Education, Culture and the Singapore Developmental State: "World-Soul" Lost and Regained?
Yeow Tong Chia
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
ISBN: 9781137374592

This book explores the role of education in the formation of the Singapore developmental state, through a study of education for citizenship in Singapore from 1955 to present day. The book provides a historical study of citizenship education in Singapore, whereby a comparative study of history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics and policies that underpin them are examined. The book demonstrates how the state maintained its hegemony and legitimacy through the culture of crisis management through education. It is essentially the history of how Singapore's developmental state managed crises (imagined, real or engineered), and how changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, served to legitimize the state, through educating and moulding the desired 'good citizen' in the interest of nation building. Underpinning these changes has been the state's use of cultural constructs such as Confucianism and Asian values to shore up its legitimacy.