Tag: CMIO

Chan Heng Chee Is Wrong – CMIO Categorisation Is Only PAP’s Tool To Subjugate And Discriminate Against The Minorities

Rilek1Corner,

As a Malay, I am insulted by the comments of the Ambassador-at-large Prof. Chan Heng Chee in http://rilek1corner.com/2015/10/05/singapore-ambassador-at-large-scrapping-cmio…. She want to defend the outdated CMIO categorisation that is her problem but what right does she have to say that scrapping it would cause so-called “unease” among minorities. She is Chinese. Not minority. Why she speaking like she macam faham?

Worse still, she say “The majority community doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s (with) the minority community (where) you have to keep emphasising it’s equal language, religion, culture (and) race”. She is trying to say what? Minority races are petty? Minority races always comparing themselves with the majority? That minority races always imagining inequalities and discrimination? Then the majority race very good not racist at all?

I want to say she is very wrong. She is from majority and she is elite. She doesn’t represent us. She ambassador she got talk to people on the ground in Singapore? Who make her expert on minority issue? She ambassador so what? Don’t mean everything she say is correct.

I tell you, don’t be blinded by what she say. This is only wayang for them. Like she say, the CMIO categorisation is a “signal” to the minority that “every race has the same standing” and that “their place in society has not been threatened”.

A signal. She knows reality is not like that. A signal because the categories are the PAP’s idea of what makes up the different communities, not what the communities really are. The categorisation is a construct that makes people fall within neat categories, that, most of the time, don’t fit them well. What is a Malay? Who is Malay? The rich cultural heritage of people that come together from different parts of the nusantara are lost because of this categorisation. Bawean, Bugis, Java, Johor, Aceh – so convenient all become Malay.

This easy categorisation benefits the PAP government, not us the people. Who knows in the future Filipinos also come under the categorisation because they can easily say that Filipinos and Malays share almost the same language and physical appearance. Even now Singaporean Chinese also cannot tell the difference until they hear the accent when we talk.

It is not ony a problem culturally. There are many legal effect on people too.

Just because you are categorised as Malay, you have lower chance of owning a HDB flat in a neighbourhood you desire. HDB ethnic quota also a problem when you want to sell your house. You go serve NS and chances are that you will be posted to Civil Defence instead of Commando. Why in Civil Defence no ethnic quota? Why the PAP government can be fine with the over-representation of Malays in CD?

Maybe you have not realise before but you should know now that the CMIO categorisation is a very convenient tool to discriminate against our community. To keep us economically backward, so that the majority elites can prosper.

The ambassador talk so much about the supra-ethnic identity but if the PAP government is really serious about forging a national identity after SG50, they should do away with the race categorisation. We will not lose our ethnic identities. Actually the opposite effect is we will explore our ethnic identities and be more in touch with it. There will be a more equal playing field. Our race will not be a factor when we decide to buy a house or when called up to serve NS. Only then will a true Singaporean identity emerge.

Danial

Reader Contribution

October 6, 2015
Singapore Ambassador-At-Large: Scrapping CMIO Race Categories ‘May Spark Unease Among Minorities’

Suggestions to scrap the traditional Chinese, Malay, Indian, Others (CMIO) categorisation may seem viable to young Singaporeans, but it would spark unease among the minority races even today, believes Professor Chan Heng Chee.

“The majority community doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It’s (with) the minority community (where) you have to keep emphasising it’s equal language, religion, culture (and) race,” the Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday (Oct 4).

“Every race has the same standing. It is very important going forward.”

Speaking at the Community Leaders’ Conference, Prof Chan, who was Ambassador to the United States for 16 years, added: “There’s a supra-ethnic identity we all share — we’re CMIO Singaporeans.”

This umbrella identity is created through housing, education and National Service policies, she pointed out. Singlish, for instance, is a unifying variant of English.

Taking a question from the floor on youths growing increasingly distant from their roots, Prof Chan acknowledged that young Chinese Singaporeans, for instance, would be “far less Chinese” than their elders.

But, the CMIO categorisation remains a “signal”, offering assurance to other races that their place in society has not been threatened. A new challenge to preserving racial and religious harmony, however, comes from the inflow of foreigners, she said.

“Some people say … we’re Singaporean Chinese and they’re PRC (People’s Republic of China) Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese. The rift is there,” she added.

Drawing on her experience in the US, Prof Chan pointed out that while Singaporeans complain about the accents of foreigners, the Americans do not. “The Americans don’t say, ‘You’re speaking Singlish. You’re not one of us,’” she said. “The challenge for us in Singapore is: How do we integrate the new citizens who’ve become part of our ethnic groups, and how do we make them feel Singaporean?”

Time could be a solution, she suggested. Over time, new citizens would pick up the values here, although she noted that the emergence of social media means they can also keep abreast of news and happenings in their hometown, which could impact integration.

Should they stick out as a separate community, it could lead to “new cleavages” in society, she said.

Another participant asked about the increasingly diverse slate of religions in Singapore, and if that changed the “balance” between racial and religious harmony.

Agreeing that there was increasing religiosity, Prof Chan said: “How do you make sure it does not attack another religion? … This is something that we have to watch out for.”

She added: “I’ll be quite frank here … it’s live and let live with LGBTs (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender), but it’s going to get more difficult because religious groups have attitudes. But, LGBTs are Singaporeans. How do you deal with that?”

As for the school environment, the splitting of classes according to pupils’ mother tongue could lead to a situation where students interact primarily within their own races, said Prof Chan.

“When all those who study Chinese are put in one class, so that their subjects make it easier for them to move around, you only have Chinese friends in your class … I think we could try to change some of that.”

Source: www.todayonline.com

October 5, 2015
Ho Kwon Ping: CMIO Categorisation A Hindrance To Cohesion

The traditional Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others (CMIO) categorisation should be dropped, so as to maintain cohesiveness in diversity, which is a challenge the Republic has to overcome in order to achieve its dreams in the next 50 years, said prominent businessman Ho Kwon Ping.

Such rigid categorisation hampers Singapore’s ability to deal with an increasingly vocal and diverse society, where there are multiple identities and more complex sub-ethnicities, he said, citing same-sex couples and intra-ethnic differences between immigrants and locals as examples.

“Race and class and a consensus on social issues are becoming increasingly complex and intertwined in Singapore,” said Mr Ho, who is executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings. He was addressing about 560 people including students, young working professionals and civil servants at his fifth and last lecture as S R Nathan Fellow, organised by the Institute of Policy Studies.

“The CMIO model … has helped to create common ground among those of different tongues and dialects, but it also has had the effect of oversimplifying the diversity that is our social mix,” he said. “How we define people often shapes how they behave, so the less we pigeonhole people, the more chances we have for a cohesive diversity.”

Mr Ho cited the example of New York City, where there is no fixed preconception of people. Despite their diversity, all New Yorkers love the city, he noted.

Similarly, Singaporeans must learn to embrace one another as individuals and not as categories, he said. “Without stereotypical expectations, we can accept and appreciate each person as different, but from whom we can learn new things.”

Mr Ho identified improving social mobility as another challenge.

Though a meritocratic system based on academic grades has served Singapore well in the past 50 years, the Republic is “in danger of being a static meritocracy that sieves people based only on a narrow measure of capability within single snapshots of time and, from there-on, creates a self-perpetuating elite class”.

Citing statistics on the backgrounds of those in prestigious schools and Public Service Commission scholarship recipients, and showing that the majority came from privileged families, Mr Ho said: “Ironically, the original social leveller and purest form of Singapore-style meritocracy — our educational system — may perpetuate intergenerational class stratification, rather than level the playing field.”

Affirmative action for disadvantaged groups is not a solution, because that would bring about “the start of an unending process of affirmative actions that will only demean and discredit our meritocracy in the long run”, he added.

While non-graduates can now take on jobs previously open only to graduates, Mr Ho said the Civil Service could do more to take the lead on social levelling.

For instance, the Administrative Service — the elite among public servants — should change its recruitment criteria, replacing academic pedigree with psychometric and other aptitude tests.

The third challenge for Singapore to overcome is in building a collaborative, and not paternalistic, governance style, said Mr Ho.

“However, such a government culture of participatory democracy can work only if the institutions of civil society can be actively engaged in decision-making,” he said, in calling for better access to information for civil society activists.

During the dialogue after his speech, questions on race and diversity dominated the proceedings. Members of the audience asked whether Singapore would go the way of New York City in becoming a cultural melting pot and whether the Republic was ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister.

Mr Ho expressed confidence that a more cohesive diversity would solidify in the coming years.

Citing the United States as an example, he said questions had also been raised on whether the country was ready for a black president, yet Mr Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

Meanwhile, Mr Bilahari Kausikan, Ambassador-at Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed as Mr Ho’s successor as S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore.

Source: www.todayonline.com

April 10, 2015
Eugene Tan: Do Away With Race-Based Annual Academic Data

Every year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) publishes data on how Singaporean students fared in the previous year’s national examinations; that is, for the Primary School Leaving Examination, and the GCE O- and A-Levels.

The data demonstrates the significant progress of Singaporean students over the past two decades. Last year, 95 per cent of the 2003 Primary One cohort proceeded to post-secondary education after 10 years of schooling.

Before last year, the annual releases were titled Performance by Ethnic Group in National Examinations. They are now titled 10-Year Trend of Educational Performance. However, the data remain primarily organised and broken down according to the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others (CMIO) racial classification.

Raising academic standards is a collective national effort. We should not allow success or failure to be perceived in racial terms when other factors such as socio-economic status are playing a larger role.

Such a routine public release of annual data on the major ethnic groups’ academic performances is likely to have the unintended consequence of reinforcing racial stereotypes, especially of the minority groups.

The MOE should replace the current practice of annual reporting of such data with periodic reporting every five or 10 years. As the ministry stated in its 2014 data release earlier this month, “year-to-year fluctuations are to be expected as each batch of students is different, so it is more meaningful to focus on longer-term trends over 10 years”.

In November 2012, I asked in Parliament whether the objective of providing feedback to the communities on their students’ academic performance can be achieved by a limited release at five- or 10-year intervals, when comparisons and analyses can be more meaningful and productive.

The MOE’s Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi replied that the annual release of data “enables the respective communities to monitor the effectiveness of their educational programmes, and recognise and celebrate their children’s achievements. There is also value in providing such information so that the community, ethnic self-help groups and the public can study the data and discuss areas for improvement”.

If ethnic self-help groups need the information annually to assess and tweak their programmes, the MOE can easily provide the data directly to them away from the public glare. But circumspection is needed with annual data, since such programmes take time to raise academic standards and performance.

PROVIDE DATA BASED ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS

To be sure, the data is of some use in examining educational performance trends. Yet, in presenting trends, such data are not necessarily better if they do not provide meaningful information, and this undermines the primary purpose of releasing it.

For example, the data show that Malay students, despite making the biggest improvement in mathematics, still do not fare as well as their non-Malay counterparts.

In 2004, 67.8 per cent of Malay students passed O-Level mathematics. The figure has hovered at around 70 per cent since 2009. The comparative figures for Chinese and Indian students were 93 and 80 per cent, respectively, last year. But these statistics do not tell us why some groups perform better than others.

This is not to mollycoddle some groups or to massage the facts of educational performance of the various races. Instead, greater attention and care should be put on the type and regularity of the information released, and how to release it in a measured way that will strengthen the efforts and self-esteem of groups that do not do so well.

How about publishing data on how students perform according to their socio-economic status (using proxies such as housing types and household income), which is more relevant than race in explaining and uplifting educational performance?

Is it not more likely the case that a non-Chinese student who needs help in mathematics would have more in common with his Chinese counterpart who also needs help in the same subject than with a fellow non-Chinese student who is doing well in mathematics?

Research has shown that academic performance is not simply a function of actual ability. It is affected by the shared beliefs that people hold about the performance and abilities of their own and other social groups, whether it is race, religion or gender.

Stereotypes are beliefs people have about different social groups, and how these beliefs affect our attitudes and abilities. Stereotype threat occurs in situations where people fear that their poor performance, when judged by or treated in terms of their race, fulfils a negative stereotype about their group. When people perceive a stereotype threat, they tend to underperform, thereby conforming to the stereotype.

Context matters, too, and affects how we view presented data. We have long imbibed the dominant meritocratic discourse, which often equates academic success with one’s individual ability and effort. Hence, education successes and failures are commonly framed and seen as resulting from factors originating outside our well-regarded education system.

The data are organised along race, but do particularistic factors such as race explain why a group lags behind academically, never mind the significant progress made?

In educational psychology, the cultural deficit model posits that some groups underachieve vis-a-vis the dominant majority group because their culture is disadvantaged in important ways — in skills, knowledge, and behaviour — which contributes to poor school performance generally.

At a time when the CMIO racial classification is less relevant with more inter-racial and international marriages, we must do away with racial stereotypes or notions of cultural deficits, because they undermine the very students we seek to help. Only then can our students develop to their full potential, unencumbered by the stereotypes and baggage of race, religion and language.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eugene Tan is associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University School of Law and a former Nominated Member of Parliament.

Source: www.todayonline.com

November 22, 2014