Singapore's main newspaper, The Straits Times, today reports that when a local girl with excellent high school results chose to enrol in Carleton College, her friends were surprised she did not choose a big-name university. But she is glad she went to Carleton. I am not surprised.
My wife, who teaches in a college in Calcutta (Kolkata), and I have visited our son who is at a liberal arts college in America. We also visited him when he spent a semester at a leading British university last year.
His liberal arts college seems better in so many ways. The classes are smaller, there is more interaction between teachers and students, there are jobs on campus. My son won't be coming home for his summer holidays because he has been offered an internship in a city not far from his college town.
And the education he is getting is much more wide-ranging. Because he is at a liberal arts college, he has to take courses in various disciplines. Though he is doing a double major in science and technology, he also has to read the social sciences and humanities. That is how he has come to like economics. For his political science course, he had to subscribe to the New York Times. He has had to write papers in English which were not only beyond me but even impressed my wife, who teaches English.
But in ever practical Singapore, people might ask, isn't it better to specialise? Well, liberal arts college graduates may go on to further studies, or they may work for a few years and then do their masters. What they gain is a rounded education which gives them a perspective that those who specialise from the undergraduate level are not likely to have unless they are very curious, which could distract them from their studies and result in poor grades.
One could say it is better to specialise and build a successful career than acquire a rounded education and a so-called better "understanding" of the world, which is not the same thing as street smarts.
I agree: a liberal arts college education is not for everybody. I am not being snooty. One can go through some of the world's best universities without getting a liberal arts college education.
This is an education based on the premise of creating Renaissance men and women which seems too ambitious today when knowledge is expanding exponentially, branching into new areas and disciplines that were inconceivable when the Renaissance ideal was born.
But one needs to understand science, know a bit of economics, and be able to write. A liberal arts college graduate should have no problems with all this.
I am not sure, however, whether Singapore is the right place for a liberal arts college.
A liberal arts college encourages openness and a questioning spirit which are not very evident in Singapore.
How Singapore edits Wikipedia
Everyone knows there's self-censorship in the Singapore media.
But the censorship extends even to Wikipedia!
A personal detail about a Singapore minister, who is currently in the news, was removed from Wikipedia recently.
I remember seeing that detail earlier. But when I checked his biography again in Wikipedia two days ago, it was no longer there.
However, anyone who can log in to Wikipedia can still see that detail by checking the page's history.
I have never edited Wikipedia myself, but one doesn’t have to be an editor to go through a Wikipedia article’s history and see the changes made.
It was such a minor detail which did not reflect badly at all on the minister, who is very capable.
So why remove it?
Maybe it was wrong: I have never seen it in Singapore newspapers. But just because it is not mentioned in the papers does not mean it was wrong. There is self-censorship in the media.
I have no doubt, however, that if there were greater openness a liberal arts college would be good for Singapore.
But it might not be a good idea to start a liberal arts college as an adjunct to one of the three Singapore universities. An education committee is exploring that option, says the Straits Times, because it fears people may not be willing to pay the high fees necessary for a college with a low student-teacher ratio.
Singapore universities, though ranked among the world’s best, are huge, big things. They are the exact antithesis of liberal arts colleges. If there is going to be a liberal arts college at all, it should be independent. Only that way can it develop an identity of its own.
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