Education in the Global City

The manufacturing of education in Singapore

Aaron Koh, Terence Chong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317294849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Education in the Global City examines education in Singapore through the critical lens of 'manufacturing'. The book brings together two disparate fields which inform each other, education and the 'global city'; and the book's contributors analyse and critique the manufacturing of Singapore education and Singapore's global city formation. The collection covers vocational education, language policies, Higher Education, English education, critical thinking, sex education, creativity, and critical feminist scholarship.

Collectively, the book pries open the ideology of the manufacturing education system, and points out the tension between the nation and its ideologies, and the 'global city' aspirations. It also asks how education contributes to, and is shaped by, the market realities of Singapore's global city ambitions – which are at odds with the nationalistic local agenda and priorities of nation-building.

In interrupting and speaking against the prevailing (and narrow) manufacturing of education for a teleological end, in spite of Singapore's successful nation-building, this book is an important contribution to critical education scholarship.This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Education in the global city: the manufacturing of education in Singapore

Introduction

It is purely a matter of (timely) coincidence that this special issue is published at the cusp of Singapore’s golden jubilee. Fifty years of nation-building may not be considered long in historical terms, but Singapore has come a long way as a default nation. In 1965, Singapore was forced into independence from the failed merger with Malaysia because of ideological differences. It built a nation out of the ruins of a failed nationhood. As a small island state with no economic hinterlands and natural resources to expand its small domestic market, it was difficult to imagine how Singapore would have an economic future, not to mention a political future as a nation state. But survived it did, and has remarkably turned around into one of the world’s richest countries, according to Forbes magazine (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2014).

Nevertheless, it is this very national success that has prompted deeper reflection over its nature and the side effects it has ushered in. In this introductory essay, we frame the global city that is undergoing social, cultural, and political changes to critique the narrowness of how education is manufactured to serve the national economy and global city aspirations. Weighing heavily on the economy–education nexus is the deepening contradictions between the cosmopolitan inclusiveness of global city existence where capital accumulation is pivotal and the necessarily exclusive rhetoric of nation-building. Along with the essays, we open up and critique the ideology of manufacturing and unexamined politics that underpins the construction of the Singapore global city. We gesture to a broader vision of critical education for Singapore in our conclusion.

Manufacturing the (fragile) nation state

Like all nations, Singapore’s nation-building is not left to chance. It is manufactured out of an enduring narrative about a nation that nearly did not make it. The fragility of its nationhood continues to haunt its national imagination and serves to legitimize an economy-based governmentality that embraces globalization.

Indeed, building the economy has become a national enterprise for the People’s Action Party (PAP) Government. It can be said that any national policy that emanates from the PAP Government is steeped in fiscal rationale, calculated to benefit economic growth. Take, for instance, the popularly known “Baby Bonus” policy which costs the government SGD2 billion a year. It is an incentive-driven social policy that is meant to encourage married couples to procreate to boost a declining birth rate (Ministry of Social & Family Services, 2013) because if left unaddressed, the government calculates that the trend of a declining fertility rate would have social and economic repercussions. However, such pro-natal policies stop short at making it mandatory for companies and employers to offer work–life balance measures or childcare facilities because they would impinge on businesses and their growth, thus underlining the assertion that the fertility problem is big enough to demand public funds but not important enough to intrude on the private sector. Meanwhile, a faster and cheaper way for growing human capital is to import them through liberal immigration policies, despite a growing resentment politics against the influx of “foreign talents” (Koh, 2003; Yeoh & Lin, 2013). These are two examples of national policies that are, on the one hand, conceived to bolster Singapore’s international competitiveness and global city positioning, while on the other, implicated with social consequences that are deemed acceptable on the altar of economic growth.

Manufacturing as a national ideology

Latching on to the leitmotif of manufacturing as the unifying thread that binds this special issue together, we think of a special issue that examines how a well-planned, some may say, over-planned city-state manufactures its global city ambition and the attendant cultural politics would appeal to an international readership. A definition of “manufacturing” is in order here, which we define as the agentic role of the state in steering policies, resources, and ideological state apparatuses such as schools and government bodies toward a deterministic pathway about building its economy. This pathway is reinforced by national myths and mainstream narratives of vulnerability, crisis, and survival. In addition, the invariable top-down approach to manufacturing must be rationalized and legitimized by regimes of truth which, in Singapore, is accomplished with gross domestic product (GDP) growth, numerical digits, and rising percentage points, all meant to correspond to the “good life” and material comforts in the city-state. Seen from a psychoanalytic perspective, Singapore’s propensity for manufacturing – the practiced act of making of something out of nothing – we argue, is motivated by a national psyche linked to its traumatic birth as a nation and its perpetual state of anxiety. This trauma and anxiety fuel the national psychosis (read: fear of economic collapse) which, in turn, pave the way for the social project of disciplining the Singapore body politic.

This special issue puts “education” in the center of our collective analysis because it is a key plank in the state’s manufacturing process. While international readers of this journal may be familiar with Singapore’s success in global education rankings, given the almost routine applause for the country’s stellar performances in international tests, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD’s) Program for International Student Assessment tests where Singapore has emerged top (Ministry of Education, 2014), and most recently, the Learning Curve, which ranks Singapore’s education system third, ahead of all Western education systems (Davie, 2014), there has been very little work that critiques the manufacturing ideology that underpins the machinery of education in Singapore in connection to its global city aspirations.

The emergent structure of feeling in the global city

We examine this theme in a contemporary moment where an emergent “structure of feeling” (Williams, 2014, p. 27) is redefining the social and political milieu of Singapore. On the political front, the May 2011 General Elections was a rude awakening for the PAP Government as it garnered its lowest share of the vote since independence. The received votes plummeted steadily from 75.3% in 2001, 66.6% in 2006, and to 60.1% in 2011. The decline in the ruling party’s popularity is further underscored by its by-election defeats in 2012 (in Hougang constituency) and 2013 (in Punggol East constituency; Low & Vadaketh, 2014). Analysts of Singapore’s political trend attribute this to a growing politics of dissatisfaction with the PAP Government for making unpopular policies such as the immigration policy, fueled by wider discontents around a higher cost of living as well as the perceived arrogance and elitism of the PAP polity (Chong, 2012; Low & Vadaketh, 2014; Tan & Lee, 2011).

Typical of this was the government’s release of the Population White Paper in January 2013 which declared a 6.9 million projected population growth by 2030. What ensued was an unprecedented organized public protest that saw a record estimated crowd of 4000 people gathered at Hong Lim Park lashing out at the PAP Government (AsiaOne News, 2013). The topic was also fiercely debated on social media which has itself grown into an alternative political space to express discontent not afforded in the mainstream media. What warrants critical attention at this public protest was the semiotically loaded overt expressions of xenophobia and stronger assertion of Singaporean identity on placards that read “Singapore for Singaporeans,” “Made in Singapore,” “I miss Singapore,” “No to overpopulated Singapore,” and “Waiting for 2016.” These messages of protest need no decoding for their political and social meanings.

The Population White Paper has aroused complex contradictory feelings, a mixture of genuine concern for personal livelihood and space, nationalism, and anti-foreigner sentiments. This protest has also suggested that this is a global city that has failed the litmus test of what a global city life is: the celebration of inclusive cosmopolitan virtues and outlook. Significantly, the dissent and politics around the Population White Paper have made it clear that the Singapore polity is changing, and that the “Singapore consensus” does not comply easily to the dictates of the one party PAP hegemon. The manufacturing of consent is no longer a simple process.

Education and global city nexus

Despite garnering international accolades for its education system, the nexus between education and the global city has remained understudied. As such, while the study of this “global city-state” (Olds & Yeung, 2004) has branched into other fields such as critical migration studies (e.g. Schiller & Caglar, 2010; Yeoh & Lin, 2013), transnational urbanism (e.g. Smith, 2001), and a wider hodgepodge of global cities scholarship (e.g. Bridge & Watson, 2013; King, 1991; Olds & Yeung, 2004; Roy & Ong, 2011; Sassen, 1991; Yeoh, 1999) education as a field of politics and study which is both a product as well as a determinant of the city-state has not yet been adequately examined in relation to the global city literature.

Our contribution in putting together this special issue is to bring two disparate fields, namely, “education” and “global city” to inform each other with a view to analyze and critique the manufacturing of Singapore education and its global city formation. The contextual backdrop of a global city at a crossroad of change is necessary because an examination of the manufacturing of Singapore education cannot be divorced from the social, political, and economic (changing) formations in which education is deeply embedded.

Thus, our aim in this special issue is to present a collection of essays that spotlights specific aspects of Singapore’s education through the critical lens of “manufacturing.” The various topics include Vocational Education (Terence Chong), Language Policies (Lionel Wee), Higher Education (Francis Collins et al.), English Education (Suzanne Choo), Critical Thinking (Leonel Lim), Sex Education (Warren Liew), Creativity (Terence Lee), and Critical Feminist Education (Michelle Lazar). Collectively, these papers pry open the ideology of manufacturing education system to service its national economy and global city ambition. But before we frame this larger argument that situates the collection of papers in this special issue, we provide a few contextual points about Singapore education.

Education is a major area of investment in Singapore. The largess of this investment is evidenced by a 40% increase in expenditure, from SGD7.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2007 to SGD10.5 billion in FY 2012. This amounts to 3.1% of its GDP, more than other OECD countries (Ministry of Education, 2013). An informed analysis of Singapore’s global city aspirations and economic imperatives, therefore, cannot sidestep the symbiotic relationship between its education and the economy. The logic of this education/economy theorem is straightforward in the way Singaporean students enter and exit the education system and, in the process, find themselves sorted and sifted into different educational pathways, but ultimately manufactured as human capital with the requisite knowledge and skills to support the Singapore economy. Ideologically, education and schooling practices function as a “cognitive machine” (Kenway & Koh, 2013) and a human resource generator to feed human capital into the Singapore economy.

Joel Spring has aptly described education in Singapore as “schooling for economic growth” (Spring, 1998). This tight coupling between education and economic development is a well-established and unchallenged thesis documented in the literature on Singapore education (see Gopinanthan, 2013), while “global”/“local” imperatives continue to shape its education development well into the twenty-first century (Koh, 2013). This enduring foundational axiom continues to be applied like a formula to ensure that Singapore’s economy is sustainable.

Likewise, its global city aspirations are not a recent invention. Academic literature started using the concept of “world city” (Friedmann & Wolff, 1982) before “global city” became a popular lexicon in academic discourse made famous by Saskia Sassen (1991; Oswin & Yeoh, 2010). However, we believe that international readers might not know that Singapore’s first foreign minister, S. Rajarathnam, could be the first to have invented the concept of “global city” in 1972 when he “declared Singapore would be a global city with ‘the world as its hinterland’” (Kenway & Koh, 2013, p. 275). This etymological point notwithstanding our argument is “the art of being global” (Ong, 2011, p. 1) for Singapore began early in its foundational years of nation-building where education as a resource is in partnership to manufacture its global city aspirations. This remains to be deployed as a national framework through a regime of govermentality and enterprise of all sorts such as the formation of global hubs for biomedical science, technology, finance, arts, and education.

Special issue focus

We regard this special issue of discourse as a “thought collective” (Dean, 2014) that engages in the critical analyses of the ideology of manufacturing that serves the one-dimensional global city aspirations of Singapore. Mitchell Dean (2014) defines “collective thought” as the gathering of a group of intellectuals to exchange viewpoints around a common intellectual framework. In a like manner, we gather mostly Singaporean academics in this special issue to examine how education is enlisted to realize Singapore’s global city ambition notwithstanding the inherent contradictions therein, contradictions that have to do with how the twin forces of the nation (and its ideologies) and global city aspirations come together and/or are in tension with each other; how education contributes to and is shaped by the market realities of its global city ambition that are at odds with its nationalistic local agenda and priorities of nation-building. In what follows, we summarize each paper and situate it in the larger argument of the “manufacturing ideology” that frames the special issue.

The essays

In the literature on Singapore education, vocational education is under research, although there would be the occasional inspirational success story of vocational students (now contemporarized as Institute of Technical Education [ITE]) in the media, students who triumph against odds – the familiar kind of “meritocratic story” that attests to promote its “national doxa of meritocracy” (Koh, 2014, p. 204). Thus, Terence Chong’s essay (“Vocational Education in Singapore: Meritocracy and Hidden Narratives”) fills an important gap of knowledge.

To see the marginalization and politics around vocational education, Chong’s essay must be situated in the wider changes in the Singapore education landscape. It is not difficult to weave an argument out of the recent changes in Singapore’s education in the last decade that points to the choices and diversification of schools that has also contributed to social/educational stratification in its education landscape. First, there is now a concentration of elite schools, for example, specialized schools such as National University of Singapore (NUS) High School of Mathematics and Science, Sports school, School of the Arts; independent schools and autonomous schools that offer the elite Integrated Program; boutique universities such as Singapore Management Universities and Singapore University of Design and Technology; and the more exclusive NUS-Yale liberal arts program in addition to the two comprehensive universities: NUS and Nanyang Technological University.

The question to ask is where does ITE fit in the wider landscape of schools in Singapore and more importantly, what sort of social and economic pathways awaits students who enter and exit the ITE? These are unsettling questions to ask because it will reveal how education is deployed as a huge machinery to manufacture human capital, sorting and differentiating them into different pathways to service the different enterprises of the Singapore economy. Chong’s essay offers a historical analysis of vocati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Education in the global city: the manufacturing of education in Singapore
• 2 Vocational education in Singapore: meritocracy and hidden narratives
• 3 Language politics and global city
• 4 Mobility and desire: international students and Asian regionalism in aspirational Singapore
• 5 Toward a cosmopolitan vision of English education in Singapore
• 6 Critical thinking and the anti-liberal state: the politics of pedagogic recontextualization in Singapore
• 7 Sex (education) in the city: Singapore’s sexuality education curriculum
• 8 ‘Inculcating’ creativity: culture as public pedagogy in Singapore
• 9 Doing ‘‘critical’’ in a postfeminist era: reviving critical consciousness through peer dialog
• Index