That divorces have not shot up is a tribute to the way traditional marriage values have survived.
Working mothers who do not spend enough time with their children, plus the break-up of the extended families – these two changes are the real dangers to the transmission of our traditional values, or culture. Unless both mother and father make time to inculcate the values and to shape the attitudes of their children, or enlist the help of grandparents, the children will acquire more of their values from outside the home, their peers. And these values may not be what they should be.
Another powerful factor in shaping values is the pervasive influence of our television. Most of our TV features are imported from America or Hongkong.
With nuclear families and working mothers increasing, our teachers will inevitably play a more important role as the imparter of values. Unfortunately, the quality of our teachers recruited in the 1960s and early 1970s is not as high as that of the 1950s. Rapid economic growth drew the able students to banking and industry, away from teaching. This was made worse because there was no comparable increase in teachers’ salaries. We have to reverse this trend and recruit better qualified teachers, which means paying them what they can get in industry, commerce or banking.
Speaking to my three friends over lunch, I was reinforced in my view that the future of our children cannot depend on happy recollections of crackers and special Chinese New Year cakes or food.
Even after we have improved moral teaching in schools by teachers of high moral standing, parents must still make time for their children in the evenings and at weekends. And those who can should maintain the extended family so that the grandparents can help bring up and influence their children. We have educated our women and want them to work. We intend to provide their children with well-run creches, nursery schools, and allow them to employ foreign domestic workers. But do our women need to value their careers more than, and at the expense of, their families?
Speaking to my three friends over lunch, I was reinforced in my view that the future of our children cannot depend on happy recollections of crackers and special Chinese New Year cakes or food. There are more fundamental attributes in our way of life than the sound of crackers, and special flowers and fruits, and new clothes connected with Chinese New Year, however much joy these memories may bring. The relationships between children and parents, between brothers and sisters, between husband and wife, and the rights and duties of parents and of children – these are crucial to the continuity of any civilisation. The day we divorce each other freely, as they already do in the West, and toss the children about like football between father and mother, although we may speak Chinese and may be able to quote the classics, we would already have changed, and for the worse.
Although Singapore, Hongkong, Taipei and Guangzhou are different societies with different lifestyles, nevertheless, for the present, there are common features in all of them: the close-knit ties of family, where the respect for and care of parents is the mirror image of love and responsibility for the upbringing and training of children. Chinese in these societies still place the interests of family and society above those of the individual. These are profoundly Chinese traditional values. These are worth preserving.
Preserving a society’s culture and ethos involved more than keeping up with traditions and outward forms. More important were the underlying values and world view held by the masses. In a speech, titled “Changes in Singapore: The Obvious and the Imperceptible”, to undergraduates at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological Institute, on August 22, 1988, Lee spelt out his concerns about the changes he observed in the society.
We are too Westernised
… the people who work in the lower echelons, they were hardworking, thrifty, had tremendous stamina, grit, and they put society above self, particularly the Chinese who formed the majority.
If we had a British-type workforce, we would not have made it. We had a Singapore-type workforce that produced the results. So it was the bi-cultural leadership that understood them and at the same time understood the modern world, and therefore meshed in the desires, the urges of the people at large and the mechanisms, investments, manufacturing processes, services that we were able to export to the world, primarily the West. …
I met a group of Hongkong professionals who were extremely uneasy, and we discussed a scheme that would make it possible for them to consider using Singapore as a perch in case of need, and continuing to work in Hongkong. At the end of their stay, when I met them, they said, “You are a very Western society, we are very Chinese.” I said, what’s the difference? They said, “Your people, right down to ordinary workers, they look so Westernised, their behaviour is extremely Western. We are very Oriental.”
“You are a very Western society, we are very Chinese. Your people, right down to ordinary workers, they look so Westernised, their behaviour is extremely Western. We are very Oriental.”
I then started to probe this. As I met friends, looked up their data, I discovered that this casual remark had profound significance. This was ’84. It’s the software in the younger generation which will determine whether Singapore continues to thrive, to prosper, to be a dynamo as it used to be, as it has been, or whether it will plateau like so many Western societies, like Europe or Britain, where they’ve just lost steam. They don’t see the point of striving and achieving any more. They’re just comfortable and they’re happy. And the Europeans in particular, more than the Americans, they feel comfortable with an enlarged community in 1992. They can afford some protectionism. It does not matter if world trade becomes too fierce and too competitive for them. Life could go on, for at least some time.
I don’t think how you dress, whether you wear shorts or ties or open-neck shirts, or wear your hair short or long, makes the slightest difference.
One problem therefore is a difficult, almost an intractable one. We can’t reverse track. In fact there was no option. We couldn’t have used Chinese. It would have caused tremendous conflict, would have not got us here. If we continued with Malay as the national language, our economy would not have made it and the people would have rejected the government. Tamil was out of the question. So there was no choice. The consequence is to ask ourselves, is it possible to maintain our core values in spite of this barrage of books, television, magazines, travel, people?
First, to succeed, we must decide, yes, this is a problem, we are under assault, what is it we want to keep?
I am not familiar with basic Malay and Indian values as much as I am with Chinese values. But I do not believe there’s all that much disparity between the Asian cultures. The Malays are least under assault because they have religion – Islam. The strongest single factor in any culture is your religion. It is the book by which you live, your behaviour, your rituals, your prayers, the things you say and do, your day of remembrances. And theirs is strong and resurgent. The Indians, more than the Chinese, attend their temples, keep to custom. And I agree with this writer in the Sunday Times, I think it was yesterday, Miss Tan Sai Siong, that Indians have changed less than Chinese. Malays, least of all. Indians still observe their customs, still have arranged marriages.
What is it that we should consider core values? I don’t think how you dress, whether you wear shorts or ties or open-neck shirts, or wear your hair short or long, makes the slightest difference. Unless it’s a manifestation of an inner urge. But these core values, I believe, are basic. Do you consider your basic relationships to be fundamental? The human relationships. What Confucius described as the five critical relationships. Mencius epigrammatised it in this way. I read it to you in translation – “Mo Tze taught the people how to cultivate land. He appointed Xie as the Minister of Education, whose duty was to teach the people human relationships. Love between father and son, one; two, duty between ruler and subject; three, distinction between husband and wife; four, precedence of the old over the young; and five, faith between friends.” Father and son, ruler and subject, h
usband and wife, old over young, faith between friends. In other words, the family is absolutely the fundamental unit in society. From family, to extended family, to clan, to nation.
In the West, with the tendency of modern government taking over more and more the functions of caring for the young and caring for the old, and in fact, caring for everybody – the unemployed, the disabled and so on, the family is becoming irrelevant. So much so that half the children born in some American societies are born out of wedlock. They are living together but they don’t feel that there is any need yet to make a commitment to each other. But they have committed the next generation. …
Have we changed? Let’s go through some of the basic core values.
Strong family ties? Yes, but only the immediate family, the nuclear family, father, mother, children. It does not include grandfather, uncles, cousins. They’re remote. They live somewhere else, in some other flat, perhaps near by and they can leave the baby with them. But the links are not as close as when I grew up.
I grew up in a big extended family home. A rambling house in Siglap, Katong. I grew up with a wealth of cousins. … There were five households – grandparents and four married sons and daughters and their children. So the relationship was a close one until, just before the war, we set up home on our own. But because the years of childhood were years of living in an extended family, the bonds are close.
Marriage pattern? Altered beyond recognition. The arranged marriages are gone. Children are better educated than their parents. They decide the parents’ ways and tastes and choices are not acceptable. The result, you all know.
Relationship with authority? Ruler and subject by and large still abiding. But the older generation is more deferential, respectful of ministers, of officials, than the younger generation. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. It’s just an observation. The younger generation feels more equal with the official they deal with, the less educated or better educated than the counter clerk. And because it’s one-man-one-vote, the ministers go out of their way to be approachable, friendly, and a sense of equality, of talking on level terms, has become the norm. Not necessarily bad provided that doesn’t lead to what it has led to in the West, in Britain and America, where they are contemptuous of politicians. Politicians make them promises with no intention, with no capability of ever fulfilling them. And they carry out polls to discover who are the people least respected or honoured or thought well of – politicians and journalists way down at the bottom. Why? Multiple reasons. If you keep on making ingratiating statements, put out in response to secret polls you have taken, it must lead to cynicism and eventually to scorn, contempt.
Thrift, hard work, faith between friends? Hard work, yes; thrift, with CPF, less so. Faith between friends – I have not noticed deterioration, but with time, with mobility, we may get what Alvin Toffler once described as “the disposable society”. As you move up, you dispose of your furniture, your old wives, your old clothes and you acquire new ones and you dispose of your friends too. I do not think we’ve come to that but we are becoming a rapidly mobile population. If you are good, you’ve got a personable character, you’ve got the right drive, you get into the right career path, it’s the express way to the top. And rapid change in lifestyles as you get up to the top. Now, all that we can get in our stride, provided the core values remain. The ones who are 30 and above probably are already secured because they grew up at one time when their parents had large families and plenty of time to spend on them. It’s the ones now in primary school perhaps, even in lower secondary school. Both parents working, huge classes – one teacher to 40 students, no individual attention. And the nature of the teacher also has changed. She used or he used to be a very respected member of society because there were very few educated people in the 1940s, in the 1950s. Teachers were educated and they were well paid. They had good moral standards, were well-behaved and imparted, by example, those values.
As you move up, you dispose of your furniture, your old wives, your old clothes and you acquire new ones and you dispose of your friends too.
Then came rapid growth – the late ’60s and into the ’70s and on to the ’80s. Good teachers left. By the droves. I see it because I get the CVs [curriculum vitae], they are in the foreign office, they are going abroad, they are in the Economic Development division. They have left the schools. Enterprising, the able, the ones with the drive.
The hotel manager looked at me and said, ah, Chiang Kai Shek. I said, no, no, I come from Singapore. He says, yes, Chiang Kai Shek, good man.
The result? If you become a teacher, you are less successful, morale goes down, the less successful stay behind and are recruited, they are less of a model for students. We’ve spent the last 10 years reversing that trend, trying not only to pay them more, but also to give them a status in our very achievement-conscious society.
By and large, it’s a problem still at the top. Only the highly educated have that degree of bi-culturism where they are more Western than Eastern. At the middle and in the lower ranges, it’s still very much an Asian society. The Western habits, songs, dances, whether it’s a disco or Swing Singapore, their dress styles or their fast foods, that’s just a veneer. But if it seeps down, if we are not conscious of what is happening and we allow this process to go on unchecked, and it seeps down, then I believe we have a bigger problem to deal with, where the middle ranges will also be more Western than Asian.
The problem is going to be acute over the next 10, 15 years. If we can hold out in these next 10, 15, at the most 20 years, I believe the pendulum will swing the other way. It is based on my observation, it’s human nature. Race is an obvious part of your being. I once turned up after the war in a hotel in Switzerland. I was not a wealthy student, but I had some savings and decided I’d have a holiday in 1947, ’48. And the hotel manager looked at me and said, ah, Chiang Kai Shek. I said, no, no, I come from Singapore. He says, yes, Chiang Kai Shek, good man.
So, whether you like it or not, your identification is settled by how people perceive you to be. And if you’re not a Caucasian or an African, you just are not, that’s all. You can think like one, you can behave like one, but you are not accepted as one. That creates very big problems for those who have emigrated and for their children too, a sense of frustration, of non-fulfilment, because you’re not functioning as a full member of that society. So every vacation, you will notice, we have Nobel prize winners and other very distinguished scholars happy to come to Singapore. Asians, to give of themselves. Most of them are from China, not from Singapore, but they feel a certain ethnic affinity, they feel at ease, they are accepted as what they are, Chinese, or Indians, whatever.
In 10, 15 years, Taiwan, Korea, Hongkong are going to be successful beyond doubt, industrial modernised societies. By that time, Japan will be even further ahead, and China would have got going. I remember this distinctly as part of my vivid experience, travelling on a bullet train in the early ’60s in Japan, when the Japanese were still unsure of themselves and the Americans were the models. And I saw them earnestly in conversation with the Americans, almost obsequious. And I shook my head. Almost fawning to please the Americans. I’ve seen less and less of that as they’ve discovered that they’ve learnt almost everything they needed to learn from the Americans. Now they are on par, except for the armed forces. And they are ahead in several fields of research. And with it has come pride in being Japanese, and of course admiration from other Asians and the rest of the world. …
I would hate to believe that the poor, ragged, undernourished Chinese coolie and the equally ragged Malay peon and driver and Indian labourer had the inner strength to build today’s Singapore, and their children with all the nice mod clothes, well-fed, all the vitamins, all the calories, protein, careful dental care, careful medical checks, PT, well-ventilated homes, they lost that inner drive. It’s not something which we can treat as fantasy and unlikely to happen. If you search within yourself and see how different am I from my father and my mother and from
my older cousins and brothers, you will begin to know what I mean.
If we are unconscious of these stimuli that are working on us that make us automatically accept certain norms of behaviour as desirable because the people who behave like that are successful or apparently successful, then we run a risk of losing that set of core values and unconsciously absorbing one which is not suitable to us as a people and to our environment.
While acknowledging the virtues of the British legal system Lee argued often that it could not be applied wholesale to Singapore, where Anglo-Saxon cultural conditions did not apply. Instead the system would have to be adapted to suit the new society’s circumstances, he argued in a speech to the University of Singapore Law Society on January 18, 1962.
Justice and fair play
Our architects learn of classical forms of Grecian colonnades and the Roman forum, of the grace and beauty of Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s, buildings of beauty and grace built out of marble and sandstone, of ancient Greece and ancient Rome and not so ancient London, to fit the style and climates of their time and their people. But then architects have to come back to Malaya and mould from granite and cement the buildings to fit our people and our climate.
There is a gulf between the principles of the rule of law, distilled to its quintessence in the background of peaceful 19th century England, and its actual practice in contemporary Britain. The gulf is even wider between the principle and its practical application in the hard realities of the social and economic conditions of Malaya. You will have to bridge the gulf between the ideal principle and its practice in our given sociological and economic milieu. For if the forms are not adapted and principles not adjusted to meet our own circumstances but blindly applied, it may be to our undoing. You must bridge this gulf quickly if you are not to spend the first few years of your practice after graduation floundering in confusion.
Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas Page 55