Surprising Grace

A friend of mine has a 2.5-year-old son who used to go to pre-school on weekdays while both his parents worked. When the circuit-breaker measures against COVID-19 recently took effect in Singapore, he and his parents found themselves - like most Singaporeans - confined to the house. As part of the nation’s home-based learning drive, his pre-school teacher emailed worksheets to his parents every day, which they ignored for a week while trying to juggle working from home and taking care of their toddler. Then, the teacher called and asked them to submit the worksheets. Nowadays, the parents (who thankfully still have a dose of common sense) take turns to do the daily worksheet and then let the child doodle on it before submitting it online, in what they call a “team effort”. A 2.5-year-old's homework When I heard this story, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The idea of 2.5-year-olds having homework to submit everyday - not to mention in the middle of a worldwide pandem...

It’s been some time since I wrote. The intervening time seems to have passed in a bit of a blur. Some moments stand out: the sunset on late afternoon walks home, light moments with the community, surprisingly deep conversations with friends or people I met for the first time, curious dogs on the street, the excitement of children. But a lot of the time has gone by in restless activity – one thing after the other of what I might call work – leaving me drained and looking for ways out of the “productivity trap” (which I wrote about in an earlier entry). It’s not that the work is not interesting. But sometimes I wonder if it is enough; if it really makes a difference. Perhaps some of this is due to the nature of the work I’m engaged in at the moment – research and advocacy – which has no visible immediate impact; but perhaps in another way it is a question that can be asked about anything that we do. As I write this I’m sitting in a hotel in Cebu, where a colleague and I have come ...

A while ago, I heard that a prominent government official known for promoting productivity in government had been baptised into the Catholic Church. “He can now take on a new ministry of promoting productivity in the church!” a friend of mine joked. This rather incongruous statement made me stop and think. IS productivity a value of the church? Productivity is certainly a national value in my native Singapore – right there at the top of the list along with efficiency, effectiveness, etc. We want government to be effective, which it generally is. In general, public services in Singapore work, public transport gets you places, and the economy generally runs like a well-oiled machine. All these are well and good; the results of a culture of productivity. But we can also see, I think, some of the dark side of productivity when it becomes both a national and personal obsession. When I ask people how they are these days, the invariable reply is, “Oh, busy as usual.” Working freneti...