Singapore General Election 2015 and the Role of Citizenship Education

Abstract

This article explores the role of education, in particular citizenship education, in shaping the Singapore electorate. An understanding of the history of citizenship education helps to shed light on the contemporary political culture in Singapore. The extent to which democratic citizenship education has been taught in schools since 1958 is explored. Singapore’s citizenship education has consistently stressed the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, patriotism, national identity and moral values—with the goal of nation-building and legitimising the People’s Action Party state. This reflective historical piece on Singapore’s educational history adds a relatively unexplored facet to the discussions on the general election 2015 results as well as Singapore’s subsequent political development. The results of the 2015 general election in Singapore, seen in this light, are not so surprising, as they reflect the success of the state’s citizenship education in shaping the current political culture.

Key Words:

• citizenship education
• political culture
• Singapore electorate
• moral education
• citizenship duties

Notes

1. ‘SG50’ refers to the celebration of Singapore’s 50 years of independence. This acronym was used throughout Singapore in 2015.

2. The current character and citizenship education (CCE) will not be examined, as it was implemented only in 2014, which means that the voters in 2015 would not have been taught this new subject (CCE).

3. The committee also drew examples from moral education programmes in Taiwan, Japan and Russia.

4. The objectives are also stated in the editor’s preface of all the Good Citizen textbooks.

5. CDIS (1980, pp. 30–31) (in Chinese).

6. ‘Hari Raya Puasa’, otherwise known as ‘Eid ul-Fitr’ in the Middle East, is a Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month, or Ramadan.

7. CDIS (1981, chapters 8, 9 and 18; 1982b, chapters 15–17) (in Chinese).

8. CDIS (1981, chapter 14; 1982a, chapters 11, 14 and 15) (in Chinese).

9. See CDIS (1983a, pp. 24–25) (in Chinese).

10. CDIS (1982a, chapters 7 and 9; 1982c, chapters 9–13; 1982d, chapters 9–11; 1983a, chapters 10, 11 and 13) (in Chinese).

11. See CDIS (1982c, chapters 7 and 8; 1982d, chapters 6 and 7; 1983a, chapters 7 and 8; 1983b, chapters 4 and 5).

12. The Five Shared Values are: nation before community and society above self; family as the basic unit of society; community support and respect for the individual; consensus, not conflict; and racial and religious harmony.

13. This is an updated version of the NE messages as found in MOE’s National Education website, http://ne.moe.edu.sg/ne/slot/u223/ne/index.html.

14. The NE outcomes for primary level was subdivided into another two levels—primaries three and six. This was the same for the NE outcomes for secondary levels, which delineated the intermediate outcomes for secondary two and four.

15. Birth of nations corresponded to the NE message ‘Singapore is our homeland’; harmony and discord—‘We must preserve racial and religious harmony’; conflict and cooperation—‘We must ourselves defend Singapore’; growth of nations—‘No one owes Singapore a living’; looking ahead—‘We have confidence in our future’; challenge and change—‘we must uphold meritocracy and incorruptibility’.