A mathematical look behind the curtain of meritocracy in Singapore.
by A’qil
Cover: National Language Class, 1959 (by Chua Mia Tee, oil on canvas)
The idea behind the Singaporean society is maddeningly simple if you look past the smoke and mirrors. To our core, meritocracy runs it all — the idea that our work determines our rewards in life. To be hardworking, smart or cunning, that is the only way forward in our society. Either that or you won the birth lottery and can sit comfortably atop the toil of generations before you (which actually if you think about it for more than two seconds, already betrays the very meaning of what it is to be meritocratic). To many of us, that is what meritocracy is and continues to be: a system that has structured Singapore since her birth and brought us much reward globally and locally.
Competition is great for social progress! Or rather, that is what we’ve been told by our parents, our grandparents and probably some random Grab driver uncles too. “Work hard, study hard, then ok already! Go to good school, get good job then dun need worry in life one.” It’s probably way easier to believe them, especially if they appear to have reaped the benefits of our systems. The conclusion about meritocracy can be easily drawn up for those who weren’t handed the short end of the stick after all.
As someone who doesn’t accept wholesale what our elders might sometimes ramble about, I thought I’d write an analysis of the system I grew up in. This may of course, be very different for kids growing up now as our system has evolved, and I’ll do my best to be cognizant of this! This article is not an attempt to glorify or discredit meritocracy but to understand the cogs and gears of it. To add some depth to my (very amateur-ish) analysis, I wanted to borrow some ideas from mathematics, particularly from the field of game theory — which always lends itself handy to the study of social computing and economics. Meritocracy is, as most other socioeconomic systems, very dynamic with certain strengths, contradictions and certain natural thresholds that emerge, which vastly change the outcomes of it.
To begin, we have to go back to the very start of it all. The fight for our first wins.
Every Singaporean kid learns early that major exams are the biggest indicators of the paths we will take in life. Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) determines secondary school. Your secondary school determines your streaming and your O/N-level odds of success. O-levels determines your junior college or polytechnic and so on. This effective chaining of one win to another (or conversely, one loss to another) is what pressurises many kids and even their parents to make the very best out of the first touch point — PSLE. When I was growing up, I remember that my parents, like many of my friends’ parents, did not fuck around when it came to my PSLE. So, naturally I didn’t fuck around too.
Officially, this academic rite of passage to chart our own success story, where the best at each stage and test advance, is the one true Singaporean arc of life. It appears fair and potentially the most socially optimal way to promote some healthy competition in our society.