The following are excerpts from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally Speech on Sunday, 29 August 2010;
Defence:
“… When Dr. Goh passed away in May, Singaporeans were reminded of his enormous contributions to Singapore, in economy, in defence, in education and many people lamented that the younger generation knew too little about what he did or how much we owed to Dr. Goh and they suggested naming something after him so that Singaporeans would always be reminded of what he had done.
I agree. Dr. Goh was instrumental in building up the SAF… Dr. Goh’s emphasis on developing talent and on a thinking SAF endures.
The Singapore Command and Staff College is the highest institution for training senior officers in the SAF.
It has a handsome home in SAFTI MI and all officers headed for senior positions in the SAF sooner or later will attend advanced courses here.
We will rename SCSC (Singapore Command and Staff College) as the Goh Keng Swee Command and Staff College in Dr. Goh’s honour…” (emphasis ours)
Education:
“… From Mindef, Dr Goh went to education and when he became Education Minister, he totally revamped the system.
He made teaching systematic, he introduced streaming, he fostered a high quality professional teaching service and he began the process of continuous improvement that’s created a first class education system admired around the world…
The Ministry of Education has a headquarters at North Buona Vista Road. This is the building.
It’s expanding its HQ, building a second building next to it not just for the headquarters but also to house an Academy of Singapore Teachers and specialist academies for specialist teachers for English language, for PE, Sports and Arts.
It is like the Academy of Law or the Academy of Medicine.
It’s meant to upgrade the professionalism of our teachers.
And this complex will be the nerve centre for Singapore education and a symbol of the importance of education to our young and to our future, and we will name it the Goh Keng Swee Centre for Education.” (emphasis ours)
Dr. Goh Keng Swee was born in 1918. He was an undergraduate at the LSE, and graduated with a BSc. in Economics in 1951 (first-class honours) and won the William Farr Prize. In 1956, he was awarded a Ph.D in Economics and in 1966, he was made a Honorary Fellow of the LSE. He passed away on Friday, 14 May 2010.