The author provides many evidences to point out the negative impacts of meritocracy in societies of developed countries. Besides that, he also discusses about the challenges due to the overuse of meritocratic system that Singapore’s government is facing. There several solutions that have been carried out by the government and social organisations such as the Association for Early Childhood Educators (AECES) to cushion the impacts of inequality caused by the meritocracy in educational system in Singapore.
I do agree with the author’s view that a meritocratic educational system is contributing to the rapid development of Singapore from a third world country to a close-to first world country within 40 years. It is significant to say that Singapore has succeeded in developing economically and socially because of its strong belief and implementation of meritocracy. Meritocracy has formed a firm foundation of the development in terms of the quality and ability of policymakers, working capability of people in the country. This ensures the governance of the country to be effective and efficient and the people of the country to stay competitive in the globalised world economy. One example would be that Singapore remains in top 3 positions for the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) since 2009. GCR is a yearly report published by the World Economic Forum. The report assesses the ability of countries to provide high levels of prosperity to their citizens. This means Singapore is considered to be a country highly active in global economic activities and the people enjoy a high degree of standard of living because of their high productivity in the economic area. Therefore, meritocracy helps Singaporeans to constantly develop their intellectual and economic abilities to adopt to the fast changing global economy. At the same time, ensuring the improvement in the social well-being of the people.
I agree with the author’s point which states that a meritocracy-based educational system brings about social inequality due to the slowdown of the social mobility. The most significant impact of meritocracy is to develop a high and constant degree of social mobility. However, as the society has experienced the inter-generational social mobility, people in that society will be more aware of how crucial is meritocracy being the path to achieve success. Hence, the winners in the meritocratic system will try their best to support their children along the meritocratic path. This leads to an unequal starting point between the winners, or elites, will have more resources and privilege to benefit their children’s education, for examples, preferential primary school admission for the children of alumni and a lower PSLE cut off score for affiliated school. In comparison, children who are less advantaged will have to work harder to achieve better grades than the former in order to reach the same standard of education. This inequality in starting points leads to a greater disparity in level and quality of education among children with different financial background will receive. For instance, statistics shows that only one in eight undergraduates in public universities come from low-income families. This may imply that the meritocratic educational system is not fair to all students and the opportunities for less advantaged to pursue higher education are comparatively lower than children from affluent families. Therefore, meritocracy is accentuating the gap between the rich and poor and this will slow down the social mobility in society.
As we have mentioned about the problems brought by the meritocracy, we need to find out feasible and manageable solutions to cushion the negative influence of meritocracy in society. The government has started off by offering financial aid to ensure resources reach to less advantaged students so they do not have to worry about costs education. However, the provision of financial aid by the government is limited. The most effective solutions would be to open and diverse the system by providing more platforms for success. Also, the more privileged should take initiatives to help the less privileged to ensure Singapore’s brand of meritocracy remains compassionate, fair and inclusive.
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