A Gift of a Programme

In my opinion, the aim of the GEP should be is to nurture people to being leaders of the Singapore society who are not just able to be good in their studies, but also developed in terms of socialising skills, creative thinking ability and have great compassion towards others, especially his followers. With these three attributes complete, a leader would be able to lead others into the right way effectively while maintaining his follower's trust in him. Thus, GEP should not just focus their assessments on purely results, but also these factors.

To start off, creative thinking is definitely more important than being intelligent when picking a leader. Very often, people regard smart students as hard working people who are able to solve any problem they face with the information they have. However, in this rapidly changing society where information is always being updated, technology is constantly upgraded and news are obsolete after a few days, and where everything is unpredictable, storing information in your heads would not help much as it would not be applicable for the situation you face would not be as simple and straight forward we think. We must be able to have the ability to think creatively and to source out useful information available during that point of time which is helpful in solving that particular problem. Having knowledge of the past 1 million years would be a waste of time memorising if we are not able to selectively pick out those which we can use. Hence, a good leader for the society should be able to think creatively so as to be able to adapt to different situations without wasting too much resources.

Also, charisma is also a crucial factor when one person is to give the population of a whole nation instructions and expect them to follow it. When a leader has done an ingeniously planned out idea which is able to solve a whole nation's problem, the leader would require the cooperation of its citizens to be able to push his idea forward so that words become action. However, not all of the people in the society is able to understand the goals and means of the leader as which how it is going to progress and help the society in the end. Thus, as an elite, the leader should have great socialising skills and persuasivness to be able to convince the masses to follow his path. But of course, no leader ever lives forever and he would need to be replaced some time. Thus, there should be no elitism in the society and the leader should work together alongside the people instead of ahead of them. This way, the people would be clearer in the leader's motives and be able to learn from him hence nurturing new leaders as well as gaining the trust of the people.

Lastly but most importantly, a good leader should be able to be compassionate towards his followers and not exploit them. Just like in the holocaust, Hitler was a leader with creative thinking as well as charisma, however, the only thing which made him fail as a leader was his inability to think for the people and not have elitism. In the holocaust, he clearly stated a "hierarchy" whereby Jews were seen as inferior to others and the Nazis were the elites and should be worshipped. It is due to his non-thoughfulness towards his followers, that lead to the people being frustrated and not coorperate with him. Thus, a leader must remember that his work is to lead the people to the goal, so that the living standards of the people would be improved and using a pragmatic way of exploiting the people to achieve the goal is not an appropriate way to go.

However, I also think that the results of a student in his studies is quite important as to som extent, it is able to reflect his ability to think creatively as well as to be able to socialise with others especially with the improvement of the education system nowadays where students are tested whole-roundedly. However, the GEP must remember that although they are training out elites to lead the nation, these leaders should be humble and not show elitism at all.