Meritocracy mustn't lead to 'winners' thinking 'losers' don't deserve help: Sun Xueling

SINGAPORE - One possible unintended consequence of Singapore’s meritocracy is that those who have succeeded in the system may develop a sense of entitlement, said Minister of State for Social and Family Development Sun Xueling.

These “winners” may believe that their success is fully earned because of their capabilities and effort, and that the “losers” do not deserve help because they did not put in enough effort for themselves, she said on Tuesday (Nov 15).

Ms Sun, who is also Minister of State for Home Affairs, was speaking to 90 students from Singapore’s pre-tertiary institutions and institutes of higher learning at a dialogue session at Singapore Polytechnic in Dover.

These are misconceptions, she said, because there are so many factors behind one’s success or failure.

She added: “We must guard against the breeding of this sense of entitlement, and instead grow a culture of collective responsibility.”

The dialogue session, which focused on refreshing meritocracy and strengthening social mobility, is part of the Forward Singapore movement, an initiative by Singapore’s 4G government leadership to refresh the country’s social compact.

The students, who are between 19 and 26 years old, were split into smaller groups to share their reflections and ideas on the topics before talking about them with the rest of the room.

Speaking to The Straits Times on the sidelines of the event, second-year Ngee Ann Polytechnic student Claudia Selvakumar, 20, said her group discussed social mobility and how people who have not done well early on may harbour the belief that they are incapable of contributing to society.

Her group also discussed how such people may face stigma and discrimination, and may end up living in social bubbles, unable to imagine other ways of living, she said.

[[nid:219427]]

Ms Selvakumar, who is studying community development, said: “That’s where we should come in to support them and let them know that their backgrounds shouldn’t be a limiting factor.”

She said she has also felt the same way after going to the Institute of Technical Education after her N-level exams. She added that she often compared herself with her elder sister, who did well academically and got a government scholarship to study in a university.

Mr Torance Tan, 18, who has completed his studies at St Joseph’s Institution, said Singapore is lucky to have started off on a solid base of mutual respect among its ethnic groups and among people of different socio-economic statuses, but more can be done.

Mr Tan, who has applied to study law at university, said there is still a minority of people who discriminate against others for various reasons, including race, religion and social class.

But he said Singaporeans should try to deal with such people compassionately, instead of working with cancel culture, which he describes as toxic.

Cancel culture, or being “cancelled”, is a form of social ostracism which happens mostly online to people who are deemed or proven to have crossed social boundaries, such as being racist.

Closing the session, Ms Sun said there needs to be more recognition that early trauma or bad experiences such as domestic violence can have a long-lasting impact and can affect people’s behaviour in settings such as school.

Summing up her interactions with the young people during their group discussions, she said the students were invested in broadening Singapore’s definition of success, and that she was heartened to find them actively participating or thinking about solutions to the problems they had identified in the session.

But Ms Selvakumar said that while she found the discussions productive and engaging, more can be done to reach out to and include students who might not feel comfortable, or are not involved in such dialogues.

She said: “We are all here because we want to be here, but what about those who are not?

“They are the ones that need the most help and their viewpoints and suggestions are the ones we should be listening to most because they are also future leaders of Singapore. I believe that engaging the disengaged is important for the future.”

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.