Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s annual National Day Rally (NDR) was held at ITE College Central, Ang Mo Kio, last Sunday.

There was extensive coverage of his speech online and in the media over the past two days.

Judging from their tweets from social media, several young Singaporeans obviously did not learn much about the NDR.

Fortunately, we manage to get three young Singaporeans who could string more than 140 characters together to provide their take on the rally.

1. "PM is taking the right steps"

by Clarence Ching

A few months back, I had an informal conversation with a top-brass civil servant after a presentation on my friend’s non-profit. During the conversation, she revealed to me that the civil service has been under tremendous public pressure to deliver since GE2011. With public scrutiny on various policies, ministries had to garner satisfaction from the public before heads start to roll.

The Government and the civil service seem to be trying to gain brownie points from the people - and so was the PM in his speech yesterday.

What struck me throughout NDR was PM's call for youths to explore alternatives rather than settling for a degree. That, in my opinion, was the right step forward among other policy shifts. A polytechnic student myself, I understood how stark reality was. There were few paths I could take with a diploma in hand - either at a low entry-level job or at University - and these two were very common paths amongst polytechnic graduates.

I felt that the natural road to progression was to grab a degree before heading down my career path. Truth be told, university education shouldn’t just be another launchpad into the job market, but rather, an intellectually stimulating place to dwell on theories and concepts in-depth, allowing me to add more value as an employee of a company in future.

Neither should university education be the only place for one to add value to himself. The preconceived notion by employers that paper credentials are all that measures an individual’s worth needs to be changed. Sure, a degree may represent a greater knowledge of a subject or skill; but experience may be something equally or even more important.

With a new tripartite Committee tasked to develop a new integrated system of education, training and career progression for polytechnic and ITE students - and the Public Service Division merging both the non-graduate and graduate schemes within the civil service - Government has made a first step, allowing others to follow suit.

The appointment of DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam to lead the committee affirms the Government’s intention to take this seriously, potentially redesigning the tertiary education landscape for the next few decades. The future certainly looks bright for students who want to explore alternatives rather than following traditional paths.

It remains to be seen how the Government will shift mindsets. Perhaps the Government will provide subsidies to firms that hire non-graduates and dangle carrots at firms who allow non-graduates to climb the career ladder on an equal position with graduates. The Government’s move would probably be calculated - graduates will face greater competition and they will have to show their ability to deliver. While I applaud the bold move, the electorate will certainly keep a close watch on the civil service and determine whether the Government can deliver what it seeks to achieve.

At the end of the day, it is up to us to shape the Singapore we call home. How can we redefine a person’s worth, so that it is more than just paper qualification? How can we provide more paths for our youths to reach their aspirations, now that we can afford to do so? How can we include more Singaporeans in our chase of diverse aspirations?

These are questions we have to answer ourselves.

Clarence Ching is a final-year Business and Social Enterprise student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

2. "A queer take on the NDR"

by Ho Ka Onn

I’m not a mover.

I’m not one of the people whom everyone knows upon sight, and I would like to refuse the privilege of using my age as a factor to draw people in.

I am a queer person, and given my limited experience and relatively lower academic qualification, I can present a unique take on the NDR as someone who exists at numerous intersections.

PM Lee’s talk of a new generation with new aspirations made me ponder about discourse in Singapore. Recently, I attended a discussion event that highlighted lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) voices and promoted discussion amongst the LGBT community and its allies. It was really great - for we had discourse, urgently needed between the people who each hold different identities in society. It wasn’t so great, however, when I, as the youngest person at the table, was constantly spoken over, with my anger dismissed as irrational because of other’s “more salt than your rice” ideologies riding roughshod over my valid requests for the space to be made safe.

Like any other community, the LGBT folks have their elders. These are people who really are the movers and shakers, the ones with political and social clout, and in my opinion - the elders I ran into at the event need to understand that needs change, people and their (personal) politics change, and that their social capital can’t buoy them through a conversation.

In the same way, the elders at the top of our hierarchy need to acknowledge that we need to hear the voices of the new generation and their aspirations.

When PM Lee mentioned that he wanted to see a Singapore where education functioned to allow youth to achieve their potential, not stifle everything they had with rote memorization, the phrase “no promoting homosexuality” sprang to mind. It’s a phrase that has defined what school was like as a queer teen; everytime teachers and educators deny that there is bullying of sexual and gender minorities, even those right under their noses, they use this phrase.

It’s hard for LGBT students to focus on their studies and realise just what they can do if the people we task to educate our youth have this phrase as an ideological shield. When PM Lee says that he wants students to achieve their full potential in school, I don’t think he included LGBT students in that statement.

What potential can we realise if we are persistently told that we don't matter, anyway?

There has been a continual emphasis of writing a new Singapore Story for all in previous NDRs, and this year also saw the same. PM Lee concluded with a series of stories of Singaporeans he featured. He remarked, “Together, let us be the pioneers of our generation… let us create a better future for all Singaporeans.”

Clearly, “all” doesn't include the LGBT community. Not when our supposedly better future doesn’t include ownership of HDB flats. Not when our students keep being ignored. And I’m fairly tired of being excluded all the time, implicitly, from things that apply to everyone else.

If there's one thing we can agree on, it's that Singapore's not perfect. In any case, though - it is a home that i still unerringly head for, and I call no other place home. Maybe, one day, it will be home in all senses of the word. And I hope that day will come.

Ho Ka Onn is an activist and first-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University. 

3. "Ah, finally - some clarity on CPF"

by Ng Yi Shu

The Central Provident Fund (CPF) - and the fiasco around it that started just this year, with blogger Roy Ngerng being sued for defamation by the PM, and the sudden protests at Hong Lim Park - got me all confused about the CPF. I’ve never really known about what the CPF had in store for me as a student - I only knew that the money in my Edusave account (now my Post-Secondary Education Account) would be deposited in my CPF once I graduate.

So I didn't really get why people was so hung up over CPF - despite covering the initial events that started the now-infamous defamation suit between Roy Ngerng and the PM and the two Return Our CPF protests. Why are people hung up over the Minimum Sum? How do I spend the money in my Medisave? What are the various few schemes that I as a CPF member have?

It was a relief when I saw PM Lee communicate the CPF scheme and retirement much more clearly than any government website or brochure would have at the National Day Rally. The changes, too, were a relief - retirees can soon withdraw a lump sum when they reach 65, and there is now a Silver Support scheme paying lower income seniors.

There wasn't a drastic change to the CPF either; seniors are still encouraged to monetise their property. It was quaint, though, when PM Lee actually spoke about seniors living alone and away from their children. It might have shown a connection to the youth of today, who, like me, probably wouldn't want to live with their parents when they come of age. The suggestion that seniors monetise their property also showed that the government wanted seniors to remain relatively independent, instead of relying on them.

The better communication methods on the various retirement schemes available has yet to address the key concerns coming from Speakers’ Corner - the Prime Minister has yet to talk about giving citizens more transparency on the CPF - so I doubt that the voices (in the form of the Return Our CPF protests) will stop.

Not that the protestors had engendered much change. Sure, protestors like Roy Ngerng brought to public consciousness the problems entailing Minimum Sum and how the money in our CPF has been invested; but they also merely amplified dissatisfaction, bringing more visibility to problems. If protestors like Roy Ngerng didn’t raise questions, these changes would probably still have occurred, primarily as a result of the National Conversation and feedback sessions two years earlier.

Perhaps, better communication methods could be learnt from this episode - the Government can better provide information to the public, who are often unclear about government policy. A fancy presentation isn't always a solution, but in this case, it was.

Ng Yi Shu is a first-year undergraduate at NTU.