数码民粹

民粹主义借着互联网在欧洲卷土重来，是近年让许多政治观察家，忧心忡忡的一个政治趋势。

英国智囊团 Denos在十一月初发表了一个不寻常的研究报告，题为“数码民粹主义的新面貌”（The New Face of Digital Populism）。他们调查了欧洲互联网上10,000民粹分子。得到的结论是，民粹主义正死灰复燃，而且有越演越烈之势。论者认为，如不及时遏抑，5年之后将席卷欧洲，形成一个比欧盟国债更严重的危机。

这次调查发现，网上的民粹分子，一般年龄较轻，大部分是三十以下的男性。他们不信任主流政治以及司法建制。有强烈种族主义倾向，讨厌移民，尤其是回教移民。

有趣的是，这数码运动，乍看似跨国界的，不过各国网民们却急欲重归民族国家：法国人的法国，德国人的德国。他们都声称要维护行将消失的国家文化传统。基本仇外，反对欧盟。

其实，在二十世纪九十年代早期开始，民粹政党在法国、丹麦和瑞士就已取得了有史以来最好的成绩；在意大利、奥地利和荷兰，它们甚至首度进入国民政府。这次调查一个令人心寒的发现是，这些组织在互联网上的支持者，远远超过其注册党员，而且往往达百万之数。

民粹主义，向来没有明确定义。在欧洲被称为民粹组织的，主要以其思维心态划分，范围极广，包括了政治上极右的纳粹主义以及极左的无政府主义、种族主义、民族主义、民主原教旨者以及各式各样的沙文主义。

“我们 vs 他们”的排他心态，可说是民粹思维最基本的精神。欧洲民粹运动的特征，就是仇视主流建制。他们自命代表纯朴无辜的普罗大众，对抗自私狡诈的精英权贵。他们对复杂的社会问题，给出自接了当的，常识性的，简单的解读以及解决方案。他们交流的方式，是强有感染力的“老百姓式”（man in the street）,平易近人，爱憎分明。他们提出“救赎政治”，强调意识形态，与当权者的“实用主义政治”，形成鲜明对照。他们声称要夺回权杖，归还给真正的主人 - 那拥有至高无上权力的人民，恢复真正的民主。不过，吊诡的是，他们虽然主张直接民主，怀疑代议制，却往往热衷于追随一个明星式的“人民英雄”，认定他是人民的救星，无条件地听他的话。

“阳春白雪，下里巴人”的道理，放之四海皆准。在弄清楚了民粹思维的本质之后，它之所以在人手一机的数码时代，以野火燎原之势，迅速传播的原因，不辩自明。

下面，我用四组对立的两极，作为讨论架构，进一步从更多面向，说明主流政治在网上不敌民粹思维的原因。

我们 对 他们
前面说过，排他的心态，是各式各样民粹思维的基本心态。许多战争与社会动乱；大者如纳粹的反犹太主义和近年在欧美涌现的伊斯兰恐惧症，小者如民间的村斗和家族世仇，无不是这种心理在作祟。排他的心态，原是人类与生俱来的原始本能。根深蒂固，深埋在人性之中，极易召唤，往往一擦就亮，一呼百应。

许多民粹运动一个共同的敌人，是统治精英。精英与百姓被看成是对立的。百姓纯朴善良，而精英自私并诡计多端，绝对不能信任。所以，各式各样的阴谋论是民粹叙事（narrative）的主要内容。而阴谋论就像煽情新闻/娱乐，受众广大。

简单 对 复杂
民粹者的论述通常简单易懂。他们擅长把复杂的社会问题简单化。最常见的，是找一个代罪羔羊，通常是外人（他者），然后把问题统统归咎他们。例如，许多欧洲民粹分子，把失业、薪金呆滞、治安等问题，一股脑都推到移民身上。

应付问题时，最困难的，是缓急轻重的拿捏与平衡。民粹主义者则往往无视这些困难的“细节”，直接把问题“意识形态化”或“道德化”。例如我国的语文议题。从国家的角度看，国家凝聚力，国内外政经形势，学生的谋生出路等等，都是不容忽视，攸关存亡的考量因素。可是，很多网民却不理这些，一下子把问题提升到民族灵魂的高度，指责别人只知功利，数典忘祖。

民粹叙事，还往往乞灵于神话或童话，利用其家传户晓，早已深入民心的“原型”（archetype）， 以达到“最大的简单化” 的效果。近来台湾选战，绿营“三只小猪”的文宣操作，就是一个例子。还有，民粹分子常常有意无意地为民选政府披上专制帝王的黄袍，以符合传统“是非／善恶／专制民主/压制反抗”的二元对立的简单逻辑。

情绪 对 理性
民粹运动诉诸情绪。情感比理性原始，一旦煽动起来，平日压抑累积下来的挫折、不满、愤怒、委屈等总总情绪，都能藉此发泄，给人一种“发现了自己”的痛快之感，容易上瘾。

理性则是严格律己的成果，不易成就。社会科学发现，在很多社群中，认知理性高度发展的人，往往只占少数。精深复杂的理论不易为民众了解。所以民粹民众对知识精英，高度不信任。对学者专家以及他们提出的数据与理论，往往嗤之以鼻，宁可采信天方夜谭式的阴谋论。

低阶段 对 高阶段
人生是一个发展的过程。各式各样的能力，如认知能力、道德境界、人格价值等，都有一个从低到高的必经发展阶段。例如，每个人的道德境界都要经过“自我中心”阶段，到“族群中心”阶段，然后发展到人道主义的“人类中心”阶段。明显的，许多民粹民众，大都停滞在“族群中心”的阶段。据研究，世界各国居于“族群中心”阶段的民众，占人口的大多数。所以，民粹运动容易引起共鸣。

当然，互联网不是造成民粹运动复兴的唯一因素。西欧的民粹主义的兴起，主要是民众对传统政党的表现失望所致。在选民眼中，主流政党在处理全球化，欧洲一体化，移民问题，高官腐败等问题，皆表现欠佳。同时，欧美民主社会越来越严重的“政治萎靡”（political malaise）现象，也助长了这个趋势。

最令人担心的是，民粹组织在网上的支持率，有逐渐转成选票的趋势。论者认为，民粹运动如果要通过民主程序，进驻主流，一个明星式领袖的出现，是关键的条件。所以，造神运动正在各地如火如荼的展开，都希望能制造出一个万众引颈以待，不畏权势，勇于抗争，并且天纵英明的“救世主”。

(早报言论 2011年12月31日）

spider trees

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01543911f324970c-popup

Russell Watkins: 'I was in Pakistan a year ago for DFID, looking at the impact of British aid in helping people affected by the floods. In northern Sindh a vast area had been flooded, but the waters had finally receded enough for local communities to start to return. While we were there the local NGOs told us about this odd phenomenon: miles and miles of flooded land, where every piece of vegetation was shrouded in these spider webs, like candy floss. It was stunning – a surreal sight. The trees were the only things above the water, so it was a very strange landscape, definitely ghostly'Photograph: Department for International Development/Russell Watkins

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札记：双语政策

当年，李光耀面对的问题，是必须从四种语文选择一个共通语言。他选择英文是一个务实的抉择。

五十年后的今天，看双语政策，利多于弊。下面是一些我看到的，当年决策的考量因素：

1，从打造新加坡国族认同感的角度看。如果不采用英文为第一语文，而用中文或马来文，其他族群会接受吗？

2，如果四种语文并重，那各族群之间的沟通，必然有问题。四种语文并用，建国初时的行政系统亦无力负担。

3，两种语文并重（中英、巫英、印英），很多学生不能应付。如果各族孩子的英文都是半桶水，族群沟通必有问题。国家生产力亦会大受影响。

4，邻国对当时新加坡的疑虑，以及随之而来的打压与孤立。

5，国际强国对第三个中国的疑虑。外资与外援的考量。

6，英文是世界经济与科技的强势语文。

7，英殖民的法律行政制度传统。无可否认的，英国的法律行政制度，是建国时期的主要政制基建。

如果您是决策者，面对这种种问题，您会做怎样的决定？可以提出一个您认为行得通，更好的语文政策吗？

今日新加坡的成功，不正是得力于李的双语政策吗？

如果大家都认识到，以英语为主，母语为辅的双语政策，是新加坡的生存与繁荣的基石。那么，关于消灭华文教育的指责，与关闭南大的争议就相对容易解决了。

不过，首先必须澄清一下关于我国教育现状。令我常常不解并惊愕的一个现象是，在本地，提起我国教育，就听到怨声四起，（例如华英网友（#43）说，现在孩子的英文是一桶水了吗，可能比过去的半桶更少吧。）仿佛我国教育大不如前，正在退步。

国际教育专家对新加坡教育的评估，却完全相反，在他们眼中，新加坡教育是世界最先进的系统之一，是值得借鉴的学习对象。

回应美国总统奥巴马雄心勃勃的教育改革议程。OECD最近出版了一份很详尽的评估报告，Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States，称誉新加坡为接近全球顶部，突飞猛进的教育系统。

至於华文教育，比起从前，至少在普及性方面，绝对是大有进步。记得在建国初期，华文并不如我们今日想象的那么普及，部份服役的华裔青年，甚至听不懂华语，因此有“福建兵团”的出现。今天的华裔中学生，绝大部份能听，能说，多多少少能读，能写。在这个基础上，因材施教，根据孩子的天份，各有程度不一的进径。这也让他们在离校后，可以比较轻易的，自动自发的重拾华文。

现在我们可以回到主题。双语政策是生存之道。英语是工作语，也是各族赖以沟通的语言。所以，让学生掌握英语是首要之务。凡事都有代价，学生的天份参差不齐，有些孩子母语的掌握上不如人意，是可以理解的。如果这样的做法被看成是处心积虑的消灭华文，也只能说是一种猜测。

至於南大的关闭，李在他的书里，前因后果，有详尽描述。不过，如果我们从双语政策的大方向看，可以说是理所当然的结果（logical conclusion ）。

Singapore: Educating for the future

Posted by Andreas SCHLEICHER Nov 8, 2011

I had always been interested in Asia’s success story of Singapore, that transformed itself from a developing country to a modern industrial economy in one generation. This year I had the opportunity of a visiting professorship at Singapore’s National Institute of Education to learn more about this country. If I had to summarise what I learned in one sentence, this is a story about political coherence and leadership as well as alignment between policy and practice; about setting ambitious standards in everything you do; about focusing on building teacher and leadership capacity to deliver vision and strategy at the school level; and about a culture of continuous improvement and future orientation that benchmarks educational practices against the best in the world.

At the institutional level, both policy coherence and fidelity of implementation are brought about by a strategic relationship between the Ministry of Education, the NIE and the schools. That's not just words. The reports I received from policy makers, researchers and teachers were entirely consistent, even where they represented different perspectives. NIE’s dynamic director Lee Sing Kong meets the Minister on a weekly basis. NIE professors are regularly involved in ministry discussions and decisions, so it is easy for NIE’s work to be aligned with ministry policies, and school principals learn about major reform proposals directly from the Minister, rather than through the media. Teacher education programmes are designed with the teacher in mind, rather than to suit the interests of academic departments. Teachers typically go into the field with a first degree, the Master’s programme serves to frame the practical experience gained in schools within a coherent theoretical underpinning later in mid-career – and I met plenty of teachers who had taken that up and continue their education while in the profession. In recognising the need for teachers to keep up with the rapid changes occurring in the world and to be able to constantly improve their practice, every teacher is entitled to 100 hours of professional development per year. Teacher networks and professional learning communities encourage peer-to-peer learning and the Academy of Singapore Teachers was opened in September 2010 to further encourage teachers to continuously share best practices.

The usual complaint that teacher education does not provide sufficient opportunity for recruits to experience real students in real classrooms in their initial education isn’t unknown in Singapore. It is simply difficult, disruptive and expensive to get an annual cohort of 2000 teacher recruits into classrooms. So what to do? Do like Stanford and establish the world’s premier teacher education institution with clinical experience for a hundred students per year and let the rest of the country sink? Singapore is not the U.S. where teacher policy is a function of myriad decisions made by local authorities who often have no idea how their decisions are actually affecting the quality of the teaching profession. So Singapore has gone the other way round – on top of school practicum attachments of between 10 to 22 weeks, NIE is currently bringing classrooms digitally into pre-service education, with technology enabling real-time access to a selection of the country’s classrooms, in ways that don't distract schools from their core business and at the same provide student-teachers with insights into classroom experience in many schools, rather than have a few idiosyncratic experiences only. NIE also carries out an amazing range of classroom-oriented research to help teachers personalise learning experiences, deal with increasing diversity in their classrooms and differences in learning styles, and keep up with innovations in curricula, pedagogy and digital resources.

It is also striking to see how teaching talent is identified and nurtured rather than being left to chance. Like all government employees and many other professions in Singapore, the teachers’ performance is appraised annually by a board and against 13 different competencies. These are not just about academic performance, but include teachers’ contribution to the academic and character development of the students in their charge, their collaboration with parents and community groups, and their contribution to their colleagues and the school as a whole. It was intriguing to see how teachers didn't seem to view this as a top-down accountability system but as an instrument for improvement and career development. Teachers who do outstanding work receive a bonus from the school’s bonus pool.  After three years of teaching, teachers are assessed annually to see which of three career paths would best suit them – master teacher, specialist in curriculum or research or school leader. Importantly, the individual appraisal system sits within the context of great attention to the school’s overall plan for educational excellence.

PISA data show that schools in Singapore have comparatively limited leeway in making hiring decisions. But I learned that the principal of the school to which teacher-students are attached will sit on the recruitment panel and weigh in on decisions about the recruitment of the people they could end up with, well aware that wrong recruitment decisions can result in 40 years of poor teaching. So it’s not all just about your school, but about the success of the system.

I could see how all of this plays out in practice in Qifa Primary School. It was the experience you would expect in Singapore, a charismatic school leader, an engaged team of teachers with a critical and collaborative mindset, and disciplined and yet cheerful students. But what impressed me most was a visit to one of Singapore’s three Institutes of Technical Education (ITE) which cater for the bottom quarter of school performers. I had long wanted to see how the country deals with these students. I was received in the school’s restaurant which, entirely managed and run by students, almost looks like an upgraded Lau Pa Sat with airconditioning, serving dishes from a dozen countries and cultures, a symbol of a country that doesn't see culture as an obstacle but seeks to capitalize on its diversity.

I visited a classroom where a visiting Australian chef was captivating a group of students with an interactive presentation on the latest research on preparing meat, in a first-class learning environment equipped with the up-to-date technology. The facilities and amenities of the ITE were easily comparable to those of modern universities anywhere else. This is a country that invests the same amount of public money into every vocational student as the high school student going to its most prestigious university, that understands that the physical learning environment can shape the image of an institution and that prioritizes the quality of teaching over the size of classes. And the ministry provides the ITE’s with full budgetary autonomy over a ten-year budget envelope to facilitate long-term strategic planning and investment.

Clearly, Singapore seeks to break the East Asian mould where academic achievement is revered as the only route to success, recognising that students learn differently and differently at different stages in their lives. Once seen as a last resort, Singapore’s ITE College West is now a place of choice for students, with 90% of graduates finding jobs in their chosen field, up from 60% decades ago. The ITE also sees a sizeable number of students who make it from the ITE to the polytechnic to the university and to anywhere in life. Principal Yek Tiew Ming explained how the ITE carefully follows its graduates for a decade to learn from their experience and success, and regularly brings successful alumni back to show its current students that the sky is the limit to achievement. The ITE’s also provide good examples for building synergies between public provision and the business sector. Each technical field in the ITE’s is advised by industries in that sector to keep it current with changing demands and new technologies. New programmes can be built for multinational companies looking to locate in Singapore.

All this has changed the way in which political leaders and educators view those students, no longer considering them as failures but as experiential learners. And I was impressed by the students of the ITE as much as by its principal and teachers.

I had taken the outgoing flight with a Western airline and the returning flight to Paris with Singapore Airlines; you fly with the same plane with the same technology, you eat similar food but you experience how much the sense of responsibility, dedication and diligence of the people in charge can make a difference to your experience as a customer.

There are important lessons the world can learn from Singapore. To those who believe that systemic change in education is not possible, Singapore has shown several times over how this can be achieved. To become and remain high-performing, countries need a policy infrastructure that drives performance and builds the capacity for educators to deliver it in schools. Singapore has developed both. Where Singapore is today is the result of several decades of judicious policy and effective implementation. On the spectrum of national reform models, Singapore’s is both comprehensive – the goal has been to move the whole system – and public policy-driven.

I was struck most by the following features.

Meritocracy. I heard not just from policy makers or educators but also from students of all ethnic backgrounds and all ranges of ability that education is the route to advancement and that hard work and effort eventually pays off. The government has put in place a wide range of educational and social policies to advance this goal, with early intervention and multiple pathways to education and career. The success of the government’s economic and educational policies has brought about immense social mobility that has created a shared sense of national mission and made cultural support for education a near-universal value.

Vision, leadership and competency. Leaders with a bold long-term vision of the role of education in a society and economy are essential for creating educational excellence. I was consistently impressed with the people I met at both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Manpower. These Ministries are staffed by knowledgeable, pragmatic individuals, trained at some of the best universities in the world. They function in a culture of continuous improvement, constantly assessing what is and isn’t working using both data and practitioner experience from around the world. I was speaking with Minister Heng about our Skills Strategy only to realise that he had already studied most of my slides. They also respect and are respected by professionals in the NIE as in the schools. The close collaboration between policy, research and practice provides a guiding coalition that keeps the vision moving forward and dynamic, expecting education to change as conditions change rather than being mired in the past.

Coherence. In Singapore, whenever a policy is developed or changed, there seems enormous attention to the details of implementation – from the Ministry of Education, to the National Institute of Education, cluster superintendents, principals and teachers. The result is a remarkable fidelity of implementation which you see in the consistency of the reports from different stakeholders. 

Clear goals, rigorous standards and high-stakes gateways. The academic standards set by Singapore’s Primary School Leaving Examination and O and A-levels are as high as anywhere in the world, and that is also what you see from their results in PISA. Students, teachers and principals all work very hard towards important gateways. Rigour, coherence and focus are the watchwords. Serious attention to curriculum development has produced strong programmes in maths, science, technical education and languages and ensured that teachers are well-trained to teach them. Having been very successful as a knowledge transmission education system, Singapore is now working on curriculum, pedagogy and assessments that will lead to a greater focus on high-level, complex skills.

High-quality teachers and principals. The system rests on active recruitment of talent, accompanied by coherent training and serious and continuing support that promote teacher growth, recognition, opportunity and well-being. And Singapore looks ahead, realising that as the economy continues to grow and change it will become harder to recruit the kind of top-level people into teaching that are needed to support 21st century learning.

Intelligent accountability. Singapore runs on performance management. To maintain the performance of teachers and principals, serious attention is paid to setting annual goals, to garnering the needed support to meet them and to assessing whether they have been met. Data on student performance are included, but so too are a range of other measures, such as contribution to school and community, and judgements by a number of senior practitioners. Reward and recognition systems include honours and salary bonuses. Individual appraisals take place within the context of school excellence plans. While no country believes it has got accountability exactly right, Singapore’s system uses a wide range of indicators and involves a wide range of professionals in making judgements about the performance of adults in the system. 

So is there nothing that Singapore can learn from the world? Actually there are a number a points.

You can mandate good performance, but you need to unleash greatness. Finland provides an example for how you can shift the focus from a regulating towards an enabling policy environment. Perhaps it was no surprise then that when I met State Minister Wong for lunch, he had just returned from a visit to Finland. 

Singapore’s educators realize that the skills that are easiest to teach and easiest to test, are also the skills that are easiest to digitize, automate and outsource; and that value is less and less created vertically through command and control and increasingly so horizontally by whom you connect and work with. There is much talk about educational success being no longer about reproducing content knowledge, and efforts initiated to develop imaginative skills to connect the dots and to anticipate where the next invention will come from; about ways of working, including communication and collaboration; and about the tools for working, including the capacity to recognize and exploit the potential of new technologies. And more than that, the centre of the current discussion is now on ethics, values and the capacity of students to live in a multi-faceted world as active and engaged citizens. But Singapore’s educators, like educators elsewhere, struggle with finding appropriate answers to what students should learn, the ways in which they can learn these broader competences and how teaching and schooling needs to change to achieve this.

Despite building many bridges and ladders across the system, PISA shows how social background still creates important barriers for student success. Like others, Singapore finds that the emphasis on meritocracy alone provides no guarantee for equity, and that it takes effective systems of support to moderate the impact of social background on student and school outcomes and to identify and foster the extraordinary talents of ordinary students. Educators are inspired by the life-changing opportunities created at the Northlight School. There is also considerable interest in Shanghai’s success with attracting the most effective school principals to the toughest schools and the most talented teachers to the most challenging classrooms as well as in Ontario’s approach to creating awareness of and addressing social disadvantage.

While Singapore does so well in allocating public resources to maximize value for money, parents are spending significant resources on private tutoring. When measured in PISA metrics, private tutoring actually adds very little in value to the high quality education in Singaporean schools but it does, apart from the money, take up a disproportionate amount of student learning time. Singapore would make much better use of the country’s economic and human resources by accepting rather than ignoring the demand for such more personalized learning and perhaps building it into the regular school days of public schools, as countries like Denmark or Finland have successfully done.

So, all in all, while there is a lot the world can learn from Singapore, there remain lessons too which Singapore can continue to learn from the world. In short, there seems always much to gain from education systems collaborating to address tomorrow’s challenges to their strengths today.

新加坡人参与了辛亥革命”吗？

这篇言论不蒙早报言论刊用，不知道是不是与韩山元先生或白马非马的名字有关。

新加坡人参与了辛亥革命”吗?

近来，一位网民白马非马，在随笔南洋网的论坛上说了一句话，“从来没有新加坡人参予过辛亥革命”。

他的这句话，引出韩山元的质疑：“中国同盟会新加坡分会的三位领导人张永福、陈楚楠与林义顺都出生在新加坡，在新加坡受教育与成长，请问他们不是新加坡人吗？”

白马非马则认为，这些革命义士的身份，是新加坡华侨，当时还没有新加坡这个国家。

于是引爆了一场“谁是新加坡人？”的网上辩论。各路人马纷纷加入战围。事关国家认同，大家越谈越激动，口沫，眼淚与鼻涕齐飞。不过，有关各造似乎都秉承了死不认错的网络辩论传统，直到今天，在混战了十多天之后，大家都还毫无倦色，悻悻然的各不相让。

这类纠缠不清的概念，向来被我视为个人的挑战，不弄清楚不能安眠，於是也加了把嘴。下面是我的看法。

一些比较抽象的名词，如民主，自由，公正等，其涵义往往因人地时空，而有所不同。“新加坡人”这个名词，也一样。在沟通时，如果能够先把其含义厘清，比较容易找到交集点。

如果我们说某某是新加坡人，可以从下面四个角度看。

1，从法律的角度着。如果法律承认他是新加坡人，那他就是法律上的新加坡人。
2从个人认同的角度看。最容易的，是直接问当事人，他是什么人：是中国人、印度人，菲律宾人还是新加坡人？如果他认同的是印度，就算有新加坡公民权，没有人可以抢走他精神上的认同感。本质上，他是印度人。不过，我见过很多外地公民，他们从小在新加坡长大，生活习惯、语言文化完全与本地人无异，如果他们认同新加坡，我们当然可说，实质上他是新加坡人。
3，从他的居住地看，这就好像我们说麻坡人，梹堿人一样。
4，从文化的角度看。如果有一个人，他说他是英国人，可是他既不会讲英语，对英国社会的文化习俗也毫无认识，就算他有英国passport。你能摸着良心说他是英国人吗？

所以当我们在讨论时，应该先弄清楚我们说的“新加坡人”是指上面4项的那一项，这样才会减少混乱。

那位网民白马非马说，那些参与辛亥革命的义士，从文化，认同心态以及当时的殖民地的法律看，他们只能算是海外华侨，不是新加坡人。明显的，那是从上面说1，2与4 的角度看。没错。

韩山元说，他们在新加坡出生，成家立业，所以是新加坡人。那是从3着眼，当然也没错。

如果你问这些革命义士，他们是中国人还是新加坡人。答案是肯定的。是中国人！

不过，如果你对他们留在新加坡的后代子孫说，这些人不是新加坡人，那就未免太没有人情味。如此看来，从不同的语境脉络出发，说“新加坡人参与了辛亥革命”，或“新加坡华侨参与了辛亥革命”都似乎说得通。

不过，如果从沟通（communication）的要求看。“新加坡华侨参与了辛亥革命”的说法，则比较准确。

首先，相对“华侨”而言，“海外华人”，“新加坡人”在历史上的意含，是有区别的。

杨荣文在谈到辛亥革命时说，“在殖民统治时期，许多海外华人的忠诚的对象是中国，而不是他们当时住的地方。”“把海外华人的政治忠诚重定向到东南亚新独立的国家，是一个历时几十年的斗争。”“1955年周恩来总理在万隆，诫勉海外华人成为他们住在国家的忠诚的公民，是明智的和必要的。他们的地位，从‘华侨’改变‘海外华人’。”“对于海外华人，把自己对华族的‘文化认同’与‘政治忠诚认同’分开，是至关重要的。没有一个明确的区分，会有很多问题。当然，看到中国迅速发展，我们感到非常自豪和高兴，因为这不仅对我们的经济有好处，同时也提高了我们在世界上的尊严。同样的，当清代中国软弱并遭人践踏时，所有华人都感觉得被世人贬低。但是，这与我们的政治忠诚，不能混为一谈。这样一来，海外华人可以庆祝他们作为新加坡人，马来西亚人，美国的人的华族性（ Chineseness）而不会被人误解。

同时，在沟通时，必须照顾到“受众”的知识背景。现在说的话，当然是说给现在的人听。

如果我们在历史教科书上写道，“在1910年，有些新加坡人，跑到中国去参加辛亥革命，其中几个还牺牲了。”新加坡的学生读了，一定会十分困惑。为什么新加坡人要参加中国的革命运动？

如果改成“在1910年，有些在新加坡的华侨参加了辛亥革命。”相信他们会比较容易理解。

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