Racialised Education in Singapore

The Singapore education system plays a central role in the mythology of the young country’s nation building project. The education system is portrayed as the cradle of Singapore’s multiracialism, fostering racial harmony and understanding. Yet this historical study of primary school English textbooks from the 1970s to the present reveals that since the beginning of the 1980s they have been systemically designed in such a way that they evoke high levels of racial consciousness, and at their worst have displayed a pro-Chinese bias that has deprived non-Chinese children of inspiring role models. This study helps to explain the results of recent sociological research that has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Singapore education system as an instrument for promoting racial harmony.     

Disavowing liberalism: recuperating socialist practices within global capitalism

In Liberalism Disavowed, Chua Beng Huat builds on his earlier work on Singapore as a “communitarian democracy” and analyzes three institutions that work coherently to buttress the legitimacy of the ruling People’s Action Party: first, the public housing program that requires the nationalization of land; second, the state capitalism that is profit-driven, market-oriented, professionally managed, and resistant to corruption; and third, the “state multiracialism” that governs an ethnically diverse population. Chua rejects the idea that Singapore’s success rests on authoritarianism and free-market capitalism, as much it has necessitated political repression and outward-oriented economic policies. The three institutions have roots in the Party’s socialist beginnings, shaping the Singapore system indelibly, and they are likely to sustain over generations. Singapore’s disavowal of liberalism is significant in light of the crisis of the Western liberal-democratic order and the rise of right-wing populist nationalism, as well as the political developments in East and Southeast Asia. Hence, its workings and contradictions, and the larger question of recuperating socialist practices within global capitalism, need to be critically evaluated. A salient concern is whether the critique of the liberal conception of the self also entails the avowal of an alternative conception of freedom.