Singapore Students and Entrepreneurship
Category: Schools and Education
By Fong Yi Xun
Lately, it seems that Entrepreneurship is a hot topic around Singapore. Ask the students and about 75% would tell you that they are interested in setting up their own shop and being their own boss. There appears to be a shift of job preference from conventional jobs like Doctor, Lawyers, Teachers to being a doctor with his own clinic, a lawyer governing his firm, teacher setting up educational centres. Wow, has the government succeeded in convincing Singaporeans to be Entrepreneurs? A few years ago, the Government wanted its Singaporeans to be risk-takers, as a result of polls and statistics that show Singaporeans are not willing to take risk. Since then, Entrepeneurial activities start to infiltrate into our schools. These include E-Clubs as CCAs (Entrepreneur Clubs), primary school students setting up stalls in public to sell their products, and even Business as Secondary school subjects. To increase the number of business graduates, two new institutions were declared as Universities. They are the Singapore Management University (SMU) and Singapore Institute of Management (SIM).
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By constantly promoting the importance of Entrepreneurship and glorifying successful Entrepreneurs, we are getting our students to have a mindset that "if you are not the boss, you are lousy" which is not true. We still need workers. A divide between the capitalist class and the working class will widen inevitably. My point of view is that we should not overreact to the demand of Singaporean Entrepreneurs. Allow students to realise their risk-taking potential in daily teachings. More emphasis should be placed on getting students to self-reflect and understand more about themselves. Schools should then supply resources for students to creatively express themeselves i.e. setting up their own stalls with their own ideas (not the idea of their teachers).
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Having said all this, I believe that in order to sustain the risk-taking spirit in Singapore, Entrepreneurship should not be seen as a fashion that is currently popular due to the immense attention to the topic. However it should be instilled slowly, a step at a time in our students.
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