Goodbye to the Nanny?

It's the makings of a revolution. Until recently, Singapore embraced the discipline-oriented, Confucian approach to governing its people and educating its children. Like a nanny, the government preached about everything from who should have children to how often to flush the toilet. Teachers lectured students on the right answer to every question. There was little room for debate. But two years ago Singapore's leaders saw a crisis heading their way: though Singaporeans were becoming proficient at manufacturing high-tech goods, few people seemed to know how to even think about creating new technologies. Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew worried that lack of creativity would prevent the country from joining the Information Age. He launched a reform program and, without even a hint of irony, instructed schools to start being more creative.

The paradox is almost comical: a government known for its lack of tolerance for dissent was almost ordering people to loosen up. With thick packets of directives on how to teach creativity, officials promoted methods like teamwork, brainstorming and problem-solving in the classroom, getting away from the idea that there is only one correct answer. The top-down approach is on its way out. We must get away from the idea that it is only the people at the top who should be thinking, and the job of everyone else to do as they are told, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said at a Conference of Thinking in 1997. The government aims to teach children to think independently--but not rebelliously. To some, it seems an iffy proposition. The minute you teach people to think for themselves, they're not going to think the way you want, says one leading businessman.

It won't happen overnight. Singapore's students are still stressed out. Streamlining education by providing better facilities for brighter kids winnows out the losers as early as the age of 12 and students struggle with a crushing workload. Students' schoolbags are so heavy that the government created a task force a few years ago to recommend ways to lighten the load. One suggestion: pack fewer pencils. Educators are planning to introduce exams based on American SATs, which test analysis rather than knowledge. Spending on education has risen more than 30 percent since 1992 to almost $3000 per secondary student. The government is investing $1.2 billion in computers; by 2002, classrooms will have one for every two students.

That's the easy part. We are good at transmitting knowledge of technology. But how do you match technology with opportunity? says Education Minister Teo Chee Hean. Educators and entrepreneurs have drawn up a plan to cut students' workload by 30 percent. The key thing is to make more time for our students, says Teo. Time to think and play, the government hopes, will help students one day develop into creative workers.

The aim, above all, is to raise economic competitiveness. The government has established five new programs with US universities--engineering with MIT, medicine with Johns Hopkins and management with Wharton, the University of Chicago and France's European Institute of Business Administration (Insead). Singapore hopes they will help spread innovative thinking to local schools, too, and wooed the universities aggressively. The University of Chicago considered setting up in Hong Kong until Singapore offered tax-free status and funding for start-up costs.

A year from now, Singaporean students will start studies in the University of Chicago's tile-roofed, Chinese courtyard house, carefully restored to its original ornate style. But inside, the classrooms will look exactly like the American business school. Small teams of students will brainstorm in intimate classrooms built to teach people how to think, says Bill Kooser, associate dean at Chicago's Graduate School of Business, not what to think.

Demand for the creative approach is burgeoning. Peter Low, a crusader for reform, teaches at primary schools, colleges and major corporations. In his classroom, earnest businessmen listen intently. Creativity's not just for the guy in RD, says Low, jabbing the air and cracking jokes throughout the class. He arranges marbles on a projector tray into a circle. The goal of our education has been to form our thoughts into a pattern, he says, scattering the marbles. Our goal is to try to come up with a pattern no one has ever seen before.

Those marbles could one day haunt Singapore's leaders, who have built the city-state's economy with a successful combination of development and authoritarian rule. Skeptics think tinkering with education just to create a more productive society is missing the point. This very economic definition of education [undermines] any real attempt at creativity and maximizing one's ability, says Chua Beng Huat, a sociologist at Singapore's National University.

Singaporeans say they don't want to lose the discipline that has helped their students shine. We want to become a knowledge-based economy, says Teo, the Education minister. Some people think that light only emerges when there is chaos. I don't think so. If we are completely uncontrolled, then we are not going to get ideas. Can the government produce creative thinkers who are also obedient? At Crescent School, the squeaky-clean girls jump to their feet respectfully when a visitor appears; embarrassed administrators wave to them to continue with their studies. Who knows, Singapore's future graduates may one day outgrow their nanny.