Mrs Chan Khah Gek

Principal, Victoria Junior College

Dr Ong Chit Chung

Chairman of the Victoria Executive and Advisory Committees

Distinguished Guests, Parents, Teachers and Students

Ladies & Gentlemen

            It gives me great pleasure to join you tonight for your College Day.  VJC has grown from strength to strength in its first 21 years.  It has built a solid reputation for excellence and innovation in both the academic and non-academic fields.  And like a young person on the threshold of entering the adult world, the college faces a host of new challenges that will come with its increased maturity and growing responsibilities.  The college will have to explore how it can build on as well as look beyond past achievements, and find new pathways of excellence.

Globalisation – Its Opportunities and Challenges

2.                  The world, in all its dimensions, is evolving and in fundamentally new ways.  Wherever we look, it is a more fluid future, with old certainties being broken down and major new uncertainties emerging.  It is also a more global future, with globalisation bringing both huge opportunities, as well as new and knotty challenges.

3.                   First, the opportunities.  We are at the cusp of a new wave of wealth creation, with China and India opening up to the world.  Together with Southeast Asia, Asia is seeing the growth of new economic opportunities on a scale never seen before in the global economy.  Across Asia, a process of integration is rippling forward.  It is intertwining Asia’s economies, especially with those of China and India.  It is generating new opportunities for professionals and entrepreneurs, as well as researchers and students.  New middle classes are growing across the region, and  demanding new and more sophisticated services.  Underlying all of this, we have a real belief that millions of young people share across Asia, that they can get much better and more fulfilling lives, and that education will get you there.

4          Given Singapore’s strategic location at the crossroads between China, India and Southeast Asia, we are uniquely poised to plug into and promote the social and economic networks that will shape a new era of Asian prosperity.

5.         But there are also major challenges that come with a globalised future.  The rise of new economic powers will not, if history is any judge, be smoothly accommodated by established economic leaders.  It will quite likely involve friction or even turbulence.

6.         And most critically, despite unprecedented global economic integration, we seem to be moving further from a sense of commonality between peoples, common aspirations and a common feeling of what binds us together as humankind.  The recent tragic incidents in London and Egypt are only the latest reminder, the latest manifestations of this sense of alienation and isolation from a common world.  This will be a central challenge, within nations and across the globe, for many years to come.

7.         What this all means is that we are at a critical point in history.  The 21st century can be a far better one than the 20th century, with many more people lifted beyond bare subsistence, and more wealth created globally than in any comparable period before.  But it may not be.  What happens will depend more than anything else on the ideas and convictions of the young.  It will depend on whether the young people who will lead the communities and societies of the 21^st century are determined to expand the common space that they share, regardless of race, culture and religion, and put their talents and energies to work to help others, within their own societies and beyond.

Grooming Students for the Future

8.         How can we prepare our young people and ourselves for such a world?  How do we teach them to compete and succeed in the 21^st century, while nurturing in them a sense of their responsibility to shape better societies and a better world?  Let me set out two general points, which we are giving greater emphasis to in education.

9.         First, through our schools and tertiary institutions, we want to help our young people to reach out to others, and to avoid being parochial.  It has to become a basic habit and desire, almost an instinct.  The desire to reach out, to get to know, and to include people with different backgrounds.  Integration, mutual respect and friendship between people of different races and religions must win out.  But it will not happen by default.  Every one of us has to be responsible for finding common space to share with others, in small, everyday ways as well as in the big ideas and aspirations that govern our lives.  Each of us has to use our minds and actions to create a reality of openness, and to avoid parochialism at all costs.  That is our responsibility.

10.       Second, we want to help you develop a zest for inquiry.  To make a difference to the society you live in, you have to question what exists, think the unthinkable and imagine the unimagined.  That’s how society advances, in other words, how it moves forward in positive and productive directions.  We want to nurture students who are not just good at recalling the right answer or model essay, but who are keen to discover a new answer or suss out for themselves workable alternatives in situations where there is no right answer.

11.       But as JC students, you have the responsibility to question what exists in an informed manner.  To make a difference, you need clear eyes and heads, and the ability to analyse and think through the problems you care about objectively and rigorously.

12.       As these habits take root among our young people, we grow the skills and habits of mind that will gradually transform our society and create new opportunities.

Education for the Future

13.       I am happy to see that Victoria Junior College is evolving its programmes to address these new dimensions of education.  The college aims to achieve a new balance between nurturing key life skills  -  critical and independent thinking skills and strength of character, on the one hand, and ensuring that students obtain a rigorous foundation in basic knowledge in school on the other.

14.       One of the college’s key areas of focus is to develop a sense of global-mindedness in every student.  Beyond what can be taught in the classroom, the college challenges students to dig deep and get their hands dirty in engaging with real-world issues.  For example, I understand that during the recent June vacation, different groups of VJC students ventured all over the world, from Sri Lanka to Tokyo to Beijing, to Washington DC, New York and Silicon Valley in the US.  Before each trip, the teachers actively engaged the students to learn more about the issues they were likely to encounter in these various overseas environments, and consider their relevance in the Singapore context.  I understand that at global corporations like Apple and Google in Silicon Valley, their people were thoroughly impressed with our students’ curiosity and engagement, comparing them favourably to other undergraduate students they had met from prominent American universities.

15.       Achieving this spirit of thoughtful inquiry and global-mindedness in school programmes is not easy.  It takes teachers who are themselves thoughtful and innovative, able to make meaningful links between what they teach in the classroom and how things play out in the real world.  It takes a school culture that welcomes fresh ideas and approaches, and gives both teachers and students the space to grow and develop in ways they had not considered before.

16.       Schools also need the support of the community.  VJC’s recent fieldtrips would not have been as successful without the college’s strong networking ties with diverse institutions and businesses like SingTel, NUS Overseas College and 77^th Street.  Thanks to their help in providing local contacts in the various cities, as well as technology and other assistance, VJC was able to offer an even wider exposure and involvement to its students.  As we have heard in the Principal’s report, the college has also benefited from numerous other collaborative efforts with local institutions, companies and alumni.  The community has a vital role to play in shaping education for the future, and I encourage schools and industry partners to look for more of such ways to work together.

Conclusion

17.       To take advantage of globalisation’s many opportunities while also successfully fielding its challenges, our schools must build on our strong fundamentals in education while broadening the field of learning that is open to their students.  Having achieved the School Distinction Award and the Best School (National) Thinking Culture Award, Victoria Junior College certainly has a sturdy foundation on which to build future initiatives.  My congratulations to the VJC community on your collective achievements.  I look forward to seeing more new and exciting programmes that will further enrich the local education landscape.

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