Singapore's system of talent production: the paradox of success

In Singapore, uniquely talented persons often find themselves in a very strange situation due to the success of the meritocratic system here. In this entry, I am not suggesting that Singapore does not value 'talent'; it certainly does and in fact puts in great effort to cultivate talent....

But in my view, the 'system' in Singapore has been too successful in churning out 'talent'. Everywhere we go, we hear about Singaporeans with a string of A's under their belts or high scores for standardized tests. The paradoxical effect of our success is that individual 'young and uniquely' talented persons are often not considered to be unique, for they are now hidden within the talent-crowd comprising talent of varying degrees of excellence, passion, and dispensibility. As a result, a prodigy-in-the-making with great passion in his chosen field may very well be treated as any 'ordinarily talented' person.

So, while I agree that 'talent' in the collective sense is valued, I feel that individual young and uniquely talented persons (henceforth called 'young potential supertalent') may not be so valued, and what I mean is this: instead of being singled out and groomed further to realize their fullest potential in their chosen field, quite often, these people with potential to go far in their fields are overlooked. (Old, established, and proven 'supertalent' such as Nobel Prize winners of course need not worry, since risk-averse Singaporean bosses are always reassured by tried and tested products.)

Consider the common view in Singapore that there is a replacement for anybody no matter how outstanding he appears. Consider also the unfazed reaction when many bosses and managers in many Singapore organizations encounter outstanding young individuals - there is often no outward expression of being impressed at all. The nonchalant or even occasionally aloof treatment comes across as a non-verbal message to the young potential supertalent, hinting to him that all his achievements are 'not a big deal' at all; and thus he feels slighted. The impression that bosses and managers have is that there are numerous Singaporean first class honours or summa cum laude graduates, masters degree holders, PhDs, artists, writers, academics, and other professionals around....Surely one less wouldn't make a difference? And furthermore, if the person later became a globally recognized figure in his field, we can always reclaim him as a 'prodigal son', can't we?

This is a kind of culture in Singapore, which may have a negative effect of creating disillusionment in the young potential supertalent who perceive the system as one that fails to recognize their great potential to go far in their fields - their uniqueness. Flooded with hordes of straight-A's graduates, quite a lot of organizations in Singapore have lost their ability to identify the young potential supertalent and differentiate them from those who are merely ordinarily good. This does not mean that they do not wish to be able to do so, but merely that they find it increasingly difficult or even impossible to do so because on the surface, everybody looks quite talented!

Some may feel that as long as these young potential supertalent still live on and pursue their trades, who cares if they are disillusioned? They may further reason that even if we lose one outstanding local talent, we can always seek a foreign replacement. I think that sometimes there is no replacement if the talented local person is a 'one of its kind' (sui generis). After all, history has shown that there is only one Chopin, one Michaelangelo, and one Einstein. I also suspect that there is a consolatory kind of thinking that even if a young potential super-talent is disenchanted and upset, then maybe he can do better work because of his frustration! After all, many geniuses were very depressed and disillusioned people. So the impression is that depression might bring about excellent work: correlation is thus confused with causation.

In every field, if we fail to cherish, promote and support the next generation of Singaporean 'young potential supertalent' now, they will be hindered from reaching their fullest potential, and their path to global fame will be greatly slowed down. Singapore has done a good job of supporting some important fields, such as life sciences, engineering, computer science and so on, but I feel that it can do a bit more in certain other fields...

One might argue that if the flower is of a particular species, it will look beautiful no matter what, and hence there is no need for extensive support. But this argument fails to recognize that there is a subtle but significant difference between a wilting flower that still manages to look nice in the normal way, and a fully blossomed flower that looks spectacularly captivating because of special nurturing. A painful process of struggle does not create talent; many people succeed not because of the lack of support for what they do (financially, emotionally, institutionally, etc), but in spite of it. Bread and butter issues do distract people, as one episode of the Chinese television series 'Zheng Ban Qiao' (the Artist) shows. Some struggle is fine, but too much struggle wastes the precious time of the talented person who could have started contributing to his chosen field much earlier.

At this point, one might ask this question, 'How do we identify the young potential supertalent then?' Unfortunately, this is not always easy. But it is precisely because of this difficulty of identifying them in advance that Singapore needs to view every person who is 'quite talented' as an individual with potentially great contributions to make in his field - that is, with due respect despite his youth, and with the working assumption that he may one day go really far indeed....

In an era when Singapore has successfully churned out so many people with good grades and apparent flair in various fields, the task of identifying and nurturing the young potential supertalent is made much more challenging. The success of the meritocratic system in producing students with many A's has made the task of identifying those who can go really far in their fields much trickier. And it is precisely because of this reason that we must not end up thinking that people in our talent pool are all 'talented in the same ways', as though they are interchangeable and easily replaceable commodities. If we end up doing so, we would have failed to understand what the psychologist Dean Keith Simonton calls 'the origins of genius'.