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Dr. Goh Keng Swee's extensive career as a public servant was dynamic as well as distinguished, in many ways decisively instrumental in the making of the Republic of Singapore. This distinctive collection of essays attempts an assessment of the long-term influence and significance of Dr. Goh's major contributions. Commissioned as a companion volume to Goh Keng Swee: A Public Career Remembered, this volume brings together an exceptional team of Singaporean scholars whose interdisciplinary expertise and cross-generational perspectives offer a balanced analysis and nuanced appraisal of Dr. Goh's lifetime of public service. The book's contributors argue that Dr. Goh's past endeavours bequeathed an enduring legacy, meriting fresh examination and careful evaluation in order to appreciate the heroic scale of such achievement. Particularly instructive are the examples of Dr. Goh's thinking patriotism, fiscal prudence, strategic pragmatism, and creative imagination at work technocracy at its finest which could be of immediate, practical benefit to a wider 'nation of technocrats'. Further illumination comes from the insights of those contributors who had worked with the former Deputy Prime Minister and knew him personally. For a half-century that witnessed key turning points and phases of development in Singapore's transformation from colonial port city to independent global city, Dr. Goh played a leading role in the crafting and conduct of public policy, as with the creation of public institutions, which made the difference between survival and success. Goh Keng Swee: A Legacy of Public Service will be read by present and future generations of public servants, by Singaporeans in general, and by all students and laypersons with an interest in the modern history of Singapore social, economic, political, military, and cultural to which a characteristically simple and frugal Dr. Goh contributed both decisively and unreservedly. The organization of this volume reflects both a thematic approach and a chronological arrangement of material, the focus and the order of chapters corresponding to the historical sequence of public offices that Dr. Goh held: social welfare; political and constitutional evolution; development economics and finance; the armed forces and defence industry; the education system, from schools through higher education to the research institutes; Chinese studies, from Confucianism to 'China watching'; and cultural development, with special emphasis on the creation of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
List of contents
Introduction (Emrys Chew); Goh Keng Swee in a Social Welfare History of Singapore (Ho Chi Tim); Goh Keng Swee in Politics and Parliament (Kevin Y L Tan); Goh Keng Swee, the Development Economist (Lee Soo Ann); Goh Keng Swee and Finance (Linda Low); Goh Keng Swee and the Emergence of a Modern SAF (Bernard F W Loo); Goh Keng Swee and Singapore's Defence Industrial Policy (Adrian W J Kuah); Goh Keng Swee and the Singapore Education System (Alistair Chew); Goh Keng Swee's Contributions to Higher Education, Military Education and the Research Institutes (Ernest Chew); Goh Keng Swee and Chinese Studies in Singapore: From Confucianism to 'China Watching' (John Wong); Goh Keng Swee's Cultural Contributions and the Making of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Bernard T G Tan); Conclusion (Kwa Chong Guan).
