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Strategic Conversations on Education
Being a member of a School Advisory Committee, I recently spent an engaging morning with school leaders and partners exchanging views on preparing students for an unknown future.
As I reflect on the conversations and juxtapose that with the macro trends impacting Singapore, I realize that if we focus on preparing our students for future jobs in Singapore, we would have failed them as this is the wrong problem statement.
The advent and proliferation of digitalization necessitate that Singaporeans compete in the global market — both in Singapore and as expatriates. Doing this will require a generation of Singaporeans who are imbued with additional (and often different) knowledge, abilities, and mindsets from what we currently teach in our schools.
I believe it is no longer sufficient for Singaporeans to be “the big fish in the small pond.” Singaporeans need to be able to not only survive but thrive in the big pond. Just like how our G pushes our local companies to go international, we should also push our talents to do the same. And this starts with tweaking our education syllabus.
Hence, the correct problem statement should be “how do we prepare our students to be global employees ….”
