<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>HR development: Talent v Grades
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'(In Japan), before you become a landscape architect... by the primary school stage they have already decided whether you've got that aesthetic sense of colours, shapes, forms... If you have it in a high degree, then you become a sculptor or a painter, architect, interior decorator, landscape artist...
'(Here in Singapore), we just pick them by their O levels and A levels, what they scored for mathematics, science, languages, not...how well they did in aesthetics.
'We've had the same problem with architecture. We have stereotype buildings... I wonder why. Because we employ or rather we train people who scored well in engineering....
'...my son had a schoolmate who won a scholarship to Cambridge and wanted to do architecture. They were not interested in his A levels. They said: 'Give me a portfolio of all your drawings.' And on the basis of his portfolio, they said: 'Right, we'll take you for architecture.'
'So that's human resource development... you got to identify early... is he a musician, a dancer, a swimmer, a sportsman? So now we have specialised schools for sports, for music, for the arts, physical education.'
MM Lee, on the importance of developing people according to their innate talents rather than exam grades.
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'(In Japan), before you become a landscape architect... by the primary school stage they have already decided whether you've got that aesthetic sense of colours, shapes, forms... If you have it in a high degree, then you become a sculptor or a painter, architect, interior decorator, landscape artist...
'(Here in Singapore), we just pick them by their O levels and A levels, what they scored for mathematics, science, languages, not...how well they did in aesthetics.
'We've had the same problem with architecture. We have stereotype buildings... I wonder why. Because we employ or rather we train people who scored well in engineering....
'...my son had a schoolmate who won a scholarship to Cambridge and wanted to do architecture. They were not interested in his A levels. They said: 'Give me a portfolio of all your drawings.' And on the basis of his portfolio, they said: 'Right, we'll take you for architecture.'
'So that's human resource development... you got to identify early... is he a musician, a dancer, a swimmer, a sportsman? So now we have specialised schools for sports, for music, for the arts, physical education.'
MM Lee, on the importance of developing people according to their innate talents rather than exam grades.
