Gold medals?
Get an education first
Under new proposed policy, even Maradona, in his pre-fame days, would have been turned away if he had applied for Singapore citizenship. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Dec 7, 2003

In another back-to-basics move, Singapore may in future grant citizenship to top foreign athletes only if they have a minimum level of education.

The review is aimed at ensuring they have a fair prospect of getting a job after their playing days are over.

This represents a tightening up of the sports foreign talent scheme, started five years ago, to recruit potential champions. Until now, the criterion has been purely based on the candidate's sports potentials.

Scores of imported teens mostly from China and Indonesia have their schooling, their training - and even their retirement plans - worked out.

It was only in March last year that Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong announced Singapore's attractive perks to prospective gold medal winners that virtually guaranteed their well-being for life.

The Athletes Career and Training programme (ACT), he said, would not only fund the training of some 30 to 70 athletes, but also look after their non-sports concerns.

The plan's future now appears uncertain at best. It may be due to the bad times. Currently, the government is carrying out a "Cut Waste" campaign and some leaders may feel that such spending is inappropriate.

The government may also be responding - without saying so - to public demands to cut down the number of foreigners (including sportsmen) here because they are taking away local jobs and opportunities.

The minimum education for sport imports has not yet been announced, but given the workforce's rising skills here, it is likely to be restrictively high.

Besides, the state's first sports school, due to open next month, has announced it will not admit budding sports students who are not from the "express" stream.

This would exclude many talented athletes who are poor in studies.

Twelve children who were refused entry because they were from the "normal" stream (30%), were later allowed after the public accused the school of "inflexibility." The rule, however, remains unchanged.

Similarly, some of the foreigners who had been taken in could hardly speak passable English. This policy to ensure that Singapore's sports champions - both imported and local-trained - meet a minimum academic achievement is widely debated.

A few support it, calling it a pragmatic move that will prevent future problems. "Otherwise, this sports promotion will in future produce a large number of retired athletes who cannot get a job," a sports official said. "You can only have so many coaches."

Critics, however, say it is unrealistic to expect all the sports-gifted to be academic achievers as well. "There will be a big wastage. Some simply can't cope with studies and sports together."

Others believe that like other laws, it should be implemented flexibly to cater for the exceptional cases. It is easier said than done.

Singaporean bureaucrats may be adept in carrying out the rules but allowing for individual exceptions to them is a far tougher act.

Without that, a young budding soccer player like Maradona or Pele who applies to become a Singapore citizen may be turned away purely on academic grounds.

Similarly, so would marathon runners from Kenya or Ethiopia or the majority of America's basketball stars be rejected because they're considered poor prospects to get work in the city.

In fact, if these were teenagers seeking entry into Singapore's new sports school, they may not get past the interview.

Maradona and Pele, for example, were born into large families in the slums of Argentina and Brazil, as were many of South America's poorly educated World Cup players.

In fact, the majority of athletes from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe would probably fail to cut it into Singapore's stringent "Express" stream. Yet, why should they? They have a far better gift than that.

The debate actually goes beyond sports. It has led to the question whether the government is emphasising too much on academic studies when it is encouraging creativity and a diversity of talent.

Every year, some 43,000-44,000 children are admitted into Primary One for 10 years of pre-college education. About two-thirds of them, of course, do more by pursuing a tertiary education. The rest moves into a vocational stream.

For a whole generation, the majority pursues a narrow range of courses, engineering, IT or business, to get a job in these fields, some of which are in decline.

Singapore's system is producing little diversity of skills or interests that will allow it to move into new economic areas. Sports may help to widen that perimeter.

Under the "Remaking Singapore" exercise, the state is shooting for new strategies to prosper, like life sciences, and hub activities for education, health and the arts.
Somewhere lower down are sports with leaders exhorting its citizens to go out and win world - or at least regional - laurels.

The Remaking Singapore Report, with hundreds of suggestions, now lies with the government, which is mulling over it for a decision in a few months' time.

Between its submission in July and now, there has evidently been some rethinking in several major areas that may result in less, rather than more, change to Singapore.

Sports is apparently among the affected. The S-League, for example, is being reduced from 12 to 10 teams because of money problems, insufficient public interest and, in a few cases, poor management.

The Community Development and Sports Minister Yaacob Ibrahim has denied that the Government is abandoning the foreign sports talent scheme.

It was suspended pending the review due to be completed around this time. Until then, any application for citizenship, permanent residence or employment passes for non-Singaporeans will stop.

There are also public calls for the government to emphasise less on university degrees, or what elite school people come from, when identifying talent for civil service jobs or promotion.

Enunciated by Mr Lee Kuan Yew decades ago, this reliance on the university degree has been gathering strength. This, he had explained, was still the best means of measuring human intelligence.

In this age when nations and people compete with each other on ideas, it is time to dilute it in favour of personal college achievements in initiative, leadership, current knowledge and communicating skills.

(This article was first published in Sunday Star, Malaysia on Dev 7, 2003)