Teaching Singaporean literature in secondary schools: A Singapore case study

The aim of this article is three-fold:

(i) to inquire into the circumstances leading to the study of Singaporean English literature texts in secondary schools in Singapore

(ii) to consider literary, cultural and political issues that have arisen as a result of a conscious decision on the part of schools and the Ministry of Education to adopt the texts for both non-examinable and examinable study purposes, and

(iii) to look at teacher attitudes in the use of such texts.

The article initially focuses on a school which first began the systematic study of the texts followed by issues which have arisen. Closing the article is a survey of teacher attitudes. Teacher attitudes are probably crucial to what is really an important educational-cultural experiment being conducted in Singapore.