Perspective

I think that the main purpose of education is to impart knowledge and comprehension ability so that human beings will be able to understand what goes on around them and subsequently, be able to make informed decisions by themselves.

Being a product of the Singapore education system, I would say that the system is truly one of the best in terms of producing people who can ace examinations. Unfortunately, the system fails spectacularly in preparing one to make informed decisions about one critical aspect of life, and that is finances.

Of course, some people would point out that we are promoting entrepreneurship in schools. That teaches you, or rather encourages you to make money. However, it does not teach you how to spend money wisely. With the entrepreneurship drive, it seems to me that we are teaching that the solution to money problems is even more money.

This is a huge fallacy. How many people can actually be so sucessful at entrepreneurship that money is never a problem ever again? Most people either end up being a salaried worker, or perhaps owning a small-medium enterprise. For many of us, money will always be a constant headache.

It need not be a headache if we had the knowledge of how to manage our money properly. We need to teach our kids that the proper way to financial freedom is control of spending. It is certainly a whole lot easier to control spending compared to controlling income. We usually can make decisions on how much to spend, but we usually have little say over how much income we get.

It is not surprising that many people, especially young people are in debt. Our society has glamourised consumption. Symbols of success are often material objects, such as the size of the car, the size of the property, the size of the bank account and so forth. Credit is easily available through credit cards and easy loan schemes. It is small wonder why many young people are in debt.

So, what did we do to address the problem? Financial counselling avenues are set up to help these people. While it is good to have financial counselling to help those who are already in debt, the question now is why are we not doing anything to prevent them from getting into debt in the first place?

Personally, I didn’t understand anything about financial planning until I came to university and made myself take courses in accounting and finance. It wasn’t rocket science, but it opened my eyes, especially when I learnt the power of interest. I suspect that many peoeple don’t even know the exact cost of taking up a loan or racking up credit card debt because they do not understand how interest works.

Take for example a car loan. If you pay cash for the mid-size car (e.g. the Nissan Sunny or Mitsubishi Lancer), it’ll probably cost you about $55,000 upfront. The person trying to sell you the loan tells you that it only works out to be a monthly sum of about $700 over ten years, with zero downpayment. For a graduate with a good degree earning $3000 a month, $700 is not that big a deal. However, if you do the math, $700 x 12 months x 10 years = $84,000. Over ten years, you paid $29,000 of interest to the institution that gave you the loan.

Shocking figures? Actually, $29,000 is not your actual loss. If the money had been invested instead of being given to the bank, you would have earned interest on it. Assuming that you invest $2,900 annually over 10 years at a return of 5%, the $29,000 would have been worth about $36,500 at the end of the ten years. With $36,500, I can probably go on annual 2 week trips to any part of the world for the next 10 years.

To illustrate the concept of how interest can work in your favour, let’s take the same example again. Assuming that you invest $2,900 annually over 30 years at a return of 5%, you would have paid a total of $2,900 x 30 = $87,000 for the investment. However, your return at the end of the 30 years is about $192,000. You earned $105,000 by simply doing nothing but investing your money wisely. Of course, if you increase the amount of your investment, or if you manage to achieve more than 5% returns, you will certainly get back alot more money.

Therefore, I really think that our education system should incorporate some form of financial education. The concept of interest is not not some esotoric concept. It’s something that can be easily explained to the person in the street. Armed with this knowledge, I am sure it will save many people from suffering future hardships. For those who still get into huge debt when armed with sufficient financial knowledge, at least they suffer not as a result of ignorance.

While providing simple financial education to our young is not all that difficult, I wonder why has it not been done. The only explanation that I can come up with is that it is not in the interest of the economy to have the bulk of the population being financial savvy. Interest accounts for a huge chunk of income for many financial institutions. If people are not going to get into huge debt, how can these institutions make money?

If you take an economic perspective, debt is probably a good thing for the economy because it increases the circulation of money in the economy. However, from a moral perspective, debt is not a good thing, especially when people are unable to pay their debts. Bankruptcy has a social stigma attached to it. The individual who is in debt often will have to worry about how to pay the debts, and this can strain relationships with their loved ones. It can affect their ability to work, or even their ability to function as a normal human being.

It’s really about time that we consider implementing financial education. If we can have things like moral education and sex education, why not financial education? After all, an education is abut equipping a person to be able to make informed decisions, no?

After reading a blog entry by a Malay guy called Ridzwan (I presume that is his name, going by the name of his URL), I must say that racism in Singapore is something that is still very much alive, although in appearance, everything looks nice and well.

I am not sure why some Singaporeans, especially the Chinese Singaporeans, take such a negative view towards fellow Singaporeans of another race. I speak from experience. I graduated from The Chinese High School, a school where you almost have no students from other races. I went on to Hwa Chong Junior College, where the situation is slightly better, but not much. I do notice that many of my friends who have been through 6 years of education in both Chinese dominated schools are somewhat racist.

I must say that the kind of racism I’ve seen is not the extreme kind (by that I mean actual and negative physical action against someone of another race). More often, it’s an extremely strong opinion about a race having certain characteristics and making unsavoury or even derogatory remarks.

Despite 6 years of schooling in institutions where there were few students of other races, I somehow didn’t turn out racist by any measure. I don’t know why, but I just think that it’s not right to make certain conclusions about people based on their race. While it is true that people of a certain race have slightly different habits and customs, it does not make them any less a human being.

It’s just plain unfair to think of certain races as inherently being more lazy, more unpatriotic, more prone to causing social problems etc. It’s always easier to demonise others because that makes self-reflection unnecessary. By casting others as the problem, we escape from having to consider whether we are problematic. Face it, for whatever labels that are cast on non-chinese Singaporeans, I bet to my last dollar that you will find many Chinese Singaporeans that fit the label exactly. Before Chinese Singaporeans think badly of other races in Singapore, they ought to make sure that they have the moral authority to do so.

I had the benefit of being in the minority when I went to the UK for 3 weeks in 2004. When I was there, I truly understand how it feels to be in the minority. You are always conscious of yourself because you look different from most people around you. It gave me an invaluable lesson. I think that most Chinese Singaporeans should go spend some time in a place where they are the minority and see how it feels. Nothing teaches better than actual experience.

Of course, that’s not a feasible option for everyone. I don’t think that having Racial Harmony Day is a feasible option either. What can one day of celebrations do? What is really necessary is for people of different races to come together for an extended period of time. Understanding is not forged in a matter days. It takes years. And, it better start from young. As the saying goes, old habits die hard.

Perhaps the first step in the right direction is to dismantle the SAP school system. The SAP schools focus on teaching excellence in Chinese, and students are usually Chinese. How can we reduce racism if we have such schools? I came from one such school, and I see for myself that such schools, more often than not, produce students that harbour some form of racism. And, it doesn’t help that most of these schools are academically strong institutions that attract smart students. This means that their graduates are likely to be future leaders of society, and I am not comfortable with these future leaders harbouring some form of racist ideas.

I think I’ve stirred a hornet’s nest by suggesting the dismantling of the system that I went through. I have to admit that there are exceptions, and not every graduate from an SAP school is racist. However, the odds of producing a somewhat racist person is higher in an SAP school. By the same token, I think that muslim schools (called madrasahs if I am not mistaken) should also be looked at. These schools should be confined to strictly teaching religion, and learning other subjects should be done in government schools. If we want to tackle the problem of racism and maintain racial harmony, we really need to take the necessary steps, even if they might not please certain groups of people.

Check it out man, the post-65 Members of Parliament have started their own group blog. Check out the screenshot below:

 

I don’t mean to be skeptical about this, but this looks awfully manufactured. It really gives me the vibes that some Young PAP member thought that it’ll be a wonderful PR effort to have a blog. While I give credit for PAP’s effort in keeping up with times, I am skeptical of the entire thing.

While I do not have a bias against group blogs, I still prefer blogs to be personal. Robert Scoble, who is widely regarded as the world’s first corporate blogger (he was a Microsoft employee) was so hugely popular because he wrote as an individual, not as an employee of Microsoft. To me, a blog is the online persona of an individual. The reason why I enjoy reading blogs is because I by reading them, I get an idea of what this person is and what he stands for. This p65 group blog outrightly failed in appealing to me in this regard.

What is worse is that of the 5 blog postings I read, only two postings, one by Christopher De Souza and the other by Baey Yam Keng, remotely look like a blog post. The other 3 read like a replay of the same message in the news media that the PAP has been pushing out lately: we want to engage young people, we want your feedback, stand up and make yourselves heard.

I realise that I am starting to sound cynical, but the timing is seriously bad. It now looks to me like it’s a coordinated PR effort that culminated in the launch of the p65 blog. Oh yes, this is the first blog that I see that had a countdown timer to the launch of the blog. It just seems so manufactured!

Oh well, I shall withhold any further judgement for now. I shall see monitor the p65 blog for a while and see if the hype lives up to its promise. Don’t be mistaken, I’m not a PAP hater (this is not a disclaimer against any possible repercussions against me. I stand by all my opinions, whether they are nice or otherwise). I’ve worked with an MP and interacted with some ministers and at the personal level, they are wonderful people. However, when they put on the PAP hat, their personality gets discarded because they have to toe the party line.

If the post-65 MPs are interested in reaching out to the young, my suggestion is this: stop all these publicity. I am already numb to all the messages that the media constantly churns out about how the Government wants to engage the young. I certainly hope that the Straits Times will not make this front page news. It’s just going to turn me off even more. I hope that all of them will exude their own individuality, daring to voice their own opinions, and not rephrasing the official party line. If they want young people to stand up and voice their opinions, theyshould lead by example. After all, these 12 MPs are our leaders, are they not?

A few people who read my previous entry thought that I was mad to have written something like that and have my name attributed to it. What was quite funny were the predictions of repercussions, such as losing my degree, not being able to get a job, or even arrested and thrown into jail.

I acknowledge their concerns, which I believe to be the result of a combination of knowledge of past precedents and coffeeshop talk. However, what I do not acknowledge is that I should not be expressing my opinions.

The previous entry merely contains my personal opinions. It’s purely what I think and feel as a young citizen who regards himself as a stakeholder of this country. Why should I keep quiet, or self-censor my words so that I am “politically correct” when there is something that I think should be addressed? I am a Singaporean, and if there is something about Singapore that I think is not right, it is my duty to bring it up so that everyone can think about the issue and then collectively decide how to move on .

As much as I disagree with some government rhetoric, I whole-heartedly agree with one, and that is we are a small country with no other natural resources other than human resources. If our people just keep quiet and mind their own lives, how can we survive in this increasingly uncertain world?

As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing that cannot be said or discussed, provided that the issue is not personally insulting to an individual or group. I do not think that there is anything in my previous post that insulted anyone or any group. Why should I fear that something bad would happen to me? As the chinese saying goes, 平日不做亏心事，半夜敲门也不惊。(Translation: If you didn’t do anything against your conscience in the day, when there is knocking of your door in the middle of the night, you will not be shocked)

Although I’m not personally too concerned with the doomsday predictions, what saddened me is that some of my fellow Singaporeans are more in favour of keeping quiet, rather than to raise issues. I do not know why this is the case. Our government leaders have made it clear on multiple occassions that they want Singaporeans to stand up and speak their mind. Why is there still this fear about speaking up publicly?

Maybe I am just a square peg in the round hole of Singapore society.