Singapore was NOT a fishing village in 1965

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://therealsingapore.com/content/...g-village-1965

Mislabelling Singapore as a fishing village in 1965 is not only factually wrong, it also gives the PAP way too much credit for the kind of economic transformation they have delivered post-independence. What the PAP inherited in 1965 was a city that was already had very good infrastructure - from a well run civil service (police, education, hospitals etc), public utilities (water, electricity, drainage), a thriving port, a transport network (an excellent national road network complete with a public transport system), to a business community that had already achieved great success.

This was a process that started back in 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles first landed in Singapore - that was when the story started, not 1965! Driven by the success of entrepôt trade, the port of Singapore was already one of the world's most prominent ports before WW2 - given its strategic position at the southern most point of mainland Asia, making it a natural place for ships to make a stop en route between East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines etc) and India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and beyond.

The key factor was in fact the building of the Suez Canal in Egypt. Once the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Singapore lay directly on the route from Europe to Asia. In the minds of the locals and the British Colonial Office, it had now become firmly anchored as an integral part of the British colonial chain in Asia.

What you can deliver depends so much on what you are given - let me give you an example. When I was serving national service, I gave private tuition to some students (a very Singaporean thing indeed). I had a whole range of students: from the RJC student who was determined to get a distinction for his Economics 'S' paper to the poor kid from a neighbourhood JC who was struggling to pass 'A' level Economics.

Needless to say, I had an easy time with that RJC student as we were having mostly philosophical debates about economics - he didn't need help really, he just needed someone to challenge him in a way to develop more innovative ways to approach the subject. Whereas with the neighbourhood JC kid, I did what I could but to no avail. The RJC student did get his 'S' paper distinction (he had brilliant results and went on to be a scholar) and the neighbourhood JC kid failed his economics exam - what is the conclusion? Depending on whom you ask, they will either tell you I was a great tuition teacher or an awful tuition teacher. Do you know what made the difference in those two students?


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