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Data point of one, but the only Singaporean I've known loathed the army, loathed having been a conscript, and deeply resented the government for having deprived him of two years that he could have spent staying competitive with international students. He described a world of complete incompetence and lethargy, because none of the conscripts expect to stay on and therefore none of them have any incentive to work. They just rot for two years. And the cynicism has become institutional, so it's hard for even enthusiastic conscripts to escape the pull.
I'm torn on the subject, personally. The advantages of a well-run conscript system are clear, but it's expensive to run and encourages corruption and (often) dislike of the army. Similar to forced Irish teaching in Irish schools. The Brits used to have a fairly good system where you could sign up for the officer cadets (or something to that effect) and spend one weekend per month doing fun, interesting exercises that also made you a little bit of money. Most people didn't stay on, but many did and the ones who left still had acquaintances in the army and an appreciation for army life. We stopped doing it because it was too expensive. And I doubt that one could afford to do it for the poor bloody infantry.
I've known many young men from Singapore and this is a nearly universal opinion on their period of conscription. Its a waste of time and energy, no one wants to do it or cares about doing a good job, there often isn't really anything for them to do after they finish basic. There experience is more about what they can't do: start college, get a job, pursue a relationship. Most also express resentment that, while they are "unemployed in uniform" the women they just graduated with spend those same two years partying and sleeping with foreigners.
I hadn’t thought about the gendered aspect but you’re right. The Swiss 18 weeks seems like a much more viable form of conscription.
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Threadjack, but I'm interested in the lessons drawn from this that can be applied to other language revitalization efforts. Young Cajuns usually find my partial speaking incredibly cool and wish that learning Cajun French was more available as an option.
And they successfully revived Hebrew in Israel. I don't know, I think it's some combination of bad timing and culture specific issues.
Re: bad timing, I will get some flack for this, but as far as I can see Irish and Scottish nationalism are heavily American- and returning-expat-influenced 'modern' nationalisms. In comparison to Israeli nationalism or Islamic nationalism, which are revivalist movements aimed at throwing off oppressors who prevented them from acting according to their ancient ways, they want to throw off the oppression of a British-tinged nationalism in order to become a modern, liberal, secular nation. The Irish people that I have known personally identified very strongly with chocolate-box Irishness but associated actual traditional Irish culture with backwardness and Catholic atrocities. There is a dislike of anything resembling ethno-nationalism that coexists uneasily with the explicitly nationalist (and anti-British) nature of the politics in both countries. Learning Irish is (I'm told) boring, compulsory, and was instituted by the bad old nationalists not the shiny new nationalists. It's resented in the same way that learning the Catechism is resented.
Re: culture, Irish and Gaelic were mostly spoken by the embarrassing parts of the country, backwards old country people that the cool crowd have no interest in associating with, and it's barely even spoken by those people. Learning Irish doesn't let you do anything cool, it's just something you have to put up with. The cool crowd therefore resent it, don't use it, don't make anything cool with it, meaning there's nothing cool you can do with it, and the cycle continues. A lot of Jews genuinely want to read the Old Testament and other religious documents in the original.
I'm aware that the above is really pretty insulting to Irish traditionalists. It's the anti-Irish-language perspective as I was told it by left-wing nationalists at an English university, recalled as accurately as I can and mixed with my own observations and those of an English acquintance who grew up in Ireland. Personally I think it's rather a shame.
TLDR: modern Irish nationalism is for various reasons surprisingly anti-Irish. Make sure that you have genuine ground roots support before making language teaching compulsory. Otherwise, sponsor making cool stuff in that language.
On the other side, if you learn Irish Gaelic, you can be translator of official EU documents into this language.
And no one will ever check whether your translation is any good, no one will ever read EU regulations of banana size and curvature in Gaelic. Dream job for life.
Standard translation process for major institutions, EU included, is that translated documents will get proofread and possibly QA'ed, so at least someone will read that document.
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https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-displays-out-of-office-message-in-translation-blunder/?amp=1
Seriously, though, government work is as far as you can get from cool.
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I think the advantage of conscription in Singapore that I'm trying to get at is that it increases the prestige of the army as a social institution, and the concomitant prestige of the career (non) commissioned officer corps. LKY is always about attracting the best.
Don't know about Singaporean system, but any prestige from conscription hinges on the implementation details. My hypothesis:
Conscription system where everyone is called up, avoiding draft is difficult, and candidates to officer and specialist tracks are selected by reliable, standardized tests and methods for IQ and other desiderata, compulsorily administered to all -> Military is unpleasant, but has some prestige to offset, because (a) if you made it to the officer track, your rank signals your IQ (b) no matter your personal rank, there is a high chance that in you observed relatively intelligent and competent superiors during your stint.
Conscription system where draft avoidance is easily possible -> Highly competent, affluent people who have most to gain from college or have family networks or otherwise good prospects of lucrative career have the highest opportunity cost from the draft -> They avoid the draft -> The majority of the elite in your country doesn't serve -> If you manage to nevertheless recruit competent officers, the elite won't observe their competence first-hand -> Avoiding draft correlates with elite status and signals good things, military career signals bad things. -> Prestige plummets.
Won't outline the failure mode where instead of standardized tests the officers are selected by either political patronage or nepotism.
Officer's rank absolutely offers prestige in Finland, even moreso in the old days than now (people unironically used to say that the Reserve Officer School offers better training for general leadership, in corporations and so on, than dedicated leadership courses), but it's probably still the case that young male job applicants are instructed that you shouldn't put your military rank in your CV when applying for jobs abroad, since it's... well, not a similar sign of prestige in many other countries, quite the opposite.
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Has any conscription system ever placed officers through conscription? I was under the impression that officer corps always consisted of volunteers.
To my knowledge, Israel and Finland. I think both are offshoot developments the old German system, where a prospective officer candidates were volunteers but had to serve a lengthy period of time first in enlisted and NCO equivalent positions in regular regiments before and between officer school exams.
Basically, in the Finnish system, there are two sorts of officers:
Reserve officers: Every conscript starts as, well, a conscript, equal to all others. After eight weeks of basic training, the most suitable ones for command are selected for reserve NCO training, organized in their company, and after seven weeks of basic NCO training, the most suitable ones for further command then go to the Reserve Officer School, which can train them up to (generally) a major's rank, usually lieutenant's rank. They would then be activated in wartime but don't stay in the army after their conscript service are up (apart from refresher courses, of course).
Commissioned officers: These are commissioned for army service (training, rapid response etc.) during peacetime. They are trained at National Defence University, which takes applicants on the basis of exams like any other university, though you have to be a reserve officer (in some cases reserve NCO) to apply.
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Huh, TIL. Looked it up, guess I was wrong. I was more used to the American system and assumed it was universal, I guess.
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That's what I'm saying, judging purely by the chap I knew, it did the exact opposite, it instilled a lifelong contempt that otherwise he might not have felt. You cannot 'attract the best' and conscript every able-bodied man, they aren't compatible. If the army was prestigious (as in Rome) people would be queuing up to join of their own accord.
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