シンガポールのメリトクラシーと学校中退現象

抄録

The aim of this paper is to explore the background of Singaporeʼs contemporary policies for school dropouts. Singaporeʼs educational system has often been described as being based on the concept of meritocracy (Mimizuka et al. 2003, Kang 2005). According to Young (1958), in a meritocratic society, rewards and social status are distributed based on individual merit. Interestingly, meritocratic Singapore has increasingly attempted to include school dropouts, who are supposed to have lower merit. This should be even more puzzling when we consider that Singapore has already achieved a low school dropout rate compared to other developed countries. Although it is reported that there are about 1,200 students who leave school before finishing secondary education every year, this phenomenon has been very little investigated even in Singapore. Sim (2005) focused on the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), which provides vocational education for post-secondary students in the lower streams, and found that the aspirations of ITE students were lifted during the school period. However, Simʼs study did not shed light on school dropouts.

This study examines the following two research questions: 1) Why does Singapore attempt to include school dropouts in further education? 2) How does Singapore help school dropouts return to school? The data were gathered from the following investigations. The first is semi-structured interviews of social workers who work at Singaporeʼs social agencies, where various kinds of assistance are provided for school dropouts. Interviews were conducted with fourteen social workers in nine social agencies. The second is a review of past local research on Singaporeʼs school dropouts, which is not so well known due to a lack of publicity. In addition, Singaporean national census data and information from local newspapers were also used in this study.

Based on the analysis, the author insists that there are three primary reasons behind Singaporeʼs contemporary policies for school dropouts: 1) a political reason, 2) a social policy-related reason, and 3) a labor economic reason. Clark (1960) demonstrated that “losers” under a meritocratic educational system are likely to “cool-out” so that they become adjusted to their appropriate social position in later life. On the other hand, Singaporeʼs school dropouts tend to “freeze-up” and then fall into bottomless cracks in later life. Once they have “frozen-up,” they may be stigmatized as “losers” in the meritocratic educational system and then marginalized in the precarious labor market. To overcome this situation, Singapore has attempted to enhance political stability and the social cohesion of the state. Moreover, school dropouts are encouraged to return to school in order to compete with cheaper migrant workers in the labor market.

In summary, Singaporeʼs success in reducing the number of school dropouts can be looked upon as an outcome of Singaporeʼs effort to enhance political stability, social cohesion and economic growth so as to tackle increasing external uncertainties. In this sense, Singaporeʼs top academic performance among school students, despite the fact that more school dropouts are integrated into the mainstream, can be viewed as a process involving a state strategy of survival under the highly competitive, globalised economy.