Choo, Suzanne S.

Given the extraordinary pace at which especially new media technologies have developed in the last five to ten years, as well as the unprecedented amount of leisure time youth spend engaging with media such as television, Facebook, or games, there has been greater recognition by scholars, educators, and policymakers of the importance of incorporating media education and media literacy in schools and curricula. Current curricular approaches have moved away from a protectionist rationale toward a concern with supporting youth to become active media users (Buckingham, 2002). This shift towards recognizing youth’s agentive role particularly through digital social media has also led to a focus in media literacy programs on both production and consumption; in other words, fostering youth’s critical and reflective capacities in relation to both their consumption and production of media texts/content. Learner-centered pedagogies that draw on students’ everyday understanding, experience, and use of media in and out of school are advocated (Hobbs, 2011b). Recognizing and building on students’ media experiences is a key principle of media literacy curricula that aim to empower students to become active, reflective, and critical users of contemporary media.

Once regarded as the most essential subject in the national curriculum vital for civilizing the public, English Literature has now lost its place of prominence. In this paper, I focus on Singapore where the subject was a core aspect of the colonial curriculum and where it is currently facing declining enrolment at the national examinations. In the first part of the paper, I discuss how Literature initially functioned to propagate colonial values education in Singapore and how, following Singapore's independence, its goals were overtaken by a nation-state model of values education. Limitations of this model provide the grounds for a transnational model of critical values education that, as I argue in the second part, may be powerfully conveyed through Literature. It is Literature’s capacity to facilitate transnational critical engagements with values and explorations of identity especially involving highly sensitive aspects related to gender, race, and religion that represents the strongest justification in the light of its present demise. What Literature offers is the possibility of engaging with values beyond the confines of Empire or nation by grappling with essential questions about what it means to be a cosmopolitan as opposed to a nationalistic citizen inhabiting the world.

Today, the intensification of global interconnectivity is a key characteristic of the twenty-first century. This has spurred governments and policymakers to envision how best to equip future-ready citizens who can navigate increasingly globalized workplaces resulting in the worldwide popularity of models that articulate twenty-first century competencies. Twenty-first century education models perpetuated by transnational and multinational organizations posit an idealized vision of the future-ready citizen equipped with requisite skills to compete in the global economy. Informed by economic rationality, such models promote a consequentialist approach to education where the primary aim of schools is to develop citizens as human capital who can thrive in globalized workplaces and ultimately contribute to the progress of their nation. In this paper, I focus on the twenty-first century education model currently infused across schools in Singapore. Using this as an example, I examine models of twenty-first century education from the lens of Confucian cosmopolitanism. I explore how the application of Confucian cosmopolitanism can facilitate an ethical re-orientation of twenty-first century education that shifts the focus from instrumental competencies to humanistic virtues needed for a more hospitable future.

In an age of hyper-globalization, ethical criticism has become vital in tackling the bombardment of information across networked societies. This paper begins by exploring the historical emergence of ethical criticism, its dominant approaches (relational, analytical and historical), and potential for character education. Next, we focus on character education in Singapore. Utilizing a comparative case study analysis, we compared older and recent character education syllabi and applied ethical criticism as an analytical lens. Findings show a discernible shift from moral adaptation to some evidence of ethical criticism where more emphasis is placed on the relational and less on analytical and historical aspects. We then examine the opportunities and tensions for ethical criticism in Singapore’s character education programme. These tensions arise from the simultaneous objectives of empowering citizens to handle the challenges of multicultural engagements alongside the limits placed on critical-ethical thinking when applied to analyzing politics and systemic structures of power.

English education has played a key role in the modernization and globalization of Singapore. Following the institution of the Bilingual policy in the year following the nation’s independence in 1965, the English Language attained a privileged status among other languages taught in Singapore schools. To this day, it is viewed as a vital catalyst to securing Singapore’s continued economic growth and to maintaining its image as a cosmopolitan hub conducive to foreign businesses and investments. In this chapter, we chart developments in English education in Singapore from the country’s independence in 1965 to the present. We focus on key changes to English Language syllabuses across Singapore’s history which we contextualize alongside four major phases of education in Singapore: Survival-driven education (1950s to 1960s), Efficiency-driven education (1970s to 1980s), Ability-driven education (1990s to 2000s), and Student-centric, Values-driven education (2010 to the present). The chapter concludes with observations about future developments of English education in Singapore.