The last decade was marked by a rate of change and innovation that is unprecedented in human history. Bill Gates moved beyond capitalism to creative capitalism. Barack Obama became America’s first black President with the message of ‘change’. China impressed the world with the biggest and most expensive Olympics ceremonies and buildings. G-8 was replaced by G-20. We saw the worst economic meltdown but we will also possibly see the fastest recovery. On the Internet, we began to hear the voices of individuals via blogs and the wisdom of the masses via forums and Wikipedia. Retail storefront renovations were replaced by website design. Today, anyone can be a movie director with YouTube and Amazon is finally making a profit! Phones are becoming smarter, televisions are becoming flatter and computers are becoming smaller.

Given the resources made available to facilitate the flow of knowledge and information, the rate of change is not going to remain constant but will most likely accelerate, the only possible limitation being environmental sustainability.

With a changing world, schools can no longer build their value and distinctiveness simply on tradition and heritage. While core character values should be held constant to uphold the essential human spiritual traits, curriculum content and delivery is under tremendous pressure to innovate or else lose their voice to the age of advanced information technology and Facebook and Twitter groups.

In City College, we envision ourselves building a community of learners to navigate in the new globalised physical and virtual world. We will constantly embrace the new market services, products and leverage upon them as tools to help us impart valuable skills and character traits to our next generation of citizens and leaders. Lessons via podcasts, work assignments on Facebook, Twitter announcements, illustrations from Hollywood films and learning through doing, designing and playing would become a norm. Excellence, ingenuity, integrity and servitude would be our anchors.

More than being savvy in new economic space, City College would also be actively involved in regional community development programmes through working with established social enterprises. Other than the capabilities to mine economic value, we want our graduates to have a deep sense of empathy and to play a part in helping those whom the common market is under serving. We want our graduates to live a life of purpose alongside a life of prosperity. We want to see phones becoming smaller, television becoming smarter and the computer becoming cheaper.

Yours for change,

Kenny Low
CEO & Founder