the week: Schooling, the schools and the scholars
Joseph Schooling retires; Parliament debates the recent controversial CCE content; Dr Ziwen Liu wants you to stop using air conditioning
The weeks starts with the retirement of Joseph Schooling. Schooling is a true Singaporean hero, so perhaps it is only fitting that he had been chewed up and spit out by the system. Schooling and his family had sacrificed much with little help from Singapore prior to his first Olympic win in 2016, having paid out of pocket to put Schooling through training programs in America. Predictably, the country celebrated the win and Schooling was invited to Parliament, which was more a photo op for the Ministers and MPs, as if Schooling’s greatness could be achieved by association. I guess it’s easy to get behind a champion.
By far the most disgusting of this behaviour comes from Minister Edwin Tong. In his Facebook post on the 2nd of April after Schooling’s announcement, Minister starts by saying “I think we all remember where we were that day, stopping everything to watch the race.” Ok relax Minister, this isn’t 9/11, you can drop the hyperbole. He goes on to speak about “Jo”, and his journey through the 2016 Olympics. Who? Now, I am not privy to the relationship between Edwin Tong and Joseph Schooling. I don’t know if they’re bosom buddies, or if they had only ever spoken five sentences to one another. It reminded me of a meme where people refer to professional esport players by their actual name instead of their in game names as a joke to imply they’re close friends. Regardless, using it in the post like that just reeks of wanting to appear closer to Schooling, and maybe through osmosis Minister Tong can cement himself as having done something as Minister for Culture, Community and Youth. Or maybe they’re best friends and “Jo” regularly hangs out with “Ed”, given their great number of common interests and hobbies (he might have to if he wants to become a politician).
Minister Tong goes on to write: “we remember him not for his medals, but for the belief he has given us”. The irony is of course that the medals mattered more than anything else to Singapore. After failing to qualify to the finals in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Schooling was to enlist for National Service (NS) in 2022. To be clear, I don’t know if the lack of medals had stopped Schooling from receiving another deferment, but what I am saying is this country did not afford Schooling the leeway to at least see his swimming career through before prematurely ending it. To Schooling’s credit, he has said that “NS didn’t end [his] career”, but let’s be real, the demands of NS don’t gel well with the aspirations of an Olympian.
Singaporeans are quick to get behind a champion but are even quicker to pounce when their champions fall. There is no short supply of Singaporeans with crab mentality, waiting for the first opportunity to pull a fellow Singaporean down. The endless comments about Schooling’s weight, article after article about Schooling’s use of cannabis overseas, the criticism of Schooling when he failed to qualify for the 2020 finals.
And so we come to the end of Minister Tong’s post, where he thanks “Jo” for “showing us that it is possible to come from Singapore and still be a champion”. In this Minister Tong is finally right: Joseph Schooling is a champion not because he came from Singapore but despite of it.
We come now to the weekly segment on Israel. For some reason local media and Singaporeans just can’t let this issue go, and this week it comes in the form of Parliamentary Questions from MPs Hazel Poa and Leong Mun Wai, in essence asking 1) if the Ministry of Education (MOE) can make public the content and materials on the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE); and 2) what content is taught to students of different levels.
Minister Chan Chun Sing refers them both to a speech he had given on the 4th of March, smugly asking the speech to be distributed for Parliament to read as if it answered all the questions. I have read and listened to the speech in question. It has answered nothing. Short of releasing the actual lesson plans and materials, Singaporeans will not know what was actually taught in the classrooms. Broad conjecture stating how younger students are taught the “plight of the innocent victims, how they can express sympathy for and empathise with others” while older students are taught “more recent events, and help them better understand Singapore's national interest” does nothing to tell you what was actually said in those lessons. What are Singapore’s national interests according to the MOE? What was actually said about Israel’s and Hamas’ part in the conflict?
Once again the veil of information asymmetry descends down on Singapore politics. Minister Chan refuses to release any of the materials, citing that materials taken out of context could damage the MOE. Don’t we have a mechanism for dealing with that? He insists that parents could ask the schools if they wished to know more about the curriculum, where the teachers could adequately explain the material to them. Do our MPs not have the right to ask what is being taught in the classroom? Do they not have parents as constituents?1
As an aside, I don’t think that the Israel-Hamas conflict should be taught in the classroom short of it being just an objective history lesson of the Middle East and the conflicts that happened with all the facts and timeline properly considered as a full course. I don’t think the schools should draw conclusions for students but rather allow them to draw their own conclusions after presenting as fully factual a picture as they can. In fact, I don’t think we should have CCE at all. By all means have a social studies class which teaches students about Singapore, but let it be a purely factual exercise - Singapore’s history, the political system, our relationships with our neighbours and wider global community and various conflicts we might have. We have outsourced so much of what parents should be doing for their children to the schools - teaching children what is right and wrong and imparting values. CCE according to Minister Chan is a defence against “global and social media, news and fake news, compet[ing] every moment to pull our people in different directions, challenging our efforts to maintain national cohesion and harmony”. The solution to that isn’t some state curated narrative taught via CCE lessons, the solution to that is to actually foster our student’s ability to think critically and discern what is right and wrong for themselves.
After several exchanges the discussion culminates in what would be the headline the media decides to put out “'Please do not twist our words': Chan Chun Sing tells Leong Mun Wai in debate over making Israel-Hamas lesson materials public”. In a continuation of the rake-stepping theme from the previous weeks, Mr Leong makes another unforced error in purporting that Minister Chan had “accused [Mr Leong and Ms Poa] of being divisive”. This allows Minister Chan to respond with an easy soundbite telling Mr Leong “not to twist our words”. In truth, Minister Chan had not said anything about the opposition being divisive, so I’m not sure where that came from.2 Mr Leong is prone to being too much of a loose cannon. Whether this will come back to bite the PSP in the next election remains to be seen.
But this was far from the worst thing that was brought up in the exchange, though of course Mr Leong who does not benefit from any cover from the media will bear the brunt of the headlines while Minister Chan who enjoys cover from the media will escape yet again having said some truly insane things:
In response to Ms Poa’s question on how many schools have organised dialogue sessions with parents on their request to know what materials are being taught to their children, Minister Chan gave this non-answer “some schools have received such requests most of them have not”. He had not answered the question at all. The answer to the question how many is that some have and most haven’t? I’m not sure this answer would even be accepted in the schools Minister Chan oversees.
Minister Chan also expounded on the purpose of CCE:
“to help our people understands (sic) their emotions, the diversity of perspectives within our society, help our students to learn to verify the information that they come across that is widely available on social media, help them to understand our nationals (sic) priorities and positions and interest, and most importantly help them to take constructive and positive actions for the sake of our cohesion and harmony.”
For him and the PAP, the people of Singapore cannot be trusted to navigate the world of social media, or even emotions, on their own. By his own admission the schools need to be teaching critical thinking skills to students. The curriculum and education environment does not foster that. In a leaked memo on Singapore on Wikileaks, there is a less than flattering image of Singapore on Singapore’s attempt to steer our economy to a knowledge based one. In it, the memo identifies our education system as one which “stifles independent thinking”. Anyone who has been through the Singapore education system can attest to this. I think programs like the CCE actively foster this. It is a joke that Minister Chan attempts to twist CCE into a program that fosters critical thinking in any capacity.
But perhaps the most ridiculous part of this was when Minister Chan decided to recount an anecdote from a session where he was presumably instructing principals and teachers how to use these CCE materials:
“One of my senior educators rose and spoke and reflected on this after we had an hour more (sic) of sharing. She asked, ‘Minister, why is it that whenever something like that happens, you have to come and tell us and share with us? How long will it take us to develop those instincts to react together as one united Singapore? That we will not be pulled apart by different forces from different directions?’
It was a poignant moment. I assured her that I did not expect and I do not expect all my educators to be experts in foreign policies, and it would take us time and perhaps generations for us to reach this stage whereby we can respond as one united Singapore.”
Minister Chan no doubt thought this was an inspiring and amazing way to cap off his speech. He had just recounted a story in which a senior educator had basically told him (no doubt with tears in her eyes in awe of him) that only with his sharing of his infinite wisdom could we make sense of what was happening whenever a crisis happened. Like Moses coming down the mountain with the stone tablets, Chan Chun Sing is here to tell us what to do. If a disaster were to happen tomorrow, would she be saying “where is Chan Chun Sing? I need him to make sense of this for me! Where is Minister Chan right now?” First, I think this story highlights what Minister Chan thinks of the Singaporean people, that we cannot be trusted to form our own thoughts and conclusions about the world around us; and second, if this is the quality of our senior educators I am truly worried for our children today.
Will the media report on any of the other things which occurred during the exchange or will they only report on the stupid things that the Opposition say? Of course Minister Chan can get away with saying these things, he has the media providing cover for him. There are valid points being raised by Mr Leong, the lack of transparency of the government in educational policies or teaching material and curriculum, that as a member of Parliament he should be able to review and access these materials, that Parliament should be able to debate what is appropriate or inappropriate for our children. But we have to settle for any headline which shines a bad light on our Opposition.
In a commentary piece on 5th April, Dr Ziwen Liu, Dr Guang Yu Jin and Mr XiangJian Zhang want you to stop using your air-conditioners. Titled “Commentary: Singaporeans’ reliance on air-cons will only lead to more discomfort”, the piece on CNA argues that we should switch away from air-conditioners to other cooling methods.
Let me first say this: that I believe in climate change. I believe that global warming is happening, and that humans have definitely played a part in the warming of the planet (though it is debatable how much), and that if we as a species reduce our carbon and greenhouse gas outputs we can definitely cool the planet. What I disagree with is pinning the responsibility on the individual. Individuals do not account for the vast majority of emissions. Less so the population of Singapore, which accounts for less than 0.001% of the world’s population. Which is why policies like passing the burden of plastic bag use to the consumer, and requiring Singaporeans to switch to electric vehicles by 2040 are policies which reduce emissions by a drop in an ocean, and are implemented so the government can be seen to be doing something rather than actually doing something.
So the moment that the piece encouraged Singaporeans to monitor our “personal carbon footprint” by “tracking time spent in air-conditioned spaces”, I knew these people aren’t serious about actually tackling global warming. For starters, the term personal carbon footprint was coined by BP in an advertising campaign aimed at redirecting the focus of global warming away from industry towards the individual. Could we reduce carbon emissions if we turned off our air-conditioners? Sure, probably. Would that reduction be meaningful in any way that could actually save the planet? Probably not. Air-conditioning isn’t even close to the most polluting thing when it comes energy usage in our homes.
There is scant evidence in the article that air-conditioning is exceptionally bad for the environment, or that turning it off will make a noticeable difference. The one piece of evidence that is used is a study from a global sustainable development consultancy Arup (you can download the study here), in which the “‘hot spots’ in the Singapore Central Business District are up to 6 degrees Celsius hotter than their rural surroundings”. This is misleading. I have read the study. Nothing in the study suggests that the 6 degrees is due to the use of air-conditioning, the study only says that “[t]o a large extent, we have designed our cities to be hotter. We’ve pushed out nature, concreted our streets and built high in steel and glass. That makes the built environment a huge contributor to the build-up of heat in cities, compared to their rural surroundings.” Further, the two areas compared are the Central Business District and the incredibly habitable and populous Upper Peirce Reservoir. Do the writers of this piece expect Singaporeans to live in conditions similar to those found in Upper Peirce Reservoir? Perhaps we should forgo our houses and move back into the jungle. No doubt Singapore was a much cooler place in the 1800s, but I doubt many people today would want to live there as it used to be.
What is the point of this article? Realistically none of the solutions suggested can be implemented by the individual. Should we all attempt to rebuild our homes to use other cooling measures? Or is it more realistic that we utilize new technologies like this cooling paint that reduces ambient temperatures by up to 2 degrees? Human beings are incredibly bad at reacting to slow moving changes, meaning that where the temperature is slowly creeping up due to global warming, we lack the political will to change our consumption habits. But what we are really good at is innovating and coming up with new solutions to our problems. The air-conditioner was an excellent invention that Lee Kuan Yew credited as the secret to Singapore’s success. The air-conditioner will continue to play a huge role as Singapore gets increasingly hotter. What can be changed are the invention and implementation of cleaner energy sources, better technologies to reduce heat in urban centers, and even innovating the technologies used for air-conditioning will be more effective than telling people not to use it. Air-conditioning used to use CFCs as a refrigerant, which had incredibly damaging effects on the ozone layer. Upon discovering the huge impact CFCs had on the ozone the refrigerant was switched to HFCs, and today the ozone is on its way to a full recovery. Human innovation has been and will be the way to solve this climate crisis.
The solution to the climate crisis cannot be pinned on the individual, and it certainly won’t be solved by finger wagging at Singaporeans telling them that they have to endure 35 degree days without touching their air-conditioning remotes. Stop passing the burden of this crisis to the individual when any action, even collective action, the population of a country takes will pale in comparison to any action that will be taken by industry or government.
Understandably both Ms Poa and Mr Leong do not have constituents being NCMPs, but they still represent the voice of over 66,000 residents who voted for them, constituting over 48% of the residents there
The only thing I can think of is a completely different exchange Mr Leong had earlier in the session with Minister Tan See Leng in which Minister Tan said that Mr Leong had decided to “rehash the divide between us versus them Singapore citizens versus PR again”. Even in this I don’t think Minister Tan was referring to Mr Leong as being divisive, so I’m not sure what Mr Leong was thinking when he made the comment. Either way it comes across as confused and inaccurate which is not a good look for the Opposition.