Education in the Global City ─ The Manufacturing of Education in Singapore

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.

Aaron Koh is Associate Professor in the School of Education and Professional Studies at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His research areas include cultural studies in education, global education studies, and language arts and literacy. He is on the Editorial Board of Curriculum Inquiry, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy,Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. He is also the Series Editor ofCultural Studies and Transdisciplinary in Education. He is one of the investigators of ‘Elite Schools in Globalizing Circumstances’, a multi-sited global ethnography study of youth and education in nine countries and across six regions.

Terence Chong is a sociologist and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, where he is coordinator of the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme and co-coordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme. His research interests include Christianity in Southeast Asia, heritage, cultural policies and politics in Singapore, and the sociology of religion and deviance. He has published in academic journals such asJournal of Contemporary Asia, Critical Asian Studies, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies,Modern Asian Studies and Asian Studies Review. He is the author of The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance (2010), co-author ofDifferent Under God: A Survey of Church-going Protestants in Singapore (2013), and editor ofThe AWARE Saga: Civil Society and Public Morality in Singapore (2010).