REVISED STRUCTURE OF EDUCATION (Paper Misc. 3 of 1979)

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Order read for Resumption of Debate on Amendments [28th March, 1979] to Question [27th March 1979].

"That this House having noted the Report on the Ministry of Education, 1978, contained in Paper Misc. 3 of 1979,

(1) supports the revised structure of education which will allow each pupil to study at a pace suited to his learning capacity and which will make him as bilingual as he can be,

(2) approves flexibility in implementation particularly to accommodate the wishes of parents,

(3) recommends periodic adjustments and changes to the revised structure which experience and advice of principals and teachers show to be desirable in the long term interests of pupils.". - (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education).

Which Amendments were,

(i) at end, to add a comma and the following new sub-paragraph -

"(4) resolves that the Minister of Education do report to Parliament after 2 or 3 years on the progress, unresolved problems and state of implementation of the revised structure of education". - (Mr Fong Sip Chee, Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour);

(ii) at end, to add a comma and the following 2 new sub-paragraphs -

"(4) advocates that the Ministry of Education collates the suggestions and criticisms raised during the debate in the House.

(5) urges the Ministry to study the implications of policy changes in depth and to give schools and parents adequate lead time to implement such policies". - (Dr Toh Chin Chye, Minister for Health).

Question again proposed, "That the comma and new sub-paragraph (4), proposed to be added by the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour, be there added."

Mr Speaker: As had been agreed, the debate may range over both amendments and the original Question. Dr Tan.

Dr Augustine H.H. Tan (Whampoa): Mr Speaker, Sir, over the last few days we have listened to many speeches in this House on the subject of education; some eloquent, some wise and some humorous. But if there is any one factor which emerges from the presentation of the speeches, it is this. On the subject of education, as on no other, everybody considers himself an expert. The objectives which have been outlined by hon. Members have been many and varied, recommendations profuse.

If I may just draw attention to three points brought up by three Ministers for illustration. One Senior Minister thought that having two languages, like English and Chinese, involves a cancelling out process. However, he seems to have been affected by the New Mathematics which he has been studying together with his daughter. One minus one does not equal one, but equals zero. He said that because one language cancels out the other, therefore you get a monolingual product. Another Minister wants the standard of the second language to be higher than that provided for by the Goh Report. Yet another wants more time to play marbles. We have got to be realistic. We can be wide-ranging in our objectives but we have to look at the resources available to us. We cannot turn the Education Ministry nor the teachers into supermen and superwomen. We cannot achieve everything that we desire even if these objectives are all valued and worthy ones. There is a time constraint. There is a nerve constraint on the part of those who are being subjected to the process.

Perhaps the value of the Goh Report is in pointing out the tremendous wastage of our system. I find the wastage shocking, not merely in terms of literacy as pointed out but, as on the first chapter, page 3, that there seems to be a correlation between illiteracy and drug abuse, delinquency, attempted suicide, and court martials. In other words, there are disciplinary problems of various kinds. We have got to stop and think not merely in terms of why or how this illiteracy has come about but, more fundamentally, why the products of our schools are so prone to such delinquency.

There is one point which the Report did not cover. Perhaps the sheer size of the task did not provide enough time but which we ought to look at over time, that is, what about those 39% who eventually attain three GCE 'O' level passes and the 40% who fail to attain three GCE 'O' level passes. What kind of students are we producing here? What are their values and attitudes? One Member brought up an important point, namely, that we seem to be hearing and reading reports about very highly educated people, professionals, who are criminals. These are the ones who surface and get caught, but how many countless others have gotten away? Sir, it will be interesting to find out what the graduates' values and attitudes are.

The Motion standing in the name of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education is one which, I think, most of us can support. It is harmlessly stated and has some utility in terms of highlighting that each person should be given the chance to proceed at his or her own pace, which should have been obvious many years ago. It is quite strange that we have only now paid attention to this problem. I think one can improve the Motion in various ways as some of the Members have done, but what is more fundamental is the process of implementation. For all the good intentions and all the good objectives it is the implementation which is going to be crucial. Here the Prime Minister put his finger on the problem correctly. If I may quote him: [page vi, paragraph 30]

'However, the more fundamental principle of good education is recognition by the Ministry that the basic teaching organisational unit is the school.'

Here again, one would have thought that this was a rather obvious point but it took the Prime Minister to bring it to the attention of the Ministry of Education.

The problem is that there has been too much concern with the exercise of power by civil servants in Singapore. Just look at the principals and teachers having to hurry to some obscure counter at the Ministry of Education to receive a circular or the most recent order on what to do and what not to do, or the latest changes to be implemented. Little account was taken of their views and reactions. Little account was taken of their morale and, more fundamentally, no account was taken of the values and attitudes of the teachers themselves. Even the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour, a man whom I respect for his linguistic and other abilities, in pointing out the problem of teachers' morale and the need to do something about it, referred to them as "digits". Perhaps his encounters with the Prime Minister have resulted in some of the terminologies rubbing off on him.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour (Mr Fong Sip Chee): Close influence.

Dr Augustine Tan: Sir, this is something which we want to pay particular attention to and many Members of Parliament have complained that the question of teachers' morale has been dismissed too easily in the Report. If I were a teacher and I got this bright young systems engineer coming to me asking all sorts of questions: are you fed up?

An hon. Member: Yes.

Dr Augustine Tan: Are you happy with your pay?

An hon. Member: No.

Dr Augustine Tan: Are you happy with your principals and officials of the Ministry of Education? I would be rather hesitant to be frank and honest in conveying my true feelings and views. It would have been better if a questionnaire had been sent out to all school teachers and principals anonymously. I would think that the result would be drastically different.

On this question of proper treatment of people, since we are making much use of Confucianist ethics, I would like to quote the English translation of The Analects of Confucius by Arthur Waley: [page 88, paragraph 3]

'The Master said, Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect. Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual and they will keep their self-respect and come to you of their own accord.'

Interesting, is it not, Sir?

An hon. Member: Very wise.

Dr Augustine Tan: We subscribe to Confucianist ideals but why do not the people who govern, the people who hand down orders, listen to what the Master has to say? If people are treated with proper respect and given their proper due, their creativity will be released. They can flower in their professions. We have the recent example of women doctors being berated in this House for watching the clock. We might advise them to buy watches instead. But they came out with a reply to the Minister for Health. They stood up to him like a man!

Sir, the medical students were chastised by the Member for Anson and reminded of their debt to the ground. It is a valid point. We can turn around and chastise and scold many other people, professionals, intellectuals, academics, teachers, and any small group that does not have the voting power; we can do that. But let us remember one point. These groups may be minorities in terms of voting power but they too have rights. Their principles are principles. Truth is truth. In the case of these medical students, there can be no question that the principle of bonding is correct. But how they go about doing it is important, and the "how" tells us whether we have got the refinements that Confucius told us we ought to have, or we simply rub people's heads into the dirt.

University lecturers too have their grouses. It is not uncommon for university lecturers to be hauled up by a petty administrator at the university, sometimes even a former student who has assumed the position of Assistant Registrar, to be told what to do and what not to do, or which agency to turn to buy a particular plane ticket even if it should cost twice as much as some other agency, and so forth. Sir, I could tell this House endless tales of this sort - where people feel that they are not treated properly and that they are not given their due. Sir, if Singapore were to survive as a state respected by others, we need to produce people who can stand up for their rights. So to those people whose rights are trampled upon but who have the guts to stand up and point out what is wrong, I say, more power to them.

Now, let me turn to page 35 of the Goh Report. I am sorry. It is a very confusing system. It is Chapter 3, page 5. The last paragraph (5.1) talks about the "Pupils' Home Background", and I quote:

'Good schools have higher percentages of pupils from better home background, in terms of pupils' fathers' occupation and educational level than the other schools. In both the Chinese and English streams, the differences in the percentages between the good schools and the poor schools are significant.'

Note, Sir, "better home background". Now, Sir, if we really want to give everybody an equal opportunity, I think we should stop and think in terms of that 20% who are going to be relegated to the lowest stream of the primary school and study what are the factors affecting these poor children. I think there have been studies which show that diet plays a very important role in terms of the concentration level of children when they are in school. If the children do not have a full breakfast, their concentration level suffers a severe decline by about 9 o'clock. The child gets fidgety, becomes mischievous and is penalised. He is simply unable to concentrate for the simple medical reason that the glucose level in his blood stream has fallen below normal. Are we doing anything about this? Do we realise that there are still many poor people among us who are struggling along and cannot provide proper food or a proper diet for their children?

Many MPs have pointed out the need for study facilities. I have also pointed that out and I was therefore aghast when the National Library banned students from studying in the Library - a most unwarranted step. We simply evade problems when they become too great for us to face up to. If the ratio of library facilities to student population is too low, well, raise the ratio.

Then, Sir, children who come from the middle class or upper middle class homes have got the benefit of tutors. We are therefore going to see an accentuation of income or wealth disparities under the new system, because there will be pressure to provide more tutors for the children so that they will go to the first two streams and not the last. What about the poor? They will be left behind.

Another factor we have got to bear in mind, Sir, is the role of parents in monitoring the performance of their children. Here we seem to contradict ourselves in terms of policy. The Ministry of Finance says that we need more labour, particularly more woman power, so that we will not have to rely too much on immigrant labour. So try and get more women to do the work. It will be good for the economy. But is it good for the soul of the youngsters who are going to be left behind? Is it good for their education? Is it good for their values and attitudes when their mothers slog away at an eight or nine-hour job per day? This is something for us to think about. Yes, there are economic benefits, but what about the social costs? Why do we not think in terms of providing half-day work for women? If women doctors watch the clock because they have to rush home to cook the evening meal, then there is a legitimate reason for them to do so. Why do we not let the women doctors work half-day at half-pay? It is a simple solution.

Sir, another consequence of our policy is the small family that we have today. We are constrained by land - economic circumstances, no doubt. But have we stopped to think about the long-term implications of small families? Many of us here in this House come from large families. We have many brothers and sisters. There were fights, there were quarrels. There was deprivation in many cases. But there is one thing we learn from large families, that is, to share, to give and to take. I am afraid, Sir, that too many of our youngsters today do not know how to give. They only know how to take. They have too much pocket money, too many toys which, in any case, destroy creativity, and too much freedom, even freedom from parental control. We admonish parents to have small families so that they can have more facilities and more time for their children. Yes, they have more facilities and more money. More time? No, not for the children because the extra time is taken in working for the mother so that the parents can have greater leisure outside. They can go out dancing and gambling. They do not mind the children. What the children have are the school's ECA, homework and TV. So the consequence over the long term is greater selfishness in our younger generation.

I have had countless cases, Sir, of young men complaining to me at my "meet-the-people" sessions, furious with the Housing and Development Board for refusing to let them change the tenancy of their flats which they were about to buy. They had registered three or four years previously, to buy these flats, using their parents' names, brothers' names, and sisters' names because they were as yet single. But since then they have got married. And now the wife says, "Let us live alone by ourselves. There is a nice new four-room flat. Why do we want to bother with our parents, your parents especially?" So the young man went to the Housing Board and said, "I wish to take out the names of my parents, my brothers and sisters. Let them live in the rented flat where they are right now, and my wife and I will go to the new flat." The rented flat might be a one-room flat or a two-room flat. The new flat is a four-room flat or a five-room flat for two people. Of course, the Housing Board would say to them, "This cannot be done. If you wish to get a new flat, you have to take out a new registration number because you were not married at the time when you registered to buy a flat." They got mad with the Housing Board and came to me. I therefore explained to them and said, "Look, why don't you take your parents with you and then let them apply for a flat for themselves? It may take one or two years. They have put up with you for 24 or 25 years. Why can't you put with them for another one or two years?." This is the kind of attitude which our young people have. I am worried and I am sure the MPs here are worried too. If you have five or six children and half of them are not filial you will still be taken care of in your old age. But when you have one or two children, and half of them are not filial, you have had it.

If I may turn to page 6, Chapter 3 of that Report. There are some interesting findings here. One is that the Government-aided schools seem to have performed better. I will quote from paragraph 5.3.2:

'While only 44% of all the schools are government-aided, 71% of the good schools are government-aided and 84% of the poor schools are government schools ...'.

Surely, Sir, this is something for us to pause, think, and ponder at length. Why should this be so? What is so special about the Government-aided schools?

Paragraph 5.4 points out to "Other Factors - Dedication of teachers. Teacher's teaching method, and Quality of pupils." But these are dismissed in a sentence:

'Besides those factors that have been considered in the previous paragraphs, there are many other factors which are intangible and yet important. They are:'

They are simply dismissed in one sentence. Sir, these qualitative factors - dedication of teachers, teacher's teaching method and quality of pupils - are obviously important. They are crucial elements to be considered. But since these are not amenable to the computer and the systems engineers do not know what to do with them, they have simply been brushed aside. Yet the very finding that 71% of the good schools are Government-aided schools should give them plenty of food for thought. Why is this the case? Why do the Government schools perform so badly? But no explanation has been provided.

Another paragraph deals with the pupil-teacher ratio and it simply dismisses the idea because the finding was that despite the fact that there was a higher pupil-teacher ratio in the good schools the results of the good schools remain good and, therefore, there is no need to look into this pupil-teacher ratio. Absurd, is it not, Sir? If we are serious about raising the quality of our education, we should not base our reports on such spurious findings. There is such a thing as spurious correlations which simple human commonsense can tell systems engineers about.

Now, Sir, we talk about market value. Let me just give an illustration from the University. After obtaining a first degree, a First Class Honours, a man goes off and spends four or five years to get a Ph.D. in Philosophy. He comes back and joins the University. When the time for promotion comes and he is not promoted, he starts asking questions. He is told, "But what is your market value?" Of course, after teaching Philosophy for 10 or 15 years he would have no market value. That should be rather obvious. But he has got a special value - educational value. Look at the effect this has on the young graduates! The University is getting very short of staff. The brighter young graduates are not going to pursue higher degrees. What is the point? You slog away for four or five years to get a Ph.D. only to be told at the end of it that you have no market value. We had a better system before: Lecturers, Readers and Professors - just three grades. Today we have Lecturers, Associate Professors, Professors, and now Senior Professors. The British system is one thing. The American system is simply -

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education (Dr Goh Keng Swee): Mr Speaker, Sir, on a point of clarification. The Member mentioned some error of logic, error of inference on the part of the systems engineers. I just happened to return at that point. Can the Member give me the chapter and verse?

Dr Augustine Tan: Mr Minister, are you referring to the Bible or to your Report?

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Sir, I have no pretensions to holiness of the hon. Member. It is the blue book, Sir.

Dr Augustine Tan: Chapter 3, pages 5 and 6. There are quite a few offending paragraphs there. The Minister has the original copy. I am quoting from the printed version. I will give the paragraphs. They are paragraphs, 5.1, 5.3.2. 5.3.3, 5.4 and 5.5.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Where is the error of logic?

Dr Augustine Tan: The first point concerns the percentage of good schools: "71% of the good schools are government-aided schools and 84% of the poor schools are government schools ...".

Dr Goh Keng Swee: These are statements of fact.

Dr Augustine Tan: Yes. I am just wondering why these important statements of fact are not properly analysed.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: The Member wants enlightenment on these?

Dr Augustine Tan: I do not suffer from lack of enlightenment. But I think the Ministry perhaps could do with some.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: If the Member knows the reasons, then I think the systems engineers are quite right in not giving him the reasons. However, let us not quibble. What is the Member's next point?

Dr Augustine Tan: Paragraph 5.4 pointed to three important factors: Dedication of teachers, Teacher's teaching method, and Quality of pupils. I was just complaining that these factors were simply stated as "intangible and yet important." I was pointing out that this should be related to the difference in performance between the government and government-aided schools. That is one. The other point concerns the pupil-teacher ratio. The finding is perhaps spurious and should not inhibit the Ministry from pursuing the improvements to schools and lowering the pupil/teacher ratio. May I continue?

Dr Goh Keng Swee: All right.

Dr Augustine Tan: Sir, I was talking about some problems of the University. The British system is simply Lecturer, Reader, Professor. The American system is Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor. But we have a system which fits neither one. We have Lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor and Senior Professor.

An hon. Member: Senior Lecturer.

Dr Augustine Tan: I am sorry. Thank you. There is a Senior Lecturer. So we have Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor and Senior Professor. The intention behind this system was good, namely, the University was losing too many staff and therefore greater pay should be given to the teaching staff. However, if we look at the actual promotions, we find that people like doctors, Business Administration lecturers, lawyers get promoted more rapidly, not because they are intrinsically better in terms of education and educational value but because their market value is higher. This is one more example to illustrate this problem.

The Member for Anson recognises this problem, Sir, and emphasised that we should look for quality of commitment and, I should add, professional excellence, academic excellence. Titles matter to people. Professionals are not so much concerned with pay if they are accorded proper status, proper respect. But if teachers and professors do not get the social esteem which they think is their due, then they can only feel aggrieved that they have lost out somewhere along the line. And if we add to this the huge discrepancies in pay between the civil service and the teaching profession, then I think the discontent gets all the greater. I think what is important for us to realise, Sir, is that from the point of view of new graduates, what are the inducements for them to go into a particular profession or career? In other words, the concept of opportunity cost is more important than market value. What has the person got to give up to pursue a University career, to pursue a career as a teacher? Just the other day, one Institute of Education official complained to me that their lecturers were being paid no better than teachers themselves. These lecturers are teachers to teachers. If the morale of these lecturers is low, then they can only present glum faces to the teachers who will, in turn, present glum faces to the pupils.

Now, what about the so-called brilliant 8% that the Report extols? Here, I think there is a danger that because they are recognised as brilliant, we might overload them. The proposal to introduce a third language at some stage is one which I would not support.

What about the values and attitudes of these people? Having the bilingual capability, having eight distinctions and so on do not necessarily make these people good leaders. If I may quote from one Minister whom I overheard in the Member's Room, he said, "What good is it to me to have a First Class Honours Permanent Secretary if that fellow is not practical?" He has a point. Another person in an exalted capacity said, "Under the new system, I would not have survived. I am a monolinguist." How many people in this Chamber would have survived? Do we make enough room? In other words, is there a necessary correlation between intellect and linguistic ability? And if there is none, is there sufficient leeway in the system for transference or for emergence of the brilliant monolinguist, or even the above average monolinguist? I have trouble as I read through the Report on streaming. To go from the higher step down to the lower step, yes, it is very easy. It is like falling off the ladder. To climb up the ladder, both primary and secondary, the language is quite a barrier. I think the Education Ministry should look more carefully at this problem.

On the flexibility which is given to parents, it is a good gesture. But at the same time I am just wondering what the end result would be if the parents all sign for their children to be admitted to the higher streams of education. Is there indeed sufficient room for the late developer?

Let me get down to the objective of education. The Goh Report simply puts it that the basic objective is to achieve literacy in at least one language. The Prime Minister is more ambitious as usual. In the second paragraph, he says:

'It was, and is to educate a child to bring out his greatest potential, so that he will grow up into a good man and a useful citizen.'

I have no quarrel with either the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister on the stated objective. I would just like to emphasise a few points. One is that from my observation, even university students do not know how to think for themselves. It is a surprising statement but it is a statement of fact. Because they have been programmed right throughout the school system to be recipients, to be like a computer taking in some input and providing some output. When students organise seminars nowadays, they turn to lecturers and also to people outside, established in their fields, to come and speak. In my time when we organised seminars, we were the ones who were the speakers at the seminars. When we had debates, we thought through the ideas ourselves. I took part in many debates. We thought through. We did not go up to lecturers to ask for ideas. But now the university teams come up to us and say, "Can you give us ideas on this subject because, if you don't, the other team will win because they are approaching Professor so-and-so." It is something serious for us to think about.

Here, I go back to my good friend Confucius, and I quote him in CL3 (Chinese as a Lower Second Language): xue er bu si ze wang ( ) si er bu xue ze dai ( ) "He who learns without thinking is lost. He who thinks without learning is in great danger." I might add, "dangerous to others and to society as well," Our students also need to have the ability to select. Singapore is a small open economy. For all our educational efforts, unless the proper values and attitudes are instilled in the students, these efforts can be undone through the TV, through magazines, through the movies, through contact with tourists.

Let me turn to The Analects of Confucius, page 206. This time I will quote in EL2. Master Kung said: 'Highest are those who are born wise. Next are those who become wise by learning. After them come those who have to toil painfully in order to acquire learning. Finally, to the lowest class of the common people belong those who toil painfully without ever managing to learn.'

I quote that, Sir, not to discourage the working class but tO show that not all Confucianist values and ideas are valuable. We have to be selective. Do we know, for example, that in the Confucian scale of hierarchy, the scholars and officials are at the top followed by farmers, artisans and merchants. In a developing society, we value the entrepreneurial class. The status must be there. But in a Confucianist system, his class is at the bottom. That is obviously not what we want. In our society, we need to have much respect for technical and physical or manual labour. But the Confucianist value system relegates them to the bottom. Sir, I quote this because, as high a regard as I have for Master Confucius, we need to be selective in adopting values either from the East or from the West, or both.

Thirdly, Sir, our students should have the ability to cope with stress that comes with competition, rapid change, and the stress that comes from the compact living environment. It must be a great sense of tragedy to us to read from the newspapers from time to time of young students committing suicide on the eve of an examination. Are we giving them sufficient to cope with such stresses? Then our students have to be tolerant of others, but most important they have to be cultured individuals, not people who look towards a philosophy of crass materialism, not people who eventually assume positions of power and exercise power in petty fashion. Above all, students must be moral beings. Here, there is a dilemma of a secular state where we cannot teach religious values. We have to take ethical values distilled from various religious systems.

The Ministry of Education should set a good example. I have here some problems with the English. On Chapter 1, page 2, in the middle of paragraph 4, there is a sentence which reads as follows: "The retention being between 2-5% in most cases." It is a sentence that does not have a verb. In Chapter 1, page 5, line 4 of paragraph 3, the sentence reads: "But in Singapore, much of the problems ...". It should be, "But in Singapore, most of the problems ...". In the fifth line of the last paragraph of page 5, Chapter 1, it reads: "One way to overcoming the dangers ...". Not only is the word "overcoming" spelt wrongly but the proper word is "overcome". Sir, we are all human. So perhaps we can be forgiven. We make mistakes but God does not.

May I be permitted just to end by quoting from the Book of Proverbs, Chapter One. 'The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: That men may know wisdom and instruction, understand words of insight, receive instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity; that prudence may be given to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth - the wise man also may hear and increase in learning, and the man of understanding acquire skill, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.' Amen. 3.18 p.m.

Mr Lai Tha Chai (Henderson): ( In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, Sir, having listened to the one hour long discourse about Jesus Christ and Confucius, it causes me, the one who intends to speak in CL1, to wonder whether I should speak on Confucianism further without taxing the patience of my colleagues. May I perhaps be allowed to use a few sayings from the Western philosophy so as to counterbalance the Eastern philosophy of my colleague who has just spoken to help mutual interchange.

Sir, the Report on the Ministry of Education presented to the House on the 16th March, 1979, by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education is one of the most important historic documents after the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore since our independence. The Report makes special reference to the most complex language problem that exists in our multi-racial society. At the same time, it has also boldly and fully by self-criticism disclosed the seriousness of mistakes made by the Government in this respect in spite of what it has achieved in other fields. All these errors have been enumerated in detail in the Report. So after having carefully studied the Report, I asked myself, if the Education Study Team had not been led by Dr Goh Keng Swee, our Deputy Prime Minister, and his Study Team members had not been officials from Ministries other than the Ministry of Education, would we be presented with a Report that is both self-derogatory and not painting a good picture of the Government? I do not think so.

In a developing multi-racial society, language education is a common problem. It is a thorny problem as it seeks to streamline or accommodate all the languages or the various ethnic groups into a unified education system. This is not easy. However, we have done quite well in this respect. Let me give some examples. Yesterday, the Minister for Labour mentioned about the Government changing the 3.3 system of the Chinese stream to the 4.2 system so as to enable the Chinese stream secondary students to sit for the same examination for the English stream. This was good and of advantage to them. The atmosphere then was quite different from what it is today. As related, what the Senior Minister of State, Mr Lee Khoon Choy, experienced in those days none of us new MPs here, including myself, could have experienced.

Second example. The Nanyang University changed its four-year system to the three-year system so as to put the Pass Degree students on the same footing as the students in Singapore University, thus giving equal treatment. This was also good. So I can say that we have done quite well. After independence it was decided to embark on bilingualism. In addition to learning English, students of various races have to learn and master their respective native languages. So far, we have not been able to boast of any great success. Many students after leaving school have not been able to converse in English nor in Mandarin or Tamil or Malay. So much so that when the Deputy Prime Minister was the Minister of Defence, he had to set up a special Hokkien platoon in the national service in order to enable certain soldiers unable to converse in English or Mandarin to converse in Hokkien on military strategy and other matters. Therefore, the Report advocated a multi-stream or multi-channel system in order that schools could allow students of different abilities to develop at their own pace. This will enable the younger generation to be taught according to their talent and capacity and not become illiterate in this modern age. For example, it has been found that certain students after studying for 10 years still know nothing and are good for nothing. Therefore, other than what many Members have considered to be difficult to implement, theoretically I think that the multi-stream system is a very sound method. All the principals, teachers and Ministry officials know that this is a good system. If we can succeed, it will mark a significant progress, a progress which has not been achieved by other developing countries. In fact, there are many difficulties ahead. I would just like to cite two examples. The first prerequisite is to solve the problem of the syllabi. We cannot use the same textbooks for all students of different streams and levels. They should use different textbooks. The writing of textbooks should be undertaken by those who are well-versed in education as well as in the languages. At present, there is some fault in this respect. That is to say, some people who are well-versed in languages may not be equally good at education. So when such people write the textbooks, although the textbooks to the adults appear good in phraseology and very beautiful, however, they are more suitable for adults than for school children, because to the students such textbooks would be too difficult to comprehend and a heavy burden to them. I once looked at a lesson in a textbook on Education-for- Living. The title of the lesson was "We go to school." wo men dao xue xiao qu ( ). I remember when I was a primary student, I had also a lesson whose subject title was in these words shang xue ( ) "Going to School". I thought to myself, why should the term dao xue xiao qu ( ) be used, which is a longer term instead of shang xue ( ) as commonly used? Why not the other way round? Those who are knowledgeable in linguistics or who are educationalists can perhaps enlighten us on this. Sir, if I may recommend one, our Minister of State for Labour is an educationist as well as a linguist. Am I correct, Mr Sia? Another is the Member for Delta who is also a linguist. If they can say which one is better: shang xue ( ) or dao xue xiao qu ( ) it will be good to our children. If shang xue ( ), fang xue ( ), shang ban ( ), xia ban ( ), shang ke ( ), xia ke ( ), etc, are better and more familiar terms, we should use this sort of brief and pithy terms rather than using lengthy and circumlocutory terms. One should not try to be too smart by creating innovations to replace commonly accepted terms of usage. So I say textbooks are very important, because without good textbooks the teachers, the principals and the students will face difficulties and a host of problems and we may find ourselves back to square one.

The next point I wish to raise is that we must not only have teachers and principals who are dedicated, we must also have Ministry officials who are equally able and dedicated to the cause of education. For example, take myself. I studied in primary 3 up to primary 5 before I took the enrolment examination to join a middle school. I spent another five years from lower junior school to senior middle school before I took the university entrance examination. During this course of schooling within this prescribed system, if I had not come across good teachers, good principals and good Ministry administrators, then a problem child like me who did not fit in properly with the prescribed standard in the formal education system would long have become an illiterate nondescript.

Therefore, Sir, I would like to point out that the bilingual policy stipulated all along by the Government has been a correct one but because of the lack of expertise in educational administration, it has resulted in everybody having a say in education and everybody having a finger in the education pie. I am not saying that the Ministry of Education is lacking in experts. I am not saying that our schools are devoid of good teachers and good principals. What I am saying is that an officer who has not studied education at all was sent to work in the Ministry of Education. For example, I met one officer one day and he said that he had just gone to work in the Ministry of Education and he was reluctant to make any decision on educational measures. Under the civil service system, he had to work under established rules and regulations. So he would do just as he was told. He was unfamiliar at the beginning but later on he became familiar with the business of giving orders and instructions, directing people around. However, we soon began to see deviating results from this.

We see some good principals faithful to their duties had become bad principals working to rules. Some good teachers dedicated in their profession had become bad teachers by following bad examples. Once this vogue was set, then in the educational circle very few people would want to talk about how to be decent persons and very few people would want to talk about moral education because nobody talked about moral education. Therefore, few of the teachers interviewed by the Education Study Team talked about moral education. That is why there is very little mention of moral education in the Report, and this has caused the Prime Minister to jump on his feet.

I would suggest here something which has not been mentioned by other Members. One is that we must reorganise the Institute of Education. The Institute of Education was formerly known as the Teachers' Training College. The name has been changed, and the signboard has also been changed. But in my view, generally speaking it is still a case of old wine in new bottle. The Institute of Education has not been able to shoulder its sacred tasks. The basic requirements of the Institute are good teachers, good principals and good staff. In my view, the Institute of Education should get in touch with some primary schools and secondary schools and other establishments where there are educational facilities to set up some primary experimental classes and educational research centres at those places. In this way, we shall be able to produce, on the one hand, good teachers and, on the other hand, various experts needed as good educational administrators. Such outstanding teachers and personnel can be sent overseas for further tudies to acquire new knowledge. But, it will serve no useful purpose to send those con- descending and hardworking good teachers and good principals abroad. Some who have gone abroad in search of treasure have come back but have not become good teachers and good principals. I feel that if the Institute of Education is well organised, its success will provide the main pillar of strength by enhancing the upward development of our education.

Sir, in short, I would say that this Report on education together with the letter from the Prime Minister, embodies the sum total of our experience on which to build our multilingual education system. With this foundation and under the insistent direction of the Government on bilingualism, we can build up our new, multi-channel education system. If our educationists can do well by matching the rich educational experience and thesis of the Report with all the views presently suggested and expressed in this House and apply them with speciaL methods in their educational specialties or through any measure considered best by them, they may be able to set up a good educational system in this complicated and plural society of ours.

Sir, the Deputy Prime Minister has taken over the portfolio of the Ministry of Education and this has been well received by members of the public. Everybody is glad. Everybody is full of confidence. However, as Sir Winston Churchill had said, let me quote him in EL3, "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." Just as what I think the Member for Jalan Kayu had quoted in Chinese some two days ago, "Gong yu shan qi shi, bi xian fi qi qi" ( ), that is to say, if we want to do a good job we must have good tools. So, if we give the Deputy Prime Minister adequate time, and I think we should, he will then be able to spot talent. There is no lack of talent in the Ministry of Education. I know there are many. Even if he is not able to spot the talents we should let him have the opportunity to develop the talents. Only when he has developed enough talents can he make use of them. Then, we Singaporeans Will be able to achieve what appears to be unachievable.

In introducing his Motion the Deputy Prime Minister has said that Singaporeans are a resourceful people and have got out of many a desperate predicament. Therefore, I express my support for the Motion and I also express my confidence in him that step by step an ideal system of education in keeping with the needs of our multi-racial society will be established. 3.38 p.m.

The Minister of State for Labour (Mr Sia Kah Hui): Mr Speaker, Sir, I am happy to know that there will be flexibility in the implementation of the revised education system and that the wishes of parents are to be taken into account. In this spirit of tolerance and willingness to consider points of views of others, I shall mention later certain undesirable controls and directives from the Ministry of Education which could be done away with for the good of everyone concerned and in the best interest of education as a whole.

Seeing the number of experiments or rather changes in the education of our young in the last few years, one wonders what is the object of education. One moment it is the acquiring of language skills; one moment it is technical skills (so much so that students, both boys and girls in the first two years of the secondary schools had to spend one or two mornings or afternoons a week in a workshop), and the next moment it is extracurricular activities (so points are awarded for participation, so much so that some students find no joy in participating because they had to go to school outside their normal school hours but some participate because they need the extra marks for promotion). No doubt these are desirable qualities that need to be acquired by the young if possible, but they have been blown out of all proportion until other aspects of education suffer as a result.

Are our children sent into the world after years of schooling equipped to live, in the words of the Prime Minister, as "worthy citizens guided by decent moral precepts?" We who would be scandalised if we were to hear of men sent to fight armoured tanks with rifles must feel the same if large numbers of our young are sent into society to fight the battle of living with a smattering of knowledge of "subjects" and language skills. Maybe that is what we have been doing all these years. Maybe I am exaggerating. Nevertheless, I think our schools must make it a point to give paramount importance to the realm of moral and character aspects of education. No doubt knowledge and the acquiring of skills to do a job is necessary, but far more important are the qualities enumerated in paragraph 19 of the Prime Minister's letter addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education. Or to put it in an all-embracing way, in the words of Jesus: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Our Singapore society is a multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-religious one. The Prime Minister is perfectly right when he says that the best of the East and of the West must be blended to our advantage. He mentions "Confucianist ethics, Malay traditions, and Hindu ethos", and I would like to add "Christian teachings." We must remember the great contributions made by the Mission schools, in particular the inculcation of moral values in the pupils under their charge. The dedication of the teachers, their concern for the total welfare of the pupils are cherished memories of many.

The Prime Minister also mentions about the transmission of the norm of social and moral behaviour through stories. In 1959 the Ministry of Education published five small volumes of "stories" selected by the Ethics and Religion Committee for use in primary schools in connection with the 'Right Conduct' syllabus. The Singapore Inter-Religious Organisation played a major role in the Committee. I find the stories are mainly taken from the English sources as they were then easily available. The stories could be expanded to include more Chinese, Malay and Indian folklore. The five little volumes are not textbooks. They are meant for the use of teachers and I believe, in the hands of capable and enthusiastic teachers, a lot can be achieved. The proverbial anecdotes sheng yu gu shi ( ) published currently in the Straits Times in the bilingual page are also useful. Some of the picture series published in three languages in the New Nation are suitable also. Such stories could be told (not read) by teachers in the language best understood by the pupils. This in some measure could help to ward off the undesirable effects of the so-called rat race in our midst and get down to the fundamental and real foundation of a good education.

There is ground to believe the allegation that Mission Schools have been losing their distinctive character over the years because of too much control from the Ministry of Education and if this trend is to continue long enough it might just reduce the Mission schools to the level of Government schools. We have heard hon. Members say and it is also in Dr Goh's Education Report that aided - schools are in many respects superior to Government schools. Unless we want the aided-schools to come down or degenerate under the management of the Ministry of Education to the level of Government schools, I suggest that many of the controls should be done away with. I would suggest that the Mission schools be left completely under the management of the schools' Board of Governors, but since the Government has the responsibility for the welfare of all citizens, whether young or old, and has put in a share in the form of capital grants, pay the salaries of teachers, etc, it is only right that the Government be represented on the Board of Governors just like the many industrial undertakings in which the Government has a share and that the Government appoints certain members to the Board of Directors. Such industrial undertakings are then left to carry on business under the watchful eye of the Board of Directors. For the Mission schools, the Ministry of Education could spell out what the schools are expected to achieve in general terms and then let the Board of Governors run the school. The Ministry need not come down to the level of insisting, for example, that the Catholic Junior College or Anglo-Chinese Junior College must function three long days and two short days a week just like the Government run National Junior College. Surely the principals of the Mission junior colleges run by their own Board of Governors should know how to arrange the classes according to the needs of their students.

Again, there is no need to insist that the Mission schools conform to the number of hours to be spent each week on certain subjects as in Government schools. There is no need for the Ministry of Education to insist that religious teaching must be conducted at certain hours. It is a detail best left to the principals to arrange. If we are to have schools of distinctive character, the control and regimentation from the Ministry head-quarters must be minimal and, if possible, abolished altogether. The heads of schools and Boards of Governors must be given a freer hand in the management of their schools. The teachers who choose to teach in the Mission schools must not be transferred out against their wish and, in the case of appointment of the aided-school heads, the Board of Governors should have the final say. I know that the Ministry of Education requires the School Board to advertise the vacancy in the press and then submit three names to the Ministry for its selection. I think this is wrong and is an unnecessary interference with the management of the school. I think it is important to bear in mind that if a school were to preserve its character, the choice of the principal must be left to the school authorities. The Mission school authorities and the Ministry of Education should not, and need not be on two opposing camps. Rather, they should be partners and together find solution to problems, never losing sight of what their common goal is - i.e. to provide the best environment and the best way to turn out "worthy citizens". Thus, both sides can learn and adopt the good points of each other.

I have the impression that the Mission school authorities have been receiving the directives from the Ministry headquarters as though they are 'edicts', or perhaps they have given up suggesting alternatives because the suggestions in the past had fallen on deaf ears? Whatever it may be, they should not take without question the directives from the Ministry headquarters. If they had done that, they would have been vindicated by the Goh Report. I must state categorically here that it is not my intention to cast aspersions on individual officers in the Ministry. For all I know, not one of them is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the Ministry as revealed in the Report.

Switzerland has been put up as an example of having a successful system of bilingual education and, mind you, this is without a Ministry of Education. I wonder what would be the reaction if I were to say, "overhaul completely our existing Ministry of Education". I mean abolish the part of the Ministry's work which could be considered "shackles" by the schools but just keep a minimum staff for the reduced administrative work: return the majority, if not all the professionals to where they really belong - the schools. Would this, in the final analysis, not be good for our younger generation? Or is this suggestion a preposterous one?

May I now say just a few words on the proposed streaming of primary school children. Since it is proposed that the parents be given a say in the matter and it is also admitted that there is no foolproof way of assessing the children at this stage, I would suggest that only general principles and guidelines (including syllabus for the different streams, if you like) come from the Ministry of Education and whether the children will go into the Primary 4A, 4B or 4C or from 4A to 4C or from 5C to 5A classes and so on, could be left entirely to the school principals and teachers because they are the people who know the children best. In this way we can avoid the problems and the stigma that can come about if all the children are put through a standardised mill at Primary 3 or 4 level. In this way, do we really lose anything if we do the streaming on a national scale as is being done in Primary 6 now?

May I be allowed in passing to mention that the present system of selecting students for admission to secondary schools and junior colleges may after some years result in the branding of schools and colleges into different classes, that is. A class, B class and C class; or first, second and third grades. The selection for admission to junior colleges is based on the number of points attained at the 'O' level examinations. If a student has less than so many points, he is allowed to join, say, National Junior College: and if he has more than a certain number of points he goes to, say, Catholic Junior College. I have no doubt oversimplified the selection process. I understand it is done by the computer, What I want to ask is whether this, in time to come, would lead to the concentration of the brightest in one college, the next best in another, and so on. If so, is this desirable?. Shall we not consider other alternatives, such as grouping students according to the subjects they propose to take, e.g., those taking Mathematics and related subjects go to, say, the National Junior College and Temasek, those doing English and related subjects go to, say, Hwa Chong Junior College and Anglo-Chinese Junior College, and so on?

It is good that almost every citizen has an opinion about education, including Members of Parliament, though the great majority claim ignorance about education. No apology is needed. For all at one time or another have been taught and are now parents with kids in schools, the hon. Member for Alexandra excepted. In any case, we have complete freedom of speech. Biologists talk about metaphysics, inorganic chemists about theology and blunt men write to the press to say that Lim Chong Yah does not know anything about economics. In our context the question is whether the various points made and proposals put forward in the last few days will ever be accepted by the authorities. Accepted or not accepted, I feel that the contributions to the debate must have some potential value.

I am an optimist. Of all the thousands of words of wisdom uttered in this House, some no doubt will fall on fertile ground and bear fruit in the years to come. I have no doubt whatsoever, none whatever, in fact not I alone, for I can confidently say on behalf of all my colleagues in this House, having heard them all, that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and everyone of his officers would put their whole heart and soul in their job, that is, to make sure that our young citizens get the best education that is humanly possible to give. 3.55 p.m.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education (Dr Goh Keng Swee): Mr Speaker, Sir, we spent four days debating the problems of education. I cannot, with the time at my disposal, give justice to all the comments made by Members on the subject. I therefore welcome the amendment made by my colleague, the Minister for Health, that a proper account should be taken by the Ministry of Education of the wise words spoken by wise men and that at various stages of implementation, due consideration be given to them. What I can do, with the time at my disposal, is just to refer to some of the more salient points and I will discuss them not necessarily in order of importance.

First is pressure on pupils due to an overload of the curriculum, and to allegedly misguided parents who put pressure on their children to perform well in mental tests, and so on and so forth.

Many hon. Members have compared the present plight of school children with the happy days they themselves enjoyed while they were in school. The Senior Minister of State (Prime Minister's Office) said that he spent a lot of time during his school days catching fish and flying kites, and so did other Members.

I will not let this occasion pass without telling Members how I spent my school days. I regret to say, almost to confess, that my school days were a period of idleness. I showed a total lack of ambition. My parents made no attempt to pressurise me to study. Perhaps I exhibited no dragon-like qualities. Whatever it was, I never did my homework. I did my Mathematics homework during Geography or History periods. For this purpose I found it prudent to get a desk right behind in the classroom so that the distance between the teacher and myself was the maximum. Fortunately, Latin was taught after recess, so I found time during the recess to do Latin homework with the generous assistance of considerate fellow students. When discussing this, Mr Speaker, Sir, you will remember, during the tea break two days ago, that my colleague, the Minister for Law and Science and Technology, did exactly the same thing. He never did his homework. However, he had the misfortune of being caught because I suspect he did not take the precautions which I did. So he was sent to a detention class. But thereafter he decided to do his homework and topped the class each year from then on. He became a model scholar and won the Queen's scholarship. Sometimes I wonder whether I am fit to hold this job.

For instance, when I heard the Member for Kampong Kembangan complaining bitterly yesterday that school children instead of studying in tuition classes were actually spending their time frolicking around, I thought that was a sensible thing to do. I would have done it myself. However, as a Minister, I must suppress my instincts. I must work the system, however poor it may be. And I must commend my colleague, the Minister for Law and Science and Technology, as a model student and not myself.

An hon. Member: You are being too humble.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Why is it that in our time we took our studies very lightly, whereas today's children are working very hard? Is it because our parents were enlightened whereas today's parents are not enlightened? I do not think so. I think the reason is an economic one. During our time the British were in charge. The good jobs were held by Europeans whether they be in the Civil Service, the Police, the hospitals, the University, in business or in the professions. So the schoolboy at that time saw very little prospect of a satisfactory career. There was very little inducement to excel. In fact, career opportunities were so poor that another colleague, the Minister for Health, seriously contemplated entering the priesthood. Fortunately for Singapore he changed his mind at the last moment and opted for a career as a scientist, so that we are not deprived of his distinguished services to the party, to the Government and to the country.

Dr Augustine Tan: What about his soul?

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Today, the opportunities for talented young men and women are vast. The whole world is virtually their oyster. Is it to be wondered then that they will try to excel? And they do their best to get four distinctions at 'A' levels, or even five distinctions if we allow them. There is nothing wrong about this. There is nothing wrong about parents pressurising their children to study hard, of course, with the caveat that all this must be done within limits of their children's capability.

I do not share the alarm which many Members have expressed about too heavy a pressure on children because of curriculum or monthly tests or whatever. After all, the curriculum at 'O' level is very much the same as the curriculum for Senior Cambridge which the Minister for Labour and I had to sit for in our time.

I now turn to moral education. Almost every Member who has taken part in the debate has expressed his strong opinions about this. In my view, we should take special note of the views expressed by the Member for Mountbatten and the Senior Minister of State, Prime Minister's Office, on the dangers of deculturisation. As we move more and more towards a predominantly English form of education, as we are more and more exposed to the media influences coming to Singapore, this would become an increasingly difficult problem to counter. It is a problem because the danger is greatest, not with the least educated but with the most highly educated, as the Member for Serangoon Gardens has explained. It is not a problem with the PSLE failures who are attracted by the counter-culture, but a problem with university undergraduates and even university post-graduates.

Many views have been expressed on the content of moral education, how it should be conducted, what kind of citizens we want to produce. All these will be duly considered. But I think Members have missed the essential point. So far as the process of education in schools is concerned - and here I am concerned with moral education in schools - we have to embody these ideas, these norms, these principles or whatever we call them, into the teaching system, and this has to be spelt out in the curriculum and syllabuses.

What we need now is not so much more ideas about what should be taught. We shall get a fairly good solution - at least I look forward to that - from the committee headed by the Minister for Communications. What we need is not so much more discussion of ideas or content but implementation - how to bring all these excellent and very desirable objectives into a system that can be applied in our schools. Let me explain more simply what I mean. Last night I was at the Conference Hall listening to a concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Then it occurred to me that the whole point about moral education was exemplified by the Conductor of the Orchestra, Choo Hoey. A year ago when I wanted to start the Orchestra, I invited him to Singapore and asked him whether he was interested in starting an orchestra here and becoming the Conductor. He immediately replied yes. He would like to take on the job. I asked him, "Why?" And this is interesting. He has two children and he did not want his children to be educated in Europe. He wants them to be educated in Singapore. He said he came from the Chinese stream. That is one cultural advantage of Chinese education. He is a colleague of the Minister for Communications.

So what we really need is a Choo Hoey in the Ministry of Education who can advise the Ministry on how to spell out all these excellent objectives into a working programme. I hope the Minister for Communications' committee will give some thought to this because this is a crucial element. Once we move from the realm of discussion into the realm of implementation, we must get someone who knows how to do it.

There are many tricky problems here. Morality is not culture-free. In other words, different peoples and different societies have their own different moral values. Morality is also linked with religion and this is a very sensitive subject in Singapore. Therefore, we should really try to look for a fairly level headed, practical educational expert with experience of curriculum development in this particular field of moral education.

It is not true, as some Members have suggested, that moral education is not taught in other countries. Moral education is taught in British schools for instance, though not as a compulsory subject which we intend to make in Singapore. This is a very crucial area in the future development of our educational system. The various views which have been expressed by Members coming from different school backgrounds, different cultural streams, different religions, will be valuable to the Ministry when we plan our programme in this field.

Parents have come in for a lot of critical comment, not only in regard to over-pressurising their children but also in regard to their role as moral educators of their children. I am not as pessimistic as most Members are about present-day parents. After all, they must be a pretty good bunch of people. Otherwise we would not have made the grade in the face of so many difficulties, so many problems and so many crises in the last 15-20 years. If the adult population which are parents today have not the right quality and the right moral attributes, I do not think we could have made the grade. What concerns me more is the next generation of parents. When children are more and more exposed to influences of modernisation or Westernisation, and their parents, especially the present-day younger ones, have not instilled in them the same conviction of the Confucian ethics or Christian values or what have you, so that they could rub off these on to the children, such moral values will decline. For this reason, we shall have to pay special attention to the teaching of moral education as a subject in schools.

The Ministry administration has been criticised severely in the Report. I am very glad to hear some Members saying that Ministry officials should not be regarded as scapegoats. I entirely agree with this sentiment. In fact, the Report has explained at some length the defects of the system and not the inadequacies of individual officers who have to operate the system. In our discussion with them, we found that they are very concerned with the problems. They are very hard working. But at the same time, one gets the feeling that they found the problems facing them rather overwhelming.

I brought the team of systems engineers with me so as to try and make improvements. Improvements cannot be done overnight. One of the things which needs to be done very quickly is the installation of a computer. We have asked the Finance Ministry for money, and approval has been forthcoming with unusual speed. It is quite an economical type of computer costing $588,000 only. It is a mini-computer with print-out facilities and 15 on-line terminals. It should be ready and in operation in about 16 months' time, after which if I am still Minister of Education, I will have less reason than my predecessors to make errors in decision making.

I think the mechanics of management is not the core problem in our education 2system, even with the computers and even with a better system of decision making. We still have to solve other problems. Members have rightly identified that one of these is creating better relationship, better communication between schools and the teachers and principals and Ministry headquarters. The relationship at present is unsatisfactory. The Schools Division is overhauling the whole system of working. Why is it unsatisfactory? How did it come to such a sad state of affairs? I have gone into this problem in some detail and I have come to the conclusion that the Singapore Teachers' Union must bear part of the blame. This matter has a long history, probably going back to colonial times when teachers felt that they stood in great danger of being victimised by the principals, many of whom were Europeans. And quite rightly the Union insisted that evaluation of teachers should not be left to school principals.

In any system in any bureaucracy, once a practice is introduced it goes on. It has its own momentum of inertia. So the result is that when the school inspectors go on their rounds they are regarded as a threat by the principals and teachers. They are there really to find fault and see whether the principals and teachers are doing their jobs properly, whether the drains are properly swept, tuckshops kept clean. We cannot have good relationship between teachers and principals and the Ministry headquarters if the relationship is basically an adversary one.

What we in the Ministry are thinking of is to make the objective of the Inspectorate different. We feel that they should go to schools, not individually to inspect the teachers but as a team, to see what are the problems facing the school and how teaching methods can be improved. In this way the Inspectorate could assist principals and teachers to achieve better professional standards. In fact, this is the way inspection of schools is done in other Commonwealth countries. But for some reason or other the system of individual inspection of teachers which originated in the long past just kept on going, with very unfortunate results.

Here, I come to the comments of the Member for Whampoa about variation in school performances dealt with in Chapter 3 of the Report. The Study Team found considerable differences between schools, insofar as they are judged in terms of percentage passes in Primary School Leaving Examination and 'O' level examination. Some schools have 100% passes and others have about 20% passes. Then the Team examined some of the factors which gave rise to this variation. One would expect that where the ratio of pupils to teachers is small, the school would produce better results. That is the normal expectation: one teacher to fewer pupils. But, in fact, we found the reverse relationship. This is explained by the fact that parents know which are the good schools and send their children to these schools. Parents know also which are the bad schools and avoid them. That is what paragraph 5.3 is about. The hon. Member should have read the first two sentences and then he would have found the reasons.

Dr Augustine Tan: Point of clarification, Sir. My point was that the finding, legitimate as it is, does not point to any policy conclusion that there should not be improvement in the teacher/pupil ratio. It is as simple as that.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Sir, that is the Member's inference. There is nothing said about policy on improving or not improving the teacher/pupil ratio. This is a study on the causes of variation. Then there are other factors listed out in paragraph 5.4: Dedication of teachers, Teacher's teaching method, and Quality of pupils. The Member says, "The Team should have gone into greater detail. Why did they not do it?" The answer is simple. It is not a Ph.D. academic dissertation. The Systems Engineers have to do a practical job and they have got to finish their work in time.

Dr Augustine Tan: Point of clarification, Sir. Sir, I was not advocating that the education officials, the Systems Engineers, embark on a Ph.D. exercise. Far from it, Sir. I am concerned with commonsense approach, that is, if the finding is that the majority of good schools are Government-aided schools and no explanation is given, why this is so? If no attempt has been made to explain why this is so, then I say, they lack commonsense. That is all.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Sir, I think the reasons why Government-aided schools perform better than Government schools are known to all Members. It is not necessary to state the obvious. First, they are older schools. Many of them have histories of up to 100 years. My old school celebrated its Centenary only two years ago. Second, many of them, being private schools, have teachers with strong religious backgrounds. They are more highly motivated. I must really give the Member for Whampoa a word of advice. He is an academician. It is very praiseworthy for an academician to want to know everything. But when you are running a Government Ministry and you have to run a policy, there is one state of mind a good administrator and a good policy maker must avoid at all costs. I call it "Child in toy shop syndrome" - what do you want? I want everything! You cannot have everything.

Dr Augustine Tan: Point of clarification, Sir. It is a serious point which I am pursuing. It is no laughing matter. What I am concerned about is: how do we produce better schools? How do we produce better students? If the finding is that there is something in the Government-aided schools that tends to produce good quality students, then we had better examine what these qualities are. Off-the-cuff, the Minister gave several reasons, and I say, "That's it." And they are very crucial points. There is the dedication of the teachers, dedication of the principals, the values, the attitudes, the morals of the teachers and the principals. These are critical. This is no toy-shop syndrome, Sir.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: If anybody in the Ministry does not know that the better schools are produced by better teachers and that better teachers are more dedicated, then he should not be there. We have to deal with the practical problems of the world and there are enough at hand to occupy our attention.

As I said, a new working relationship must be established between the Ministry, schools and principals. We have started it and I hope in course of time it will show results.

Many Members were concerned about the morale of teachers and questioned the conclusion of the Study Team that the low morale of teachers was more apparent than real. The Member for Nee Soon put the proposition very succinctly. He said that 72% of those interviewed believed their social status was poor, 92% were worried about too many changes, 82% said they had no chance to air their grievances, 74% claimed that they have no chance for promotion. Then he asked this question: how can only 18% have low morale? The logic of this argument is relentless. If this were a chess game, I say, this is "checkmate." I concede the point to him that the conclusion drawn by the Team is faulty in logic.

Having said this, I go on to say that those Members who doubted the conclusion of the Team on the ground that we interviewed only 140 teachers and not 18,000 teachers were on the wrong track. We did in 1977 send confidential questionnaires to 18,000 teachers. Only 30% of them expressed dissatisfaction with the work as compared with a much higher level of dissatisfied teachers encountered by the Systems Engineers. So it is not the number of teachers you get data from that counts, but the way you approach them.

It is not true that teachers were overawed by the Systems Engineers who in most cases are much younger than the teachers. I assume their approach to the teachers was such that they had to gain their confidence. So I concede the point to the Member for Nee Soon that the morale of teachers is a problem and it is a problem which we have to tackle.

Two Members said that we should not take a decision on this and that we had better wait until we get more opinion. I completely disagree with this view. It is not necessary to wait any longer. We spent four days debating on the Motion. Some Members have gone out of their way to seek the opinion of their constituents, parents and teachers in their constituency, and I think we have got inputs from all strata of society and at all education levels. Now, to defer a decision on this is to show a pathetic indecision on the part of the Government, an inability to decide to come to a conclusion when on the whole the response of the general public has been favourable. Secondly, it is implicit in the Motion that there will be flexibility in implementation and that parents' views will be fully taken into account.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour has moved an amendment proposing an additional resolution which I accept, that is, in two or three years' time the working of the new system will be reported to Parliament and debated again. The Minister for Health has tabled an amendment proposing two resolutions which again I think will be very useful. In the face of all this, I think we should proceed with the Motion and the amendments. We will be voting on them and not defer a decision on this.

Bilingual education has always been a very tendentious issue. I listened with great attention to what my colleague, the Minister for Health, said about how the brain absorbs knowledge on language when it is presented in the form of phonograms or ideograms. It is just as well that I did not take up Medicine. When I left school I was toying with the idea of becoming a doctor. Then someone told me that I had to know the names of all the bones. I decided that this was too tiresome. Anyway, after listening to his account, I am very glad that I did not take up a medical career. I have great difficulty following his talk. If I understood him right, he was against bilingual education because in the learning of one language one part of the brain is working and if two languages have to be learnt, the same person will find -

The Minister for Health (Dr Toh Chin Chye): Point of clarification. Mr Speaker, I think my colleague, the Minister of Education, has got me wrong. I did not say that I was against bilingual education. I was saying how, in the case of the Japanese, two operating systems in the brain reinforce each other because they were teaching one language, whereas in Singapore we have got two separate languages but they do not reinforce each other. I distinctly added that bilingualism can be practised in Singapore provided certain parameters or weightages applied to one language as against another are clearly spelt out. The other point which I very seriously made is that the fault lies with the Ministry of Education, namely, they have been teaching Chinese for so many years that up-to-date they have not been able to produce the list of 2,000 characters which the pupils ought to know.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: I stand corrected, Mr Speaker. I am very grateful for the Minister's clarification.

My colleague, the Minister for Labour, believes that the standard of Chinese taught in schools should be raised and that an additional year should be allotted for this. I am not sure whether this proposal would be acceptable to the majority of parents. Singaporeans are an impatient people. They want returns from their children very quickly. If we tell the children, "You spend one more year so that your Chinese language can be more proficient", I think it is likely to generate opposition to the Chinese language and may well be counter-productive. However, it is provided in the Report that if some parents want the teaching of Chinese or Tamil or Malay to be of the highest possible standard, then we will make provision for these children. But I do not think we should enforce higher standards all round and ask that 'O' level be done in five years as a consequence of this.

I do not think the Chinese schools are going to vanish. In fact, at the instance of the Prime Minister, nine of the best Chinese schools have been selected for special assistance. They will be given extra attention by way of allocation of teachers, provision of teaching aids, new buildings, and so on. They will also be encouraged to receive the best of our primary school leavers. In this way, we would minimise the negative effects on Chinese education in Singapore as a result of parents' preference for education in English.

I now come to the controversial subject of streaming. I agree it is a beastly thing to do to children at Primary 3 or Primary 4. I also agree that it offends against the egalitarian instincts of most Members of Parliament. Most Members have to be responsible to their constituents and they want fair play all round. The mere idea of streaming slow learners from fast learners lays it open to the criticism of being elitist. No Member of Parliament can be more fair and more conscious of the rights of the working class than the Member for Anson, Mr Devan Nair. I think what he said on this subject bears repetition and I would want to read extracts from the excellent speech he delivered four days ago. I quote him:

'Egalitarian societies which have sought to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator have invariably come to grief. Thus it is that even in the professedly egalitarian society like the Soviet Union, special schools are provided for the exceptionally gifted and talented, in the spheres of music, art, mathematics and science. My colleagues and I in the NTUC have had no difficulty in satisfying the working class on the ground that talent and ability must be assessed and paid for at their market value and sometimes at their international market value.'

Then he goes on to sound a note of warning to the elites, the high-flyers who make their way to the top, and he said:

'... our meritocratic elite must never forget that the rewards of their excellence and high performance are ultimately justified only by the quality of their commitment and service to the general social good.'

I want to say a few words about the meritocratic elites produced by our educational system over the last decade. Unlike the time when my colleague, the Minister for Law and Science and Technology departed for England on a Queen's Scholarship (I think there were only two of them), today we send more than 200 of our best scholars abroad on various scholarships each year. Unfortunately, too many of them come back as Engineers. There are not enough engineering jobs in the Government Service to employ all of them. After all, the Public Works Department workshops repair trucks and broken-down bulldozers. How many engineers can they employ? The Telecommunication Authority of Singapore can employ some of the electronic engineers but only a limited number because they find that those produced by the Polytechnic are more useful and down-to-earth.

When I returned to the Ministry of Defence in 1970, things were in an awful mess. Quite frankly, it was far worse than the Ministry of Education ever was. This was because of the very rapid expansion that took place in 1968-69 which outstripped all our manpower capabilities. So there was a desperate need for talent of any kind. Fortunately, there were lots of these engineers around. So we got them into Mindef and they assembled themselves into all kinds of teams in logistics, manpower and so on. Eventually we found that their skills acquired in engineering colleges abroad could be put to good use in solving management and administrative problems.

We also learned a number of lessons from this exercise. It may be useful if I were to relate this experience to Members, not because it is directly relevant to the Motion but it is relevant as to how best we can make use of high-quality manpower. Of course, there are some who are basically selfish. There is nothing we can do about it. They serve their bond and after that, whatever we do, they say, "Goodbye. Now I want a job in the private sector." There is a lack of commitment. Unfortunately, there are some like that. There are others to whom money is less important than the satisfaction they get from their work. For instance, the team of systems engineers who helped me with this Report. They could have got much more pay if they left Government service and work in the private sector. But they found that the work is of value. They found that it was a challenge to their intellect. They believe that the outcome of their work, if successfully implemented, will be of value to Singapore as a whole and they derive enormous satisfaction from this.

If we want to get commitment from them we must put them in jobs which are challenging to their minds and in which they can produce results. I must say that quite often they have to work as a team because in solving complicated problems one person alone cannot achieve results. We need a management team to do the job.

I make this point because some 45 or 48 engineers have recently been recruited into the Administrative Service and they are now being distributed to the various Ministries. So I do urge my colleagues, the Ministers and Ministers of State in charge of those Ministries, to bear in mind that if they have high-quality talent they must know how to use them. Otherwise, they will lose them. And that is because if the talented ones feel that they are not making any contribution and that their work is not challenging, then the fault is not theirs.

I entirely agree with the Member for Anson that we should train our talented young men and women to the highest level of excellence they are capable of and we should not place any constraints or handicaps in the path of their development. That is why I cannot agree with the proposal by the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour that all students should have a common five-year stream for 'O' level and we allow double promotion for high-flyers. Everyone knows that accelerated promotion is seldom practised in schools. Further, he forgets that the five-year stream 'O' level is meant for those who could not do 'O' level in four years. If they can get 'O' level in four years, why spend an additional year? I see no point to this. Where is the stigma in getting your 'O' level in five years or getting your 'O' level in four years? I would have thought that the stigma is more on those who do not get 'O' level at all.

Mr Fong Sip Chee: Sir, on a point of clarification. I did not suggest accelerated promotion alone. I proposed then that the system could consider double promotion but it would be better if the brighter students were to be creamed off to classes using syllabus as that proposed for those who can complete GCE in four years. There is the difference between creaming-off and downward streaming-off.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: I think this is really an exercise in semantics. If you cream off the better students and put them in a four-year stream and allow the rest to do the five-year stream, then what is the difference between his so-called common system and the one proposed in the Report? In fact, it is not a common system because there are two streams, one four years and the other five years. Some Members have recommended that when streaming is done they should remain in the same school. I agree with this proposal. I think it is a very practical one and should be a feature of the system.

Streaming is invidious and it is against egalitarian instincts and yet most Members have recognised this as necessary, an evil necessity as one Member has put it. The experience in Japan as well as in Taiwan could be instructive. According to the Systems Engineers who studied the Japanese system in more detail than I have, the Japanese do not tolerate inequality among themselves. For instance, in the big Japanese companies, like Mitsubishi or Mitsui Company, the big multi-national companies, the difference in pay between the President, the top executive, and the office girl is only six times; a very narrow margin. This means that, taking the case of a bank which I know of, if the office boy gets one-sixth that of the Managing Director, you have to pay him $30,000 a year. But this narrow margin of income in Japan is just an illusion. The Japanese know that if you want a good man you have got to pay him well. The take-home pay of the Managing Director is peanuts. He finishes it off in one evening out. What he gets is an unlimited expense account, Somebody has calculated that the expense account of Japanese business executives is greater than their total defence budget! Perhaps "wily" or "cunning" is not the right term.

But they are a very ingenious people. They know how to get the best of all systems. Look at their school system. They know that if they have common examinations, as we have in the primary school and secondary school at 'O' and 'A' levels, then children of different abilities will be 'showed out' to be different. Many of them will fail and they think that is bad. So they do not have any common examination. Every school sets its own examination and everybody passes. Everybody is happy. Now, what will happen if we were to try it here? At one time we had a semblance of the Japanese system in the sense that we had automatic promotion. The result was that for many school children, as they got promoted upwards, they under- stood less and less of what was being taught. In the end when they failed the Primary School Leaving Examination, they joined the Army as illiterates. But in the Japanese system it does not matter. Here in Singapore you are teaching them in English and if they cannot understand what is being taught in school, they cannot speak in English. But in Japan, if they cannot understand all the kanji and katakana, they can speak Japanese. That is one option open to the Japanese which is not open to us. All Japanese school children move from primary to secondary school and 38% of them go on to the universities.

And yet we know for a fact that competition under the Japanese school system is extremely fierce, much fiercer than it is here, How do you explain this? The difference is that their streaming is not within schools, that is, slow learners, average learners, above average and brilliant students. They stream between schools. The best students try to get to the best schools. So there is fierce competition for entry into the best schools. The average students have to be satisfied with average schools, and the slow learners go to the slow schools. So it solves itself. The slow learners can learn at the same pace because they are all slow learners in the school. But since the Japanese parents are also like Singapore parents, they also believe that their children will become dragons and they all want to send their children to the best university, that is, the Tokyo University. Once you have gone into Tokyo University your life is made. You can choose jobs because the big businesses will woo you into their service. You can choose the Government Ministries. Every prestigious Government Ministry, like the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will want your services. From then onwards there is only one way you move - upwards. There is something about Tokyo University which is called Todai - in Chinese it is Tung ta. If you acquire the aura of Todai, this will ensure you success in your post-graduate life. So to get the Todai, you must get to the best secondary schools. To get to the best secondary schools, you must get to the best primary schools. To get to the best primary schools, you must get to the best kindergartens. Therefore, competition begins at the kindergarten stage. Whichever way you arrange your education system, there will still be competition. The best will want the best. The average will lose out to the above average.

Many Members have said that in future we must pay greater concern to the majority. This sentiment was warmly received by Members of the House. Quite rightly so. Indeed, the purpose of this Report is to pay more attention to the great majority. As we have explicitly stated, the brilliant 8% can look after themselves. We make no recommendations. It is for the 92% who somehow do not fare as well as the 8% that we have to make various adjustments so that they too can develop at their own pace to realise the fullest potential during their school career. That is the purpose of the Report.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I have explained why I accept the amendments moved by my colleague, the Minister for Health, and my other colleague, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour.

Mr Speaker: I shall put the Question first on the amendment proposed by the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Labour.

Question, "That the comma and sub-paragraph (4) proposed to be added, be there added.", put and agreed to.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Mr Speaker: I shall now put the Question on the amendment proposed by the Minister for Health.

Question, "That the comma and sub-paragraphs (4) and (5) proposed to be added, be there added.", put and agreed ta

Question accordingly agreed to.

Mr Speaker: As sub-paragraph (4) has already been added to the Original Question by the first amendment, the two new sub-paragraphs added by the second amendment will be numbered (5) and (6).

The Question now before the House is the Original Question, which is the terms of the Motion moved by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, amended by the addition of the new sub-paragraphs (4), (5) and (6).

Original Question, as amended put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House having noted the Report on the Ministry of Education, 1978, contained in Paper Misc, 3 of 1979,

(1) supports the revised structure of education which will allow each pupil to study at a pace suited to his learning capacity and which will make him as bilingual as he can be,

(2) approves flexibility in implementation particularly to accommodate the wishes of parents,

(3) recommends periodic adjustments and changes to the revised structure which experience and advice of principals and teachers show to be desirable in the long term interests of pupils,

(4) resolves that the Minister of Education do report to Parliament after 2 or 3 years on the progress, unresolved problems and state of implementation of the revised structure of education,

(5) advocates that the Ministry of Education collates the suggestions and criticisms raised during the debate in the House,

(6) urges the Ministry to study the implications of policy changes in depth and to give schools and parents adequate lead time to implement such policies.

Mr Speaker: I propose to take the Suspension now. I suspend this Sitting and will take the Chair again at 5.25 p.m.

Sitting accordingly suspended at 4.55 p.m. until 5.25 p.m Sitting resumed at 5.25 p.m.