Final Thoughts on the “World-Soul” of Singapore: Education, Culture and the Making of the Developmental State

Abstract

In Singapore, as in most countries, education is a key instrument for state formation. This was the primary objective of citizenship education curricula, which found its expression over the years in subjects like civics, ethics, history, EFL, RK, CME, as well as social studies. Unlike citizenship education in the West, education for democracy did not feature as an important goal in citizenship education in Singapore. For Singapore, the focus on citizenship education was, and still is, less on democratic ideals and values, than on “good governance”, nation building and state formation.²

Said the Mandarin: There is nothing lacking in the provision of the body, seeing our middle kingdom bodily strong, sinewy — but there is more to Kingdom and Man than Body. When a people clutch all gods as money gods, you must be vigilant. Pieties are not rods to fish material things; they form a World-Soul to which one gives assent and he is whole who lives in fellowship: this, too, is your goal. Great cultures are not hewn from a heritage for sons, but for great-great-grandsons of due age. Some investments then must always seem pointless, a fling into the well, but there’s some goodness to be less than pragmatic. No work is ample and no wall strong if you should slight the temple.

from the poem “A Chinese Parable” by Gwee Li Sui¹