Comparisons between TT,Singaporeare useless

THE EDITOR: In his October 3 column in the Newsday, headlined “The cruciality of education,” Reginald Dumas argues that education is the key factor that explains why, in 1962, TT had a per capita income of $704 and Singapore $472, whereas 60 years later, TT’s is US$15,243 and Singapore’s is US$72,794 – a five-fold difference.

However, all comparisons between Singapore and TT, whether in education, or economies, or crime, or political systems, are useless. This is because the populations are too different. Singapore is 74 per cent Chinese, 13 per cent Malays and nine per cent Indian. TT, according to the 2011 census, is 35 per cent Indo, 34 per cent Afro, and 15 per cent mixed.

As the world’s leading scholar Thomas Sowell has often pointed out, different rates of achievement among different ethnic groups is the norm, not the exception. Trinidad Chinese, for example, became economically successful within one generation of arriving here and this pattern holds today.

The table below shows that, of the different educational levels between TT and Singapore, only tertiary education is much higher.

Level TT Singapore

Primary only 46% 34%

Secondary only 29% 19%

Technical 5% 10%

Tertiary 6% 24%

This means either that tertiary education is the key factor in Singapore’s five-fold higher GDP per capita (a conclusion belied by that country’s major products) or that some other variables are more crucial for economic progress.

Dumas refers to Singapore’s first-place rank in the 2015 Programme for International Students’ Assessment (PISA) of 70 countries surveyed in science, reading and maths, as compared to TT’s 53rd ranking. This reflects the fact that the average national IQ for Singapore is 103 (where 100 is the average), whereas TT’s average IQ is 85, which is an entire standard deviation below average.

JENSEN RUSHTON

San Fernando