There's just something wrong with politeness surveys. One survey done recently rated Singaporeans as very polite people. Yet another rated Singapore as fifth from last among other nations for politeness. Well, I personally think that Singaporeans aren't polite. Singaporeans are more like reserved. Or rather, so reserved that they could be mistaken for the dumb until they get Progress Packages.
I think that's the common mistake other countries make when they describe Singaporeans as nice polite people. The reason why they think so is probably because we don't talk much, so people just think we're being nice. I mean who seems more polite, some American telling you to go fly uncle charlie's kite or a Singaporean?
However, Singaporeans aren't just reserved, they're apathetic too. And when a politeness survey uses another set of criteria, Singaporeans will quickly be found lacking. The second survey which rated Singapore poorly used criteria that required Singaporeans to actually step in and do something, like someone dropping a stack of books and waiting for help.
I as a Singaporean will actually tell you that you'd be better off picking up the books yourself. Singaporeans will stop and look, think "should I help?", decide you're not worth the trouble and move on. That's how Singapore is. I'm not surprised we did badly for the second survey.
In fact, Singapore is so bad at this whole social interaction business, including courtesy and politeness, that the government has to step in and launch a campaign like "4 million smiles", which borders on the ridiculous and smacks of desperation.
You can't make Singaporeans more sociable just by starting some stupid campaign and hoping it works. Full marks for trying but a big flat zero for effectiveness. I have no idea why Singapore still uses campaigns when we can see that they don't work. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we're lost for other solutions. Think about that.
Social interaction is a culture. The reason why other countries do it better is because it is second nature to them. In Singapore its just not in the national psyche to be anything other than an efficient, emotionless worker drone obsessed about the bottom line and results. Maybe we've forgotten to be people, so much that we need surveys to tell us that we are too robotic.
And don't even get me started on how much we are suckers for anything that quantifies our success, like surveys. It seems that Singapore would go out of the way just to get good ratings for surveys, like its some stupid exam where we need to score 100 marks. Maybe we do well at surveys because others don't care so much that they'd go out of the way to do well at them.
Since we're never going to do well for these surveys using campaigns, I have a solution that works. Get a bunch of "polite" people to shadow the surveyors so that when they drop their books all these "model citizens" would rush in to help. That way we'll score high, we can remain the apathetic citizens we are and we save money on campaigns.
Don't worry about the moral implications of faking surveys. Everyone knows that surveys aren't that reliable anyway. They're just good for conning the ignorant, which is just about anyone overseas when it comes to Singapore. Voila! How come no one ever thought of this?