figures that only looked nice on paper

Tharman Shanmugaratnam's (Minister of Education) response to his calls, during his rallies, to abolish streaming in primary schools. Mr Tharman had said that the practice of streaming has enabled Singapore to maintain a low drop-out rate of 3 per cent, 10 times lower than that in the United States where there is no streaming.

But Mr Chiam (SDA candidate for Potong Pasir) said that these were figures that only looked nice on paper.

"He was using figures which are presentable to the general public. I was a school teacher. I am talking from an educational point of view. When we get a 3 per cent drop-out rate, it looks nice on paper but for those who are streamed … they would have already lost their spirit.

You have condemned them as rejects and failures.

"I think they should study the Russian education system, rather than comparing it to the American education system. The teachers there really care for late developers and slower learners.

They spend more time on them and really bring them up very nicely."

The Facts:

They tell us the 'big lie' that "the figures don't lie", as they treat us as categories and not as individuals. However, category is not truth, but merely an act of choice driven by hidden agendas and prejudged priorities. Categories are intrinsically ambiguous. They can be distorted so that most of the data is 'on message', while awkward numbers are ignored. "Domination is transfigured into administration."

Reduced to statistics, both human problems and problem humans are made anonymous. Brutally insensitive decisions and actions are reduced to bookkeeping. As a paper exercise, otherwise unpleasant acts are purified. Treated as mere statistics, the unemployed, homeless, hospital waiting lists, alcoholics and other drug addicts, the mentally ill are all made invisible.

From their numerical platform, obsessive compulsive neurotic politicians claim to manage the risk and the uncertainty of our society with the arbitrary use of statistical models; with opinion polls, market research, focus groups, socio-economic classifications, performance measures, efficiency audits, cost-benefit analyses.

Through statistics, society becomes well-behaved, tidy, controllable.

...Professor Ian Angell on "single death"