[hellofunk]

Singapore gets a lot of attention for having good schools, high-achieving students, novel teaching methods (sometimes), and in a sense, all of these things are true.

But there is always a cost. The enormous pressure that minors have to perform well in school in Singapore has led it to having one of the highest teen suicide rates in the world. In the short time I lived there, I knew 2 highschoolers who committed suicide.

There is nothing wrong with challenging a child, but I hope Singapore's culture eventually evolves to be a little easier on kids in general.

[seivan]

Sweden is higher on the suicide rate per capita and has fallen down on PISA recent years.

Neither stats does say much.

[cLeEOGPw]

Spoken like a true american.

Given 8.5/100000 suicide rate in US and 10.27/100000 in Singapore, what would you choose, 999989 well educated, well developed in mathematical and analytical thinking, highly proficient in solving unknown problems individuals, or 999991 lower than average (US has notoriously low education standards), highly afraid of math, often leaning towards social and gender "sciences", overconfident and self important, yet having very little skill practice or general knowledge, individuals? The answer is pretty obvious.

[hellofunk]

I'm specifically talking about teen suicide rates, not whole-population suicide stats.

Additionally, your stereotyping of the rest of the world as self-important is not the right attitude.

p.s. I do not live in the U.S.

[oddx]

Do you have any stats for this claim?

I found only this link and look like rate isn't really high http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414751/table/T1...

>Suicide numbers and rates per 100,000 young persons aged 15-19 - Canada 10.8, Singapore 8.5, USA 8.0

[hellofunk]

I've seen that before as well, but it is based on real old data. Many of the numbers are from over a decade ago.

My claim for this statement is a bit less formal; within Singapore, where I lived, it is common word-of-mouth that the teen suicide rate needs serious attention, and they often say there that it is much worse than in most other places. But I can't point you to a specific study.

Also, regarding formal stats: Singaporeans are (rightly so) quite skeptical of any official figures released by the government. Singapore's leaders tend to keep private any stats that are unfavorable (much of the recent haze-related details the last couple of years were promptly removed from public media if they were too critical; and if anyone there writes articles, even on a personal blog, that are critical of the culture, its policies, or raise serious questions, they often get severely fined or imprisoned).

[seivan]

Well put! Yeah, people are very American-centric in their global conclusions here.