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Via Siew Kum Hong, Eddie Teo's Defending Scholarships but not all Scholars speech was making the rounds on the Singaporean Twitterverse earlier.
A short while ago, Acidflask came up with an Annotated Guide to Eddie Teo's Speech, which I felt was not entirely fair. As an aside, I will note that Siew Kum Hoong and I were broadly approving of the speech, while most of those who disliked it were/are scholars.
A summary of Acidflask's guide:
1) Bond-breakers are evil because they waste taxpayers' money (FALSE)
-> He says that Eddie neglected to mention that Liquidated Damages exist. Bond breakers are thus not immoral and irresponsible, since they earn their organisations money.
2) Bond-breakers are evil, but rare (O RLY?)
-> He accuses Eddie of setting up a false dichotomy between Good scholars (???/791) who finish their bonds and Bad scholars (9/791) who don't serve a single day, meanwhile ignoring Disappointing ones (!!!/791) who break their bonds having served them partially.
3) Quitters are evil, and I will bash the one who got me started
-> He says Eddie launched a "scathing ad hominem attack on a bond breaker" (Yu-Mei) by saying, based on an essay she wrote for s/pores, that "She should never have been selected for teaching [as] she showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
4) The practice of divination
-> He says that the scholarship panel selected Yu-Mei wrongly since they didn't know she (in his opinion) had "no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
5) Daddy knows best. Now sit down and shut up.
-> Scholars are not treated as independent, intelligent agents, but rather as pawns.
6) Not all fast tracks run at the same speed -> It does not make sense to have a multi-track public service
Acidflask: "That was not my point at all, merely that the existence of multiple tracks is likely to breed arrogance for those on the fastest tracks, and resentment for whose who are not."
7) Postscript - let's learn to behave at the level of a ten-year-old
-> Eddie is excoriated for praising a scholar's presumably learning to reason like a ten-year-old.
Now, in general speeches are not the same as essays, so we should bear that in mind when reading them.
More specifically,
1) Bond-breakers are evil because they waste taxpayers' money (FALSE)
This is indeed a nonsensical claim, and I always get upset when people make it.
If I get enough capital, I plan to set up my own scholarship agency which will give out scholarships and make the recipients suffer so much that they will break their bonds and I will receive a return well above the market rate.
Woo hoo!
Eddie *did* say that those who leave without having served one day are what Acidflask calls "evil", but I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of such cases do not leave for reasons similar to Acidflask's. For example, Acidflask's is the only case I know of with such special circumstances, whereas the other bond breakers I know of who did not serve a single day got bought out by investment banks or consultancies, or wanted to stay on in their countries of study to work.
All generalisations are false, and this is even more so for a speech, so quibbling about semantics is churlish.
2) Bond-breakers are evil, but rare (O RLY?)
Acidflask:
Eddie Teo's classification of quitters* GOOD (??? of 791): Those who finish their bond as contractually agreed upon, then leave the civil service - Not bond-breakers. Lots of good reaons for doing so. Now run along, kiddos.
* EVIL (9 of 791): Those who do don't serve a single day of their bond and leave the civil service - Bond-breakers. Thankfully, only 1% of the apples rot.Ladies and gentlemen, we are looking at an excellent specimen of the common logical fallacy - the false dichotomy!
And here is the missing middle, the case that was glibly elided over:
* DISAPPOINTING (??? of 791) - Those who serve part of their bond, but not all of it, before they leave the civil service...
Not even the most astute and attentive audience member could have been expected to remember that [this sort of scholar] was alluded to ten paragraphs prior!
Eddie does not leave out "those who serve part of their bond, but not all of it, before they leave the civil service", nor does he call all of them "disappointing".
Although he did not give any numbers, he did acknowledge "attrition", and say that not all "attrition" is bad. In other words, "good attrition" (his words) is not "disappointing" (Acidflask's word):
Do we expect 100% of our scholars to stay throughout their bond period? No... Attrition figures... hide many things... I often ask them if the attrition is a good attrition or a bad attrition. What I mean is "Are you losing the right people or the wrong people?" If the best officers leave, and only the mediocre remain, the public service is in big trouble. We need enough of our best people to stay and provide a continuous flow of leaders. Likewise, with scholars.
And yes, he talked about this under the "Bond Breaking & Attrition" section of the speech, one paragraph before the statistic that 9/791 PSC scholars quit without having served a single day.
So no, there's no false dichotomy or glib elision.
The most you can accuse him of is leaving out the number of scholars who fall into this category, and of conflating attrition due to scholars quitting before they serve a single day of their bonds and attrition due to their quitting while serving their bonds. So, like a bikini, this part of his speech conceals more than it reveals.
3) Quitters are evil, and I will bash the one who got me started
He is not the first person who objects to Eddie's characterisation of Yu-Mei as having "showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
Yet, if you read Yu-mei's essay, it is notable that she:
i) Says that "the main reason I had applied for the government scholarship in the first place was to try to save my parents from having to pay for [an overseas] education"
ii) Does not mention her classroom experience, which is presumably the central part of one's work life as a teacher.
iii) Does not mention that she had an "interest in, or passion for, teaching". Indeed, she says that
"I applied for a teaching scholarship because the only thing that I was interested in studying at the time was English literature, and the only thing I thought people did with university degrees in English literature was to become teachers (or journalists)... if teaching was my likely career path, I might as well try for the government scholarship and be done with it"
Now, if I wrote a long essay titled "My Family" and I did not mention my father at all, it would be eminently reasonable to assume one or more of the following:
i) I was an orphan
ii) I was an illegitimate child
iii) My father abandoned me when I was young
iv) I was on bad terms with my father
v) I was conceived by Zeus in the form of a golden shower
Silence speaks volumes.
Similarly, to write an essay about one's experiences as a scholar without mentioning the work that one did and whether it was to one's taste invites the not-unreasonable conclusion that one had no particular passion for it.
Of course, one could always say that Yu-mei's essay was about the scholarship system, and not about the work that she did while in it, but the omission is still puzzling. Furthermore, we still have points i) and iii) which lay out why she applied i) for a scholarship and specifically ii) for a teaching scholarship.
Why this is considered "a thin veneer of civility... [below which is] a scathing ad hominem attack on a bond breaker" is beyond me. Just because someone "should never have been selected for teaching" does not mean that he is a "bad" person. For example, I would definitely not be selected for Medical School, but if someone were to comment that I "should never have been selected for Medical School", this is not an ad hominem attack.
Indeed, the "evil" scholars (i.e. those who quit without having served a single day of their bonds) were separately identified in Eddie's speech, as were those who "those who lack commitment and have little interest in the public service" and thus break their bonds after serving for a while. He even goes so far as to say, of the latter, that "we should be disappointed that we failed to sieve them out earlier, but we should not be unhappy". Note too that Yu-mei falls into neither category as she served out her bond fully.
Acidflask says that there was a lack of evidence, and that:
Evidence as to whether or not she was actually a good and successful teacher - student feedback, principal's evaluations, etc. - is apparently not necessary to justify such a deduction [that she should not have been awarded a teaching scholarship]
Yet, if Eddie had gone to said lengths and dug out her file to present this information in a speech made during the Singapore Seminar, attended by 350 public service scholars - the text of which was put online, no less - reaction would rightly be outraged at this outrageous violation of privacy, public shaming and abuse of power (for a speech, no less). Furthermore, the ideal scholar is not just someone who does his job properly, or even does his job well; the ideal [PSC] scholar is "outstanding" and has "a strong conviction and passion to serve Singapore and Singaporeans a fulfilling and rewarding career in the Public Service" (sic), and this is something that Eddie talks about.
The fact is that talking about Yu-mei took up 2 paragraphs of a 35 paragraph speech, and served as a casual anecdote to contextualise discussion and serve as a springboard for the rest of the speech. Mountains should not be made out of molehills.
In truth, both Eddie and Yu-mei's texts make for good reading, and both address separate, though related, aspects of the scholarship system.
Of course, Eddie is missing important points. Yu-mei is definitely not the only scholar who takes/took up a scholarship despite lacking interest and passion for it. There are more scholars who lack those attributes than he would care to admit (at least in public) and so should presumably never have been given their scholarships, but then we all know that lots of people lie to the scholarship panel. There're also the other points Yu-mei's essay raises: about gullible 19 year olds being conned and other big questions about the scholarship system as a whole.
One can also say that his speech lacks more than token empathy for Yu-mei, but this is, after all, a speech to 350 scholars and not a personal (or even open) letter to her.
4) The practice of divination
Eddie's point is not that the scholarship system could not see that she would be an able and willing scholar when starting her bond - it is that she was not able and willing when she was 19.
To wit, the line was:
PSC should not have awarded her a teaching scholarship when she showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching
and not
PSC should not have awarded her a teaching scholarship when she showed that she would not turn out to be interested in or passionate about teaching
There are certainly criticisms of the scholarship system in that it is impossible to foresee at 19 what a scholar will be like at the age of 23 (or 25, for those who have to be Slaves) and at least until they finish their bonds, but this is not what Eddie was regretting - in the case of Yu-mei. He *does* make the mistake of assuming that those who are (or at least seem to be) "suitable for public service" at 19 will still be that way when they start to serve their bonds, but that is a separate point.
5) Daddy knows best. Now sit down and shut up.
Acidflask says scholarships take advantage of innocent and gullible 19 year olds, and that it is deplorable that scholars have little say over their career development.
The former is true, and I don't disagree with the last, yet the Civil Service's Management Associates scheme seems modeled after (or is at least packaged to resemble) similar schemes in many large private-sector organisations. The difference is that a [foreign] scholar's bond lasts 6 years, while private sector Management Associate programmes last 1-2 years, but the programmes differ in degree - not in kind.
(I am skimming through many things, like the MA Programme being different from but related to both scholarships and the Administrative Service, but the idea remains the same)
Acidflask also posits a hypothetical situation:
The supposed response to scholars desiring information about their career trajectories in reality does not address the fundamental issue.... Could you imagine a vice president of a large company whom, after years of work at the helm, to be absolutely ignorant of what he or she wants in the next 5 or 10 years, and have no roadmap for attaining such goals? Would you pick such a vice president to be the next CEO?
Yet, even with a Fast Track, a scholar would not reach such levels of seniority within a mere 6 years (as far as I know). Furthermore, Eddie is not asking scholars to be ignorant of what they want - he is just telling them to suck it up when they are posted. The former concerns choice desire and the latter agency; it is my understanding that scholars are not totally powerless when it comes to steering their career path.
I cannot imagine the vice president of a large company who, after years of work at the helm, is absolutely ignorant of what he wants in the next 5 or 10 years, and have no roadmap for attaining such goals, but equally I cannot imagine the vice president of a large company who is told that in 10 years time, he will definitely become the CEO. The Indonesians have a term for this sort of occurrence. It's called KKN - Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme (Korruption, Kollusion and Nepotism).
6) Not all fast tracks run at the same speed
I agree with this critique. I still agree with this critique.
7) Postscript - let's learn to behave at the level of a ten-year-old
Yes, it is disappointing that scholars have to be reminded of what ten year olds know. But it is heartening to know that scholars learn that their positions are not god-given rights and that they cannot lord it over everyone else - which are criticisms which have been leveled at them.