pol of bod response paper 1

I am a student in Singapore. I went through the entire Singapore education system, from learning my ‘A-B-Cs’ and manners in kindergarten to national education in primary school to learning how to juggle studies with extra-curricular activities in secondary school, and now as a university student on the brink of graduation with a bachelor’s degree. From here, if I am deemed as having the potential to be effective at a higher academic level and for a higher capacity job, I may be offered a scholarship to further pursue my studies. Such a scholarship will probably be government-sponsored or government-linked.

The idea of being sponsored for studies seems to be a sign of success as a student here. We are primed to understand that another party’s willingness to invest in our education, increasing our capacities and human capital, is desirable and something to be proud of having achieved. As a result, students at all levels vie for scholarships, enticed by the prestige of being a ‘scholar’ and the expectation of having an opportunity to land a prestigious job that leads to a high-level career. It was only after exploring scholarship opportunities overseas that I realized the strangeness of the fact that almost all scholarships offered here “provide” its scholars with employment as a part of the agreement. In other countries, scholarships are offered primarily to support the student’s studies for the sake of providing them the opportunity to further their studies. Employment with a specific agency is not a proviso for receiving a scholarship. Here, post-studies employment over a period of about four to six years with a government or government-linked agency is often a requirement, and “bond-breakers” are expressly frowned upon.

The fact that most educational scholarships in Singapore, and certainly the most prestigious, are offered by the government through government-linked agencies, shows a virtual monopoly over the channeling of investments in academically high-achieving individuals. Even if some such individuals are not acquired pre-university, in university “opportunities” continue to be offered to students who display high aptitudes. At the National University of Singapore (NUS), the University Scholars Programme (USP) and NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) are two such opportunities. Through these programmes, guidance is offered to high-calibre students which includes internships in companies and industries of possible future employment and career and recruitment talks. The control over such students as resources for the workforce persists in its monopolistic nature.

Singapore churns children and students out through its educational institutes into productive workers for the Singapore economy. Besides scholarships, which are reserved for only a handful of the most academically successful students, Singapore’s general school curriculum is developed and adjusted with the main purpose of providing labour units according to the demands of the market and economic sectors slated by the government for growth. Under the banner of meritocracy, students are channeled along educational paths to eventually be matched with certain types of jobs, and not others. If a student had to retake their Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), they would probably end up in the Normal Technical (NT) stream in secondary school, followed by the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). Some continue to polytechnics and universities, but more often than not, ITE is it and then they enter the workforce with a technical skills certification that qualifies them to do mostly blue-collar jobs. This is the way in which the government channels labor units towards jobs spaces that continually need filling. Workers become the workers that they are mostly according to the kind of students they had been. If your “use value” is deemed to be more optimally increased through further studies, you are channeled in that direction, whereas if your “use value” is deemed to better serve the economy through your entrance into the workforce as soon as the basic technical skills for it have been acquired, then you would be channeled in this direction instead. Both regulatory and social institutions mutually constitute to condition the population such that we willingly, even rationally, go with it.

When I graduate and join the workforce, I will be one unit in the larger Singapore economy. At that point in my life though, I will be considered in a dual role of not just a unit of labour but also that of potential reproduction for the further propagation of the Singapore society. The “baby bonus” is targeted at the segment of population that pays taxes, since it is a tax break policy, and this includes most university graduates while systematically excluding low income individuals. Not only is the government engineering reproduction in the population, it is even going into the specifics of the type of reproduction that is desirable for the society. Each body enters the Singapore society with a value upon it, and this value is derived from the “use value” of the baby’s parents in terms of their economic contribution. This is in line with Foucault’s concept of the body as biopower, where individual bodies are meaningful not in themselves but through relations with each other towards sustenance of the community under the power of the sovereign in conditioning, manipulating and ultimately controlling them.

(Written as a response paper)


peace, from muggerland!