Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

2015). This has had implications for efforts to make teaching about gender and sexuality
an integral part of the school curriculum. Between 2000 and 2003, a four-phase campaign
based on Memorandum 423, s.2000 was launched to integrate gender concepts into the
English, Science, Math, Filipino, and Makabayan curricula. However, related teacher training
projects were not sustained, and several years into the campaign teaching materials
for schools were yet to be printed (Illo et al., 2010). The 2009 Republic Act 9710 further
sought to correct gender stereotypes across the school curriculum, including, crucially, the
curricula for Muslim and indigenous groups in Mindanao. However, resistance to sexuality
education remains widespread and entrenched, partly due to the local Catholic hierarchy’s
relatively rigid stance on abortion and other gender-related issues.
Standing in stark contrast to the Philippines is the case of Singapore, where
the state has pursued a concerted nation-building strategy aimed at binding
together an ethnically and linguistically diverse population. Singapore also
stands out from most of its neighbours in terms of the effective translation of
government policy statements into determined bureaucratic follow-through.
Given severe inter-ethnic tension during the transition to independence, the
management of ethnic diversity has been a particular official priority. This has
been conducted in a highly top-down, paternalist fashion — epitomised by the
use of schooling to impose Mandarin Chinese as a unifying ‘official’ mother
tongue for the ethnic Chinese community (who originally spoke diverse regional
languages). Officials have used schooling, housing policy and quotas to maintain
a rigid categorisation of the population into four bureaucratically convenient
but rigid and strongly-bounded ethnic silos. The result is that multiculturalism
Singapore-style essentially corresponds to Amartya Sen‘s definition of ‘plural
monoculturalism’ (2006): the ethnic communities co-exist in parallel, but interethnic
mingling is limited. At the same time, members of all ethnic communities
are exhorted to ‘know and love Singapore’ and ‘believe in Singapore,’ 59 with
curricula designed to direct belief firmly
towards the developmental achievements
of the ruling party. At the same time, the
curriculum for social studies, in particular,
has been used to remind Singaporeans of all
ethnicities of the dire threats that Singapore
has faced in the past, and the continuing
need for unity and discipline in order to resist
potential threats in the future (Khamsi and
Han, 2013).
The construction and maintenance of
totalising, rigidly bounded national identities,
posited on ethno-cultural essentialism and a
narrative of ever-present foreign ‘threats’, sits
awkwardly, to say the least, with attempts to
The relatively recent
emergence of most
societies in the region
from colonialism, the
conflict that accompanied
that process, and the
enduring social divisions
that were often part
of the colonial legacy,
help explain why the
task of nation-building
has been accorded such
overwhelming priority by
post-colonial elites
59 See https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/education-system/desired-outcomes-of-education.
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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