“Don't Worry, I'm Not Going to Report You”: Education for Citizenship in Singapore

Abstract

This case study examined how Singapore adolescents from different socio-economic, academic, and racial backgrounds positioned themselves as citizens within a highly-regulated, centralized educational context. Through interviews, classroom observations, and the author investigated students' conceptions of citizenship and their perspectives of the official historical national narrative. Despite their different backgrounds, participants from all three schools consistently provided very similar depictions of citizenship and key events in Singapore's history. This shared understanding can partially be attributed to the inclusive nature of the national narrative in the school curriculum, which consistently emphasizes the themes of unity, consensus, and harmony. At the same time, the participants consciously avoided addressing controversial issues and none contested the central narrative of racial harmony, meritocracy, and progress, largely due to the combination of a climate of censorship and a regime of high stakes tests that stifle democratic discourse within the classroom.