Beyond A

The meaning of learning should go beyond A. In a knowledge economy, it may be difficult to tell what useful (youyong有用) is and what useless (wuyong 无用) is. Take the learning of Chinese language, for example, is it useful or useless? Have we pre-forecasted the emergency of China, we might not change our education and language policy so drastically in the past.

We really have to look beyond “A for Uncle Ernest” (Lee Wei Ling, Sunday Times 13 June 10). The learning of GP should go beyond scoring A, but acquiring general knowledge in life. If you are only interested to score A, then A is your limit and whatever wuyong will not be in your mind. You will end up learning less and do not know the usefulness of wuyong.

It is hard to convince Singaporeans the “useless” Chinese language is in fact useful in life. The Chinese philosophy emphasizes a lot on “uselessness” and emptiness. It is because of “wuyong” then it makes the meaning of “youyong”. If an empty glass is full, it is useless. Only when it is empty, it can then contain water. Similarly, if the room is full, one will never able to put in more furniture.

There is also a debate among Chinese whether one should study books on Chinese philosophy (jingdian 经典). If you have an empty stomach, jingdian is useless. You better find a job to make a living. Jingdian is good when you have maintained a living and look for higher achievement in life or towards a meaning life. Singapore has one of the highest income per GNP in the world. If we want to progress further, we need to go beyond scoring A, and learn from the jingdian and make use of the “uselessness”. This is especially important to our younger population.

Our young and future leaders will have to think and make use of “wuyong”. There are some universal values of Chinese philosophy, thoughts, ways of doing things etc that they have to learn, be it in Chinese or English language, to make Singapore more competitive in the world. As a leader, he or she has to create “youyong” from “wuyong” just like our past achievements in solving our lack of resources problems. That was how we built our Changi airport, enlarged Jurong Island, and Marina South.

Perhaps, MOE has already recognized this. Even though the language environment is not in our favour, MOE is still trying to use English to teach Chinese. But really, the learning of Chinese should go beyond mastery of the few hundreds Chinese characters. Knowing the meaning behind the words will tell you how to make use of “wuyong” and become “youyong”.

We don’t have natural resources but we survive. For this, we thank our western friends. We learn from them how to develop our economy, build industrial estates, establish financial centre, airport, seaport, MRT, even casinos. We are now in solar energy initiatives, bio-medical, underground and nuclear power possibility. All these are “youyong”, or another word the practical consideration – the “yang” forces.

Most of the recommendations from the Economic Strategic Committed are the “yang” forces. The Committee did suggest some “yin” forces, like arts, media, cultural centres etc. Again, these ideas are generated from a western perspective. Have we considered the direction and creation of Jap wave, Korean wave and the future Han and Indian waves? Generally, it is difficult to identity the “yin” forces. Not to mention we have putting too much attentions on “yang” forces.

The world has now changed. Confucius Institute is ballooning in the world. China is spreading her soft power. One should not narrowly think that the Institute is only teaching Confucius thoughts and philosophy. The Confucius Institute covers the teaching of Chinese language, culture and traditions. In fact, Confucius is more towards “yang” forces, one has to know Laozi, Yijing, Buddhism and many others to have a full picture of Chinese ways of doing thing. Not only China is doing that. One of the 2006 Ma ying-jeou presidential election agendas is to promote the Taiwanese version of Chinese language and culture to the world.

With the help of Confucius Institute, more people in the world will know about the wuyong and youyong, the change in ying and yang, and their implication and application in business and politics. Young Singaporeans wanting to be future leaders of Singapore will have to take up the challenge of learning the wuyong Chinese. They can then use the knowledge to help others to upgrade, to improve life of Singaporeans. This is the duty of an intellectual (shi 士).

Scoring A is only fulfilling the “youyong” and making use of the “yang” forces. In order to help Singapore to sustain growth, our future leaders whether in politics, culture, intellectual, or business will have to make sacrifices to learn, understand and make use of the “wuyong”, or the “ying” forces. The brightest young people in Singapore, please, take up the challenge for your country!