Obscure Back Roads

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[Fiction - Draft] Part 4, originally written May 2006
What happened was that for a few months after Tina came back from four years of Manhattan, she couldn't date. She remembers stifling her shivers whenever she met men who spoke with such strong Singlish accents. And one of them was promising enough, until he confessed he would rather be watching Mr and Mrs Smith than "slow" Annie Hall. Then somehow Damien came into her life. She was idling at Clarke Quay's tcc, pondering over a random tourist's comment that "everything is too new here" when he intruded, not giving her time to compose herself:

'And I don't suppose you're the ST journalist?"

He'd said it in such a casual manner that his accent had failed to register.

Related posts:
Part 1 of story - Dinner Music for People who aren't Very Hungry
Part 2 of story - The Sound of Silence
Part 3 of story - New Amsterdam

P65 MPs: Style over Substance?

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Singapore Post-1965 Politicians: Style over Substance?
Dancing their ways to our hearts, snaking their ways to our minds

Style
Barack Obama is a lesson in style - people trust and are charmed by him. He appears on shows like Conan, and young voters eagerly reach back to him. In the same fashion, our P65 MPs are signaling their desire to connect to us. Us - the group of post-65ers who will make up the majority of voters in the next election. But we just laugh at them. And at best the journalist writing for the Associated Press about P65 Chingay was restraining his smirk.

Are we observers hypocrites? Weren't we the ones who wanted PAP to loosen up from their paternalistic ways? I have a parallel first hand experience - I was a student councilor in JC. Mass dances are huge at my JC, and being responsible for devising new dances and passing on traditional ones, we councilors spent time practicing, performing and leading dances. Some students weren't impressed, they thought we cared too much for dancing - and we weren't even good at it. I enjoyed dancing but realized I was no dancer. But I danced on. Maybe I was pushed by more senior members of the establishment because they thought it was crucial in our service to students. Definitely I felt a passion to serve my fellow students. Yet style is a two-way street - not just about exhibiting, but about listening to feedback and reacting...stylishly.

If you pardon my example, aren't dances usually as mating rituals? So what are the p65 MPs using it as a vehicle for - substance?

Substance
To give them some credit
True to PAP, our P65 MPs prefer subtlety. Their blog may sometimes seem like inane recollections of their day or childhood, but carefully embedded in each entry is subtext on a hefty topic, like for example racial harmony or urban planning. The MPs have better uses of their time than to sit in front of a computer and blog nostalgia. Clearly they are using our common childhood memories to connect. C'mon, we Singaporeans are a sappy bunch, suckers for Korean dramas and more family-oriented than most city-dwellers. Politics are about grassroots power - with their posts in various languages and different MPs focusing on separate niches like arts & design, minority issues, the p65 blog is much weightier than most people give them credit for.

Then to take some away - personal peeve
First, maybe I'm claustrophobic, but something personal: I hate frames, so I dislike the layout, even when the frame is inlaid. I prefer my customized frameless version.

If I put on my postmodernist glasses and analyze why I don't like the border of happy smiling MP faces, I guess I'm bothered by how much it reminds me of our GRC system. How I don't vote single politicians but by the gang.

The lack of dialog, the lack of engagement
"It's Where We Talk," claims the tagline in a handwritten font. I'm not sure who "we" refer to, but most readers of the p65 blogs are not satisfied with the level of political engagement. While Singapore bloggers were debating the GST hike in November 2006, the first posts from the MPs didn't come till much later. Even when that happened, some MPs were accused of not responding directly to comments readers left.

Lim Wee Kiat was singled out by a reader (named anonymously "Singaporean") as "the only P65 MP here on this blog who is willing to discuss govt policies." I'm sure there are many readers who are equally frustrated with the lack of dialog and engagement. So the return volley from the MPs is: why then, no one comes the webchats and real-life sessions (other than Young PAP members)?

Our impatient world
As David Harvey succinctly said of our post-modern times, we face "Time-space compression." (Space)Here I am blogging in the United States, but my readers come mainly from Singapore. (Time)Maybe the complaint about the lack of engagement is really a complaint about the lack of timely posts? Some of the most popular Singapore political bloggers are not just the best writers, they are the most frequent writers. Politicians, however, are probably not passionate bloggers. It's part of what they do, but my advice is for us readers to slow down and push for more engagement while not pushing for more frequency.

[End of portion about MPs]
The Asides
Thanks for reading so far, I really appreciate it, and would be happy if you could leave comments.

Intra-country income disparity is a global phenomenon, countries rich as the United States and (previously) poor like China are grappling with it. I believe in the power of open markets, even in thoughts and debate, so I'm happy I live in a generation where I can influence how we tackle this problem.

Coming from a background that's at best lower-middle income, I empathize that the lower income groups need help, but I'm concerned at how Singapore politics have pressured politicians into what appears to be more welfarism, at least in appearance. With our globalized, connected world, institutions need to be nimble and quick, and I think too many complex welfare policies will drag us down.

Major diversion - The carnival as a microcosm of society
The level of democracy is reflected in our Chingay carnival. I was once in a carnival in Aalst, a small town in Belgium, and almost every float that went past was political - whether local, Belgian, European, or world-wide. Yet they were mostly very funny, if offensive (not at a Borat level though). For a while I thought there was a huge Danish population, because everyone was waving Danish flags...then I realized it was about the cartoons.

Whereas our Chingay is sanctioned clean fun. Carnivals aside, where's our space for expression? Where's our freedom of speech? Is governmental control hurting us? Let me give a YouTube example - if I want to learn about Lee Kuan Yew and I search for videos, only 5 are returned, and the top hit is about a cabbie complaining about him. Oh, no, readers of my blog who come from gov.sg, please don't start uploading innocently proper LKY clips on YouTube - learn the lesson we have to... our participatory culture needs the government to realize we are moving beyond top-down, government implemented.

IR
Decades ago, the worlds (Beauty World, Gay World, Great World etc) were what would be regarded as Casino resorts today - they offered the glamor, the exoticism...yet they went away, or were taken away.

When we return these places of decadent fun (come on, we all know casinos bring with them sins like gambling, drinking, dirty money, prostitution etc), we can't just be reintroducing them to attract hedge fund managers (Wall Street Journal suggested that's why we're doing it). Bankers come and go, and increasingly maybe Singaporeans come and go, but everyone knows - the Singaporean will at least pause and think before they pack, but the banker is gone as fast as that Mercedes cab comes...

Malaysian Ad in Hokkien

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Petronas Chinese New Year 2006 clip in Hokkien (with Malay subs) on YouTube featuring some grannies bragging about their successful kids. Sounds very Singaporean too.

*spoilers*

The clip conveys a message similar to what PM Lee said about keeping family ties strong, but of course, the clip can't be aired on Singapore TV since it's in Hokkien. Moreover, the clip says family is more important than money - not quite the message Singapore's government would encourage.

New Amsterdam

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Originally published May 2006.

New Amsterdam

[Fiction - Draft]
Ian had taken a short trip to Benelux two years earlier, and all that survived from that time were flashes of memory constantly invaded by random noise. No, he had not smoked weed in Amsterdam. So the joke goes, he went for the canals. No hos either, why would he, when the only visits he pays Geylang are for killer beef hor fun. But truly he had been there for Van Gogh, Anne Frank and Rembrandt. Van Gogh struck a chord in looking for a new Japan in Europe. Ian felt like he himself was searching for utopia. His friends took the route of mushrooms and other Amster-gems, but he had objected to anything that modified his mind.

"But you have the death penalty too," he retorted to his American friend, though he conceded that hanging was more brutal than lethal injection. He was more unsettled by the fact that he only knew about Singapore's investments through reading the Journal and FT. An opposition madman had accused the incorruptible government of supporting Burma's druglords. He didn't care for the madman and would never vote for him or his party, even as the opponent was PDP. What he was concerned with was how Singapore tolerates Aung Sang Su Kyi being under house arrest. Then again, foreign journalists claim the same of Singapore's political dissidents.

Journalism in Singapore

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Losing Faith of the Printed Word
I just spent the past hour and a half watching a BBC documentary on Tehran, and what struck me was the spirit of journalism, both of the BBC journalist and the journalists in Tehran. If Prof. Mahbubani said journalists have a tough job in Singapore, I suppose he was not speaking in terms relative to Iran. The Iranian journalists seem to display tenacity and passion I don't sense from reading the Straits Times. But I'm making an unfair comparison because those Iranian journalists featured didn't work for the equivalent of the ST - they work for smaller outfits that nonetheless have impressive circulation.

In the documentary, Rageh Omaar said that despite being news-obsessed, Iranians were "losing faith of the printed word." They browse newspapers but don't buy them. They have the fourth largest blogging community in the world, and Iranians are increasingly turning to Satellite TV and the Internet.

Foreigners tend to have an overly pessimistic impression of Iran - that it is a repressive regime when in fact there are many elements of democracy. The documentary makes me feel Singapore doesn't stand very far from where Iran is in terms of media freedom. We all have to paraphrase issues in euphemistic ways, and that is if we're allowed to talk openly about them. Bloggers are ok, so long as they do not attract too much attention. The "red lines" or "OB markers" are too broad to be useful - we are allowed to say what we want as long as we know how to dance around land mines.

An Iranian film had to be censored extensively before it could be screened locally, but went on to win at International Film Festivals - sounds familiar to Singapore? Journalists, documentary makers, filmmakers, visual artists have a central part in our world, because they communicate to us and remind us what we should be doing to progress our world.

Perhaps the reason why Holland Village Voice started out as a novel modeled after Kundera's is because I deeply feel and fear that media freedom in Singapore is an illusion. I felt compelled to speak in riddles, as Kundera did.

The old (circa May 2006 elections) post below was my attempt at writing about a character who censors the Singapore media in his own way.

The Sound of Silence

[Fiction]
The living room sounded silent as Tina turned her key, so she was surprised to see her Pa sitting in front of the TV (he had muted the news because the Progress Democratic Party was on). Her Pa had declared a cold war on her ever since the campaigning started. She sighed, but felt amused her Pa was exercising his censorship over the PDP. A refreshing change from work, perhaps.

Pa had sustained an unforgettable memory of loss. His mother tongue (Hokkien), and his university were both systematically eliminated. He was a radical Chinese educated. Today he speaks Singlish proudly, as if never wanting to let go of the vestige of his identity.

"There is no Singaporean language," sends Tina through her MSN window. She has always been irked by her boyfriend's accent and consistently incorrect grammar, but she was exhausted from work, and in no mood to fight.

She wished she was back in the Village, shopping for trail mix or thumbing a discounted Murakami she was musing whether to buy or finish reading. Snapping out of the irrational wish, she turned on the TV in her own room so she can watch the PDP broadcast sans censorship. Somehow, her finger yearned for the mute button.

Dinner Music for People Who Aren't Very Hungry

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I once heard in church the term Sunday Christians, used to refer to people who were religious only a day a week. On May 6th 2006, I started Holland Village Voice, wanting to help make sure that after the excitement surrounding the elections, online debate about the future of Singapore would continue, to make sure we are not Election Day Singaporeans.

The first format of the blog was novel-esque, a tribute to Kundera's writings about communist Prague. Perhaps it was too unfriendly a format for thinking about Singapore issues, but if you have the time to spare, please read the post below, and you will be able to pick up several issues I later wrote as opinion pieces, on media freedom, on how we approach the income disparity, on Thai-Singapore relations etc.

As always, thanks for reading, and comments are very welcome.

"Unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous"
"In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debates could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse flushed with rumours and distortions to mislead and confuse the public."
The Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts (Dr Balaji Sadasivan)

Reference: Singapore Parliament Report on GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS (Change of laws and regulations on use of Internet and podcasts)

Dinner Music for People Who Aren't Very Hungry
[Fiction]
In May 2006, the Singaporean journalist Tina flipped over the front page of the States Times to face the article she had written. She silently read through it, pursing her lips, trying to read between the parts of the story she didn’t want to write. She despaired whenever her eyes ran over the views she didn’t endorse, but were tacked below her name, her byline.

Thousands of readers judged her over breakfast. Some were disappointed at her because they thought her Ivy League education would have given her an insistence on journalistic integrity. Other sympathized with her, or rather the State, – they understood the need for public order.

Thousands more debated with her in their minds after work. They knew that news was best consumed fresh, but the MRT ride home was the only time they could spare. Some were young, but clearly not apathetic. They had a $1.20 nasi lemak for breakfast, and ate lunch at the desk, but weren’t very hungry for dinner. They weren’t hungry for million-dollar political handouts either. Jazz music oozed from their iPod buds. Those dangerous syncopations and unreliable beats that they loved as nourishment, unlike the unhealthy dose of controlled news.

One of them, Ian, crushed the newspaper in anger. He didn’t need anyone to tell him how to think. Not another arrogant politician. He likes Thailand, and has many Thai friends who misinterpret his country as snobbish. Wedging his hand into his slim briefcase, he fished out Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In the background, a woman in her late thirties was boasting how stealthy she was in taping all her fingers to mask her fingerprints. Now no one would know she had voted for the opposition. He smirked – each vote was identifiable by the voter by details printed on the envelope.

He returned to reading, and took a sharp breath reading Kundera’s line “The constitution did indeed guarantee freedom of speech, but the laws punished anything that could be considered an attack on state security.” His blog had been previously quoted a local tabloid article dealing with a sensitive political issue. He looked up as the MRT pulled into Aljunied station. On the platform he saw an old ah ma struggling with a makeshift trolley bursting with collected cardboard, and in the glass he saw his disheveled self. He sighed and wished Tina fought for the ah ma.

Problem Facing the Straits Times Forum

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Recent posts on Coffee & Cigarettes and Yawning Bread touch on, among other issues, the standards applied by the Straits Times Forum Editor. The triggers were 1. A letter by Mr Heng about "Old people have the social and moral obligation to take care of themselves." 2. Prof. Kishore Mahbubani speech at MediaCorp News Awards about "Singapore Journalists Have a Difficult Job."

Issue has been around
The issue of the ST Forum selection criteria has definitely been around for a while. I vaguely remember an old website called "Not the Straits Times Forum" that published rejected letters, and recently we've seen a new project "Straight Times Forum" that attempts to achieve the same.

On this archived tomorrow.sg page, you will find a blurb highlighting a November 2005 analysis carried out by lzydata on his blog Singapore Ink about the breakdown of ST Forum letters. It was pretty obvious how warped the selection criteria was. Unfortunately, Singapore Ink is neither active nor archived.

In May 2005, I had a brief e-mail exchange with someone from ST. The journalist from ST wrote an article about Singaporeans being apathetic about the China-Japan row then. I wrote him an e-mail suggesting that the ST Forum, by choosing to publish letters of complaint instead of those discussing serious issues, isn’t helping.

Specifically, I singled out letters like ""She shed 9kg. Now she is underweight" and "Luggage Blues on Valuair" as instances that should be directed to agencies of consumer affairs and the companies themselves.

You can read more on the comments portion of an archived tomorrow.sg page. I want to focus on his reply:

Defending the Straits Times Forum (in May 2005)

  1. ST Journalist (not the ST Forum editor): ST is a paper that is "everything to everyone."
  2. ST Journalist: Forum editor goes for the best and the widest range of issues.
  3. ST Journalist: There are plans to publish all received letters online.
Those three points are weak, and highlight a single problem - declining readership:
ST is not "everything to everyone." It is not a community newspaper
The journalist romanticized the monopolistic role of the ST by saying that ST needs to publish letters like banning cats in HDBs because it is a community paper at the same time it is a national paper. But the Straits Times is not a community paper - it is a ruling party influenced publication. After the online elitist debacle about "poor people not helping themselves," Mr Heng's "old people not helping themselves" letter sounds terribly offensive and lacking in political savvy, and creates the suspicion of a background force propagating the mantra that Singapore cannot regress into a welfare state.

A community newspaper would be concerned about old people getting injured, and reporting on how the rest of the community is acting to improve the situation. Unlike the ST, a community newspaper does not publish letters telling people their foolishness is to blame for their own injuries, that they constitute a "time bomb."

I hope no one mistakes my next reference as bad taste, I mean it all in positive terms: Nobel Prize winner Alan MacDiarmid recently died because he "fell down stairs in his home." He was rushing to catch a flight. Would Mr. Heng consider Dr. MacDiarmid morally and socially irresponsible? He is a Nobel Prize winner after all, responsible for much more than taking care of grandkids (a noble task I must say. I love you, Grandma). He was just living his life to the fullest. I don't know what advice Mr Heng would give Dr. MacDiarmid - don't be last minute?

More disturbing is ST Forum Editor's decision to publish that letter. What did he/she mean to achieve by selecting such a letter of bad taste? If the argument is to provoke debate, should the ST Forum then publish letters of bad taste sliming the ruling party's policies? The ST cannot pretend to be a community newspaper because it is not - it tries to portray itself as close to hearts of Singaporeans so more Singaporeans would read it, but Mr Heng's letter exposes ST's inability to understand what a community newspaper does.

Forum editor goes for widest range of issues, but "best letters?"
Some of the most best, meaning most insightful articles/opinions on Singapore are now appearing on the Internet, as writers find that they no longer have to be at the mercy of an opaque ST Forum policy. As more Singaporeans head online to debate national issues, the ST Forum will not have the best letters sent in to begin with.

More letters published, but not all
The ST Forum can't publish all letters, because of strict OB markers. The Internet has more relaxed rules (thankfully). Another reason why the ST Forum's readership is being diluted - why be told what to think?

Personally, I haven't been reading the ST Forum for a while. Or the ST. Not from the lack of trying - here's a good reason: I am a STI Online subscriber, but I frequently reach the screen that says that the ST servers are overloaded, and please wait or come back later. I don't get that - I thought the point of subscribing is so I'm supporting the purchase of more servers so I don't get that screen.

Anyway, as Yawning Bread implies, I agree that the ST is facing serious problems of the readers' trust and the exodus to online sources. I grew up reading the ST cover-to-cover, so I hope it will be given the freedom to develop into newspaper like the New York Times, read at places far from its source, rather than what it is today - a newspaper with a captive audience it can't keep captive.

5 reasons to attend DiaS'pura

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Diaspora+Singapura=DiaS'pura
University of Pennsylvania March 24th 2007

  1. Her Excellency (Singapore Ambassador to US/Prof) Chan Heng Chee, who in her earlier academic career published numerous articles about the role of politics in Singapore, will be keynote speaker. A fellow speaker will be Harvard Fellow Francis Seow. I think that will be exciting for anyone interested in Singapore politics.
  2. Founding President of Singapore Management University, Prof. Janice R. Bellace will speak.
  3. Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen will be there to discuss the "Singapore identity" and the "nascent film industry" of Singapore (more accurately, the recently renewed film industry). I've heard them speak before, about issues like Singlish. They're very sincere, and influential in that their "Singapore Dreaming" e-mail a few years ago must have been a landmark in Singaporeans thinking about opting out of the materialistic path.
  4. A musical to end the night with...the right note! No wait, since it's held at Penn, I guess there's an after-party that will bring us right to brunch.
  5. I'll be there. Woohoo.

Liberal Arts for Liberal Arts' Sake

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What disturbed me and prompted me to write this post? Singapore is pursuing a liberal arts college as if it is another business opportunity and approaching starting a school like starting a factory. Education in a liberal arts sense is about seeing more than the business and practical side of things. Education is more than about being best and "first."

---

Since Dr Tony Tan can be credited with the rapid success of Singapore Management University, having been indispensable to SMU in actions and words since it was just an idea, his recent declaration that "we [Singapore] must be first with [a] liberal arts school" suggests such a college would be established in the immediate future. Unsurprisingly, the urgent need is money.

The benefits that a liberal arts college will bring to Singapore are indisputable. Before such a college can succeed, the second most urgent need is to understand liberal arts education, in Biopolis-ian Singapore, for liberal arts' sake.

Fewer Students, More Student-Faculty Interaction
Tom Gerety, a former President of Amherst College argued that "we [at Amherst] believe in teaching as conversation because the best teaching is conversation." The small enrollments at liberal arts colleges allow a unique small-classroom style of teaching mostly absent in large research-oriented universities.

For Professors, Less (and Less Specialized) Research, More Teaching
Traditionally, professors at liberal arts colleges emphasize less on research, more on teaching. Their tenure is similarly judged more on quality of teaching than outputs in research. The Carleton College homepage proudly proclaims that its "talented faculty's...first priority is teaching."

In contrast to the large number of researchers at a research university, the relatively small number of faculty at liberal arts colleges should push them towards more generality and less specialization in their fields. Professor Timothy Burke of Swarthmore College discusses such issues in his post "building a liberal arts faculty."

Fewer Graduate Students, Focus on Undergrads

The focus on teaching over research translates into fewer graduate students. Instead, an unwavering focus on undergraduates characterizes liberal arts colleges. For example, liberal arts college Brywn Mawr has thrice the number of undergrads than grads in 2006/7. In the case of a research university like the University of Chicago graduate/professional students outnumber the undergrads two to one. [Please read comments by U of Chicago students on their experiences.]

However, there are also in-between universities, like Dartmouth College, that have both strong liberal arts undergrad focus and grad programs. Because of its numerous grad programs, Dartmouth is usually classified as a university, not a liberal arts college.

Less Hands-On, More General Knowledge and Intellectual Skills link
As opposed to professional/vocational training at research/professional-training universities (for example, life sciences research at NTU, aero engineering at MIT, accounting at SMU, pre-med focus at Johns Hopkins, finance concentration at Wharton, law at NUS), a liberal arts education prides itself in imparting the broad knowledge of humanities and sciences.

However, it has been noted in various studies that undergraduate colleges form a "Key pipeline of Research Scientists,"link opens PDF contributing disproportionate numbers of students to graduate schools.

A possible but unpleasant explanation for such a trend is that liberal arts colleges have moved closer to the teaching methods of the research/professional-training universities. Some point out that with decreasing enrolment in liberal arts programs, "even stand-alone liberal arts colleges are offering fewer liberal arts degrees and focusing increasingly on pre-professional programs" link

On one hand, liberal arts colleges should focus on their strength of flexibility - by consciously preparing students for many non-specific scenarios, their graduates are more adaptive and ready for our rapidly changing world.

On the other, liberal arts colleges might be utilizing their strength of high faculty-student ratio while venturing into hands-on vocational/professional training.

Measuring Liberal Arts on its own terms
Unfortunately, rankings of universities have become a worldwide obsession, and liberal arts colleges suffer greatly from the methodologies that favor research universities. As a result, liberal arts universities have struggled to remain confident on their own terms, feeling the need to justify their output in economic, tangible terms.

Ex-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan worried that "our universities are going to have to struggle to prevent the liberal arts curricula from being swamped by technology and science." Although he is inaccurate in grouping all of science out of liberal arts, he highlights that the weakness of liberal arts lies chiefly in our inability to value the humanities in its own terms. related link

Liberal Arts Programs in Large Research Universities
Coincidentally, in the same speech, Greenspan quotes a large research university's president when explaining the benefits of a liberal arts education. (disclosure: author is alumnus of Penn)

So-called liberal education is presumed to spawn a greater understanding of all aspects of living--an essential ingredient to broaden one's world view. As the President of the University of Pennsylvania, Judith Rodin, put it, such an understanding comes by "vaulting over disciplinary walls" and exploring other fields of study. Most great conceptual advances are interdisciplinary and involve synergies of different specialities. Yet the liberal arts embody more than a means of increasing technical intellectual efficiency. They encourage the appreciation of life experiences that reach beyond material well-being and, indeed, are comparable and mutually reinforcing.
Many large universities recreate the environment of high faculty-to-student ratio, broad-based liberal curriculum by having smaller programs. The Benjamin Franklin Scholars program at Penn and University Scholars Program at NUS are but two examples.

Schools are Not Factories
Singapore's rationale for starting a liberal arts college is to "groom future leaders in business, community and government." I believe in the strengths of a liberal arts education, but we must remember that causation doesn't mean correlation - many notable alumni from liberal arts colleges come from established political families. (We see a parallel in Ivy League universities). So we must believe in a liberal arts college for liberal arts' sake, and not treat it as another factory to churn out future leaders.

Other related links:
I was part of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars Program during my undergrad days at Penn, and loved the small-enrollment seminars I took that varied from a History research seminar on the Rise and Fall of the British Empire to a project-based Anthropology+Computer Modeling class on the Bolivian site of Tiwanaku. I am very happy Singapore is recognizing the liberal arts, but I hope we recognize liberal arts for liberal arts' sake. Thank you very much for reading!