MARCH 1 — How does Singapore plan to tackle our dearth of engineers? True to our technocratic ways, the government recently announced a series of measures that can be expressed as a formula:

Higher pay + training opportunities + leadership scheme = 1,000 engineers.

While this will probably work to meet the government’s target of expanding its talent pool by more than 13 per cent, it is unclear how it can address the under-appreciation of engineers in Singapore when compared to the United States, an issue raised by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during his recent visit to Silicon Valley.

The problem, in Lee’s own words, is that Singaporeans see engineers as fulfilling “a support function”.

They are there to fix what is broken, and are valued only then. It is, he believes, an issue of public perception.

Putting aside doubts that our technocratic society needs an even higher dosage of hard logic, the case can be made that the challenge of under-appreciation runs deeper.

Part of it has to do with Singapore’s insistence that the practise of science is geared towards stoking economic growth, a means to an end.

This culture of science-for-GDP is related to Singapore’s national philosophy of economic pragmatism.

Over the years, the government has been active at defining key growth areas, setting aside resources to invest in the creation of labour and the cultivation of industry in those areas.

When computer engineering was identified as a growth area in the early 1990s, many students began flocking to polytechnics and universities to take up IT courses in the hope of landing a secure job.

A similar trend can be observed in life sciences, which was seen as the next big thing in the late 1990s.

In itself, this is not a bad thing, except that it has led to a situation where Singaporeans begin to see their foray into these technical fields as nothing more than a safe bet for gainful employment, not a calling.

Engineering a change

The deeper cause of our engineering crisis is associated with our very idea of science. We would do better to imagine science not as a means to an end, but an end in itself.

The field of science and technology studies (STS), where scholars explore scientific and technological innovation from the socio-political, historical and cultural perspectives, may provide us some clue.

In his bestselling book The End of Science, veteran science journalist John Horgan argues that the rise of applied science (or, empirical science, as he calls it) has led to a situation where the field is no longer capable of producing new ideas.

As knowledge ossifies, scientists are limited to either refining or applying the major theories of our predecessors, such as natural selection or quantum mechanics.

To stem this worrying trend, he proposes the concept of “ironic science”, a practise that points “to all the shortcomings of current scientific knowledge, to all the questions left unanswered”.

It prompts scientists to keep seeking the answers for life’s biggest mysteries, such as the afterlife, and abandon the pressure to create 2.0 versions of existing technologies.

Put simply, this method reinscribes a sense of wonder in science, encouraging scientists to be dreamers more than fixers.

Gaining ‘steam’

Can “ironic science” make engineering sexy in Singapore?

On the one hand, this is the sort of question that I imagine Horgan wants to avoid. On the other, some attempt at an answer is a good first step for a pragmatic society such as ours.

My observations of the culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I am currently serving a research stint, suggests a subtle but major difference.

Even though Singapore’s institutes of higher learning have tried to incorporate the arts into technical education, it does so with the view that the arts are an afterthought, a means to an end — that end being a good STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education for the purpose of bettering our economic standing.

MIT, on the other hand, appears to have embraced humanities education in a bigger way.

Its educational philosophy is closer to what some in the US have described as STEAM, where “the arts” (the A in the acronym) is placed on par with its technical counterparts.

As an indication, MIT was ranked among the top three universities in the world for arts and humanities education last year.

Students are allowed, even celebrated, for taking a major in non-STEM subjects.

Take, for example, Abra Shen, who was featured on the school website for being the first MIT student to pursue a major in theatre arts, alongside a degree in brain and cognitive sciences.

In her interview with the school’s online magazine MIT News, she said: “I thought wow, science is really interesting, neuroscience is really great, and medicine has this creative component to it.”

One suggestion for Singapore to embrace STEAM is for us to tweak the funding criteria for technical projects from the likes of A*STAR or the National Research Foundation to include some justification along an ethical, philosophical or humanistic line.

Small changes like these can go a long way in helping us regain our wonder at science. — TODAY

* Nazry Bahrawi joined the MIT’s Literature department as a visiting scholar from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.