Picture: Daniel PS Goh, the author of this piece.
Some stuff has been going around the Net since NDR about how WP came up with some of the proposed changes announced by the PM, and a friend asked me this morning how come WP not given credit. Friend also asked me what I think of the PM adopting "your" idea of doing away with PSLE T-scores and using a wide band with more DSAs that JJ and I wrote about. Following was my answer, transcribed from a conversation that was more colorful
No lah, first of all, it would be presumptuous and plain silly for me to claim credit for anything. I have been reading widely (MSM articles, blogs, scholarly work, etc) and thinking about the issue, so have JJ. And we both discussed and came up with an argument for it. The intellectual commons gave rise to the idea. We are merely co-creators, part of the crowd-sourcing process. Ideas don't belong to individuals; they circulate and get worked by different people. We should move away from this whole super-talent, brilliant idea rubbish. Anyone who suggest he/she is a talent, don't trust him/her.
The real talent is someone who knows how to listen and then put things together for the benefit of everyone. PM is our PM, so it is his responsibility to be a super-talent in this respect, to pick up from the intellectual commons to make the necessary policy changes. As initially disappointed as I was with the NDR, and still am, I think he is doing a pretty decent job. The OSC could be seen as a big "listen-in", but the OSC is an occasional "listen-in" and I don't think political parties should be involved. WP is part of the parliamentary process that is the regular "listen-in" for the G. The point is not that WP, PAP, SDP, AOs or NGOs came up with the ideas; the point should be how well the G is crowd-sourcing to do the best to benefit all Singaporeans; the point is that the rest of us would do our part by joining in the debate.
I don't know whether someone in the Civil Service picked up the idea from us and then it worked its way up to the PM. I don't care to know. If so, I am happy to have contributed to nation-building. If not, I am still in happy agreement with the tweaks. I suspect it was a good coincidence, perhaps a logical convergence. Regardless, I will still continue to make new arguments and reevaluate old ones. Ignore anyone trying to play the credit game (or the blame game of saying WP didn't do squat, which is the other side of the coin) and don't try to get me involved!
Daniel PS Goh
*Article first appeared on https://www.facebook.com/danpsgoh/posts/570528623009885