From Third World to First: Die Förderung der Wissensgesellschaft
Mich erstaunt immer wieder, mit welcher Weisheit die Gedanken und Ansichten von Lee Kuan Yew zum Ausdruck kommen. Die Beobachtung menschlichen Verhaltens konnte er wunderbar in punktgenaue politische Zielsetzungen umwandeln, um die Gesellschaft zu gestalten. Natürlich hatte er dabei häufig auch mit Widerständen zu kämpfen und die Erfolge kamen erst nach einigen Jahren zum Vorschein.
So analysierte er alte Traditionen und Ansichten und menschliche Charaktere, die dem Weg zu einer modernen Gesellschaft entgegenstanden. Das Heiratsverhalten und somit der Probleme von gebildeten Frauen war so eine kulturelle Eigenheit. Lee dazu: “Nongraduate mothers prefered nongraduate daughters-in-law who would be less intimidating. It was most difficult to erase this cultural prejudice, that a male who was not seen to be the main breadwinner and head of the household was to be pitied and ridiculed. This was so with the Chinese, more so with the Indians, and most of all with the Malays.”
Dass die Förderung von intelligenten Menschen in einer Wissensgesellschaft unabdingbar ist, erkannte Lee bei der Auswertung der Ergebnisse des Zensus: “The 1980 census figures also revealed that better-educated women had compounded our problem by having much fewer children than the less-educated... We were more than doubling our less-educated, and not replacing our better-educated. To reverse this reproductive trend, Keng Swee, then minister for education, and I decided in 1984 to give to graduate mothers who have a third child priority in choosing the best schools for all their three children, a much-prized objective of all parents... Instead, we were taken aback when graduate mothers protested. They did not want this privilege... But since women graduates were embarrassed by this privilege, it was best to remove it. In its place, I gave special income tax concessions to married women - this time to graduate, polytechnic, A level, and O level mothers... They qualified for substantial income tax rebates on either their or their husband’s income for their third and fourth child. These concessions did encourage more third and fourth births.”
Das Fazit der Bemühungen gab Lee so: “However, the message to young men did sink in: More married their equals though the progress was slow.”
Singapore hat in den 60er Jahren eine Zwei-Kind-Politik eingeführt. Das Ergebnis dieser Politik bewertet Lee Kuan Yew wie folgt und geht noch einmal auf die einfältige Political Correctness der westlichen Länder ein: “Many critics blamed the government for thoughtlessly implementing the «Stop-at-Two» policy in the 1960s. Was it wrong? Yes and no. Without that policy, family planning might never have brought population growth down, and we would not have solved our unemployment and schooling problems. But we should have foreseen that the better-educated would have two or fewer children, and the less-educated four and more. Western writers on family planning had not drawn attention to this already familiar though less stark outcome in their own mature countries because it was not politically correct to do so. Had we found out on our own sooner, we would have refined and targeted our campaign differently, encouraging with incentives the better-educated women to have three or more children right from the start of the family planning drive in the 1960s. Unfortunately, we did not know and did not change our policy until 1983 when analysis of the 1980 census revealed the reproductive patterns of the different socioeconomic groups.”
Im Übrigen hat die westliche Political Correctness zu einem geistigen Leistungsabfall in der Gesellschaft geführt. Die schulischen Leistungen gehen - im Gegensatz zu ost-asiatischen Ländern - stetig zurück. Mittlerweile können die meisten Schüler selbst mit Abiturabschluss in Deutschland nicht mehr ausreichend schreiben und rechnen.
So analysierte er alte Traditionen und Ansichten und menschliche Charaktere, die dem Weg zu einer modernen Gesellschaft entgegenstanden. Das Heiratsverhalten und somit der Probleme von gebildeten Frauen war so eine kulturelle Eigenheit. Lee dazu: “Nongraduate mothers prefered nongraduate daughters-in-law who would be less intimidating. It was most difficult to erase this cultural prejudice, that a male who was not seen to be the main breadwinner and head of the household was to be pitied and ridiculed. This was so with the Chinese, more so with the Indians, and most of all with the Malays.”
Dass die Förderung von intelligenten Menschen in einer Wissensgesellschaft unabdingbar ist, erkannte Lee bei der Auswertung der Ergebnisse des Zensus: “The 1980 census figures also revealed that better-educated women had compounded our problem by having much fewer children than the less-educated... We were more than doubling our less-educated, and not replacing our better-educated. To reverse this reproductive trend, Keng Swee, then minister for education, and I decided in 1984 to give to graduate mothers who have a third child priority in choosing the best schools for all their three children, a much-prized objective of all parents... Instead, we were taken aback when graduate mothers protested. They did not want this privilege... But since women graduates were embarrassed by this privilege, it was best to remove it. In its place, I gave special income tax concessions to married women - this time to graduate, polytechnic, A level, and O level mothers... They qualified for substantial income tax rebates on either their or their husband’s income for their third and fourth child. These concessions did encourage more third and fourth births.”
Das Fazit der Bemühungen gab Lee so: “However, the message to young men did sink in: More married their equals though the progress was slow.”
Singapore hat in den 60er Jahren eine Zwei-Kind-Politik eingeführt. Das Ergebnis dieser Politik bewertet Lee Kuan Yew wie folgt und geht noch einmal auf die einfältige Political Correctness der westlichen Länder ein: “Many critics blamed the government for thoughtlessly implementing the «Stop-at-Two» policy in the 1960s. Was it wrong? Yes and no. Without that policy, family planning might never have brought population growth down, and we would not have solved our unemployment and schooling problems. But we should have foreseen that the better-educated would have two or fewer children, and the less-educated four and more. Western writers on family planning had not drawn attention to this already familiar though less stark outcome in their own mature countries because it was not politically correct to do so. Had we found out on our own sooner, we would have refined and targeted our campaign differently, encouraging with incentives the better-educated women to have three or more children right from the start of the family planning drive in the 1960s. Unfortunately, we did not know and did not change our policy until 1983 when analysis of the 1980 census revealed the reproductive patterns of the different socioeconomic groups.”
Im Übrigen hat die westliche Political Correctness zu einem geistigen Leistungsabfall in der Gesellschaft geführt. Die schulischen Leistungen gehen - im Gegensatz zu ost-asiatischen Ländern - stetig zurück. Mittlerweile können die meisten Schüler selbst mit Abiturabschluss in Deutschland nicht mehr ausreichend schreiben und rechnen.