Update (26/1): After some people shared in the comments about their experiences, I realized I sound so much like my father in this post. To him, an obstacle was never as important as our attitude towards the obstacle. In the post below, I approached the topic of National Service from that POV - that NS will always be needed, and if it’s going to be there, then it will be our attitude and how we deal with National Service ourselves that determine our success and minimizes its impact. To me, our destiny is in our own hands, and only our attitude affects how well we compete with the foreign talents. I still maintain that is the case. But based on the experiences shared, I have come to appreciate even more how NS handicaps us to compete, even with the right attitude. We really do need a way to ensure that the men who serve do not put a pause on their lives as the rest of the world zooms by. We may have the will to run harder and faster to catch up with the foreign talents and rest of the world, but sometimes it may be a bridge too far.
Thanks to dermapthera and signaller_private for sharing.
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I wrote most of this during my reservist which was about a month ago. I have added some stuff which are in bold:
I am reminded that while we may not enjoy doing national service and would prefer to be spending our time elsewhere, not everyone who dislikes National Service and reservist does it based on the argument that NS disadvantages us against foreigners.
We view it as both an irritant that eats our personal time as well as a duty. Our feelings about it are mixed. But what I do see is people doing what they must and doing it with a kind of resolve that can only be described as professionalism.
It is arguable if the blogosphere generally makes National Service a scapegoat for problems pertaining to foreigners in Singapore when discussing competitiveness, privileges of citizenship and fairness but personally I think the blogosphere tends to have that slant.
The question then is should the general public be made aware of such arguments. Sometimes people need to be made aware of issues they should be unhappy about and the reasons why. Sometimes though, people can be made to be unhappy about issues based on flawed reasons when there is no cause to be so.
The arguments I have seen against NS on the blogosphere seems to fall dangerously into the kind that would politicize what is a personal issue about the duty imposed on us as citizens to one that fuels nationalistic, racial and protectionistic sentiments.
I am not saying we should stop discussing the need, implementation and impact of National Service. What I am saying is National Service might not be as important to the discussion about foreigners taking out jobs as some of us might think.
While National Service might cause us to enter university at a later age, what happens during university is more a result of what we do in university than what preceded before it. It was what we did or did not do during that time that determined our grades and affected how we measured up to foreigners in the local universities and hence later in the job market.
Of course, some have pointed out that companies discriminate against Singaporean males while hiring because of reservist but that discrimination needs to be understood as the impact of National Service in influencing the market and not the result of time spent in National Service.
One of the questions then is how do we do National Service and use that two years to increase our value to the labour market. Are we working harder to maximize whatever other time we have before and after National Service to increase our own value. Yes, National Service has a cost. And it is a high one. Forgetting the argument if it is a necessary one for the moment, what are we doing to ensure we can pay it? Sure, we can wait for the government to give a handout (which they are in terms of taxes) but are we doing anything on our own to take charge of our own destiny?
I think people might actually waste more time doing leisurely activities like playing DOTA, clubbing, watching TV … Is leisure time a right for all of us? Sure, I think the option to have leisure time is a right. But we make the choices. If time is so precious based on the arguments that National Service waste our time, are those who make it being judicious with their time outside of it?
There is the argument made that the two years spent dulls the brain and breaks the education flow. I agree there might be some merit in this argument. But here is the thing - when I was waiting for my ORD so that I could go and study, I was like a boxer jumping about enthusiastically at the corner waiting for the bell to ring. However, once the bell was rung, and the fight I had impatiently been waiting for started, I realised I didn’t prepare myself for the fight.
Truthfully, the two years in National Service does have time in which we can prepare ourselves for the civilian life after ORD but how many of us have the wisdom not to squander it?
