We need a major rethink of our educational system.... and please do so outside of the box.

One of the areas that Singapore can be very proud of is how we have been able to make education so available to our kids, to the extent that we can say that no child will be denied a chance to go to school. In the previous generation there many capable people who had limited opportunities simply because they did not have access to education. But not anymore. Education has indeed been the great leveler for this generation. Because schooling is now accessible to every child regardless of his/her  socioeconomic background, career opportunities are limited more by abilities and skills rather than the individual's socioeconomic stratum. Likewise for gender and ethnicity.

But sadly this appears true only to a certain degree.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) should be congratulated for making examination data available to the public. One wishes though that they would put up more detailed data, and not only cherry picked information for public consumption.

The recent data is quite instructive. They are really quite similar to previous years' data and therefore really doesn't say anything new. True, there are some wiggly movements in percentages, but they are relatively small changes. Over a long period one can see that the performance data is relatively stable. Boringly stable. This stability is actually both comforting and alarming. Comforting because it means the MOE has done an excellent job in providing education. Not much more to do. Alarming because despite all this effort, fixed disparities in educational performances between ethnic groups are apparent.

If we look at the performance at the Primary School Leaving Examinations,we see more than 90% of students pass the exams. But only the Chinese outperform the national average. The Malay students, as a group, under-perform everyone else.

This ethnic ranking not only persist at the O-levels, but the differences are markedly accentuated. And this is for 5 O-level passes. I am quite sure if we set more stringent criteria, even greater differences can be demonstrated.

This is alarming because the data is not improving despite what the amount of resources the MOE has put into the school system. I am sure the MOE is aware of this problem. But I hope they are not ignoring it. Something drastic needs to be done because the current models are not working.

To an outsider, looking at the data, such 'fixed' differences suggest a number of possibilities:
a] Our delivery of education has ethnic biases;
b] Our way of assessing has ethnic biases;
c] Ethnic biases exist in both instruction and assessment; or
d] There are real ethnic related limitations in abilities.

Since I do not subscribe to there being biologically and ethnically related limitations in ability, it must be that the first three are valid.

The MOE must spare no effort to get to the bottom of this problem. It must not rest on the laurels of its past accomplishments. There are unintended ethnic biases in how education is delivered to the public as well as ethnic biases in how the examinations are set. It is not adequate to congratulate ourselves on the performance at a national level, because this is invariably defined by the performance of the largest and most successful ethnic group. This is unfair to the minority groups who may have unaddressed special needs and considerations.

We need to remodel our educational paradigm to level the playing field for all ethnic groups.

I was horrified this morning to pick up the Straits Times and read those incredibly racist remarks about racial profiling by Dr Lee Wei Ling.

Really unexpected. And surprised that the newspaper allowed that through.

I wonder how she would feel to be on the receiving end of some really negative "racial profiling". And how she would go about "racial profiling" our ethnic groups here in Singapore.

C'mon Wei Ling, you're way wrong about this.

'Nuff said.

Census definitions of race and ethnicity

Since we are discussing definitions, here is something interesting I stumbled across...

This year as most would know by now is our population census year. This is when the government goes out to find out as much as possible about all of us... One would expect they would have gotten all their definitions down pat by now. But there in the glossary, I found this section about how the census will define race and ethnicity.

Note that the title of this section reads "Ethnicity/Dialect Group". Really? Are they capturing ethnicity or dialect groups? Then it goes down further to tell you how dialect groups are defined within the ethnic groups..... and in the subsection are all kinds of terms, most of which wouldn't be considered dialect groups.

The first sentence of the section adds to the confusion...."Ethnic groups refer to a person's race". Hmmmmmm........ We have discussed this issue a bit before. While the two terms may often be used interchangeably, they really refer to separate entities. Race has biological connotations, and really shouldn't be used anymore to classify people (see UNESCO 1950). Ethnicity refers to identifiable common social-cultural characteristics of a group of people. Usually when the gahment comments on these issues, it is really talking about ethnicity rather than race.

But here, in this masterpiece of confusion, the census definitions essentially says Race = Ethnicity = Dialect Groups. So one wonders what data is actually being collected. It's time they tossed out their archaic world view.

Race and ethnicity in Singapore - the confusion continues

The confusion between race and ethnicity continues today in the Straits Times, through 2 opinion pieces today. One is written by Shankar Vedantam, who is a Washington Post reporter, and the other by Andy Ho, Senior Writer at the Straits Times.

I don't have any difficulties with Mr Vedantam's views, as he was merely dealing with the reality of 'colorism' in life. Yes, flawed though we may be, we often do look at the colour of one's skin, and often it makes a difference. Accepting that reality helps us to deal with it, and perhaps reduce the discriminatory consequences.

Mr Ho's views (reproduced in the Malaysian Insider) however is somewhat offensive, for he appears to be advocating racial classifications according to skin colour and other physical attributes. Now I can understand if a politician makes the mistake of confusing race and ethnicity. Just put that down to being misinformed or ill-advised. But for a science correspondent to advocate classifying people into races according to skin colour, is actually quite offensive.

I wish to ask Mr Ho..... just how do you think we can divide people by skin colour? What tonality or hue can we use? What shade of brown, or darkness would be appropriate? How does one make a distinction between a dark Malay and a light Indian? Or a dark Chinese and a light Malay?

Quite clearly classification by race is nonsense. There is no biological or genetic basis to classify people into races. And certainly no anatomical bases for this. Not only that, the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others) categories that we use are not racial classifications. They are ethnic classifications based on personal identification with various communal groups.

For once and for all, let's stop this idiocy which advocates racial classifications, and restrict ourselves to dealing with ethnicity classifications.

Marking examinations on a curve..... major pitfalls

It is a common practice for examinations to be 'marked on a curve'. There are clear advantages to such a practice, and I am sure the recent PSLE have been 'marked on a curve'.

One of the major advantages of marking on a curve, is that the average grades become pretty stable year after year, regardless of fluctuation in examination difficulty. It is common in such a system to see examination questions get more difficult and challenging as teachers introduce novel questions, often in responseto increasing ability of students to 'game' the examination.

Looking at the annual average scores will not reveal the changing difficulty level of the examination questions.

The average rates of passes for the PSLE for example remain flat through the years. This 'flatness' is boring..... but great for the MOE Annual Report.

The inherent problem here, one which is seldom recognized, is that such statistics play tricks on sub-group analysis. Let me explain....

You can see from the figure, that the Chinese students perform admirably, in fact above national averages. This is perhaps because they are best able to 'game' the PSLE exams. Because they do so well and are numerically the biggest contributor to the national average, their results essentially 'drive' the national average. And in fact determine the difficulty of the exam. As their performance improves, the pressure for the examination board (Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board) is to increase the difficulty of the exam. But you do not see this because the national average, being determined by a normalizing curve, remains identical year after year.

But what of the other sub-groups e.g. Malays and Indians? Their numbers being numerically smaller (much smaller) than the Chinese data are essentially numbers that are relative to the major sub-group, i.e. the Chinese data.

Therefore, an apparent decline in achievement of a non-Chinese sub-group, is not necessarily a decline in standards, but merely a decline in achievement relative to the Chinese sub-group. In reality, the absolute performance of all sub-groups may actually be improving. But these improvements are not visible, and tragically, not recognized.

One can speculate about why the Chinese sub-group does so well....but my guess is that they have better access to resources which help prepare them for exams and make them better at 'gaming' the examination.

By contrast, the GCE 'O' level examination is set by the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate (UCLES) do not experience the same problem. This is because, the standards are determined by the UCLES and all our ethnic groups are relatively small components of the total numbers. Here you can see overall standards improving and the pass rates for the Malay students, often regarded as poor performers, possibly improving the most rapidly of the ethnic groups.

Why is this important?

Well..... I think it is extremely important for educators to recognize that there is a critical difference between telling students they are always doing worse every year no matter how hard they try, and encouraging them by recognizing that they are actually performing better every year, though perhaps not improving as rapidly as others. The former discourages and creates and sense of despondency and helplessness, while the latter is inherently affirming and encourages the community to do better.

We should stop using racial definitions...

DPM Wong Kan Seng made some very pertinent remarks about racial harmony yesterday. While I fully agree with the points he raised, I wished that he would stop making references to race when I think he meant ethnicity. It is unfortunate because racial definitions imply we can differentiate communities based on biology and genetics. This is obviously false, so I must assume this is not what he meant.

So this is my plea to all who read this blog.....please stop referring to race when what you mean is ethnicity. Our references in Singapore to Chinese, Malay, Indians and Others (affectionately known as CMIO) are ethnicity definitions based on self perception, and not racial definitions.

Is this just semantics? I believe not.

The race and ethnicity divisions.....

The recent public discussions following upon the recent government rulings on double-barreled listings of race, have unfortunately been confused by the lack of distinction between what are generally accepted ideas about race and ethnicity.

Race (see Wikipedia), generally refers to a set of external physical characteristics which are heriditable. So we can arbitrarily think about a 'Caucasoid' race, or a 'Mongoloid' race etc. This is a notion that has become quite obsolete. Although, it is true that external physical characteristics can be largely heriditable, the limits defining racial groups are extremely fuzzy. Think for example, how impossible it is to define the limits of what the Caucasoid race is. Similarly, there are no real limits to the definition of a Chinese race. In fact, contrary to what some people may think, Chinese-ness is not a 'race'. To push the point, neither are Indian-ness and Malay-ness.

Ethnicity is however, a rather different concept (see Wikipedia). The concept of an ethnic group refers to commonly agreeable ideas of what constitutes a community, or grouping of people. This does not depend on heriditable physical characteristics, but will include characteristics related to culture, language, religion, etc. Hence to say we are ethnically Chinese, or Indian or Malay would be appropriate. In fact to be more correct globally, the identifier should be Singaporean Chinese, or Singaporean Indians etc.

We should therefore drop all reference to a 'race' identifier, and just restrict our definitions to that of ethnicity. This way we will avoid the unfortunate 'genetic' or 'biological' connotations of categorizing people according to racial groups.

It should also be clear that ethnicity is largely a social construct. It is necessary because everyone in the world defines himself or herself as part of some sort of grouping. This is an important part of how societies organize themselves and allocate resources. Our government is correct that the idea of ethnicity will never go away. We ignore it to our own peril. Every government in the world resorts to some sort of ethnicity definition (even if they deny doing so) because governments need to allocate resources according to various groupings of people. The better we are able to do this, the better we can equitably allocate resources. The trick in doing so is going to depend on how we make sure such ethnicity definitions are affirmatory and not discriminatory. This will come down to good governance and a good constitutional protection of ethnic minorities.

BMI (Body Mass Index) for Asians

So, the Brits are finally coming round to the realization that Asians are not Caucasians and should not measured by the same yardstick. At least where the BMI (Body Mass Index) is concerned.

I mean, duhhh........ we have known this for a long time already, haven't we? What took them so long?

Four years ago, the WHO Expert Consultation in Singapore already recommended new and more appropriate guideline for Asians.

BMI (kg/m2) for Adults...Health Risk
27.5 and above...High Risk
23 – 27.4...Moderate Risk
18.5 – 22.9...Low Risk (healthy range)
Below 18.5...Risk of nutritional deficiency diseases and osteoporosis

You can use the Health Promotion Board calculator to calculate your BMI.

:( Mine is 24.8.
Got to stay off that tiramisu.

Who is a Han Chinese?

Cheong Suk-Wai of the Straits Times wrote a review of Anthony Milner's book "The Malays". In it she cites the Basham Professor of Asian History at ANU as saying ' the struggle for Malay identity through the ages has been such that it is as hard to say for sure who is Malay as it is to say who is not.'

It just made me wonder if that is not true for any other ethnic definition?

After all....who the hell are the Han Chinese?

Wikipedia says:

Han Chinese (simplified Chinese: 汉族 or 汉人; traditional Chinese: 漢族 or 漢人; pinyin: hànzú or hànrén) are an ethnic group native to China and, by most modern definitions, the largest single ethnic group in the world.

Han Chinese constitute about 92 percent of the population of the People's Republic of ChinaRepublic of China (Taiwan), 75 percent of the population of Singapore, and about 20 percent of the entire global human population. There is substantial genetic, linguistic, cultural and social diversity among the subgroups of the Han, mainly due to thousands of years of immigration and assimilation of various regional ethnicities and tribes within China. The Han Chinese are a subset of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu). An alternate name that many Chinese peoples use to refer to themselves is "Descendants of the Dragon" (Chinese: 龍的傳人 or 龙的传人). Many Han and other Chinese also call themselves "Descendants of the Yan Di (Yan Emperor) and Huang Di (Yellow Emperor)" (Chinese: 炎黃子孫 or 炎黄子孙).

Locally we usualy don't even use the term but refer to Chinese as "Tang Ren 唐人".

Wikipedia further points to the fluidity of the Han concept:

'The definition of the Han identity has varied throughout history. Prior to the 20th century, some Chinese-speaking ethnic groups like the Hakka and the Tanka were not universally accepted as Han Chinese, while some non-Chinese speaking peoples, like the Zhuang, were sometimes considered Han. Today, Hui are considered a separate ethnic group, but aside from their practice of Islam, little distinguishes them from the Han; two Han from different regions might differ more in language, customs, and culture than a neighboring Han and Hui. During the Qing Dynasty, Han Chinese who had entered the Eight Banners military system were considered Manchu, while Chinese nationalists seeking to overthrow the monarchy stressed Han Chinese identity in contrast to the Manchu rulers.

Whether the idea of Han Chinese is recent or not is a debated topic in China studies. Many Chinese scholars such as Ho Ping-Ti believe that the concept of a Han ethnicity is an ancient one, dating from the Han Dynasty itself.

So let me ask you..... how do you know you are Chinese?

Something that made my day....!

In a corridor, deep in the bowels of the hospital, I saw a Chinese woman heartily greet a Sikh woman. The obvious warmth expressed between these two women of different ethnicities just made me feel so grateful that I live in a society where there is so much freedom from ethnic discrimination and strife.

Something we shouldn't take for granted.

Human Organ Trade in Singapore - at last, some discussions?

The issue has come up for discussions in Parliament. It's clear now the timing of Dr Lee Wei Ling's bemused rants. But I seriously hope that this will lead to some serious discussions about a critically important issue. The last wayang by Ministry of Health was such a rushed job, you seriously had to question what they were doing it for?

What I would like to see, and hope our Parliamentarians will raise are:

a] In depth presentation of pros and cons. Let's just not talk about the number of kidney failures and how many people will benefit. Let's have a really hard look at the ethical issues and the downsides and social impact to having a flourishing organ trade in Singapore.

b] A more honest discussions by our ethicists about the issues about to be breached by having an organ trade. Please don't hide behind august committees and issue bland politically correct, consensus documents. Let's discuss the issues openly. I must say I have been sorely disappointed by our ethicists who privately express reservations but who strive so hard to be politically correct.

c] Let the issue be clearly separated from issues of commercialized medicine. Why can't the Ministry of Health make it plain that this is not about establishing ourselves as a medical hub par excellence? If we have to do it, why open it to foreign recipients... unless we want to make their money? Society pays an ethical price in order to provide a service for our own citizens. Let's do it properly for our own citizenry, and let this not be a business/trade.

d] Let's have a clear plan on how we are actually going to implement a reimbursement/support scheme for donors. Call it whatever you want. The rose will smell the same whatever sweet name you want to call it. This is critical to the acceptability of the programme. It is not adequate to say let's approve first...and work out details later. This is just not acceptable.

The ends never justify the means. If we want to mature into a responsible civilized society, we need to give serious consideration to the hows and whys of what we are doing, and not capitulate to expedience.

PM Lee HL and the Rohingyas

I was most proud when I read today that our PM Lee Hsien Loong brought up the issue about the Rohingyas at the ASEAN Summit. This at a time when the other leaders would rather look the other way. "Illegal migrants from the Indian Ocean" they have apparently been labeled. Oh yeah...sure... kinda like 'Men from Atlantis'.

PM Lee said:
"As a very small country ourselves, Singapore understands why countries cannot simply take in everyone who lands on their shores. But we still have a responsibility to treat the Rohingya people humanely and try to alleviate their plight."

Well said, Sir.

[See previous post on Rohingyas.]

Rohingyas - ethnicity issues

Still thinking about empathy and suffering, albeit closer to home than Darfur...

I have been troubled by all those reports about the Rohingya boat people, escaping from Myanmar. I can't say I knew very much about who they were and their political plight so I started Googling them out over the weekend. Here's what I found out.
Myanmar is a large diamond shaped country locked in by the Ayeyerwadi delta and a significant coastline. It shares borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. Geographically the country is divided by large mountain ranges (Rakhine Yoma, Bako Yoma and the Shan plateau) oriented in a North-South direction which essentially separates the country into the three rivers valleys of the Ayeyerwadi, Thanlwin and Sitang.This orientation effectively meant that people movement tended to be in a southerly direction. As a result, most of the population tended to be of Sino-Tibetan origins. Over the millenia, various Asiatic/Sino-Tibetan groups moved into the region giving rise to various ethnic groups. Most became assimilated into each other giving rise to a major ethnic group loosely called Bamars (~70% of the population). Isolated hill tribes that managed to retain a stronger sense of their original culture are recognizable as distinct ethnic minorities.

The major ethnicity problem arise primarily in the western coastal state of Rakhine. This coastal state is separated from main Myanmar by the formidable Rakhine Yoma range. The indigenous people there were originally of negrito origins, perhaps similar to the Andamanese. Over time they became replaced by population groups from Bangladesh who are of Indo-European orgins and speaking Bengali dialects. These became the Rohingyas. Another group in this state were drawn from invading Mongoloid races which are now identifiable as the Rakhine. These are more similar to mainstream Bamar people and speak a similar language. The Rohingyas are Muslim, whereas the rest of Myanmar (incuding the Rakhines) are mostly Theravada Buddhists.

The difficulty in this region is that the Rohingyas who are so distinctly different ethnically, linguistically and culturally different from the rest of Myanmar, are also physically isolated from mainstream Myanmarese life because of the almost impassable Rakhine Yoma range. This makes it easy for mainstream Myanmar to consider them not "Myanmarese". The recent reference by Consul General Ye Mying Aung to the Rohingyas as being 'ugly as ogres' is as racist as anyone can get and clearly to be condemned. But the reference to ogres really comes from the supposed etymology of the term Rohingya/Rakhine from the sanskrit Rakshasa, refering to the negrito origins of the people west of the mountain range.

Here you have a classical situation of a marginalized people who are so isolated from mainstream Myanmar not just in ethnicity terms (language, culture, religion and race), but effectively prevented by geography in meaningfully integrating and participating in Myanmar life.

Sadly they remain marginalized, stateless and unwanted. Is there any wonder they try to escape this persecution? Not at all...But will they find life more bearable escaping to Thailand, Malaysia or even Indonesia. I doubt it, as these other countries having their own ethnicity issues to contend with, have no real desire to absorb them into their societies.

Meanwhile the world watches helplessly.

Is there any hope that this may be resolved anytime soon. Unlikely. Not as long as people divide people according to skin colour, language and the gods they worship. Not until those uncivilized and ignorant generals leave the scene. And this is not going to go away anytime soon.

Tragic.