In a test conducted by Programme for International Students Assessment in 2012, Singapore students, and I repeat, Singapore students, beat the rest of the world to come up tops, not only in rote learning but also in creative thinking. Amazing isn’t it?
After a decade of wearing the no talent tag, when they are deemed to be more stupid and useless than fake talents from the 3rd World, our students are world beaters. And those 3rd World countries where we drew our talents from were not even mentioned or appeared in the top rankings. Among those rated closer to Singapore are South Korea, Japan, Macau, HongKong, Shanghai, Taiwan, Canada, Australia and Finland. No wonder we are seeing the rise of Asia.
These students that topped the PISA test are likely to be strait A students for their O and A level examinations. And they are likely to be admitted to local universities and will also do very well. They will also be able to find employments quite easily and will be quickly promoted to middle management in the future.
But they will not be good enough to be at top management level. They will mostly be replaced by the fake talents from the 3rd World that they beat with hands down. Then they will add to the statistics of the unemployed or underemployed PMEs. And many will end up as their own bosses, driving taxis to pick up the foreign fake talents and hoping for some tips if they are lucky. If they are unlucky they will end up as punching bags to these foreign talents for their amusements.
Some of these who refused to accept their fate will try desperately to submit their resumes to the employment agencies operated by foreigners but would be told that they lacked the skill sets and experience needed for their clients. These foreign employment agencies would prefer to recruit their talents or fake talents from the 3rd World to fill up positions in this world class city.
One caveat, this is likely to be the picture if conditions remain like what it is now. Things may change in 10 or 20 years when all the free trade agreements are signed and foreigners flooded this city looking for jobs and our world beaters would count themselves lucky if they could even find employment in the first place.
Andreas Schleicher, Special Adviser to the OECD Secretary General on Education Policy and Deputy Director for Education and Skills has this to say, ‘It shows that today’s 15 year olds in Singapore are quick learners, highly inquisitive, able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts and highly skilled in generating new insights by observing, exploring and interacting with complex situations.’ What he meant is that our students are not blind muggers but really talented and creative. But would those asses listen to him? I bet not. The asses will still be singing praise for foreign talents and recruiting fake talents and bring them in plane loads to replace these local talents in top jobs, middle jobs and eventually all jobs except taxi drivers.
Can these bright Singapore students look forward to a great career in the future? What do you think?
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/