Poon, Angelia

This article discusses the ambitious educational reforms of the Singapore government in response to the challenges of globalization vis-à-vis the specific issues arising from the case of teaching Literature in secondary schools. It shows how the Singapore state is invested in a particular view of globalization and argues how recent scholarly moves to recuperate the notion of cosmopolitanism may provide an alternative view. Turning to cosmopolitanism as an intellectual and ethical goal when considering curricular changes to Literature may also help revitalize the subject and garner a more significant role for it in the scripting of Singapore as a nation and global city for the future.

This article argues for the importance and relevance of postcolonial studies in achieving the goal of cosmopolitanism through Literature education. Having significantly redrawn the overall contours of literary study in the twentieth century, postcolonial studies as an interdisciplinary critical tradition provides us with a conceptual vocabulary, analytical lens and interpretive protocols with which to interrogate rigorously many salient aspects of contemporary globalization in our world today. There are at least three main areas where postcolonialism’s contribution remains vital: i) in critical discussion about the nation and nationalism, ii) in countering Eurocentrism, and iii) in the examination of form, style and literary poetics or aesthetics. In this article, I explore each of these areas first before suggesting ways in which Anglophone Singapore literature may be taught and read through these critical emphases, with the ultimate goal of answering nation-centred goals while also fulfiling the national curriculum’s desired outcome of growing empathetic and global thinkers.