Advantages And Disadvantages Of Singapore's National Education

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In the past, Singapore’s history took the backseat in education because it was deemed as useless and other disciplines that imparts scientific and technical skills was emphasized to support Singapore’s rapid industrialization. Today, more emphasis were place on the government’s National Education (NE) programme with the aim to “develop national cohesion, the instinct for survival and confidence in the future ”. Six key NE messages were derived from the aims of the NE programme and they are being incorporated in the education system today. Even though some may argue that other disciplines such as sociology and literature are also able to use to achieve these NE goals, history have a competitive edge as it possessed unique characteristics of chronological, factual and interpretative…show more content…
Interpretation of history is defined as how a historian selects and organizes his facts. Different historians have different perspective on the importance of each fact and whether it is historically relevant. As such, certain facts that might be important may be left out as it was deemed as not important by a historian. But in the case of Singapore’s government NE programme, the interpretative dimension of history has allowed the state to select the history that she wants to inculcate into her citizens. The formation of the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore (CDIS) in 1981 had made history textbook to be produced by the state only and this serves as a platform to inculcate the youth on identity and citizenship . Furthermore, because textbook is often seen as being fair and offer the right viewpoint, it is seldom contested from its users. As such, history education through the use of state-controlled textbook can be seen as an ideological tool to create a nation-state and it serves to achieve the aims of
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