what a country needs for growth and progress is stability and good government
41:08
one that is honest and effective and works for the benefit of the people
41:15
good government should never be shackled by theories however attractive and logically elegant
41:25
from the outset we decided that education was the key to our future
41:31
and what language should we teach this was a sensitive and emotive issue
41:37
involving the mother tongues and cultures of various races and i had to resist the pressure to make
41:44
chinese the primary language although 77 of the people were chinese
41:51
instead i made english the working language not the official language just the working language let's be practical
42:00
and i allowed parents to choose between schools that taught in english
42:06
and chinese or malay and tama or in chinese with english or malay in
42:12
english and tamil in english it was their choice and
42:21
in a few years parents realized that their children's future was best
42:28
assured when they were competent in english in other words english as the first
42:34
language and the mother tongue was a second language because even our chinese banks were
42:40
switching to english we expanded schools built new
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technical institutes polytechnics and universities this proved decisive for our progress
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my final and most important decision was to prepare or rather to plan and prepare for
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succession and not leave it to chance
43:07
after three successive successful elections in 10 years since we first won and took office in 59
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