  He will then re-discover what his school teachers used to tell him and what teachers everywhere tell their pupils, that honesty is the best policy.

In his post, Tan says that some traditionally good schools have become second tier or even third tier.  He implies that something should be done by the education minister to stop the increasing disparity between schools.

The two major areas I disagree with him are:

1.  The income gap - that a widening income gap must necessarily mean a bad thing and
2.  The disparity in talent between schools (ie. all the talent seems to be concentrated in one or two schools) is "harmful to [Singapore's] long term development".

I will deal with the income gap first.  I don't see how a widening income gap can necessarily mean that something is amiss and the government has to take active steps.  There is no denying that the rich are getting much richer but the proper question to ask is are the poor getting poorer?  In other words,  is the standard of living of the poor in Singapore worse than it used to be 30 years ago or even 40 years ago?

I don't have hard statistics but I'm willing to bet that the poor in Singapore are now far better off than they used to be.  Almost every household now has a tv set and a computer.  Just look around you and you will be amazed to see cleaners and construction workers with iPhones.  Let's not even talk about luxury goods.  Malnutrition used to be a major problem among the poor in the past.  Today, nobody is malnourished in Singapore.  It would be ridiculous to pretend that the poor in Singapore are worse off now than they used to be 30 years ago.  That just simply doesn't square with our daily observation.

But what if the rich are getting richer?  Frankly, I don't see a problem with that.  If I were the kind of person who would allow the green-eyed monster to grow within me, of course I would be furious that the rich are getting richer.  But I'm not the jealous sort and I'm happy to see my neighbour zooming by in his Ferrari while I ride my trusty bicycle so long as he doesn't run into a puddle and splash water on me!

Let me give a simple example.

Assuming Mr Chan is a poor man in the 60's or 70's and he earns $200.00  a month.  I have increased the earnings of the poor in the 60's to take into account inflation.  The poor probably earned much less in those days but then things were cheaper so the figure of $200 would be about right after taking into account inflation.  The sum of $200 represents his purchasing power in today's terms.

Now, let's assume Mr Wong is a rich man in the 60's or 70's and he earns $3000.00 a month.  Again, I have increased the sum to take into account subsequent inflation.

The income disparity between Mr Chan and Mr Wong is only $2800.00 a month.  But Mr Chan is probably malnourished and is very much deprived of all the comforts of life.  Mr Wong has a good life but still, it isn't what we today would consider a luxurious lifestyle.  In other words, people in those days generally were worse off irrespective of whether they were rich or poor.

Let's say the government does nothing in terms of investment and development.  The income disparity between Mr Chan and Mr Wong probably wouldn't differ very much even today.

Now, let's turn to today's world and look at what Mr Goh (a poor man) and Mr Sim (a wealthy man) earn today.  Mr Goh earns $1,000.00 a month (which is what would be considered poor by Singapore standards today).  But Mr Goh has an iPhone, an iPad, a computer, a lovely tv set and he goes on a holiday once a year.  His lifestyle has improved tremendously.

Mr Sim, the rich man of today, earns $300,000.00 a month.  Of course his lifestyle exceeds the wildest imagination of average folks.  He's the typical chap who zooms past my bicycle in his Ferrari.

The income disparity between Mr Goh and Mr Sim now stands at $299,000.00.  It's a huge income gap but what does it tell us?  It tells us that the country has undergone a huge development and both men are happy and well.  It tells us that the government has done a great job and the country enjoys a plump and healthy economy.

But you may say that Mr Goh has every right to complain about the huge disparity between his income and that of Mr Sim.  But has Mr Goh the right to begrudge Mr Sim his wealth?  Let's assume that Mr Sim is one of the deserving rich who earns his money legally.  He has worked hard all his life.  He had excellent PSLE results, went to the top school, then to a top faculty in a top university.  He's got a high IQ too and he has business acumen and he knows how to invest his money.  Should Mr Sim's income be reduced so that we can have a smaller income gap?  Of course not.

The income gap is really a red herring when we are looking for clues of a mismanaged society or a society that is unjust in its distribution of income.  The income gap is not a good indicator of these things.  Rather, the proper question we should ask is whether the poor are taken care of.  If the poor aren't better off today than they used to be before, then I agree that something ought to be done.  But that is not the case in Singapore.

The same applies to schools.  I have spoken at great length in other posts on this blog about the PSLE and schools in Singapore and I won't repeat myself.  What I want to say is the Minister of Education is honest when he says all schools are good.  It all boils down to the definition of "good".  If your idea of a good school is a school that wins top international awards, has more than half its students with straight As in the A-levels and beats all other schools in the world when it comes to getting places in Ivy-League universities and Oxbridge, then yes, RI is the ONLY really good school in Singapore.  But that is not how we should determine if a school is good.

The wonderful thing about the Singapore government is its belief in meritocracy.  That's what makes Singapore such an enviable country internationally and it's what makes Singapore such a great nation.  I have listed the many achievements of RI on the international stage and it's very hard for me to think of any school in other countries achieving that sort of greatness and this is an indictment on the other countries.  Imagine an RI in Malaysia.  Can there possibly be an RI in Malaysia?  Of course not.  The bumiputra policy will ensure that a large percentage of the students are admitted on the basis of race and not merit.  Within a year, the Malaysian RI will probably do worse than our worst Secondary School.

For me, a school is good if the right students are in it.  RI is only a good school if top students are enrolled in it.  Average students should go to schools that are catered for their needs.  Viewed this way, every school in Singapore is a good school, even a school for students with mental impairment because such a school is good for such students.  Each school is tailored to the needs of different segments of society and no one school is better than the rest.  In that sense, all schools in Singapore are good.  It is when we want RI to take in mediocre students as well that we are trying to ruin RI and turn it into a bad school because that's not what RI is meant for.  I have explained elsewhere in my other blog posts that nothing hampers teaching as much as having students with a hugely diversified intellectual capacity.  Teachers will have to pitch their lessons somewhere at the average level and still, good students will be held back by the slower pace of learning and they will be bored while slow students will find the lessons too difficult.  That is why I have said elsewhere that the PSLE is a time-tested gauge of which secondary school a student should rightly go to.  It redounds to the credit of the Singapore government that it could come up with an school-placement examination that is so impartial and incorruptible.  I really hope the government will re-consider any plan to shelve or revamp such an excellent and fair gauge that has served the nation well for decades.

If we are honest about it, it's really jealousy that makes us rebel against a system that has worked so well for Singapore.  Whether it's the question of the income gap or the differences in schools, we should be honest and ask ourselves what it is that we really want.  Do I want RI to admit mediocre students only because I know my kid will do badly and yet I want him to be in RI?  But is it fair to put my kid in RI and displace a student with a better PSLE score?   Some parents have suggested that we look at education in a holistic way and we should value "other" aspects of education and not just academia.  But we know that's being hazy and unclear.  How does one have a fair test that measures the "holistic" and non-academic part of education?   Of course it's impossible and in the end, the selection of a student becomes arbitrary.  It will be open to corruption and abuse.  The PSLE is the only fair and impartial test that we can possibly have.  Nothing else will do.

The same questions should be asked when we clamour for a reduction in the income gap.  Do I want the deserving rich to be deprived of some of their wealth because I haven't got it?  Do I want his Ferrari to be taken away because it's so much faster than my bicycle?

We'll never be happy if we are always consumed by jealousy and envy.  We really should just take it easy and enjoy life.  Life can be pretty good when you get around on a bike.  Besides, cycling greatly reduces your carbon footprint and it increases your cardiovascular health too!

 Photo taken in Utrecht, Holland.

Why I love this island so!

Religious violence is something you see every day on the news.  If it's not Nigerian churches being torched by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, it's probably the tension between Hindu militants and Muslim extremists in India.

All the violence we read about is absolutely foreign to us who live in Singapore.  Whatever Western critics may say about a "totalitarian" government (which isn't true at all) or the lack of freedom (I don't know about you but I can do without the freedom to get killed or maimed), my advice to the critics is this - you remain in YOUR country and I'll live here.  On the other hand, if you happen to live here and you really don't like it at all, it's a free world and you can always go where you think the grass is greener.  Lately, there have been a lot of foreigners who come to Singapore and avail themselves of the goodness of the land but post offensive and abusive remarks against the country they're milking from.  Here is where Singapore should show its "totalitarian" strength and send these ungrateful chaps packing.

Anyway, this morning, after a very early breakfast in Little India, I cycled round this lovely part of Singapore and took pics of the various places of worship.  I had intended for this post to be a wordless post with pics alone to tell the tale but alas, it's hard to remain silent when what I see through my camera lens is nothing but perfect peace and beauty.  Mind you, these places of worship are of the four major different world faiths and here they stand, no more than 100 metres from one another in perfect harmony, wonderfully tolerant and a great picture of what faith truly means as they each proclaim its gospel of peace and goodwill to all men.

It's when I see such peace and harmony of these four great faiths in close proximity to one another that I know in my heart of hearts that God is in his heaven and all's right with the world.  May God bless Singapore and its far-sighted leaders!  OK, I'll be silent from here on.  Enjoy the pics!

As I was busy snapping a pic of the Hindu temple, a bell suddenly broke the silence of the morning and religious music could be heard within the temple.  I took a quick video of the worship session from the road.  The video is a little shaky; I had to balance my bicycle against my body, remove my gloves and hold them with my teeth and use both hands to take the video.  If you watch the video carefully, you will see a guy in a pink shirt, slightly to the right playing a wind instrument but he stands in the shade so it's very hard to make out the instrument he's playing.  It closely resembles the clarinet but it's much larger and the bell is way too large for a clarinet.  But it's definitely a reed instrument because I saw the reed - placed on the mouthpiece just as in a clarinet.  It's the only wind instrument that you can hear in the video.  I really wonder what instrument it is.

Do we have to be fat and unhealthy?

One noticeable change in all of us as we age is our size.  We tend to get bigger and bigger.  We tell ourselves this is natural.  After all, as we age, our metabolism slows down and we become more sedentary and simple arithmetics will show us why this is so - calories consumed = x; calories expended = y (which is much less than x because of our lifestyle).  Balance of calories which get converted to fat for storage = x-y.  Over the years, this accumulates to become what we see around our waists, on our faces and the rest of our bodies.  But it's not just cosmetics that we should worry about.  Our arteries get clogged, our cholesterol goes up and we succumb finally to a cardiac arrest which ends our lives or cripples us with a stroke.

Studies show that dieting does not help at all.  You can google and read up the scientific reports that diets really don't work.  Not only do they not work, they make you fatter, on the average, by 11 pounds more than what you weighed before commencing the diet.  Read this report for the details.

Not long ago, I discovered that my cholesterol was on the high side of the normal scale.  Well, that's nothing to get excited about.  Most people have cholesterol levels which are on the high side of the normal scale.  So I continued eating and living my life without any change and recently, my cholesterol level went beyond the normal range.  Some I want to be realistic.  I don't intend to cut down on what I eat and I certainly don't believe in taking medication.  So I embarked on a regime of my own creation (which is really nothing new at all) while always allowing me to continue unchecked with my usual diet of nasi padang with beef rendang and fried chicken wing and sotong sambal, masala chicken, bryani, sweet and sour pork, char siew and a wide assortment of cheeses, washed down with a lot of milk.  They say KFC is bad but I've always liked KFC and the crispy skin is the best part of the chicken.  I continue to eat KFC, skin and all and as I write this now, I have ordered KFC for the whole family and will be eating it for lunch.  And it was a prata breakfast for the whole family this morning.  OK, prata is vegetarian but I'm certainly not anywhere near being a vegetarian, not by a few lightyears.  Well, I do buy only low-fat milk but two cups of low-fat milk is equivalent in fat content to one cup of whole milk and since I drink quite a lot of it, it doesn't make all that much a difference.  I do sometimes opt for a healthier meal that comes in a Japanese bento set that contains rice, grilled salmon and fried chicken fritters. But I do not eat less than I have always been eating and I certainly don't cut out the fat and calories.

It's been about a month and I have since lost about 5kg.  How did I do it?  No dieting and absolutely no medication.  Is it possible?  I will be taking my cholesterol test in January and if my cholesterol level improves, I'll tell you the secret of my health plan.  But if my cholesterol is still unhealthily high, I won't say another word about this new regime of mine which I have since dubbed the "Ultimate Health Plan".  I don't want people to follow a health plan that doesn't help your cholesterol and I certainly don't want to have on my conscience readers of mine keeling over with a heart attack on account of having followed my Ultimate Plan.  So, I'll be the guinea pig and if it works for me and I can rein in my cholesterol level to an acceptable level, I will make this Ultimate Health Plan readily available to all for free.  Slimming centres that charge an arm and a leg will hate me for this but who cares?  This is my own plan and if I want to disclose it to all and sundry for free, who can stop me?

Supposing this Ultimate Plan also reduces the cholesterol in your body, wouldn't it be great?  You can eat as you please and you don't take a drop of medication and in a month, you lose 5 kg (and hopefully, your cholesterol drops to an acceptable level).  Do I hear the door bell?  It's my KFC lunch, folksies!  I've asked for chicken thigh and that's the best part - it's got lots of crispy skin.  Why people in the US prefer chicken breast is something that I can never understand.  Time to tuck in!


IMPORTANT NOTE: After reading over this post, it does appear as if I was selling some product.  Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not selling any product or plan.  I have just stumbled upon a health plan that has reduced my weight by 5kg in about a month without dieting and without medication.  Notice I have said nothing about exercise.  But let's be patient.  I don't want to make public a regime that doesn't work.  In January 2013, I'll be taking my blood test and  if my cholesterol is reduced substantially, that would be an indication that my Ultimate Health Plan does work.  That will be the time when I will feel justified in publicising this health regime.  And when I do that, it will be 100% gratis.  

Double Joy

This is what I had for dinner, a chicken murtabak.  The murtabak originates in the Middle East - in Yemen and Saudi Arabia and it's a pancake with a rich stuffing of chicken or mutton.  Although it's full of calories and artery-clogging cholesterol, it's really something you won't mind dying for.  You can tell when you're anywhere near a place that sells murtabak.  The aroma just hits you right in the face and you know you have to eat it and everything you've ever read about what constitutes a healthy diet is quickly forgotten.

Arab traders brought the recipe to the East, beginning with India, in the region of Kerala and then to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.  Probably because of its origin, the best murtabak in Singapore is sold by Indian Muslims.  Come to think of it, I don't know of any murtabak seller who is not an Indian Muslim.

There are variations of the murtabak in places outside Singapore and Malaysia.  I understand that there is a sweet version in Indonesia.  When I was a student travelling in Thailand on a shoestring budget, I had a sweet murtabak that had condensed milk in it and it tasted heavenly.  It's hard for me to be certain now whether my delight for this milky murtabak was attributable to the unreliable tastebuds of a famished unguided youth as I was then or whether it was really delicious but I'm inclined to think that it must have been pretty good.  That was the only time in my life I ever had murtabak with milk as a filling.  I recall the bus that I was travelling in on a cheap ticket to Chiangmai made a pit stop in one of those little towns that had only one major road passing through it.  It was past midnight and there was this street vendor selling the milky murtabak.  It was more like a rolled up prata with condensed milk in it.

Whatever its variation, the murtabak is decidedly unhealthy.  Here's where I can sneak in the second joy, now that I have talked about the joy of eating murtabak.  That's the joy of cycling.  I cycled to dinner and as I approached my favourite murtabak joint, I saw what I felt I had to take a pic of.

Yes, that's how you can enjoy a huge plate of murtabak and still not die of a heart attack.  Plus you get to enjoy the fun of cycling, take lovely photos and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you're not burning up fossil fuel.

The Fatal Junction

I recently took my bike out for a spin late one night.  As I approached at about 3am the road junction where a Ferrari driver smashed into a taxi killing himself, the taxi driver and his passenger, I saw blinking lights by the roadside.  This was also the same junction where another non-fatal accident happened just last week (about a week after the fatal Ferrari accident).

The blinking lights came from two police officers, a policeman and a policewoman.  They were very friendly and pleasant.  They told me they were on an operation to arrest motorists who beat the red lights.  As I removed my rucksack to take my phone-camera out, they even advised me to bring my bike onto the kerb.  Naturally, they didn't want a third accident at this junction and right in front of them too.

Police officers in Singapore are a decent lot.  Racist policemen who beat up blacks and only get booked when the video of the beating goes viral are non-existent here.   When I was a student, I even got a ride on a police patrol car out of the Hall of Residence in my university to the bus stop some distance away.  That incident emboldened me and the next day after having had breakfast, I saw from the dining hall of my university hostel a patrol car moving slowly along the road in the direction of the bus stop I wanted to get to.  Accustomed to the incredible friendliness of police officers and without a thought, I clutched my bag and ran after it.  I didn't want to have to walk the long stretch to the bus stop.  The policeman stopped his car immediately, thinking no doubt that a crime had been committed and I was running to them for assistance.  It's not surprising that I got an earful from them when they heard with disbelief that all I wanted was a ride in their patrol car.  That was the only occasion when they were less polite.  But even then, they were not rude.  They were probably too shocked to be rude.  They pointed out to me that it was a patrol car they were driving and not a private car.   After apologizing to them, I even had the cheek to ask if they could still give me a ride but of course they refused and drove off.

But that was a long time ago and now I'm older and wiser.  I asked these police officers if I could take pics for my blog before doing so.  I was tempted to ask them to take a pic of me on my bike but I felt that was going too far and even a camwhore must know his limits. I am indeed older and wiser.

The view from my bike

Quite apart from the fact that cycling is environmentally friendly, you get to see a lot more when you don't drive.

Pics I took while on my bike:

In need of a new battery

My cyclometer stopped working today. It had been rather erratic these past two weeks. Replaced the battery and it's now working fine.  The battery is the one I used in my rear lights for two years until last year when I replaced it because I thought the battery had gone flat when it hadn't.  I don't expect this battery to last.  Both my cyclometer and my rear lights use the same CR2032 battery.

My flat tyre

Earlier, I mentioned the flat tyre I had on Friday night.  That's been fixed.  I must have run onto a nail.  There was a hole in the inner tube.  Here's a pic of my tyre in the workshop, attended to by professionals.  

 It's a simple job of replacing the inner tube.

The Story of the Beetle Collector

I had signed up for a talk in NUS but I was in no mood to drive there.  Neither was I in the mood to take a cab there.  Public transport was out of the question; it would be far too inconvenient.  The only attractive means of transport for me was... 

THE BICYCLE!

But it was raining (and had been raining the whole day) and I thought I would give the talk a miss, so averse I was to driving.  But I soon noticed that the rain had stopped even though the clouds were still dark.  I took the bike out.

And it was such a pleasant ride. It took me only 30 minutes to get to NUS. Locked my bike at the bike shelter which was just in front of the lecture theatre and took a pic.

There was time enough for me to change into a fresh t-shirt and place my sweat-soaked t-shirt into my bag.

I then listened to the one-hour talk by a man who is truly in love with the subject of his talk, having spent 30 years researching it and who has even contracted malaria in the Amazon where he retraced the steps of his beloved Alfred Wallace.

I took a quick pic (so I could post it in this photo blog of mine) just before the talk.  

At the end of the talk, during the Question-and-Answer session, I felt I had to put in a good word for Darwin.  Didn't Darwin urge the scientific community to give Wallace a pension even though they were reluctant because Wallace was an irrational spiritualist who attended seances?  But the diehard Wallace fan replied that Darwin could very well have done that because he felt bad about having stolen the idea of evolution from Wallace.  Interestingly, there were others who came to Darwin's defence.


Ultimately, it's never safe to accept apocryphal anecdotes.  That the theory of evolution by natural selection is the brainchild of Darwin's is indisputable.  Darwin was brilliant to have come up with this wonderful theory that has been validated by a preponderance of evidence that continues to emerge right up to our time.  


I am also heartened by the fact that in all the academic talks that I have attended in Singapore, I have yet to encounter a single flat-earther who insists that evolution is false or that an intelligent Designer (notice the capital "D") created it all.  I would blush crimson if that should happen.

The evening would have been perfect but for a puncture in my rear tyre on my way home. My wife picked me up in the vehicle I had been trying to avoid.  I was a little upset with the puncture because the carbon emission would have been almost the same if I had driven there and back home.  But the comfort is it's not every day that I have a puncture and I think I'm doing my best to be as green as I can be.

An overloaded bike

Look what I found!  A bike that's really cluttered with everything imaginable.

Lunched with my good friend, Lay Hoon.  Like me, she too is a photo addict but we both sinned terribly against our nature.  We failed to take a pic throughout the lunch.  As an act of contrition, I took a pic of the bicycle rack after we parted.

Putting back what cycling takes out

Here's where I cycled to:

Night Rider

Tonight, I went on a bike ride that spanned from the centre of the island to the west and back to the central region again.  I took pics along the way and if you will let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets, I'll show you something about the history of this lovely tropical island.

First stop on my bike was:

This is the church that gained notoriety for organising a group to take over AWARE, a women's organisation, last year.  The church is known for its strong anti-gay stand.  I looked for the banner that says "GAY BUT NOT HAPPY?  CALL US AT...."  but it was nowhere to be seen.  My children spotted it years ago when we happened to drive past the church but it must have been taken down.  After the take-over of AWARE's exco, the church group was ignominiously ousted when Singapore's women showed solidarity in repulsing the group and passing a vote of no-confidence against the new exco which was shamefully removed.  Even though the Senior Pastor, Derek Hong urged the church members to give their support to the take-over group and many of the women joined AWARE as members in order to be able to vote for the new exco, they were nonetheless trounced.  It attracted so much national attention that Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister voiced his disapproval of the group and cautioned that religion and politics had to be kept separate.  See this link.   Thank God that the Singapore public and the Singapore Government are levelheaded.

That church is in the west.  Next stop is

On Saturday nights up to the early hours of the morning, this place is crawling with party-goers.  There are many dance clubs, pubs and restaurants here.  But it was a bit dead when I was there.  Look at the street itself

This is Robertson Walk.  You can barely make out the name.

I've never really noticed this delightful temple just opposite Robertson Walk

Next stop is the heart of Singapore: Orchard Road.  Someone once told me that Orchard Road was the Oxford Street of Singapore.  Always on the side of the underdog, I corrected him: Oxford Street, I stressed, was the Orchard Road of London.


There's Wheelock Place, to my left is ION.      [Time stamp: 12:32am]

You can see how dead Orchard Road was and it was just a little after midnight.  That's CK Tang.  Notice how deserted Orchard Road was.

And here is the busiest junction in Singapore, where Scotts Road meets Orchard Road.  You can hardly spot a single car.  This was the last photo I took and the time stamp says it was 12:33am and it was almost completely deserted.  Well, I suppose I was wrong.  Orchard Road is the Oxford Street of Singapore and not the other way round.  One just has to be truthful.

Total distance: 17.76km

Prata

Cycled to Ghim Moh to buy pratas for breakfast.  Quite a long queue but there was nothing special about their prata.  Just middling.