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Civics and Moral Education inSingapore: lessons for citizenshipeducation?Joy Chew Oon Ai aa Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeVersion of record first published: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Joy Chew Oon Ai (1998): Civics and Moral Education in Singapore: lessonsfor citizenship education?, Journal of Moral Education, 27:4, 505-524

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Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 27, No. 4, 1998 505

Civics and Moral Education inSingapore: lessons for citizenshipeducation?JOY CHEW OON AINanyang Technological University, Singapore

ABSTRACT Civics and Moral Education was implemented as a new moral educationprogramme in Singapore schools in 1992. This paper argues that the underlying theme is thatof citizenship training and that new measures are under way to strengthen the capacity of theschool system to transmit national values for economic and political socialisation. The motivesand motivation for retaining a formal moral education programme have remained strong. Adiscussion of the structure and content of key modules in Civics and Moral Education showshow curriculum writers have attempted to integrate separate strands of civics and moraleducation from earlier programmes and present them in a less divisive manner. The paper alsoassesses the impact of the written civics and moral education programme on teachers and pupils,and the way in which strategies have been used by curriculum agencies to overcome possibleobstacles at the curriculum implementation phase.

Few governments have pursued the case for a compulsory civics and moral edu-cation programme in the school system with as much tenacity and vigour as that ofSingapore. Since 1959 there has been active experimentation with a growingnumber of curriculum packages designed to address educational policy makers'concern with the need for citizenship training. The national school system was anatural choice for locating a formal values education programme and one slantedtowards nation building.

Historically, there was an earlier subject called Ethics in 1959. It was replacedby Civics in 1963 at the secondary school level. An attempt was made to design aninterdisciplinary programme for values education in primary schools in 1973 calledEducation for Living. By the late 1970s, there was much dissatisfaction with whatwas regarded by policy makers as a weak attempt at creating an effective moraleducation programme. This gave rise to a major review of the state of moraleducation in 1978. It resulted in a strong recommendation to revamp and beginfresh work on a new programme. The Good Citizen Project Team began work in1980. It produced, in the Chinese, Malay and Tamil languages, pupils' textbooksand workbooks, and the teachers' guide, Good Citizen. At the same time, the MoralEducation Programme for Singapore Schools (MEPSS) Project Team worked on an

0305-7240/98/040505-20 © 1998 The Norham Foundation

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alternative set of materials for Being and Becoming. It was designed, initially, forsecondary and primary levels in English and Chinese.

As though the initiatives for introducing the two new packages were notenough, Religious Knowledge and Confucian Ethics were offered as compulsory andexaminable subjects for upper secondary pupils in 1984 to complement the othermoral education programmes. Then, quite unexpectedly, at the end of 1990 thegovernment announced that it had decided to scrap Religious Knowledge andConfucian Ethics as compulsory subjects. The choice was either to revert to theprevious syllabus or rewrite a new civics and moral education syllabus. A decisionwas made in favour of the latter. By 1995 a new series, Civics and Moral Education,was ready for full implementation in schools.

The refocusing on citizenship training became clearer still when, in 1995, thePrime Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, announced the need for "National Education"at all levels of schooling. The momentum increased in July, 1996 when principalswere required to attend a seminar on the introduction of a supposedly newprogramme in schools "to teach students about the country's constraints and whatis needed for the country to continue to succeed" (The Straits Times, 10 July 1996,p. 25).

This cursory introduction to Singapore's ongoing experience of formulating andimplementing a civics and moral education programme for schools confirms that thesubject is fraught with controversies, challenges and constraints. Singapore offerssome valuable lessons about the possibilities and limits of developing a nationalcurriculum on civics and moral education. The interest of England's Qualificationsand Curriculum Authority in including "lessons in morality, good citizenship andobeying the law" in the national curriculum has been shared by many othercountries in Asia and the West (Cummings et al, 1988). Varying models offormal civics and moral education programmes exist. It can be argued, however, thatthere are broadly similar issues that policy makers have to address, a major one beingthe extent of participation of key stakeholders on the form and substance of thesubject.

As can be expected in a multiethnic, multilingual and multifaith society such asSingapore [1], there have been lively debates and discussions about the nature ofcivics and moral education. Debate proved to be particularly vociferous and spiritedwhen the government decided to introduce Religious Knowledge and ConfucianEthics in the mid-1980s. To put it mildly, it created great unease among Chinese,Malay, Indian and Eurasian Singaporeans at the official attempt to institutionaliseethnic, cultural and religious differences through a compulsory Religious Knowledgeand Confucian Ethics component. A subsequent policy reversal in 1990 shows howcontroversial it was.

The recent move towards National Education signals a renewed attempt bypolicy makers to reinforce citizenship training as another facet of values education.It can be interpreted as a strategy to legitimise, via the education system, the politicalleadership's renewed emphasis that Singaporeans must meet new economic chal-lenges head-on in a highly competitive and integrated global environment. Thus the

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Civics and Moral Education in Singapore 507

agenda for civics and moral education is threefold, cultural, political and economic,a point discussed by Tan (1994) in his analysis of moral education in Singapore.

This paper will show that citizenship training has remained the main thrust ofSingapore's efforts to develop values education in schools. It discusses the motivesand motivation for a formal curriculum in citizenship training. This is followed byan examination of the structure and content of the written Civics and MoralEducation (CME) programme currently used in schools. The role of the Ministry ofEducation (MOE) and other key participants in the design, development andimplementation of CME will also be discussed. Of interest, too, is an assessment ofthe probable impact of the taught values curriculum on pupils and teachers. InSingapore's case, curricular experimentation in this subject has gone on long enoughfor some evidence of its impact to be available. From the perspective of curriculumdevelopment and delivery at the school level, lessons can be drawn about its viabilityand limits as a subject. Moreover, given Singapore's centrally controlled educationsystem, and one that is harnessed to national economic priorities, it should bepossible to assess pupils' and teachers' perceptions on the relevance of CME toschool learning.

Motives and Motivation for Civics and Moral Education

Multiple Motives

There is no question about the motives for including a formal moral educationcomponent in the school curriculum. From its inception, moral education has beenmotivated by political leaders' belief that just as an English-medium educationsystem had to be created to ensure the country's economic development, civic andmoral values could be transmitted through the vehicle of learning the mother-tongueat school. The composition of Singapore's multiethnic population is important tonote. With a predominant Chinese population of 77.6%, 14.2% Malays, 7.1%Indians and 1.1% Singaporeans of other ethnic backgrounds (1992 figures quotedby Gopinathan, 1995), political leaders were convinced of the wisdom of a multira-cial ideology with parity of treatment for the four key languages in the educationsystem. The choice of English as an official language was politically and economi-cally expedient. It is a neutral medium and was most appropriate for the goal ofindustrialisation in the early 1960s. Teaching a second language (the mother-tongues: Chinese, Malay and Tamil) [2] was thought to allow for cultural continuityand values transmission. Writing in response to the 1978 Ministry of EducationReport, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the then Prime Minister, stated his rationale for abilingual education policy from the first primary level to pre-university education. Inhis own words:

The greatest value in the teaching and learning of Chinese is in thetransmission of the norms of social or moral behaviour. This meansprincipally Confucianist beliefs and ideas, of man, society and state. Thisis painlessly taught through stories, the myths and mythology of theirculture ... It would be a tragedy if we were to miss this and concentrate on

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second language proficiency nearly equal to the first language ... No childshould leave school after 9 years without having the "software" of hisculture programmed into his subconscious (Singapore: Report of theMinistry of Education, 1978, p. v).

In keeping with the official view of how values could be preserved throughschooling, formal moral education lessons have been taught in the pupils' mother-tongue at the primary school since 1981. This resulted in a more distinctive role forthe primary teachers who specialise in teaching the three official mother-tongues.They became responsible for mediating the official moral education programmes.The English-medium primary teachers would concentrate on English, maths, sci-ence, social studies, physical education, health education, art and music. Such alanguage-based division of work continued into the 1990s. However, with theintroduction of new syllabuses for social studies and history around 1985, othersubjects have been used since as the vehicle for teaching values in the classroom, aswill be elaborated later.

At the secondary and post-secondary school levels, CME is not taught solely inthe pupil's mother-tongue. English is used largely as the medium of instruction forCME. There are two possible explanations for this. One was the non-availability ofthe required number of mother-tongue teachers at secondary school level to teachcivics and moral education, since mother-tongue languages are taught as a subject,not a medium of instruction for other subjects. Another logistical consideration wasthe impracticality of having to prepare curriculum materials in English and the threemother-tongues. Judging by the rapid production rate of the two CurriculumDevelopment Institute of Singapore (CDIS) teams [3] that worked to meet tightdelivery deadlines of new materials by 1983 for both secondary and primary schools,it would have been unrealistic to expect them to prepare simultaneously a 10-yearseries in four languages. At the secondary level it was therefore thought that Englishcould serve as a common medium of instruction for values education.

How English could measure up to the belief held by some political leaders that"Asian" values are better inculcated through the use of pupils' mother-tonguelanguages was not openly debated. It was clearly a matter of expediency. The sheerimmensity of the task and tight scheduling given for materials development made itnecessary for the mother-tongue requirement to be compromised at the secondarylevel. Thus born out of practical difficulties, the teaching of moral and civic valuesin primary and secondary schools differed in terms of teacher deployment.

As a result, specialist subject teachers in secondary schools also became in-volved in teaching moral and civic values. With the introduction of ReligiousKnowledge and Confucian Ethics in 1984 up to 1991, many subject specialistteachers found themselves having to experiment with implementing one of theReligious Knowledge electives (Islamic Religious Knowledge, Buddhist Studies,Hindu Studies, Sikh Studies, Bible Knowledge and Confucian Ethics). From thepoint of view of learning to teach values in an explicit way, it will be noted thatSingapore teachers have had considerable experience in using and mediating thenew curriculum materials over the years. Such prior involvement in values education

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Civics and Moral Education in Singapore 509

through the teaching of Religious Knowledge and Confucian Ethics during the1980s will undoubtedly influence school leaders' and teachers' perceptions of thesignificance of National Education, a new component introduced in 1997.

Maintaining Motivation

The motivation for retaining a compulsory civics and moral education subject in theschool system remains very strong today. This is confirmed by the decision taken bythe MOE in 1991 to design an assessment format for monitoring pupils' level ofinterest in learning values through CME. The then Curriculum Planning Division(CPD) provided more comprehensive guidelines on the use of project work andclass tests for the CME syllabus. For the first time since 1992, CME teachers arenow required to plan assessment activities that are graded at each year level.Teachers follow a letter grading system (Grade A, B, C, D and F) for pupils' writtenwork. Grades are awarded based on effort in carrying out a variety of project workand individual performance in class tests. Project work constitutes 60% of theoverall marks. The remaining 40% come from class tests on the factual content ofthe subject syllabus. [4]

Secondary school pupils often work in groups of five to seven to prepare CMEgroup projects on topics of their choice. An example is the theme of "fosteringcultural and religious appreciation". Groups could be asked to gather comparativeobservational data about marriage ceremonies among the different ethnic groups inSingapore. It could take the form of videoing, observing and interviewing keyparticipants of marriage ceremonies. The products of group work are written up andpresented at appropriate lesson periods for peers and the CME teacher to review.Besides assessing pupils' learning through group project work, teachers requireindividual written assignments for CME. Pupils develop their own scrapbook ofresource materials and write personal reflections on thematic topics and classactivities.

Other measures are taken to ensure that CME is treated seriously by teachersand pupils in the school programme. School heads are held personally accountableto the MOE for the way CME is implemented in each school. They are required toappoint a CME co-ordinator to attend to the allocation of resources and assigningpersonnel for the subject. Sometimes, vice principals are tasked by principals to helpmonitor the teaching of CME and adjudicate between teachers and reluctant pupilsif the latter are tardy in submitting their written work. Such mechanisms to ensurethat CME is accorded due attention in the school curriculum suggest that the MOEis only too aware that CME could be marginalised in an education system thatpractises meritocracy and school ranking as the bases for streaming pupils intodifferent curriculum tracks[5] at the secondary and post-secondary level.

Structure and Content of Civics and Moral Education

The CDIS team that prepared the CME materials used an instructional design forunit planning that was adapted from the 4MAT system, "a teaching for learning

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TABLE I. Modules and themes of civics and moral education programme

Module Theme

Unity in diversity To foster cultural and religious appreciation

Belonging together To promote community spiritThe growing me To cultivate strength of character and to

maximise one's potentialLoving my family To affirm family lifeBuilding bonds To nurture interpersonal relationshipsBecoming a better citizen To develop commitment to nation building

model developed by Dr Bernice McCarthy" (Singapore: CDIS, 1993a). Each unitof the module consists of four steps, beginning with the Stimulus Activity (FindingMeaning in My Experience), next, Concept Development and Formulation (Think-ing Things Through), then Practice and Application (Putting Words into Action),and lastly, Further Discovery (Making It Part of Me). Teachers' guides and pupils'workbooks are written for each year level. They form pan of an integrated multime-dia package of print and non-print materials such as audio tapes, EducationalTelevision (ETV) programmes and overhead transparency masters. Between 1991and 1995, the then Curriculum Planning Division (CPD) and the CDIS mountedin-service training for over 1300 secondary teachers and CME coordinators. Princi-pals were also briefed on new syllabus and curriculum materials.

Political and Economic Socialisation

A closer examination of the syllabus and curricular materials of the earlier and morerecent civics and moral education packages shows that curriculum developers wereguided by a number of instructional objectives apart from the transmission ofcultural values and norms. These are clearly depicted by the six module titles thatmake up the CME series (see Table I). It can be inferred that, since 1981, thesubstantive treatment of the content of CME has focused increasingly on citizenshiptraining. There continues to be a strong emphasis on the element of political andeconomic socialisation. Some textual references will illustrate this interpretation.

A good example is the module on Becoming a Better Citizen, with its relatedtheme of "developing commitment to nation building" which is a major component.Taking the written curriculum at the Year 9 level (for 15-year-old pupils) as anexample, about one-third of the total of 60 lesson periods allocated for the subjectis recommended by CDIS for these units: "the concept of citizenship";"responsibilities of citizens"; "responsibilities of citizens towards laws" and"responsibilities of living in a democracy". The theme is revisited at Year 10 underthese unit headings: "issues of national concern"; "total defence and nationalcampaigns" and "responding to global issues" (Singapore: CDIS, 1993a).

That citizenship training is a dominant thrust can be seen in the content of a

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sample of units written for the Year 10 module, Becoming a Better Citizen [6]. UnitOne deals with "issues of national concern". The teachers' guide contains facts andinformation on the topic, complete with cue questions that teachers could use toteach and facilitate class discussions of key questions. In fact, a content analysis ofthe teachers' guide reveals the political and economic values explicated in the pupils'workbooks.

The provision of detailed lesson planning notes and the step-by-step presen-tation of each lesson unit is quite remarkable in the teachers' guides. This could beseen as a measure taken by CDIS to compensate for any possible lack of face-to-facein-service training on the actual substance of each CME module. Thus, teacherswho rely on the pupils' workbooks and teachers' guide should be able to implementthe lesson units so long as they can sustain pupils' interest and motivation toparticipate in structured individual and group activities.

A lead article entitled "Looking Back—an overview of the major difficultiesfaced by Singapore" forms the basis of the first stimulus activity of the unit, Issuesof National Concern. The article summarises the threats to Singapore as a youngnation from 1965 to the 1980s. It is written using reference materials originatingfrom two government ministries (the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry ofInformation and the Arts) and two leading economists, one of whom was a seniorcabinet minister until his retirement from politics in the late 1980s. The intention ofthe stimulus material is clear: to emphasise the challenges of nation building and theachievements of the People's Action Party (PAP) government. This is nationaleducation at its purest with facts given on how physical constraints (Singapore's smallsize and lack of natural resources) and economic crises faced during the last threedecades (the British military withdrawal in the 1960s, the oil crisis in the 1970s andthe economic recession in the mid-1980s) were overcome as a result of "goodpolitical leadership" (Singapore: CDIS, 1993b, pp. 60-62).

This is followed by a transparency-viewing exercise consisting of six overheadtransparencies that teachers can use to build on pupils' understanding of the issuesof national concern. The transparencies give a visual listing of the concrete aspectsof Singapore's achievements, such as the country's "successful public housingprogramme, high standard of health and medical care, provision of quality edu-cation; efficient mass transport system; world class communication system, andgood landscaping". As the next activity, pupils are asked to think about what wouldbe needed by the country to sustain further progress. The CDIS teachers' guideprovides a note in this regard:

NOTE: Some factors that pupils are likely to point out for Singapore toachieve further progress may include having a large and hardworkingpopulation which can live and work harmoniously together, having morejob opportunities, having a good government and being able to defendourselves. Thus, in general, we have to depend on a sizeable population, aharmonious society, economic growth, total security and good politicalleadership. These are issues that can affect the future progress of our

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country and therefore they are of concern to our nation (Singapore: CDIS,1993b, p. 62).

A reader familiar with the social, economic and political context of Singaporewill recognise that national issues referred to in the CME texts are the very onesraised by government leaders in their regular pronouncements of national policies.These are regularly conveyed in the country's mass media. What is also discernableis the way in which the CME unit writers have sought to give voice to a very clearmessage about the instrumental basis for achieving economic growth, racial andreligious harmony, population growth and having "strong and capable" politicalleadership. Often, too, key points are summarised for the teachers' benefit. Twoexamples with reference to the country's economic growth and political leadershipwill suffice:

(iii) Economic Growth: Our strong economy has enabled us to enjoy a highstandard of living. In order for us to continue to have this good life, we needto sustain economic growth. This implies that we have to continue to beproductive and keep our production costs low so that we can continue tosell our goods and services. The more we can sell the more jobs will beavailable to us, which will then lead to increases in our nation's income(author's emphasis).

(v) Political Leadership: One of the contributing factors to Singapore'ssuccess is our strong and capable leadership. The national policies intro-duced have been conducive to economic growth and they have ensuredpolitical and social stability. Such stability has attracted many foreigninvestments which have spurred the growth of our economy. We need tocontinue to have capable, honest and committed leaders who have the interest ofthe people at heart. We also need leaders with foresight to sustain and continueSingapore's success into the 90's and beyond. (Singapore: CDIS, 1993b, p . 63)(author's emphasis)

The concept of "this good life" reappears in the next unit entitled "Total defenceand national campaigns—be a part of them". In fact it becomes the title for anaudio-tape: "The Good Life—is it Forever?" (Singapore: CDIS, 1993b, p. 70).Teachers are prompted on how a guided imagery exercise can achieve its impact, bymaking sure that "the pupils are quiet and seated comfortably" and "... closing theireyes will help them to concentrate on listening to the tape", which is about certainscenes of the good life as it is described by the narrator. Such details in the writtenCME texts could only have come about through very deliberate lesson planningwork by the curriculum writers.

How the good life is seen to be directly linked to economic growth and whetheran overly materialistic view of the good life forms an adequate foundation for ayoung citizen's national commitment are not raised as debatable issues in theprototype lessons. It would appear that the curriculum writers had assumed thatthese are national goals that pupils could be persuaded to regard as being worthwhile

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Civics and Moral Education in Singapore 513

in themselves. Whether classroom teachers implementing such lesson units are intotal agreement with this view might be worth investigating by other researchers.

Thus, by means of the CME materials delivered as part of the official curricu-lum, upper secondary pupils could be systematically inducted into an ideologicalviewpoint of Singapore society that is strongly underpinned by a dominant economicrationality and pragmatism. In the same vein, the theme of a strong and capablepolitical leadership is attributed to the Singapore government's success in attractingand securing international investment funds and the transfer of new technology. Thedesirable qualities of strong leadership are highlighted: "capable, honest leaders withforesight to sustain and continue Singapore's success into the 90's and beyond". Byworking through an exercise "discussing" issues of national concern in groups of fiveto seven, pupils will have rehearsed the rationale for national policies in a highlyconvergent way.

It will be important to examine how such a tendency to teach for convergentthinking about national economic and political issues may run counter to thegovernment's current concern that schools be nurturing a new mindset among theyounger generation citizens. "Creativity" and "critical thinking" have become thenew buzzwords in official circles. The Prime Minister's announcement in June 1997of his government's adoption of the "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation" formula"to enable Singapore to compete and stay ahead in the 21 st century" signals a majorshift in both the process and organisation of the education system in Singapore (GohChok Tong, 1997).

Appreciating Cultural Diversity

The Unity in Diversity module is an attempt to design a component on worldreligions for Singapore schools. Such an elective was to have been tried out in themid-1980s under the proposed course title "Study of World Religions" whenReligious Knowledge was introduced in 1984, but it never took off as an electivesubject. It might have been too premature then. Recall that the CPD and the CDISwere already having to develop the syllabi and preparatory materials for five otherelectives including Confucian Ethics. Eight years later, in 1992, the MOE had hadmore lead time and a stint of experimenting with Religious Knowledge electives. Itcould now incorporate world religions as a module in the newly packaged CMEprogramme. More importantly, it would have to be integrated into the objective ofcitizenship training for life in multiethnic society.

The Year 9 syllabus for CME includes a module on Unity in Diversity whichlends itself to the teaching of facts and information about the cultural and religiouspractices of the main ethnic communities in Singapore. Examples of units thatdevelop the theme of fostering cultural and religious appreciation are: "the conceptof celebration"; "festivals, major systems of beliefs in Singapore"; and "expressionsof basic beliefs in our daily lives". The specific instructional objective for the unit onmajor systems of beliefs is to introduce pupils to the six major religions practised inSingapore: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism and Taoism. The

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rationale for learning about other systems of beliefs besides the pupil's own religiousaffiliation is stated in functionalist terms in the teachers' guide:

NOTE• It is necessary to be familiar with other cultures and religions in our multi-

cultural and multi-religious situation in order to foster harmonious relation-ships.

• Religion is so much a part of a believer's life that it influences his attitudesand conduct. For example, a person may abstain from certain food and dressin a certain manner because of his religious beliefs. Thus knowing about thebeliefs and related practices of others will help us to understand others better.We also need to appreciate that others have the right to uphold differentbeliefs (Singapore: CDIS, 1992, p. 42).

To summarise, the CME programme may be seen as a concerted effort to pulltogether a number of strands of civics and moral education, some of which werepackaged separately in the 1980s. It encompasses core values identified in the early1990s by the government as part of its official search for "national values" (Quah,1990). What is striking about CME is its very eclectic nature. Elements such asReligious Knowledge and Confucian Ethics that could no longer be sustained aselective subjects in earlier years are now incorporated, but in a potentially lessdivisive manner. English is used as the main instructional medium although Chinesecan be used in certain schools [7]. Throughout the six modules, the objective iscitizenship training, not moral education. Whether the units are on marriage,responsible parenthood, civil defence, national campaigns or responding to globalissues, the thrust of the written curriculum is to impart the knowledge, skills andattitudes considered as pertinent for good citizenship in Singapore.

Key Participants in Civics and Moral Education

Many Players, Many Stakeholders

In his analysis of the introduction and exit of Religious Knowledge in Singapore,Gopinathan (1995) makes a useful distinction between the "cultural curriculum"and the "non-cultural curriculum". The former, in the case of Singapore, encom-passes history, social studies, civics and moral education. In his view, these subjectsare intended to contribute to "the enhancement of social cohesion, political identityand loyalty to the state" (Gopinathan, 1995, pp. 15-16). In the first decade of theimplementation of the New Education System that began in 1980 (Singapore:MOE, 1978) the MOE introduced a compulsory moral education component.Eventually, the explicit teaching of values became embedded in a number of subjectsat primary and secondary schools.

As can be expected, there are many players in the processes of planning andimplementing civics and moral education in Singapore schools. Primary amongthem are government leaders, MOE policy makers, teams of curriculum planners

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and writers, principals, teachers and teacher trainers. All have been directly involvedat one stage or another.

The gestation period taken to flesh out the bare bones of curriculum policiesresulting in the syllabus guidelines and teaching packages was much longer, from1981 to 1995. The extent of consultation cannot be said to be true of other subjectswith the exception of social studies [8] and the lower secondary history syllabus forSocial and Economic History of Modern Singapore (Singapore: CDIS, 1984/5).Recalling that the written curricula for these subjects were introduced to schools ataround 1985 when Religious Knowledge and Confucian Ethics made their firstappearance, it is not surprising that all these subjects should share a commonorientation on values.

Other than the political leaders who have taken a deep interest in framing thescope of the "cultural curriculum", the CPD and CDIS divisions of the MOE aremainly responsible for determining the final form and substance of such subjects.Project teams for the writing of new curriculum packages are formed by the CPD inconsultation with senior professionals at the MOE [9]. There exists an involvedprocess of step-by-step consultation at different levels of the educational hierarchy,the highest being the ministerial committee meeting (Lim & Gopinathan, 1990,p. 77).

In the design and re-conceptualisation of CME after 1991, the CDIS projectteam worked in tandem with the CPD. The latter's main responsibilities were toprepare the syllabus and time-frames for materials development, school level im-plementation and monitoring of the use of curriculum materials. The CPD was alsoresponsible for vetting the drafts of curriculum material. It included the inputs ofcurriculum consultants and specialists from outside the school system at criticalstages of the vetting process. For example, in preparing the units on the majorreligions and belief systems, representatives from religious organisations in Singa-pore were invited to sit on committees to check the drafts of texts for factualaccuracy and interpretation (Singapore: CDIS, 1992, Acknowledgements, p. iii)[10].

For all intents and purposes, efforts at scrutinising curriculum content wereundertaken with considerable care and seriousness. The writer recalls an interviewwith a senior team member of the unit on world religions who said that her teamwere on tenterhooks while they awaited the "verdict" of the religious specialists ontheir depiction of different religious tenets and practices in Singapore. An earlierinnovation with Confucian Ethics in the mid-1980s received as much if not greaterattention from Cabinet level, as that elective was commissioned by a senior govern-ment leader. Not surprisingly, the final text underwent vetting at that level.

How much influence do Singapore curriculum writers have in determining theactual content of the materials disseminated as school texts? A very likely answer isthat they have considerable influence over what is included as the substantivecontent even if some of these are omitted at the vetting stage. The previous sectionof this paper showed examples of curriculum writers' selection of materials takenfrom keynote speeches on government policies, or a paraphrase of current social,political and economic issues addressed by government spokesmen in the mass

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media. Once encoded in the workbooks for pupils and the teachers' guides, they willbe mediated by the classroom teachers and pupils.

In the absence of adequate empirical data about how much influence policymakers have over the curriculum writers' interpretation of government policies, it isreasonable to assume that curriculum writers would see it in their professionalinterest to present curriculum content within the official ideological framework.Thus political leaders' concerns and priorities, and the perceptions of curriculumteam members of how these are best represented in official textbooks, become thestuff of much of the official curriculum.

National Education for the 21st Century

The evolution of Singapore's civics and moral education programme is far fromcomplete. A renewed emphasis on National Education, as announced at the Teach-ers' Day Rally in September 1996 by the Prime Minister, was followed by an officiallaunch of National Education (NE) on 17 May, 1997 (Singapore: MOE, 1997). Inhis Teachers' Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Goh made a pointed remark that allteachers would have to help transmit national values and explicated how hisgovernment was planning to prepare them to become effective purveyors of values:

National Education cannot be instilled in our students unless it is firstinstilled in the teachers. Teachers must feel passionately for the country beforethey can teach with conviction ... many of our teachers—as many as 40 percent of them—were either too young to remember those critical years orwere born after 1965. They, too, must learn and acquire the sense ofhistory and shared destiny that we have to inculcate in our students. Ourolder teachers will themselves have to revive their memories of those tumultuoustimes and share them with their younger colleagues (Goh Chok Tong's addressat the Teachers' Day Rally held on 8 September 1996, author's emphasis).

The structure of the NE curriculum is being worked out. It will definitelyinvolve high-level government personnel working on its content and delivery mode.A time-frame of 2 years has been given for further preparation of curriculummaterials for a revised CME programme for schools. Undoubtedly, the business athand would be to ensure a close fit between the content with the explicit purpose ofNational Education which are laid bare:

To develop national cohesion, the instinct for survival and confidence inthe future, a) by fostering a sense of identity, pride and self-respect asSingaporeans; b) by knowing the Singapore story—how Singapore suc-ceeded against the odds to become a nation; c) by understanding Singa-pore's unique challenges, constraints and vulnerabilities, which make usdifferent from other countries; and d) by instilling the core values of ourway of life, and the will to prevail, that ensure our continued success andwell-being (Singapore: MOE, 1997).

Thus, over the last 3 years, the control over the curriculum development process in

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values education has shifted from the MOE curriculum teams to high level govern-ment leaders. The brief for NE is clearly economic, as stated in the MOE pressrelease: "National Education is an integral part of the Government's strategies inEducation to prepare for the future. It is crucial to the continued success andwell-being of Singapore in the 21st century."

In May 1997, a National Education Committee was set up, chaired by the FirstPermanent Secretary from the Prime Minister's office, who is also the PermanentSecretary for Education. To quote from the same press release: "The Committeehas developed strategic approaches and measures to be adopted in the implemen-tation of National Education. These measures cover both the formal and informalcurriculum and will extend to all levels of the education system" (Singapore: MOE,1997). It is beyond the brief of this article to speculate on the implications of NE forvalues education in Singapore schools. The next section analyses the Singaporesituation described thus far and draws out lessons about the prospect for citizenshipeducation in a small and highly integrated nation-state that is seeking to increase itscompetitive advantage in a rapidly changing and technologically driven globaleconomy.

Assessing the Impact of Moral Education in Singapore Schools

Evaluation Studies and Research

Policy makers at the MOE and government levels have always been interested toknow if the explicit teaching of values has had the desired effect on pupils' secondarysocialisation. A number of official evaluation studies were conducted at differentpoints of time to determine the impact of different programmes in schools. As canbe expected for a curriculum area as complex and amorphous as values education,evaluation findings are far from complete and determinative. But there are sufficientevaluative and descriptive empirical data to suggest the overall impact of valueseducation efforts in the Singapore school system over the last two decades, as a briefoverview shows.

In 1982, an interim report on Good Citizen and Being and Becoming waswritten by an Institute of Education (IE) evaluation team at the request of the thenSenior Minister of State for Education (Eng, 1982). The study surveyed how asample of schools had implemented the two new programmes. It was followed-up bya more detailed evaluation of moral education at the lower secondary level in 1985(Eng etal., 1985). The IE evaluation team obtained qualitative and quantitative datafrom another sample of 12 secondary schools that were in the thick of implementingBeing and Becoming. An important evaluation finding, among others, showed thatteachers could be better deployed by principals in order to signal the importance ofmoral education to pupils and school staff, even though it was a non-examinationsubject. It was found that Being and Becoming was in danger of being neglected byschools, with many teachers regarding it as a "filler" subject that would make up thenumber of lesson periods they were expected to teach.

A further source of empirical data comes from an ethnographic study of moral

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education in a co-education government secondary school (Chew, 1988). The fieldresearch on the hidden moral curriculum of the school took into account theperspectives of school leaders, teachers, pupils, parents and MOE inspectors on theeffects of major education policies such as academic streaming, bilingualism andmoral education on pupils, teachers and leaders of a school community.

Much later, in 1995/96, another evaluation study was undertaken for the MOEby a team from the National Institute of Education (NIE). The brief was to evaluatethe impact of CME introduced to schools since 1992. The team began its work inlate 1995 and presented a report to the MOE in April 1996 (Singapore: MOE,1996). The study sampled teachers, pupils and administrators from 15 primary andsecondary schools.

In June/July 1996, the writer visited five schools to interview their principals orvice-principals, CME co-ordinators and teachers on their experience of teaching anddeploying staff members for CME in order to determine its status in each of theschool's programme. Although this was a very small sample, the interview dataserved as a means of triangulating the 1995 evaluation data on the perceptions ofdifferent role participants regarding CME.

Based of the available evaluation and empirical studies, some observations andconclusions can be made about Singapore's experience with values education,particularly citizenship education. A number of curriculum issues and policy impli-cations relating to the conceptualisation, planning and classroom implementation ofvalues education in Singapore will be discussed first followed by some concludingremarks.

Moral Education or Citizenship Education?

First, it will be noted that "moral education" as it has been practised in Singaporeis strongly influenced by a functionalist perspective from the top policy-making levelright down to the curriculum development level. As indicated earlier, the motives fora compulsory formal moral education programme in Singapore schools are three-fold: cultural, political and economic. Since the early 1960s, senior political leadershave clearly articulated their rationale for a compulsory moral education subject. Ithas always been linked to character building and the inculcation of civic conscious-ness among the schooling population (Ang & Yeoh, 1990, p. 84).

In the last two decades of continuous experimentation with values educationthere has been a noticeable sharpening of focus and, in fact, a restatement ofobjectives. The names given to each subsequent curriculum package reveal itschanging character. From a failed Education for Living programme in the 1970s toits successor, Good Citizen and Being and Becoming during the 1980s, pupils wereintroduced to Civics and Moral Education and now will be exposed to NationalEducation.

Substantively, the treatment of themes in CME, as has been illustrated for someunits, shows a strong socio-centric emphasis (Chew, 1994, p. 162). Citizenshipsocialisation, and much less, moral education, rides high in the curriculum agenda.Admittedly, two modules deal with personal and social education, namely, The

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Growing Me and Building Bonds. Moreover, the MOE has, since 1987, introduceda formal pastoral care and career guidance structure for secondary and pre-univer-sity pupils, with the view to providing a balanced curriculum in the school system.However, there has been a definite reorientation towards citizenship training whichthe government sees as being integral and fundamental for Singapore's continuingeconomic success beyond the 1990s.

The latest mandate, that National Education be taken seriously as part of thegovernment's strategy "to develop instincts that become part of the psyche of everychild" ... "to engender a shared sense of nationhood, an understanding of how ourpast is relevant to our present and future" (Mr Goh Chok Tong, quoted inSingapore: MOE, 1997), is congruent with the government's adoption of a systemsthinking and planning approach in preparing Singaporeans for the nation's econ-omic survival in the 21st century.

However, it may be pointed out that much of the likely content of the recentlyconceptualised National Education may not be exactly new and may, in fact, beidentical to some of the materials in the existing CME textbooks. The political andeconomic values that permeate CME modules on citizenship, community spirit andunity in diversity are surely relevant to National Education. One of the findings ofthe 1995/96 evaluation study was that CME was still in danger of being sidelined byteachers and pupils in an examination-orientated school curriculum. Secondaryschool principals, unlike their primary level counterparts, seemed less optimisticabout the efficacy of formal CME lessons for adolescent-age pupils. The fact thatsome of them had delegated the monitoring of the CME programme to theco-ordinator rather than be personally involved hinted at the role overload that theyfaced as principals in an academically pressurising school system. The stark realityis that schools and principals in Singapore are still largely judged by pupils'performance in national examinations.

A renewed emphasis on citizenship training is understandable at this stage ofSingapore's development as a post-industrial economy. National Education is con-ceptualised as meeting the requirement for re-energising Singaporeans for holding along-term outlook on economic success. The fact that top-ranking governmentofficials have been personally directing the planning for National Education isindicative of the high profile intended for National Education. There is everylikelihood that once a revised CME programme is implemented by the year 2000,teachers and principals will be closely supervised for the way they attempt tointegrate National Education values to subject teaching and learning.

Curriculum Planning and Delivery Issues

Micro-management of CME. To return to the question of how much influenceMOE curriculum specialist writers have had over content of the official textbooks,it is apparent that, given the politically sensitive nature of much of the CMEsyllabus, they worked according to the syllabus guidelines and schedule prepared bythe CPD. Politically and culturally sensitive topics were vetted closely by those

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identified for this task. It was also their responsibility to train teachers and briefprincipals on the intent and use of new curriculum packages.

What is very striking is the inordinate amount of attention given by the MOEto the micro-management of the implementation process of CME at school level.This could be due to two reasons, first as a response to the challenge of school levelpolicy implementation and, secondly, in anticipation of how teachers and secondarypupils might react to module content that might be perceived as being contentiousand possibly controversial. For example, some CME units on cultural diversity ofSingapore society might be perceived as glossing over the complexities of the subjectat hand and present instead an over-simplistic picture of cultural or religiousphenomena, or a highly pragmatic account of political and social issues.

The content of most of the modules has been designed to instruct pupils oncivics and political topics. Curriculum writers are mindful that teachers mediate theofficial CME texts. As such, they would have their own viewpoints and beliefs aboutcitizenship and moral issues. This was confirmed in an interview with a seniormember of the CME team who indicated that one of the concerns of specialistwriters was that secondary school teachers might not be equally committed to thegoal of political socialisation or be sufficiently familiar with the content of the newCME syllabus. The CDIS team pre-empted this obstacle to some extent byproviding in-service training for certain units such as Responsibilities of Citizenstowards Laws and Responsibilities of Living in a Democracy, and units on MajorSystems of Beliefs in Singapore.

Teachers' engagement with CME. Are there any empirical data showing that someteachers may be disenchanted or dissatisfied with the CME materials? Not really.Instead, teachers and CME coordinators seem to have adopted a disturbinglynon-critical stance towards the content of the CME programme. A senior curricu-lum officer bemoaned the fact that school practitioners were merely paying lipservice to CME rather than taking it seriously. It would be accurate to say that thereis little motivation, time or encouragement for teachers and CME coordinators todebate about module contents or the pedagogical approaches advocated by CDIS.It is apparent that each functionary has been caught up with the technical details ofdelivering and learning how to cope with the new assessment modes for CME ratherthan be concerned about working out ideological differences regarding CME topics.Co-ordinators are expected to teach some CME classes, conduct meetings at leasttwice a year, and report directly to the principal. They are not expected by the MOEto help teachers to ventilate any dissatisfaction with the CME programme.

Interviews with principals, CME co-ordinators and teachers also gave theimpression that they were more ready to comment on the nuts and bolts ofimplementing the subject than the content of CME. They were generally pleasedwith the high level of resource support from CDIS. Only one of the five principalsinterviewed by the writer felt that the approach used for developing CME was "toocerebral with inadequate attention given to the affective dimension" of moral

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education. Such a viewpoint is unlikely to be aired publicly. Teachers will be seenas implementers, not critics of the mandated programme.

Conflicting educational policies. The multiple motives for making moral educationa compulsory subject have important ramifications for policy implementation, suchas the deployment of personnel and resource allocation at the school level. Thepolicy of using pupils' mother tongues at the primary level for values transmissionis a case in point. At secondary and pre-university level, English is the main mediumof instruction for CME, due partly to a shortage of mother-tongue teachers forCME. The real picture is more complex than it appears to be. Even if it werepossible for the MOE to deploy more mother-tongue teachers to handle all themoral education programmes, it would have run counter to the bilingual policy ofthe education system and the policy of integrated schooling for pupils of differentethnic backgrounds. The short stint with Religious Knowledge and ConfucianEthics from 1985 to 1990 is instructive about the politics of curriculum policyimplementation and deserves elaboration.

When Islamic Religious Knowledge, Buddhist Studies, Hindu Studies, SikhStudies, Bible Knowledge and Confucian Ethics were offered as "O" level examin-ation electives, pupils were given the option of being taught their chosen elective intheir mother tongue. Thus, those opting for Islamic Religious Knowledge, Bud-dhism, Hinduism and Sikh Studies were taught the subject by a teacher with thelanguage competence to handle the subject syllabus and official textbooks. Confu-cian Ethics was taught in either English or Chinese, and Bible Knowledge inEnglish. While such an arrangement met the requirements for using the mothertongue for values instruction and teacher deployment, it had the unintended effectof attenuating the ethnic segregation of pupils in secondary schools for this othersubject besides the teaching of the mother-tongues. The government's decision toremove Religious Knowledge and Confucian Ethics in 1990 was motivated partly bythis realisation.

Conclusions

A discussion of the impact of the CME programme in Singapore schools would beincomplete if the sociological context of schooling is ignored. Educational policymakers in Singapore are only too aware that pupils and teachers treat the academiccurriculum as being more important than CME. This was borne out by recent dataand feedback from schools about CME. Teachers and pupils still ranked moraleducation after academic and assessment goals in schooling, which is not surprising.National examinations remain a key selection mechanism for identifying and stream-ing pupils at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels of schooling inSingapore. They are likely to be retained as a valued sorting and sifting function inthe future years. This reality poses the most severe challenge for any valueseducation programme in Singapore and needs to be addressed by policy makers.

The writer's earlier research on moral education in a secondary school revealed

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inherent tensions and dilemmas presented to pupils and teachers in the Singaporeschool system (Chew, 1988). It provided ethnographic data of how secondary schoolpupils attempted to deal with conflicting values arising from an earlier moraleducation programme, Being and Becoming. That programme lauded co-operationand group solidarity. At the same time, the school management system and a rigidassessment mode encouraged a highly competitive ethos. Revisiting the sociology ofschooling and moral education in Singapore 9 years later leaves some naggingdoubts about whether schools have become more effective in helping highly aspiringadolescent pupils to deal with the moral dilemma of whom to serve, the individual"Self or the "common good". Increasingly, school leaders and teachers are ex-pected to demonstrate their effectiveness in using improved educational resources toproduce highly skilled and trainable school leavers and citizens for the nation'seconomic growth in the 21st century.

No citizenship education programme could be planned and implemented in asocial and political vacuum. The Singapore example of a state-sponsored valueseducation programme demonstrates the interwoven nature of schooling and thelarger society. A functionalist theoretical perspective of schooling is useful inunveiling the interconnectedness of educational policies with political, economic,social and cultural policies as these are interpreted and enacted at different institu-tional levels. A school-based citizenship education programme that purports to teachsolely for children's personal and social development, without any attention given tothe economic, social and political context of the large society, would soon beperceived as being irrelevant and dysfunctional by pupils, teachers, school adminis-trators and parents. It would be especially difficult to justify such a model of valueseducation when the existing instructional programme is hinged to a centralised andexamination dominated assessment system.

Singapore's experimentation with its unique brand of values education serves tounderline the fact that there is no easy solution to curriculum planning andimplementation. There are too many stakeholders and participants in the arena whowill influence, willy nilly, the decision making process and determine how formalprogrammes are implemented at the classroom level. The attempt to raise the statusof the subject by making it examinable has not solved the problem. At most, it hashad the effect of increasing the pressure on pupils and teachers to spend more timeon what is perceived as an interesting but relatively unimportant item in the schoolprogramme.

Correspondence: Dr Joy Chew Oon Ai, Senior Lecturer, School of Education,Nanyang Technological University, 469 Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259756.

NOTES

[1] Singapore is an island republic with a land area of 641.4 km2 and a multiethnic population ofslightly over 3 million. As an ex-British colony, it became a self-governing state in 1959 and anindependent republic in 1965. The country has been governed by a cohesive team of politicalleaders in the People's Action Party (PAP) government since. After a successful industrialisationprogramme launched in the early 1960s, the economy has continued to enjoy sustained growth.

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Manufacturing, financial and business services, commerce, transport and communication make upthe main sectors of the economy. The country enjoyed a per capita income of S828,252 in 1995.

[2] In 1996, the Ministry of Education (MOE) introduced a new provision for the teaching ofMinority Indian Languages (e.g. Gujerati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali) as a subject for children ofsuch language backgrounds. Language teachers for the minority Indian communities areidentified, recruited and paid for by the specific Indian communities. Classes are held outside ofthe school curriculum hours, such as on Saturday afternoons.

[3] The Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore (CDIS) was set up as a separate unit of theMinistry of Education in June 1980 to develop curriculum and teaching materials. It worked inunison with the Curriculum Planning Division to prepare new curricular materials which werepiloted and disseminated to primary and secondary schools. In December 1996, the two units werecombined to form the Curriculum Planning and Development Division.

[4] The 60^10% allocation of CME marks for group project work and tests designed for individualwork is an interesting departure from the more rigid assessment structure used for other examin-ation subjects in Singapore schools. The Singapore-Cambridge "O" level subjects are examinedon the basis of individual work during written examinations. This departure for CME suggests itsunique status from the rest, perhaps indicating that it need not be so rigously examined since it isdesigned for the transmission of values and attitudinal change.

[5] The principles of meritocracy and academic streaming at all levels of the school system areobserved and practised in Singapore. Pupils and schools are expected to work to high attainmenttargets and are evaluated on the basis of academic achievement criteria and measurable indicators.School ranking at the secondary and post-secondary levels serve a means of ensuring institutionalaccountability to parents and prospective pupils. Pupils who demonstrate that they have masteredthe examined curriculum at different stages of the 10-year school system will be channelled intothe more prestigious curriculum tracks. The less academically inclined pupils are located in a lessdemanding track beginning from the upper primary level to the secondary school level.

[6] In this paper, space does not permit a further analysis of how curricular themes have beendeveloped to convey political, economic and cultural values in the school texts. Readers who haveaccess to the CME textbooks would be able to draw out further examples of the selection andpresentation of contents.

[7] The Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools at the secondary school level are given the choice ofteaching CME in Chinese or English as they admit a largely homogeneous intake of Chinesestudents who are offered English and Chinese languages which are taught at the first languagelevels.

[8] Social studies is offered as one of the six lower secondary subjects in the Normal Technical streamstarting in 1994 instead of history. The latter was perceived by curriculum planners to be tooacademic for a curriculum track designed for pupils who are believed to benefit from morepractical-type courses. Before 1994, social studies was only taught at the upper primary schoollevel.

[9] Curriculum writers are identified by the Ministry of Education from the pool of secondary andjunior college teachers and are provided with in-house training for curriculum development workat the Curriculum Planning and Development Division. Some are sponsored for overseas trainingin curriculum and instructional design.

[10] The religious organisations that were consulted in the curriculum preparation stage of the moduleon Unity in Diversity included: Association for Confucian Studies, The Catholic Church ofSingapore, The Diocese of Singapore, Hindu Advisory Board, Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura,The Methodist Church in Singapore, National Council of Churches in Singapore, Sikh AdvisoryBoard, Singapore Buddhist Federation and Taoist Federation (Singapore).

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