Perils of being educated in the English language

While students ‘’steeped in Chinese values had more discipline’’, vigour, courtesy and respect for elders, the ‘’English-educated generally lacked self-confidence because they were not speaking their own native language’’. They had less vigour and discipline. Yew’s three children went to Chinese language schools. His first child later earned a First Class in Mathematics from Cambridge […]

While students ‘’steeped in Chinese values had more discipline’’, vigour, courtesy and respect for elders, the ‘’English-educated generally lacked self-confidence because they were not speaking their own native language’’. They had less vigour and discipline. Yew’s three children went to Chinese language schools. His first child later earned a First Class in Mathematics from Cambridge University.
 The impact of cultures on governance interested him. The Japanese translated a habit of ‘’wanting to achieve perfection’’ into everything they do: from flower-arrangement, sword-making; to being a waiter. In colonising Southeast Asian peoples they killed with extraordinary cruelties, including slaughtering 50,000 Singaporeans in a few days in 1942. Confucian emphasis on scholarship makes Japanese accept ‘’the need for life-long learning and training’’. This constantly improves their productivity as workers and managers.
 What appealed to Yew most was that the pride in whatever they were doing ‘’makes for high productivity’’; their manufactured products being ‘’near-zero’’ perfect. For a prime minister of tiny vulnerable Singapore, high productivity, perfection and pride in work by citizens, were vital tools for achieving development.
As a Chinese immigrant, Yew valued Confucian emphasis on each individual not being lonely but a member of a family; devotion to the welfare and dignity of parents; working hard to support the family. Both the Japanese and the Chinese share keeping society orderly, and promoting high productivity in an economy.  They were good models for Singapore as long as they were not communists who he detested. He also feared China looming as a giant stalking across Southeast Asian countries without Russian and American presence.
The cultural weapon of North Americans and Europeans ‘’human rights’’ and freedom, including ‘’freedom of the press and association’’ were weapons for breaking down barriers to Chinese and Japanese economies. Siblings not supporting parents would give a son or daughter ‘’freedom’’ to spend money on buying American cars or luxury jewellery. Weakening Japanese dignity in achieving perfection in their products would make Toyota cars and Sony cameras, for example, less competitive against General Motors, French and German vehicle exports. The Japanese corporate practice of regarding employees as a family, combined with their regarding high productivity as ‘’a marathon without a finishing line’’, made it difficult to compete with Japanese products; and people purchasing foreign goods.
Yew saw attacks on moral values which uphold civil society being led by Hollywood, video games, Internet and mass-dialogue on Facebook and twitter by promoting gun violence; pornography and degradation of sex; paedophile; consumption of mind-bending drugs and loss of responsibility for the welfare of others. The power of satellite communication invades secret corners of homes and communities for the benefit Euro-American cultural and economic weapons. With typical insight, Lee Kuan Yew noted that American and European media resented the efficiency, lack of corruption and resultant social stability in Singapore because it set an example for China; making it more difficult for them to breakdown Communist Chinese society and economy.
By way of illustrating weaknesses of those taught in English language, Yew tells several cheeky stories. In 1964, he met Chief Okotie Eboh, Nigeria’s minister of finance, and Krobo Edusie, Ghana’s minister of presidential hospitality. Each of them shamelessly boasted about their use of cabinet jobs to promote personal trading in imported shoes and running a night club, respectively. For a man allergic to corruption, Yew was alarmed. At a dinner, Kwame Nkrumah showed himself as a leader whose country earned foreign exchange by selling cocoa, yet he celebrated a Ghanaian awarded a First Class degree in Classics (Latin and Greek) by Oxford University.
In 1970 and 1979, Zambia hosted him in a hotel built by foreigners (Yugoslavians); served tasteless ‘’European’’ food, while its furniture were imported from Spain. When he complained, his ambassador to the United Nations in New York told him about the African diplomatic convention which stipulated that ‘’the poorer the country, the bigger the Cadillac they hired for their leaders’’. On the serious business of building national development, African leaders were behaving as historic clowns.
Lee Kuan Yew probably owned a touch of anti-African turn of mind. Despite his attendance of Commonwealth conferences every two years from 1965 to his exit in 1992, there is not a single photograph of him meeting an African leader – not even his favourite, Mwalimu Nyerere – in his biographical book From Third World to First. He still offers valuable road maps to development. First is: to codify fundamental values from centuries of your societies to teach self-confidence and productivity to children in mother tongues. Secondly, send top graduates to top universities in Europe and North America to lead your military, business corporations and bureaucracy. Thirdly, copy the Japanese success which is linked to their prime ministers and cabinet ministers coming from among their ‘’best and brightest’’ university graduates.
 Yew would urge training responsibility, self-confidence and bold visions of Africa’s development. Productivity from Oxford University’s practice of re-appointing their academics every five years; combined with measures similar to American universities not paying salaries during three-months of annual long vacation would stimulate quality and research by Africa’s academics. Violence against children by not teaching them in mother tongues must not continue to cripple Africa.