By Spiegel
Writer and historian James Truslow Adams once imagined a meritocratic wonderland. A society defined by the noble aspiration he called the American Dream.
Drawing from the United States Declaration of Independence and its recognition of “inalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, he illustrated what was to become the ethos of a nation in his 1931 book Epic of America:
“…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”
“It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
It is an intuitively attractive and nominally egalitarian idea, and a vibrant nation of immigrants, entrepreneurs and frontiersmen fell spellbound.
But beneath the veneer of liberté and égalité lay sinister undercurrents. Discerning the materialism, corruption and decadence permeating 1920s America, F. Scott Fitzgerald forestalled Adams. His 1925 classic “The Great Gatsby“ damned the egalitarian mythology of the American Dream, exposing it as a dangerous flight of fancy that valorises the unscrupulous pursuit of material success.
To be sure, ‘meritocracy’ has yet to enter the lexicon in the era of the Depression, Route 66 and Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath“. The honour of coining the phrase would fall to British Labour politician Michael Young, who in 1958 wrote the satirical “The Rise of Meritocracy, 1870-2033: An Essay on Education and Equality“.
Young’s prognosis did not stray far from Fitzgerald’s diagnosis. Rather than enhancing social mobility, he argued that the meritocratic logic would come to entrench the relative positions of the rich and poor. Its rhetoric legitimises social stratification and inequality – whether people sink, swim or soar, they all deserve their respective lots. As sociologist Laurie Taylor explained to the BBC News Magazine in 2004:
“The hideous thing about meritocracy is it tells you that if you’ve given life your all and haven’t got to the top you’re thick or stupid. Previously, at least, you could always just blame the class system.”
This hideous thing is unfortunately prevalent here – a city-state whose leaders constantly reify the illusory meritocratic dream. Back in 2008, in the midst of a debate over the scholarship selection process provoked by former A*Star chairman Philip Yeo, the Straits Times’ Lydia Lim related a revealing anecdote:
“One of my friends was shaken to the core when he realised recently what his daughter thought of poor people. They were stupid, obviously, she told him.”
Shocking? Hardly so. After all, our mass media largely buys into the meritocratic philosophy hook, line and sinker. And their job, as Chomsky and Herman would put it, is manufacturing consent.
Think the shorthand for excellence that is the ‘Raffles’ brand, the obsession with elite institutions, the veneration of academic qualifications. Think the annual press praise parade lavished upon top students, especially those who overcame personal hardship to achieve superlative results. Think the gushing coverage of scholarship winners bound for prestigious universities and promising civil service careers. Think the resonance of local films portraying the rat race and paper chase – the likes of “Money No Enough” and “I Not Stupid”.
For the most part, this media valorisation appears benign. But the loathsome hauteur Young feared would take hold in a meritocratic society is not easy to conceal. A leader column in Tuesday’s issue (9 March) by Straits Times senior correspondent Radha Basu betrayed this latent condescension:
“Unlike in some countries, where people are often too poor to rent – let alone buy – their first home, homelessness in Singapore is often the result of personal irresponsibility, stemming from avarice or divorce and dysfunction.”
“Some, like Mr Yusof, commit to homes more expensive than they can afford. Others sell their homes for cash to settle gambling or credit card debts, and end up on the beach.”
Firstly, the obtusely opaque epithet that is “unlike in some countries”, employed with a leering smugness. If she knows which ones, why not list them? Secondly, with only one anecdotal example to show, how does she conclude that homelessness here is ‘often’ a result of ‘personal irresponsibility’? Thirdly, how does she define divorce and dysfunction? How are they necessarily instances of personal irresponsibility? What resounding evidence she has, heavily burdened with weasel words and vague pronouncements. The accompanying illustration – aptly titled ‘Punchlines’ – is similarly reductionist, its portrayal of homeless Singaporeans as spendthrift and unrepentant betrays an unapologetic, supercilious scorn.
The narrative can also be perpetuated less distastefully, even if it remains unmistakably blatant. The Straits Times does this by incorporating the common man, adorning a factual news peg with normative moralistic musings à la Aesop’s Fables. One such news peg appeared last Saturday (6 March), quoting National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan’s childhood reminiscences.
“When I was young, I lived in various places with my mother, who was a domestic servant. I lost my father when I was three years old, so we moved around a lot.”
“We stayed in a kampung in Lorong Ah Soo, which today has HDB flats and is in Cynthia Phua’s (MP for Aljunied GRC) constituency. Every time I visit the flats there, I still remember where the kampung house was.”
“Then we moved to a shophouse in High Street. My mum was working for a High Street merchant at that time. Today, that is where the MTI (Ministry of Trade and Industry) and MOF (Ministry of Finance) are (in The Treasury building).”
“Then we moved to a room in Bugis Street. Today, it is Bugis Junction. There were 10 of us living in that room. We had one bed which slept five. It was raised so that another five could sleep underneath.”
“Then, I moved to Kim Keat Avenue with my aunt – eight of us in a three-room flat, sharing one toilet and bathroom, while my mother stayed in a one-room rental flat in Whampoa Road.”
“Later, we upgraded to a four-room flat in Toa Payoh.”
“That is a typical Singapore story for my generation. Start in a modest flat, work hard, accumulate savings, and upgrade over time. Then, if you need to, rightsize to a smaller flat.”
Suitably moved, Low Lee Siang penned a glowing missive to the Straits Times published Monday (8 March):
I AM a 58-year-old Singaporean who shed tears on reading last Saturday’s article, ‘Mah’s own upgrading story’, in which National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan recounted his difficult childhood years growing up in various housing types.
I have 11 siblings and, in the 1960s, we lived with our grandmother and parents in a three-room rental flat. But I did not realise until I read Mr Mah’s story that I was more fortunate than the minister.
This is the Singapore story: Study hard, work hard, and you can pull yourself out of poverty.
I wish to remind the younger generation of where we have come from, and not to take what Singapore is now for granted. Today, I live in an HDB maisonette. Thank you, Singapore.
Rounding off a one-two punch, reader William Tay wrote:
“National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan’s remarkable story about his childhood years is a lesson for the younger generation. Despite his humble beginnings, he was able to uplift himself to become a government minister. This is testimony to our system of meritocracy which has enabled talented young people from humble backgrounds to rise up and serve the nation.”
There you have it. A meritocracy narrative comes full circle, notwithstanding the inconvenient fallacy of citing anecdotal successes to back the notion of meritocratic social mobility. After all, those who don’t make it also don’t make it to the papers – classic publication bias.
This news-story-to-forum-page cycle churned out by the Straits Times national education machine is apparently a well-oiled technique. One might recall the tactic employed last November following Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s acknowledgement of mistakes in his bilingual education policy. That was the cue for Dr John Ng to pen an embarrassingly fawning letter, which appeared soon after the mea culpa, expressing unqualified admiration for MM Lee’s leadership qualities.
But there are times when outsourced moralising isn’t up to the task. Where sharper sticks threaten the idyllic bubble, the Straits Times rolls out its big-gun writers. In 2008, political scientist Kenneth Paul Tan offered such a threat in the form of a detailed academic critique. The associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy wrote in an article entitled ‘Meritocracy and Elitism in a Global City: Ideological Shifts in Singapore‘:
“Meritocracy, in trying to “isolate” merit by treating people with fundamentally unequal backgrounds as superficially the same, can be a practice that ignores and even conceals the real advantages and disadvantages that are unevenly distributed to different segments of an inherently unequal society, a practice that in fact perpetuates this fundamental inequality. In this way, those who are picked by meritocracy as having merit may already have enjoyed unfair advantages from the very beginning, ignored according to the principle of nondiscrimination.”
Troubled by the social implications of this tension between ideal and reality, he warned:
“As the economic and political elite are rewarded (or are rewarding themselves) with larger prizes, a vast and visible inequality of outcomes will replace the incentive effect with a sense of resentment, helplessness, social disengagement, and even envy among those who perceive themselves as systematically disadvantaged. As the elite class endeavors to renew itself, defining merit in its own image, it will become increasingly narrow, exclusive, and dismissive toward others, losing the benefit of a broader range of less traditional talent.”
After discussing specific inadequacies of Singaporean meritocracy, he concluded:
“Singapore’s meritocratic system has been practiced so extremely that it is starting to show signs of becoming a victim of its own success: unintended consequences may, in the near future, take off on sharp tangents as the unsettling power of globalization disarticulates the inherent contradictions in the meritocracy concept itself, mainly between its egalitarian and its elitist dimensions.”
Cometh the challenge, cometh Zakir Hussain, who acknowledged Tan’s critiques (and Young’s too) in a August 2008 commentary ‘Meritocracy’s hidden danger‘. But in ceding initial ground to critics, Hussain bought room to defuse the attacks. He rounded off with a reassuring list of government measures designed to alleviate social problems arising from the dark side of meritocracy – redefining merit, broadening the meanings of talent and success in education, schemes like the Workfare Income Supplement to boost wages of lower-income workers, bursaries for children from lower-income homes, and so on.
Then, with the ground prepared, Hussain deploys the ultima ratio – racial harmony:
“This emphasis on merit and fair play has helped to ensure racial and religious harmony because minorities feel they have an equal stake and equal chances in this country, even if imperfections exist.”
Status quo defended, QED. But only because Hussain ignored the elephants in the room that are Michael Barr’s ‘The Charade of Meritocracy‘ (yes, that Far Eastern Economic Review article) and “Constructing Singapore“ - a book-length study, co-authored with Zlatko Skrbis, arguing the significance of ethno-nationalism, among other factors like power, personal connections, social class and gender, in Singaporean elite selection and formation.
Selective vision, perhaps? That’s understandable. As far as the Straits Times are concerned, we’ve well on our way riding off into a glorious Gattaca-esque sunset and living meritocratically ever after.
_______________________
Related posts:
- Press Muse – Love thyself, ignore thy neighbour
- Press Muse – Moving news and pushing pills
- Press Muse – Calling STOMP’s bluff
- Press Muse: Speaking “truth” for power
- Press Muse – The good, bad and ugly (part two)
Meritocracy? more like ethnocracy. The blatant abuse of the term has been part of a very successful strategy in whitewashing the facts when there is a mountain of evidence against it.
The systematic marginalization of the non-Chinese has been perpetuated through a series of policies that have been in place since the 70’s. This was a knee jerk reaction in the aftermath of the race riots in ‘69. Since then, all promotion of Muslims in the civil service and armed forces came to an abrupt halt.
The implementation of this misguided racist policy of selective discrimination was the beginning of the end of meritocracy in Singapore. Sometime then, LKY took a wrong turn and as a result, robbed the nation of the pledge of “… regardless of race, language or religion” And in doing so charted a new course down the slippery slope of totalitarianism. He had in effect created a ‘bogeyman’ of sorts and laid the foundations of a siege mentality that has evolved into institutionalized racism/selective discrimination.
A white South African told me that when he was growing up as a child, it was an unspoken fact that the blacks were of a lower class. It was just the way it was since they were only employed as menial labour, domestic help etc. They were ‘seen’ to be of a lower class based on their vocations. Once institutionalized racism is implemented, it creates a visual difference in how society sees perceives its own people. If as a Chinese, i do not see any Malays in the air force, commandos, ministerial posts etc. Then they must be unqualified, untrustworthy and unworthy of the jobs/posts. At that point, the matter has been institutionalized and become an unwritten policy.
But… the government being what it is has the media constantly espousing their half truths and perpetuating their lies. The term meritocracy has been used over and over again and oftentimes in a comparative study with Malaysia (who by the way has not hidden the fact that affirmative action is an official government policy) LKY even once stated that the main difference between Malaysia and Singapore is meritocracy exists here and not there. To the layman, as long as it is affirmed over and over again and kept perpetuated by the media, then it must be true…
In plain sight is LHL, his ballistic trajectory in the armed forces and politics is unsurpassed anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Alexander the great). Is that meritocracy at work?
//b
You guys don’t grasp the situation.. The problem is not the quality of our “Press-holdings” but rather it is the fact that it’s state owned.
Your attack on meritocracy as a value is untenable. Stripped bare of all political overtones, the issue is this: given the choice between meritocracy and mediocracy, what would you choose? I think the answer is obvious. If mankind (including Singaporeans) is to move forward, the process of identifying, encouraging, cultivating and elevating the smart and talented cannot be avoided.
You seem to suggest that meritocracy gives rise to inequality. I think you have it upside down. If priority is not given to the intellectually-able, then priority would be accorded to the wealthy, the powerful, those with family connections or the good looking. It is, in fact, meritocracy that allows everyone to compete in a level playing field, and thereby ensure equality of opportunity.
Perhaps, your real objection is the narrow and inappropriate mislabeling of people caused by measuring talent and intelligence with the wrong tools. This, I agree.
the issue isn’t about meritocracy per se, but with how it is as practised here.
The problem with meritocracy here is it is permissible to cherry pick. In the west you take it as it is. Thats why you notice over here whenever you have an incident like JN scandal. They will always say move along. If you don’t move u r mob.And if u ask too many questions u r a subversive or someone who is not a team player.
The article is spot on. Meritocracy as it is practised here ignores the fundamental inequality in people’s backgrounds and circumstances. The smart son of a drug addict may go to the same school as the son of a minister (increasingly unlikely in Singapore thanks to “meritocracy”), but it is ludicrous to think that his inability to succeed has anything to do with a lack of talent.
Meritocracy is only meaningful where the playing field is level.
Also of course in Singapore your “merit” depends on how many times you can say “the PM is the smartest man in the world” in 1 minute.
In Singapore, if you cannot study, you have no merits. You will be stuck in demerit zone.
Meritocracy in Singapore means having very high regard for people with many degrees – see the calibre of MPs in parliament – at best mediocre, at worst, unfit to represent the people.
I believe what we have is called ‘elitocracy’.
@smallvoice585
Meritocracy/Mediocracy – false binary. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Meritocracy as practiced here gives rise to nothing but mediocrity and the rule of the Mediocre, which will devolve to the rule of the Crassly Incompetent.
A major issue with our meritocracy is that it assumes a level playing field at the outset, and denies the relevance of any peturbations in the playing field – to the extent of denying their existence; in practical terms, discrimination in favour of the entrenched elites.
The real problem, as I see it, is that our society is a virtualised technocracy cloaking itself in the finery of merit; virtualised in the sense that one need not possess actual techne to rise through the technocracy – one need only display the signs of possession of techne, and to tell one’s peers that one is a master. No one’s going to point it out, because everyone’s depending on it to get ahead.
A well argued article in my opinion. Lacks a bit of focus but I gather that the author’s main points are the uneven playing fields that meritocracies ignore and the redifinition of merit by a decidedly technocratic ruling elite.
I do not however feel that this is something we will be able to change in any of our generations. Unless of course more opposition voices enter parliament. We need people who also came from humble backgrounds but struggled through school and became self made entrepreneurs. Someone who was poor at mathematics or science (which many of our leaders aren’t) but made a living by starting a business or became an artist or a novelist even.
The only way out of our technocracy would be to redefine merit so a (much) broader segment our population can be regarded as talented. Not just engineers or science majors.
On a more positive note, Singapore’s brand of meritocracy has created many technical talents. The challenge now is removing entrenched definitions of merits in favour of new ones. Singapore’s long term survival would desperately depend on this.
Good Evening,
I enjoyed this well written article immensely.
Meritocracy is just another polite way of squeezing out the happy middle ground – it’s nothing more than a form of reductionism to drive out the grey zone and dumb down everything into a simplistic black & white format - in the mindscape of meritocracy defined by our custodians of power, it’s just another way of saying; you are either switched on or turned off; team player or troublemaker, agreeable or disagreeable, functional or dysfunctional, cooperative or malicious and with us or against us – so that the end of the day its just a big winnowing process.
If you go against them, they will either fix you or name and shame you.
But the litmus test is what do they end up with when cows come home? Nothing much if you ask me, as the main protagonist in The Great Gastby once said laconically, “Gats, you’re worth more than all of them lumped together” - the sums it all aptly.
The last time we tried to institutionalize this word – meritocracy – it was abused by Philip Yeo and we really need to ask ourselves what did he really produce after spending so much of tax payers money? A big fat nothing!
Thank you and do have a productive week ahead.
SD (Internet Liaison Officer of the Brotherhood – sponsored by the Interspacing Mercantile Guild)
I know this type of articles doesn’t get alot of hits – but thank you nonetheless. It was in every sense exceptional and a welcomed departure from what’s regularly served up as the meal of the day in TOC – do keep up the good work.
Best Wishes
SD
I like it as well. Btw, “Gats, you’re worth more than all of them lumped together!” That’s incorrect SD, Fitzgerald finally settled on, “Gatsby, you’re worth all of them and more.” He was referring to the hippocrisy of the American elite i.e old money. Your version was taken from the Atlantic Monthly which ran the series The Great American.
Meritorcracy for the rich because poor students were not given scholarship because it was limited and reserved for foreigners after awarding the minister’s own childrens and all out of taxpayer’s money. Poor Singaporeans worked hard to feed the rich and we were called lesser mortal by charles Chong – so much for meritorcracy.
Fantastic article. Well Written!
Do u think it is Meritocracy that our PM is a general and a PM becos of his outstanding abilities to serve the common people? So far, i only see him raising taxes.
Hey….you can always vote with your feet. If you ain’t liking what you are seeing….leave the comforts of home which you are seemingly just happy to lament and take the big leap and join the global community and start to fend for yourself….I mean really fend yourself by yourself for yourself. See if you will survive in this world – once you have done that – you may have earn the right to comment and probably come to realise that politicians are alike everywhere you go…manipulative and not much trustworthy than a used car salesman.
That’s what happen to people in power — they abuse it and they will continue to — trying to justify their actions by affirming to themselves that what they are doing is for the greater good of all. I was a Singaporean citizen by definition – but I chose to control my own destiny and made the difficult decision to get out of my comfort zone. If I fall it is my own undoing — and if I stand tall it is also my own doing. It is only after I had done what I done that I come to realise what it really means to be Singaporean – not one that needs to be told what I can or can’t do.
I am what I termed – self-exiled Singaporean – because I don’t agree with half the policies being implemented by the existing ruling power and I chose not to take part in it. Soon – someone is going to take notice that we are losing more than we can replenish it.
An excellent article and thought provoking but for me and my observations of LKY’s thinking, “Meritocracy in its true form benefit the less fortunate with hope of a level playing field at best but creates a cruel BEAST of a master RACE at worst.”
Life is not that simple Man. There are many cracks into which people fall for no fault of their own. meritocracy by all means….. But a civil society needs to have a heart for their fellow beings in need of a helping hand – whether it is their fault or not.
Meritocracy is only applied on the ordinary citizens,
the elites are excused, else why nobody is made accountable for the gigantic losses at Temasek and GIC. We remembered Tony Tan said they anticipated the financial tsunami coming, yet they went into trying to bail out UBS, Citigroup, Barclays,etc, with their eyes opened. And they call
Singapore works on meritocracy, and place so much pride on this lopsided concept, tweaking it according to their self interest.
When will people realise that “merit” can be bought ? Just check out the scholars of today. Before they used to be sons and daughters of taxi drivers and labourers. Today they are sons and daugthers of the rich who very obviously don’t need the financial help but crave the marketable glory. Mr Mah may have his sob story but how many sob stories have you heard from today’s scholars ? How far can your children go compared to the rich who can afford to purchase merit by way of enrichment tutors ?
Why is anyone surprised to see the top echolons of govt organisations becoming just a dynastic inheritance of the rich ?
11 siblings ? So what happened to the other 10 ? Are they all holding high position and earning million dollar salaries ? I wonder. If they are not, then they must be stupid/irresponsible/dysfunctional?
To me, the Singaporean system of meritocracy – ala the public scholarship system – is akin to giving someone who already can fly very well a Saturn V rocket to reach for the skies and ignoring those who can only walk on the ground.
The advantages given to those who have earned ‘merit’ are enormous. Level playing field? Hardly.
There is neither social justice involved here, nor is it egalitarian. Taken to its intellectual extremes, it is nothing than Social Darwinism – only the fittest survive, the rest can rot away.
“Unlike in singapore Some, like Mr Yusof, commit to homes more expensive than they can afford.
is there a cheap home in Singapore and affordable??)
Others sell their homes for cash to settle gambling or credit card debts, and end up on the beach.”
ops you forget to mention paying of sky high SP bills,water bills,taxes,gst, costly transportation, once you didn’t pay they send you a penalty $. they arrange for installment too. instead of usual paying of sp bills $100 you will pay $150. so they sell another thing to settle the gov debts too.
come on don’t poke singaporeans nose with their own fault always. does the poor can sign up credit card?? so the credit card issue goes to the rich for being too luxuries ending up in debts. what about the poor? what credit card they have? they mere can survive daily needs of food and yet paying bills after bills sky high. once they fall sick they have to returned home with more bills. does CDC really help?? we have seen it and have been to many CDC and whatever. they just not really what they seems to be on the TV advertisements.
so stop this shit on blaming Singaporeans and start to focus on what government had don for us. here is some of it.
increase gst
increase taxes
increase electricity charges
increase water charges
increase cost of HDB
increase transportation’s.
increase,increase,increase!!!
what they give.
peanuts package every few years before elections to cool of Singaporeans to vote them!!
increase hospital ,home bills cost by 50% and at the same time giving Singaporeans subsidies 0.5%. to show gov, lky and pap still love us and care for us.
last but not less……they give us singaporeans a HOT LINE number to call and go and cry out our pain knock our head on the wall provided by PAP and return to live as usual pay and pay.
@ all singaporeans 27 June 2010
true indeed. there’s no hope for them.
been voting pap for last few years but sad that will be
voting them out in coming election before lees familess squeeze my brain out.
lol i don’t wanna go to the hotline. later kana ask knock our head on the wall for not paying.