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Racialised Education in Singapore Introduction Singapore's National Educational Research for Policy and Practice (2006) 5:15–31 © Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10671-005-5692-8 Racialised Education in Singapore Michael D. Barr School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia QLD 4072, Australia E-mail: [email protected] Abstract 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. Key Words: English textbooks, ethnicity, multiracialism, pedagogy, primary school, race, racism, Singapore, stereotyping, teaching English Introduction Singapore’s national ideology is based on a small collection of central con- ceptual elements. Two of these are meritocratic elitism and multiracialism. The myths of meritocracy and multiracialism enjoy a truly symbiotic rela- tionship, between them emphasising the ‘fairness’ of the Singapore system and ‘explaining’ the subordinate role of the non-Chinese minority races (Barr & Low, 2005; Moore, 2000; Rahim, 1998). At the same time they claim to guarantee to the minorities that they enjoy full status as mem- bers of the nation-building project (Teo, 2001; Yaacob, 2003). Such myths are very important in a society where people’s ethnic identity is a central element of identity, and where large ethnic minorities (mainly Malays and Indians) make up 23% of the population (Singapore Infomap, 2005), and lag behind the majority Chinese in all areas of life: politics, income, edu- cation and language dominance. 16 MICHAEL D. BARR Worrying Outcomes of Schooling The education system is supposed to be one of the government’s main instruments in effecting multiracialism, by encouraging inter-racial har- mony, understanding, social interaction and friendships. Yet recent schol- arship has cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of this strategy. In about 2003 Angeline Khoo and Lim Kam Ming of Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE) engaged in a sociological survey in which they ques- tioned 348 trainee teachers. Except for the possibility of a few mid-career entrants being amongst the sample, they would all have been recent prod- ucts of the Singapore school system and as a group they displayed strong evidence of racial stereotyping. To take just one aspect of their results, the Chinese trainee teachers viewed other Chinese as “industrious, practi- cal and ambitious,” but they thought of Malays as being “happy-go-lucky and lazy.” Indians were regarded as being “loud, argumentative and talka- tive” (Khoo & Lim, 2004: 201, 207, 208). Moving away from the question of stereotyping, another recent study of 263 English-speaking women of all ages found that the more recently they had passed through the school sys- tem, the more conscious they were of their own and others’ ethnicity, and that they were commensurately less inclined to mix socially with members of other races (Goby, 2004). Turning to the children themselves, another NIE study has revealed that the overwhelming majority (up to 80% of some samples) of Singaporean school children socialise exclusively with members of their own race, lead- ing to the predominance of racial clustering in the playground (Lee et al., 2004). The same study also found that skin colour is a major racial iden- tifier, with dark skin colour being a particularly strong and negative racial indicator. Being dark-skinned in a Singapore playground is to invite deri- sive nicknames like “Black Coffee” and “Blackie,” together with racist remarks about the alleged personal characteristics of Indians or Malays as the case may be (Lee et al., 2004: 128–130). The odd thing about this being a major identifier is that the difference between the skin colours is not a very reliable indicator of race because there are many tanned Chinese, fair- skinned Indians, and Malays who look Chinese or Indian. Yet my study of English textbooks used in Singaporean primary schools reveals that this is the racial characteristic that is portrayed there most prominently. At this point we can also note that the trainee teachers mentioned above are also reflecting prejudices that were rife in the society of their childhood, and which was reflected faithfully in their textbooks when most of them were in primary school in the 1980s. These two pieces of evidence suggest that the school system may not have only failed to avert this racism, but may have contributed to generating it. RACIALISED EDUCATION IN SINGAPORE 17 This Study My study covers a substantial sample of all the textbooks used to teach Singaporean primary school children English over the last 35 years (see References), and it reveals that throughout this period these textbooks have played a significant role in perpetuating, if not generating racial con- sciousness by the constant portrayal of characters in their overtly ethnic and racial identities. Cornell and Hartmann (1998: 20) have argued that ethnicity itself can only be defined in terms of difference: “To claim an eth- nic identity is to distinguish ourselves from others, it is to draw a bound- ary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ ...” My study suggests that since the 1980s the Singapore education system has been providing children with de facto training in identifying the ‘other’ and encouragement to think of them- selves and others through the prism of ethnicity-cum-race. It was at its worst from 1980 to the mid-1990s, during which time the textbooks actively propagated racial stereotypes that bolstered the self-image of the Chinese majority and denigrated the ethnic minorities. This coincided with a period in which society as a whole was becoming more racially conscious and in which Chinese racism was being given freer expression in society. The text- books were both an indicator of broader racism in the community and a driver that propagated stereotypes to a new generation. Background to Racialisation A close consideration of why this racialisation became more intense and more pro-Chinese in the 1980s is beyond the scope of this article, but it has been considered in some detail elsewhere (Barr & Low, 2005). Very briefly, the period from 1978 saw heightened consciousness of race and ethnicity throughout Singaporean society in general because of a shift in the attitude of then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who suddenly stopped downplaying ethnic differences and began celebrating the alleged superiority of Chinese culture over those of the Indians and Malays. The early outward signs were the privileging of Chinese education, Chinese language and selectively cho- sen ‘Chinese’ values in an overt and successful effort to create a Mandarin- and-English-speaking elite that would dominate public life. A number of specific initiatives in education served to exacerbate con- sciousness of ‘race,’ heighten the social dominance of the Chinese, and reduce the imperatives for inter-ethnic socialising among school children. One of these features was the new emphasis on learning one’s state- assigned ‘mother tongue’ – Mandarin for Chinese; Tamil for Indians; and Malay for Malays. This language-based segregation was a de facto racial segregation, and the exigencies of timetabling an entire cohort of students so that each child could attend his or her mother tongue class produced 18 MICHAEL D. BARR a significant degree of “bunching” of children in classes through school according to their racial classification (Ooi, 2005: 117). Since 9/11 has there been recognition within the Ministry of Education that this has helped cre- ate insular communal enclaves and ghettos within schools, but in the 1980s and 1990s such clustering of students according to ‘mother tongue’ was routine. Another major initiative was the decision to preserve and foster a collection of elite Chinese-medium schools. These schools were explicitly designed “to have an essentially Chinese ambience, in both linguistic and cultural terms” (Vasil, 1995: 73). The textual symbolism of the nation-building project has become con- siderably less inclusive as these processes of racialisation and Sinicisation have progressed. Whereas in the 1960s the success of Singapore was cred- ited to the “industry of the various races,”1 today Lee Kuan Yew (prime minister from 1959 to 1990; then Senior Minister until 2004; now Minis- ter Mentor) routinely attributes the success of Singapore to the presence of Chinese values within society (Barr, 2000: 161). 1970s Relative Racial Innocence At age seven a child in Singapore starts Primary 1. Since the beginning of the 1970s this has meant entry into a world of swotting and study, and – except for children attending a few Malay-dominated schools in the eastern part of the island – entry into a strongly Chinese environment. This is not a suggestion of an insidious agenda, but it is important to state it because it is a feature of which Chinese, as the majority race, are usually blissfully unconscious, but which members of minority
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