On How to be a Useful Scholar?

My aunt sent me a chinese article from Singapore containing a critique on scholars, or more specifically, the 'paternalistic' scholarship system which plans a comfortable and rapid progression path for its scholars, ensuring their advantage over their non-scholar peers. The natural result of such a system is scholars who lack ground work experience (due to their accelerated progress into management), make unrealistic and impractical suggestions/changes to policies (due to the need to be different), and lack empathy towards the views and interests of their non-scholar subordinates. The impression is a detached scholar living in his own comfortable world.

I do not find this criticism unfair of the present situation, but I will not bother critiqing the scholarship system as the article has done, as the system will not change, not with the massive burecreacy involved, not with the atmosphere within the civil service, and not with the climate of the education system in Singapore.(This discussion is for another article.)

What is an easier alrernative is to try to change the perceptives of scholars. The natural result of such a paternalistic system need not be one of detachment,or even if it is, we must rise above it!I think the mark of a scholar is not the ability to have different or superior viewpoints and solutions from the rest of the population, but rather, the ability to consolidate different viewpoints across a spectrum of society, and extract or combine these into something that will benefit society, or the functioning of the civil service. With such an aim, the scholar must then commit himself to rigorous understanding of the ground, if not possible through actual job experience, then at least through the experiences of senior(not in position, but in years of service) officers by conversations with them or through examination of their daily workings.

The scholar cannot see the various accelerated job posting progression as just 'stepping stones' they cannot wait to get over, such as to reach higher postings. Every posting must be an intensive learning experience in itself, packing many years into one. Scholars'must recognise that being a scholar is to learn faster, not get promoted faster.

Scholars'bring humans, like to feel useful. The illusion is that rank/position is a measure of usefulness. Clearly, it is not!

Footnote: This article does not presuppose the intellectual superiority of scholars'over non-scholars, or the accurateness of the selection process of suitable people to be scholars. It merely tries to make the best of the situation as it is, scholars already being scholars.