Educating multicultural citizens: Colonial nationalism, imperial citizenship and education in late colonial Singapore

Abstract

This article recounts the unusual history of a national idea in late colonial Singapore from the 1930s to the early 1950s before Singapore's attainment of partial self-government in 1955. Using two different concepts, namely ‘colonial nationalism’ and ‘imperial citizenship’, it offers a genealogy of nationalism in Singapore, one that calls into question the applicability of prevailing theories of anti-colonial nationalism to the Singapore-in-Malaya context. Focusing on colonial nationalism, the article provides a historical account of English-mediated official multiculturalism through tracking shifting British colonial priorities, ideologies of governance and challenges to its authority in Singapore. This account is rarely appreciated in Singapore today given official scripting of national history that abets particular amnesias with regards to its multicultural nationhood.

“Old Wine in New Bottles”: Colonial Education in Southeast Asia (1850—1950)

“…Still focusing on colonial nationalism, Sai Siew-Min describes the British officials and educators' roles in Malaya's nation-building. She stresses the common usage of the English language as the colonial legacy and provides a historical narrative of "English-mediated official multiculturalism," which she believes is the "rationale of Singapore's independent nationhood", but such colonial roots were forgotten [4].…”

EMI (English‐medium instruction) in Singapore's major universities

“…Interestingly, in their account, the point is made that enthusiastic government promotion of English‐medium education did not begin, as widely believed, during the post‐independence period after 1965, but very much earlier. One important milestone here was the Education Department's 1950 plan to promote the language, which involved ‘an English‐plus‐vernacular language education model, one strikingly similar to the English‐plus‐Mother‐Tongue model currently adopted in Singapore's schools today’ (Sai, 2013, p. 66, cited in Bolton & Botha, 2017, p. 138). Notwithstanding these early precedents, the historical record clearly shows that it was also the determination and vision of Lee Kuan Yew that definitively shaped educational language policy after 1965.…”

Exploring the Relationship between Colonial Education and Nationalism in Indonesia: A Reading of Pramoedya A. Toer’s This Earth of Mankind

“…Kim (2014) argues that music education, including that taught as part of the colonial curriculum, could be used for political purposes and to promote a sense of solidarity among people. Sai (2012) discovers that English-mediated official multiculturalism was promoted through education in late colonial Singapore from the 1930s to the early 1950s, suggesting that colonial education could awaken nationalism. Sharonova (2018) finds that intellectual colonialism, a form of colonization that does not involve the seizure of territory, was used by colonizers to maintain their superior status over colonial subjects through education.…”