As much as I would like today’s post title to be a joke, a recent Reuters article shows that it’s not. A portion of Singapore’s current and next-generation leaders have, without doubt, been groomed since they were in primary school. But is this really any different to the selection mechanisms in certain developed countries such as Britain?

Reuters argues that Singapore’s leaders advance through an “orderly” process since primary school, where those with potential are filtered into the best secondary schools, e.g./i.e. Raffles Institution, then into the best junior colleges (pre-university institutions), e.g./i.e. Raffles Junior College, and later awarded full government scholarships to the United Kingdom (e.g./i.e. Cambridge) or the United States (e.g./i.e. Masters at Harvard, MIT, etc.).

Few can protest to such an argument as there are indeed quite a number of politicians and government organisation leaders who went through such an education. A case in point is Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong himself, who was an undergraduate at Cambridge and later a postgraduate at Harvard. There’s also Reuters example of Minister of Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang who went through a similar path.

While I cannot deny the problems such a “system” may cause, in Britain (for example), there does not seem to be much of a difference. Consider the fact that Prime Minister Tony Blair was an undergraduate at Oxford, while his “counterpart”, Conservative Party leader David Cameron did secondary school at Eton, and his undergraduate degree at Cambridge.

However, given Reuters assertion that it is the degree of Singapore’s elitism that is causing problems, with one of their interviewees, head of the Asia Research Center at Murdoch University stating that, “the risk of Singapore’s elitism is that it could become so inbred, the capacity for independent thinking is lost…”, then Singapore’s condition seems more precarious. Admittedly, this problem isn’t as prominent in larger countries, with larger populations (such as Britain), as more “natural” selection can take its place.

But as Oxbridge admits an increasingly distressing percentage of independent (pay-for) school students (due to the higher standard of education provided by such better-funded schools), we could very well see Singapore’s alleged problem manifesting in the UK. However, for that matter, we could see this replicated in any other country with an established and exclusive education system.