Top students: Will they pass life?

Judging from the latest results of the GCE 'A 'level examinations, it would seem that Singapore's future is very bright indeed.

When this writer did his 'A' levels in the early 1970s, only a handful of students achieved ''perfect'' scores of four distinctions. Now, well over a thousand students do. We even have a handful who achieved six or seven distinctions; students who excelled despite taking more than the required number of subjects.

Readers who agree that Singapore faces a bright future because of bright children, please drop me an e-mail. It would be great if we were flooded with e-mails from optimists. I doubt that would happen.

Somehow, in spite of their sterling performance in school examinations, the young people of today do not inspire confidence.

Instead, there has been much discussion in the press lately about some of the things they cannot do, such as cooking simple meals, folding clothes and tidying up their rooms. They can't seem to take care of themselves.

This is worrisome. If they cannot take care of themselves, can they take care of others?

The discussion about the (in)abilities of younger Singaporeans was sparked off by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew's recent speech about encouraging entrepreneurship.

The worry goes beyond that. Can they become good employees? Can they be good supervisors to five employees, or CEOs with 5,000 under them? Will any of them rise to become the next Prime Minister of Singapore who will have a population of five million to take care of?

Will the day come when Singapore needs to import foreign talent to run the country? Heaven forbid. At the rate we are going, this may not be altogether surprising.

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Interaction

Another worry: There has also been much recent discussion about the younger generation's inability to interact with the other races.

With streaming and the SAP (special assistance plan) schools which are bilingual with strong emphasis on Chinese, the brightest Chinese speaking school children spend their formative years in a totally Chinese environment.

They have few, if any, friends who are Malay, Indian or from any other race. They have almost zero understanding of the thinking and the psyche of these other racial groups.

No doubt they might get to interact when they enter National Service, polytechnics and universities, or the workplace. Nothing can take the place of long, sustained friendship, acquaintance and daily interaction.

Singapore is smack in the middle of a vast region of well over 250 million Malays and Indonesians. Slightly further away is an even bigger group of over one billion Indians. Will our future leaders - economic and political - be able to relate well with our neighbours?

Maybe that future is too far away to worry about. Let's look at right now.

Already, it is clear that the younger generation of political leaders do not enjoy the same sort of rapport that people like SM Lee has with their Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts.

From the looks of it, the situation is not likely to improve.

Our education system has clearly succeeded in producing academically bright students. Unfortunately, success in examinations will not guarantee success in career and success in life.

Having excelled in producing academics, it's time our educationists start to look at producing more all-rounded young people, with A's in human relationships, entrepreneurship and other life skills.