THE 'VALUE' OF THE PAST : HISTORY EDUCATION AND NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The value of the past and of history has evolved from being seen as 'jealous gods of the past' in the early years of Singapore's independence, to being used as a tool for the inculcation of national values into students today. Thus, the value of the past has changed from studying history for itself and understanding the present and the future, to that of fulfilling political agendas and socializing the population. A concerted attempt at National Education (NE) was officially made in 1997 after it was realised that students were ignorant about Singapore's post-independence history, its strengths and limitations. Such an endeavour is not unique to Singapore as other countries have their own variations of NE as well. When NE messages were being infused into history, it became clear that history was beginning to lose its real value as a subject and a discipline, and was instead fulfilling a more utilitarian purpose. To further improve NE in schools, a new compulsory and examinable subject, Social Studies (SS), was implemented in 2001. Teachers soon found themselves facing huge time constraints, the immense pressure of an impending exam and the difficulties in trying to teach a large amount of information and skills to their students. Students on their part were confused about the rationale for SS as the exam had hardly any questions on Singapore per se. This thesis has evaluated the two subjects and has shown that SS can be considered a duplicate of history as it embodies the same source-based skills and historical concepts that history teaches. Therefore, history could just be retained to meet NE objectives, imbue life skills such as observation, empathy and inference and thus reduce teachers' and students' workloads. However, SS is still new and so it is too early to judge its effectiveness but many suggestions have been made to hopefully improve SS if it is here to stay.