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Social Studies

The Place of History in Multicultural Education

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Jackie

The Population White Paper: The hidden rationale for Singaporeans’ concern

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Kesavan Thangam

Kesavan Thangam (S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies) Keywords Social Studies History General Paper Junior College Secondary School Current affairs Introduction Singapore commemorates its golden jubilee this year with a slew of nation-wide events. This celebration serves as a point of reflection for Singapore’s achievement in the past 50 years. However, it is also timely and […]

Kesavan Thangam (S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies)

Keywords
Social Studies
History
General Paper
Junior College
Secondary School
Current affairs

Introduction
Singapore commemorates its golden jubilee this year with a slew of nation-wide events. This celebration serves as a point of reflection for Singapore’s achievement in the past 50 years. However, it is also timely and crucial to reflect on issues that had sparked tensions amongst the citizenry. The promulgation of the Population White Paper (PWP) and its impact on Singaporeans has been an issue widely written by many academics but the rationale for Singaporeans’ reaction over the PWP has yet to be explored in greater depth. This paper, thus, weighs in on the reasons for Singaporeans to be less inclined in accepting the PWP.

Singaporeans sent a strong signal to the ruling political party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), during the 2011 General Election where only 60 percent of the votes were cast in favour of the PAP. In comparison, they garnered 75.3 percent of the votes in the 2001 general election (Ho, S.,2014). In just a decade, the ruling party had suffered a loss of 15.3 percent of the votes. The waning popularity of the party could be attributed to several hot-button issues including large influx of migrants into the city state (Banyan, 2011). A survey done by Institute of Policy Studies revealed 52 percent of voters felt immigration was an important issue in the 2011 election (Institute of Policy Studies, 2011). It was often argued that the expansion of migrant population had made Singaporeans feel like ‘strangers in their own country’ (Jones, 2012, pp. 311-336) and ‘perceive and experience the presence of foreigners in the work setting as taking away their jobs’ (Sun, 2014). This had thus, created the “us/them (Vasu & Cheong, 2014, pp. 1-23) divide among Singaporeans and foreigners in the city state. As such, it was no surprise that some Singaporeans were less inclined in accepting the Population White Paper.

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‘Little India’: Diverging Destinies in Heritage Spaces

Author/s:

Shaw Brian J.

Shaw Brian J. (The University of Western Australia, Australia) Keywords Social Studies Junior College Secondary School Managing Diversity Introduction As a colonial legacy of the spatial and political management of immigrant groups, Little India has evolved during Singapore’s post-independence era to service the needs of a developing community. While closely identified as an ‘Indian’ space by […]

Shaw Brian J. (The University of Western Australia, Australia)

Keywords
Social Studies
Junior College
Secondary School
Managing Diversity

Introduction
As a colonial legacy of the spatial and political management of immigrant groups, Little India has evolved during Singapore’s post-independence era to service the needs of a developing community. While closely identified as an ‘Indian’ space by Indian Singaporeans, it has developed significant appeal to other locals and foreign tourists, as well as migrant workers from South Asia. This area, showcasing one component of Singapore’s imagined CMIO community (Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other), has since the tumultuous events of 8^th December 2013, become the inadvertent focus of a much broader discussion on Singapore’s national multiracial resilience in an era of hyper-globalisation. This paper considers and questions the apparent destiny of Little India as one of Singapore’s most identifiable precincts in the context of post- 8^thDecember policing responses, the introduction of the new “Public Order (Additional Temporary Measures) Bill” and the expected findings of the established Committee of Inquiry (COI). Overwhelmingly, the government’s inclination to segment identity spaces within the heritage precinct as a means of social control and public order, specifically through the restriction of alcohol sales and consumption, appears to be a case of managing the visibility of marginalised groups in order to contain evolving tensions. We argue that this path of action does not adequately address the complexity of underlying causes that cannot be dismissed simply as alcohol related. A more nuanced analysis with more emphasis on the economic and social realities confronting the South Asian foreign worker in Singapore is required to understand the new multiculturalism now apparent in the city-state. Official bureaucratic demarcators of “foreign worker”, “foreign talent” or “permanent residents” (PR) mask an inequity of social, economic and personal dignities and destinies that further fragment Singapore’s carefully managed ethnic balance and social mosaic. We need to move beyond the managing and controlling of differences of 1965 to embrace the Brave New World of contemporary reality.

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Leading Classroom Discussions About Population Policy in Singapore

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Jackie

Introduction Iconic American singer-songwriter Johnny Cash recalled in song a boyhood experience of watching his parents monitor flood conditions at their 1937 Dyess, Arkansas, home by counting the number of front steps the water had risen; 1 step = 1 foot (0.305 m): How high’s the water, mama? Five feet high and risin’ In introducing […]

Introduction

Iconic American singer-songwriter Johnny Cash recalled in song a boyhood experience of watching his parents monitor flood conditions at their 1937 Dyess, Arkansas, home by counting the number of front steps the water had risen; 1 step = 1 foot (0.305 m):

How high’s the water, mama?

Five feet high and risin’

In introducing his 1959 Columbia release, Five Feet High and Risin’, Cash noted (AZLyrics, 2000-2015):

My mama always taught me that good things come from adversity if we put our faith in the Lord.

We couldn’t see much good in the flood waters when they were causing us to have to leave home,

But when the water went down, we found that it had washed a load of rich black bottom dirt across our land.

The following year we had the best cotton crop we’d ever had.

Teaching Venice in Schools

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Jackie

The Beacon of Civic Conduct? Teaching Character and Citizenship Education in Singapore

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Jackie

Well-being and Humanities Education in Singapore

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Jackie

Old Ideas Made New Again

Author/s:

Susan Adler

Susan Adler (University of Missouri-Kansas City) Keywords Geography History Social Studies Junior College Secondary School Primary School Critical Thinking Teaching Dewey I started teaching long ago. The air was full of new ideas about curriculum and teaching methods. In the United States and the United Kingdom we had the “New Social Studies,” “New Math,” exciting hands-on […]

Susan Adler (University of Missouri-Kansas City)

Keywords
Geography
History
Social Studies
Junior College
Secondary School
Primary School
Critical Thinking
Teaching
Dewey

I started teaching long ago. The air was full of new ideas about curriculum and teaching methods. In the United States and the United Kingdom we had the “New Social Studies,” “New Math,” exciting hands-on science projects, and the like. It was all about engaging learners in the “methods of the discipline,” in doing inquiry not just memorizing facts. This was a long time ago. Today we are hearing these old “new” ideas again.

In fact, we have been hearing for some years now that we have to do school differently; that teaching for the 21^st century cannot be the same as it was back in the old days (i.e. the 20^th century). The Singapore Teachers’ Growth Model (TGM) recognizes that teachers need to be equipped with the relevant 21^st century knowledge and skills so that they are better able to develop students holistically. Education in the past, we are told, focused, more or less, on memorizing a lot of information – learning and digesting a lot of facts. Today, we must think of education, the development of young minds more broadly, to include problem solving and creativity.

These changes in focus have come about because of the changing social and economic environment. Critics of the “old” education point to:

A “knowledge explosion” – what you learn now won’t hold for the rest of your life; we must be life-long learners.
The idea that today information is at our finger tips – there is no need to simply remember information when it is so easily retrieved.
A communication explosion which means we must be able to filter what we read and hear. How do we make sense of it?
Related to this is our interconnected world – we hear news about the world far more quickly than we ever did. And people use that connectivity to make news. Consider the kidnapped girls in Nigeria. Without Twitter the world might not have been concerned, at least not for very long.
Of course there are the demands of the economy – the post industrial age needs workers who are flexible, who are life-long learners, who are problem solvers and creative thinkers.

It’s a new world. Consider the movie Her. The protagonist falls in love with his operating system. And it isn’t absurd! Movies aside, young people today must deal with a world unlike the one I started teaching in; very unlike the one that existed when public schooling, schooling for everyone, began to be the norm. Once, you could get a few years of schooling, go out and get a job, raise a family, lead a good, productive life. But today, if you do not continue to learn, you lose.

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Context, Interests, and Unintended Consequences: Lenses for Seeing, Comprehending and Engaging with the World

Author/s:

Teo You Yenn

Teo You Yenn (Nanyang Technological University) Keywords Social Studies Secondary School Citizenship Sociology Perspective The White Paper on Population created quite a firestorm when it was released in 2013. Many critiques were launched against it – ranging from big and obvious worries about the sheer number of people who are expected to live in this small […]

Teo You Yenn (Nanyang Technological University)

Keywords
Social Studies
Secondary School
Citizenship
Sociology
Perspective

The White Paper on Population created quite a firestorm when it was released in 2013. Many critiques were launched against it – ranging from big and obvious worries about the sheer number of people who are expected to live in this small city; to complaints about where these people would come from; to very nitty-gritty critiques about the details and tone of the White Paper – right down to how nurses are referred to as low-skilled workers in the footnotes.

When the White Paper came out, I was teaching a course about Power, Politics and the State. The White Paper and the controversy around it became something that students and I discussed in class. Based on such experiences in teaching, I highlight the sorts of questions that I think we ought to get our students to ask and answer when policies are introduced and when controversies arise. As a teacher, I think we should be invested not so much in convincing students about our points of view, but in giving them the tools and lenses to think through problems.

So how do we do provide students with lenses and tools? As a sociologist, three things are key: interests, contexts, and unintended consequences. Let me say a few words about each of these and give some examples of how they are useful in discussing population issues.

Interests
Used crudely, people think that “interests” is about how someone is trying to gain something, trying to maximize their interests. But the way I want my students to think about interests is to pay attention to two related things: when we say the word “interests,” we are first and foremost pointing out that there is no neutral position from which to speak. All positions involve a point of view, and more specifically, somebody or some group’s point of view. They may take their point of view because there may in fact be some sort of material benefit or disadvantage involved. But at least equally often, they take that point of view because it fits into the worldview of not just themselves as individuals, but also into the various social groupings to which they belong.

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The “New” Multiculturalism: National and Educational Perspectives

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Jackie

HSSE Online

Index

Jackie

Authors List

Authors List

The Place of History in Multicultural Education

The Population White Paper: The hidden rationale for Singaporeans’ concern

‘Little India’: Diverging Destinies in Heritage Spaces

Leading Classroom Discussions About Population Policy in Singapore

Teaching Venice in Schools

The Beacon of Civic Conduct? Teaching Character and Citizenship Education in Singapore

Well-being and Humanities Education in Singapore

Old Ideas Made New Again

Context, Interests, and Unintended Consequences: Lenses for Seeing, Comprehending and Engaging with the World

The “New” Multiculturalism: National and Educational Perspectives

HSSE Online

HSSE Online