Eroding Respect For The Teaching Profession

The subject of teachers caught moonlighting is in the news, this time scooped by the MSM and not social media. According to the figures quoted by SchTutors Tuition Agency, 60 percent of their staff of 3,000, or 1,800 in one center alone, are current Ministry of Education (MOE) teachers.

To demonstrate the dominance of pecuniary priority over pedagogy, one teacher puts it best: "It is a free market, giving tuition is very good money." Until we saw it in newsprint, many did not realise that MOE actually sanctions the go ahead for teachers to indulge in up to six hours of off hours private tuition a week. And to think online posts painted a pitiful picture of teachers too tied up with CCA work, and had to resort to private tuition to pursue their love for teaching. For once, credibility tips on the side of the MSM.

You can see how the slippery slope works. Teacher covers only part of the syllabus, and drops subtle hints in class that the balance is available after school hours at negotiable rates. No parent can resist the strategic advantage of having a private tutor who is also the form or subject teacher. India banned all teachers from giving private tuition last year, and errant teachers have been charged in court.  But enforcement remains challenging, as the educators are lowly paid and need other sources of income to put food on the table. Singaporean teachers, according to the Varkey GEMS Foundation Global Teacher Status Index
study, are the highest paid among 21 countries, earning an average annual salary of US$45,755, ahead of the United States' US$44,917 and South Korea's US$43,874.

Member of Parliament for Mountbatten Lim Biow Chuan must have been dropped on his head as a child. He actually said that disallowing teachers from giving tuition on the side could lead to "good, passionate teachers leaving the service." The passion has to be for money, not education.

To stomp down on corruption, the Public Service Division (PSD) recently made it mandatory that civil servants must make a declaration within seven days if they visit casinos more than four times a month or buy an annual pass for unlimited visits to local casinos. Officers in more critical roles than others, for instance in regulatory or enforcement jobs, will have to declare every visit to a local casino within seven calendar days. The MOE should also mandate that teachers must make a declaration of how many hours they are engaged in private tuition for extra curricular sources of income, and where the hell did they manage to find the extra time.

S'pore's Highest Paid Teachers

There is a new study out this October that ranks the status of teachers in various countries. It’s called the “Global Teacher Status Index ” and is published by the Varkey GEMS Foundation. The data was collected by the polling company Populous, which used a web based survey (WBS) instead of a conventional face-to-face (F2F) approach because, amongst other considerations, WBS is cheaper and faster. The Global Teacher Status index is the world's first comprehensive attempt to compare the status of teachers across the world.

According to the findings, teachers in the United States are paid considerably more than people estimate. They are also paid more than people think of as a fair amount.  The only other countries polled that think that teachers are paid more than they deserve in the survey are Japan, France, Singapore, South Korea, China and Egypt.

Singapore ranked 7th in the Teacher Status Index, with a score of 46.3. Apparently only a small percentage of Singaporeans believed children don't respect teachers, despite horror stories of pedophiles being awarded Ministry of Education scholarships, and school principals jailed for proclivities for under aged online prostitutes.

On the other hand, the majority of respondents believed that the fair wage for a teacher should be below what they are actually paid. As a matter of fact, they believed the teachers are overpaid by as much as 14 percent, since the average "qualifying teacher wage" of US$37,144 (S$46,400) is the highest among the all the nations in the study ("qualifying teacher wage" in USA is US$25,770). At least that's consistent, our prime minister is the highest paid among all the nations in the world.

It is no wonder that four in five respondents here — the fifth-highest proportion among the 21 nations surveyed — said they would encourage their children to pursue a career in teaching. Which parent wouldn't shove their kids in the direction of the big bucks? It looks all the money invested in private tuition may pay off after all.

A Morality Tale

Pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC) Lawrence Khong likes to claim that he is a man of principles, "I cannot allow a ruling that is passed that I feel is unjust to the church, that restricts the way we run a religious organisation." As an example of his principled rules, he maintains smoking is not acceptable for his employees - at the risk of termination - and it's not just that they can't smoke in the office, they can't smoke even outside or at home.

That could be one reason he has decided to take on Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin, by asking the court to "give guidance" on the sanction to compensate an employee who was terminated without insufficient cause. Being an ex-military man, Tan is not accustomed to having his orders questioned, much less having to tangle with someone of such rigid convictions.

Engineers know that a rigid bar of metal can still be bent, stiffness is just the mechanical property of a solid body to resist deformation. Many years ago, Khong's daughter bore a child out of wedlock. Apparently the amorous young couple had the proverbial tumble in the haystack, strict parental upbringing notwithstanding, and a church sanctified marriage was not in the plan. Here's how Khong explained his non-malleable principles in that particular case of an unwanted (as in non-church approved) pregnancy:

"I understand it's not easy to be a single mother. However, I want to make the point that my daughter's case was different. My daughter was a single girl who made a mistake and was pregnant. In this case, she was a married woman who was in an adulterous relationship. I think the context is different. However, even for my daughter, I expect her to come to a place of repentance. We assigned leaders of the church to hold her accountable, to check on her. I took her off from any leadership role in the church until many years later. I hold the same standard for my own daughter."

If Khong could forgive his daughter and made her a pastor of his God fearing congregation, why is he not kinder to BG Tan? Some member of parliament once said Lui Tuck Yew would be uncomfortable meeting with CEOs if he was paid less than a million dollars. Hence, even after the token hair-cut, Lui is still one of Singapore's millionaires. Now, if Tan had been promoted to full minister, he could have been be spared the ignominy of having to show up in court like a common criminal. Is this just a case of "see me no up"?

Musings Of A Singapore Administrator

With forty years in the civil service, and a ringside seat with the likes of Goh Keng Swee and Hon Sui Sen, Ngiam Tong Dow should have more war stories to tell about Singapore's history of governance, twists and turns, success and setbacks. Unfortunately the compilation of speeches, interviews and articles delivered and written between 2004 and 2010 quickly become repetitive, and the same anecdotes are sprinkled with each retelling.

Some are rehashed in the recent interview with Dr Toh Han Chong, published in the September issue of the Singapore Medical Association’s newsletter. Included are his pet peeves about F1 as a “frivolous” use of taxpayers’ money, what today’s younger politicians lack, and the folly of millionaire ministers.

In the light of Mah Bow Tan's revisionist recollection of the reason for his retirement (“There have been numerous rumours about why I resigned from the Cabinet, including bearing the responsibility for high HDB prices. I disagree."), some of Ngiam's quotes should be enumerated for posterity, lest our memories be challenged by unscrupulous politicians.

The secret origins of the COE:
Citing an example of creativity in government, Ngiam thought it was brilliant of Goh Keng Swee to put a tax on public utilities, arguing that the tax was small enough for people not to feel the pinch.

"Another example was is the Certificate of Entitlement. This was then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's idea. It is quite a feat to create money out of nothing. It is only a piece of paper, but the revenues are substantial." (page 138)

Planning for the floods:
It was the Ministry of Finance's practice of "robust" brand of economics that established Singapore's Bird Park at Jurong before the Zoo at Mandai because, Ngiam wrote, birdseed costs considerably less than meat for tigers and lions.

"The Ministry of Finance also rejected flood alleviation works at the Bukit Timah Canal. As it flooded only three or four times a year, it was too costly to build flood control works to enable motorists to arrive home in time for dinner." (page 122)

Separating chaff from the wheat:
Indranee Rajah may be forgiven for not understanding why tuition is essential for the PSLE survival course. At the heart of it is some notion why there should A* and "ordinary" A's. Ngiam thought it makes for the difference between the competent and entrepreneurial.

"I suggested to the National University of Singapore that we ask external examiners to set two out of ten examination questions from topics outside the core syllabus to identify the brilliant from the merely competent. We need to differentiate the firsts from the upper twos.
They told me I had misunderstood the external examination system. In fact, our own professors set all the questions." (page 134)

The Trojan Horse identified:
The politically correct story is that foreigners are essential to address the declining birth rate. Then there is the other story.

"Singapore's GDP increases of the last twenty years were due largely to expansion rather than growth. Import large numbers of foreign work permit holders enabled the economy to expand at GDP rates of 6-8 percent. Productivity stagnated at one percent. In some years it was negative.
This is the Archilles' heel of the Singapore success story. We expanded but did not grow. We scaled up but failed to skill up." (page 6)

Housing before Mah:
Once upon a time, HDB flats were truly affordable. Then the Minister invoked the existence of The Valuer who alone decides how much HDB has to pay for land, with rates marked to market. Back then, the valuer used to be a nicer guy.

"The chief valuer does not take into account the potential commercial value of the land. The economic rationale is that it it the state that builds the infrastructure, such as roads, utilities, sewerage, and rail transit systems.  The community pays for public infrastructure out of tax revenue." (page 148)

Enough of the Mah bashing already; another hit of the hammer, and his short stature may not survive another diminishing whack on the head. Truth be told, the germination of greed started earlier.

"In the 1960s, Dr Goh Keng Swee's viewpoint was that a normal family has a household income of only S$400 a month. Therefore, the monthly rent could not be more than S$40. Lim Kim San had argued with him then and asked, "Isn't that like asking me to build slums?"
("HDB Should Also Build Condos", interview with Lianhe Zaobao, September 23, 2007, page 156)

Spoilt Rotten

It was the kind of action you would expect from a Fight Club scene. Two women, ages 65 and 41, were caught slugging it out at a HDB lift lobby. The older female had her faced rearranged, the gory images captured by a CCTV camera her family had installed for personal protection since cops are not always around when you need them most.

The response from the law enforcers was swift, but instead of deadly assault or disorderly behavior, one female combatant was charged with using abusive language and voluntarily causing hurt to two female police officers who responded to the punch up. Apparently it's a more heinous offence to upset the mata-mata, than to injure a very old woman. It gets to the point where one wonders what is more laughable, the plot lines in the tv serial of the same name, or the situation in real life.

Was it a fortnight ago, when we learnt about the super duper car that the police decided to treat themselves to? The one with the specifications for onboard video and sound system to match, and GPS navigation for assistance when they can't locate the place where help is needed? Roadside sign boards are sprouting all over residential areas in our peaceful tropical island paradise, detailing house break-ins and requesting witnesses to come forward. Instead of patrolling the crime infested areas, on foot or on bicycles, they are probably waiting for the spiffy vehicle to cruise the neighborhood in. When did the police start getting so pampered?