“Rags to Riches”:
A Fantasy Too Good to be True (Singapore Case Study)
“To build a democratic society, based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity, and progress for our nation” — An Excerpt of the Singapore National Pledge
Meritocratic Dystopia
Singapore has come a long way from Stamford Raffles’ very first arrival in the island in the 18th century:from the historic unification with the Federation of Malaya in 1963, followed by Lee Kuan Yew’s famous cry announcing that Singapore was ousted from the Federation a year and a half later, to becoming Southeast Asia’s financial hub and cultural melting pot in the 21st century. The global community sings praises of Singapore’s road to progress, for its effort to build a state from the third-world to the first-world country. This is the story always told in Singapore, exemplified in 2000 when Lee Kuan Yew published his book titled From a Third World to First, highlighting his uphill battle in building Singapore to what it had become.
One must admit Singapore would not achieve its status without Lee Kuan Yew’s perseverance to lift Singapore out of slums in despair as he knew the country he loved would be doomed if he did nothing about it. This is the shining example of meritocracy, an ideology that can be simplified by using the famous quote popularized by pro basketballer Kevin Durant when he received the Most Valuable Player award in 2015, “Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.” It refers to the social system in which merit, defined by a certain competence of proof of achievement, is highly regarded in the society (Kim & Choi, 2017). In theory, this society encourages individuals within it to work earnestly to achieve success so that everyone, regardless of race, language, or religion, could compete on equal terms. Singapore has always endorsed this concept (Ng, 2010) as “A level playing field” for all Singaporeans. In reality, however, this shines a light on how the privileged manage to exploit this system to achieve their goals given their vast resources at their arsenal while the unfortunates have much fewer opportunities, causing them to be pushed further from their desired achievements.
Meritocracy: A Satire Taken Too Seriously
Meritocracy gives a false sense of security for the underprivileged as they think that they actually have a “decent chance” to take the shot “as long as they work hard,” thus creating a glimmer of hope that they can be successful as the wealthy counterparts. Polastri and Truisi (2017) illustrate that meritocracy creates a sense of acknowledgment of their self-value and abilities which incentivise them to improve their performance. Furthermore, they also explain that the environment created by this society is safe as they feel more confident about themselves due to society’s fair judgment, therefore encouraging individuals to achieve their desired success.
However, meritocracy was not meant to be worshipped in the first place. Michael Dunlop, the author who coined the term in his book “The Rise of Meritocracy”, described meritocracy as a doomed society. In his book, Dunlop explains in 2033, when society has adopted it as a standard norm, “Social inequality is justified” as “The rich and powerful are encouraged by the general culture and become arrogant. The poor are demoralised.” In reality, the privileged already have a headstart in achieving success and it also creates social jealousy between classes. Meanwhile, the poor remain at the bottom and continue their perpetual poverty cycle. Despite the sarcasm by the founder of the term in his book, people worship this idea due to that false sense of security and acknowledgment.
Meritocracy Has a Price Tag: Singapore’s Embellished Story
Does anyone know how much Singapore worships this system? During Raffles Institution’s 196th Founders Day, then minister of education Ong Ye Kung persisted meritocracy remains one of the crucial ideologies for recognising Singaporeans although class stratification and elitism had been discussed intensely as dire consequences of its over glorification (Straits Times). The love for this system stems from the 1950s when the late S. Rajaratnam, one of the founders of Singapore’s ruling party People’s Action Party, sought to entrench this ideology to his civil service. He believed paper qualifications were not sine qua non for promotion. Officers should be promoted based on their performance. One shall admit, Singapore would not be where they are without the perseverance, grit, blood, and tears of the founders to bring it to success. In particular, this is all thanks to Singapore’s late Lee Kuan Yew, who strived so hard to ensure progress. His perseverance in building Singapore to its current state instilled the same belief to all Singaporeans through the education system.
Although Singapore becomes one of the most prosperous countries in Southeast Asia, this system comes at a cost. Singapore is one of the most unequal countries in Southeast Asia. ASEAN (2018) shows the Gini coefficients between member states from 2007–2016. It is found that Singapore’s coefficient is always the highest among countries.
Despite reaching a record low on its coefficient earlier this year at 0.398 after government tax, it is comparable to Indonesia and Malaysia in 2016. This is not supposed to happen as Singapore swears by their pledge to build a society “based on equality” however they are as unequal as their developing neighbours. The survey conducted by Ipsos (2020) accentuates this sentiment as 79% of Singaporeans at least agree that Singapore’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful. This shows that despite adopting meritocracy to ensure equal chances, a clear majority still believes that the game is fixed. The distrust of Singaporean citizens in their supposedly “meritocratic” system, in a nation where this is in fact propagated as a core value, should show that meritocracy is, to a certain extent, a mere myth.
Furthermore, echoing what Dunlop previously mentioned, meritocracy in Singapore breeds elitism. Since this system rewards individuals based on their talent, ability, experience, and other forms of merit, this creates the selected few to feel justified in their feeling of superiority, as they are comparably better than the majority. Even worse, they might feel that they ultimately deserve the fruits of what actually stems from privilege, confusing it for some innate quality that grants them more “merit” than others. Given this inherited power from the institution, they will exploit the ruling minority (Tan, 2008). For example, top junior colleges are labeled as the elite schools due to its low O-Level cut-off point (minimum O-level point to be admitted into the school). Admitted to the country’s best schools, some students will feel they are better than the rest even though they receive multiple bits of help from their private tuitions. Therefore, instead of achieving the system’s original purpose, this creates social jealousy among citizens, furthering the existing disparity between the privileged and the unfortunate when it is supposed to close it.
In addition, other forms of privileges actually do play a part in forming an individual into a “successful” one in this society. In Singapore’s case, being the majority definitely helps one achieve success in that particular country. Chinese make up 76 percent of the citizens while the other 24 percent make up the other three races; Malay, Indian, and Eurasian. Since the founding fathers were predominantly of chinese descent, the government had always proposed policies that catered to the majority. For example, in 1979, Special Assistance Plan policy was introduced by the government to preserve best Chinese-stream schools to develop students with chinese values while madrasahs did not get the same treatment. What was worse was that then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong questioned madrasah’s quality by controversially asking the citizens during May Day rally in 2000 whether “…you want them to grow up all being religious teachers and religious preachers, or do you want them to be trained in IT, to be engineers, doctors, architects, professionals?”, showing distrust towards the Malay-stream schools in developing “proper” individuals. The racial preference by the government grows minorities’ insecurities whenever they want to apply for a job. Azura McIlraith, a minority, even had to take mandarin as her mother tongue because her parents felt that she would have a better future if she was fluent in it.
Singapore’s case proves that merit and privilege are not two completely separate ideas. There is a clear correlation between the two; the higher one’s socioeconomic status (SES), the higher the privilege, and thus the easier it is to achieve defined merits. Sirin (2005) studied 101,157 students, 6,871 schools, and 128 school districts in the United States and exactly proves that “…Parents’ location in the socioeconomic structure has a strong impact on students’ academic achievement.” We can surely observe that privilege quickly compounds and builds up: Fast internet access, tuitions, and others matter a lot in developing an individual to be successful. And besides economic means other privileges such as caring and supportive parents, along with access to networks and opportunities are also luck-factors which surely drive what will eventually become judged as “merit”. People at low SES are terribly disadvantaged, even in merit-based systems (and perhaps even because of it). Privilege and merit are, in fact, not mutually exclusive.
Lust for Hardwork: Indonesians’ Romanticisation towards Merit
Despite the alarming social divide and jealousy between citizens, the government did admit that it was a problem and has tried its hardest to cater to the lower socioeconomic status.
Indonesians, however, tend to not acknowledge the inequality issue behind merit. They instead degrade and despise those people who are not successful because they do not work hard enough. However, unbeknownst to them, those despicable humans are trapped in a systemically perpetuating poverty cycle. World Bank (2015) estimates a slim majority (52 percent of respondents) of Indonesians believe that it is easy for people to improve their economic status through hard work while the remaining respondents (41 percent) think that while it is difficult, it is still doable.
Overall, as the embodiment of meritocracy, Singapore is supposed to be the perfect subject of how anyone can succeed irrespective of their background. However, this ideology instead benefits the privileged as they have more excess resources to achieve the end of the tunnel while the poor remain blinded. This magnifies the flaw of meritocracy: it does not, by itself, create equal opportunity for all classes. Instead, it tends to increase the gap between the top and bottom. This bears two questions: if Singapore’s society is not perfect, does that mean meritocracy fails? Yet we must acknowledge that their success was in part due to this ethos. And further, if privilege is a surefire tool to success, why should we still believe in hard work? Even worse, should we blame ourselves for our failures in a harsh world that pretends of fairness while blindsiding us with privilege disparities at every turn? Alain de Botton argues that this is an unjustified way to view the world, and even more, a terribly unfair way to view ourselves, and our own accomplishments, in relation to that world. In his talk, “A kinder, gentler philosophy of success”, he lambasts self-help books and success-story peddlers who attribute success and failure wholly to one’s individual merits and faults, instead promoting a humbler disposition to view ourselves when we are on top, and a kinder eye towards those at the bottom. For in the end, life is but a game of cards, and pure chance determines a great deal of the outcomes. To realize truly “meritocratic” society (if that is even possible), or at the very least a fairer society, we must first realize this somber truth, and take solace in it; that none of us really have any “merit” over others, or deserve it. We play a damned game in this world, and in return we should really try to face this with more kindness and empathy instead of judgment and self-importance.
Author: Christian Anugerah
Editor: Miftah Rasheed, Yoshua Caesar, & Tasya Salensia
Illustrator: Rizki Fajar
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