AARON KOH

This book is about a small city state’s social experiment with globalization. It examines how Singa-
pore conducts its globalization experiment through the state apparatus of schooling and education
policy. The author argues that Singapor e engages with globalization by anticipating the “pr oblem
space” of globalization with calculated actions and experimentation, termed “tactics” and “tactical
globalization” in the book. Central to the book is an examination and analysis of the “Thinking
Schools, Learning Nation” education policy and reform. While Tactical Globalization contributes to
the sociology of globalization by for egrounding new narratives on globalization that ar e emerging,
it also takes a contextual and innovative appr oach to education policy analysis, which includes
a speech-tur ned-policy document and a nationally televised segment of a documentary called
Learning Journeys.

TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
“Singapore continues to fascinate, and Koh‘s analysis is a valuable contribution to the literature on
why this is so. Koh argues this powerful city state productively uses narratives around globalisation
and crisis to advance agendas for change, and that education is central to this process”.

Professor Susan L. Robertson,

Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol

“In Tactical Globalization, Aaron Koh provides an instructive analysis of the role of education policy AARON KOH
in Singapore in relation to globalization conceived as a ‘problem space’. Koh also provides broader

TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
methodological, theoretical and empirical insights through focusing on how one small, strong city-
state has taken an effective tactical role to produce productive citizens who ‘go global’ but ‘stay
local’. As such, this book is must-read for sociologists of education, policy analysts and compara-
tive educators”.
Professor Bob Lingard, The University of Queensland LEARNING FROM THE SINGAPORE EXPERIMENT
“This is a fascinating case study of how the tiny city-state of Singapore has become a global
economic hub while also maintaining a strong national identity. Koh argues that Singapore sees
globalisation as a ‘problem space’ and responds to it in shrewd, strategic and enabling ways.
He shows that the education of Singapore’s ‘only natural resource’, its people, is pivotal. In this
elegantly argued book, Koh develops a theory of ‘tactical globalisation’ thus contributing signifi-
cantly to understandings of the shifting and variable phenomenon called globalization”.

Professor Jane Kenway, Faculty of Education, Monash University

Aaron Koh is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Edu-
cation. He pr eviously taught at Monash University , Melbour ne, Australia, and had also been a
school teacher at Anderson Junior College and Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), Singapor e.
His research and teaching interests are Globalization and Education, Cultural Politics of Education,
Literacy and Language Arts and Cultural Studies in Education. He is on the Editorial Boar d of
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of edu-
cation.
PETER LANG

ISBN 978-3-03910-591-5

PETER LANG
www.peterlang.com
 AARON KOH
This book is about a small city state’s social experiment with globalization. It examines how Singa-
pore conducts its globalization experiment through the state apparatus of schooling and education
policy. The author argues that Singapor e engages with globalization by anticipating the “pr oblem
space” of globalization with calculated actions and experimentation, termed “tactics” and “tactical
globalization” in the book. Central to the book is an examination and analysis of the “Thinking
Schools, Learning Nation” education policy and reform. While Tactical Globalization contributes to
the sociology of globalization by for egrounding new narratives on globalization that ar e emerging,
it also takes a contextual and innovative appr oach to education policy analysis, which includes
a speech-tur ned-policy document and a nationally televised segment of a documentary called
Learning Journeys.

TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
“Singapore continues to fascinate, and Koh‘s analysis is a valuable contribution to the literature on
why this is so. Koh argues this powerful city state productively uses narratives around globalisation
and crisis to advance agendas for change, and that education is central to this process”.

Professor Susan L. Robertson,

Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol

“In Tactical Globalization, Aaron Koh provides an instructive analysis of the role of education policy AARON KOH
in Singapore in relation to globalization conceived as a ‘problem space’. Koh also provides broader

TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
methodological, theoretical and empirical insights through focusing on how one small, strong city-
state has taken an effective tactical role to produce productive citizens who ‘go global’ but ‘stay
local’. As such, this book is must-read for sociologists of education, policy analysts and compara-
tive educators”.
Professor Bob Lingard, The University of Queensland LEARNING FROM THE SINGAPORE EXPERIMENT
“This is a fascinating case study of how the tiny city-state of Singapore has become a global
economic hub while also maintaining a strong national identity. Koh argues that Singapore sees
globalisation as a ‘problem space’ and responds to it in shrewd, strategic and enabling ways.
He shows that the education of Singapore’s ‘only natural resource’, its people, is pivotal. In this
elegantly argued book, Koh develops a theory of ‘tactical globalisation’ thus contributing signifi-
cantly to understandings of the shifting and variable phenomenon called globalization”.

Professor Jane Kenway, Faculty of Education, Monash University

Aaron Koh is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, The Hong Kong Institute of Edu-
cation. He pr eviously taught at Monash University , Melbour ne, Australia, and had also been a
school teacher at Anderson Junior College and Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), Singapor e.
His research and teaching interests are Globalization and Education, Cultural Politics of Education,
Literacy and Language Arts and Cultural Studies in Education. He is on the Editorial Boar d of
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of edu-
cation.
PETER LANG

PETER LANG
TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
 AARON KOH

TACTICAL GLOBALIZATION
LEARNING FROM THE SINGAPORE EXPERIMENT

PETER LANG
Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›.

British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koh, Aaron, 1967-
Tactical globalization : learning from the Singapore experiment / Aaron Koh.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-0351-0050-1
1. Education and globalization–Singapore. 2. Educational sociology–
Singapore. 3. Education and state–Singapore. 4. Culture and globalization–
Singapore. 5. Educational change–Singapore. 6. Educational innovation–
Singapore. I. Title.
LC191.8.S55K66 2010
306.43095957–dc22
2010020213

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From iStockphoto.com, © Joakim Leroy
Cover design: Thomas Jaberg, Peter Lang AG

ISBN 978-3-0351-0050-1

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010

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All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
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Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Foreword by Fazal Rizvi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Introduction: New Narratives of Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1. Contextualizing Discourses on Globalization:

A View from the “East” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2. Tactical Globalization: The Metapragmatics

of Globalization in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

3. Schooling and Education for Globalization: Prescriptive

Experimentation of Education Change in Singapore . . . . . . 67

4. The Texturing Work of “Thinking Schools,

Learning Nation” Speech: A Critical Discourse Analysis . . . . 87

5. The Visualization of Education Policy:

A Videological Analysis of Learning Journeys . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

6. Working against Globalization:

The Role of National Education in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . 145

7. Global Flows of Foreign Talent: Identity Anxieties

in Singapore’s Ethnoscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Conclusion: Living with Globalization Tactically . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

5
6
Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Fazal Rizvi who encouraged me to write this long

overdue book. I had the opportunity to discuss the conceptualization
of this book with him while he was at the Hong Kong Institute of
Education as a Visiting Professor. He shared with me many ideas and
insights that inspired me to begin the writing process.
In addition, I would like to thank Bob Lingard, Jane Kenway and
Susan Robertson for endorsing this book. I am also grateful to Allan
Luke and Carmen Luke for the intellectual training and tutelage when
I was a graduate student at the University of Queensland. I would not
have finished the writing of this book without the many encourage-
ments and support from friends and colleagues; for that I thank Victo-
ria Carrington, Jan Connelly, Canwin Tse, Esther Shaw, Bidisha Banerjee,
Ng Say Kau, Shirley Lam, Saroja Dorairajoo, Harrison Pou, Zeng Jun
Ren and Jo Marion Ng.
My copy-editor Sarah Chong deserves special mention here. De-
spite her heavy work commitments, she readily took on the copy edit-
ing of this book, and completed the whole project in a matter of a few
weeks.
I thank Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and Taylor
and Francis, Routledge for granting me the permission to reproduce a
few articles that I have published with them. Chapter 1 was first pub-
lished as “‘Heteroglossic’ discourses on globalization: a view from the
‘East’” in Globalizations, vol. 2, no. 1, 2005, pp. 228–239; Chapter 2 as
“Living with Globalization Tactically: The Metapragmatics of Globali-
zation in Singapore” in SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast
Asia, vol. 22, no. 2, 2007, pp. 179–201; Chapter 3 as “Singapore educa-
tion in ‘New Times’: Global/local imperatives” in Discourse: studies in
the cultural politics of education, vol. 25, no. 3, 2004, pp. 335–349; Chapter
4 as “On Singaporean authoritarianism: Critical Discourse Analysis and
Contextual Dissonance” in Pedagogy, Culture & Society, vol. 3, no. 3, 2008,
pp. 303–314; Chapter 5 in Journal of Education Policy, vol. 24, no. 3, 2009,
pp. 283–315; Chapter 6 as “Imagining the Singapore ‘nation’ and ‘iden-

7
tity’: The role of the media and national education” in Asia Pacific Jour-
nal of Education, vol. 25, no. 1, 2005, pp. 77–93. All chapters have been
updated or revised, and freshly copy-edited for this book.
Last but not least, this book is dedicated to my sister, Eileen Koh.
I can never thank her enough for her love and care in times when
I needed most. This book is also dedicated to the students whom I had
taught at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), Singapore in 2006.There
are too many names to mention here, but I hope they know who they
are.

8
Foreword by Fazal Rizvi

Whatever one thinks about the political ideologies and governance strat-
egies of Lee Kuan Yew, it is hard to deny that he was a ‘tactical genius’.
He became the first Prime Minister of Singapore in the most turbulent
of times. Singapore’s emergence as a nation in 1959 was accompanied
by economic destitution, political turmoil and racial strife. Yet by the
time Lee Kuan Yew left office in 1990, Singapore was transformed from
a very poor colonized country with few prospects into a confident na-
tion with a highly educated population able to enjoy one of the highest
per capita incomes in the world. Indeed, even with a small population,
limited space and natural resources, Singapore has now become a role
model for social and economic development.
It would be churlish to deny Lee Kuan Yew much of the credit
for this transformation. It was his tactical genius that enabled Singa-
pore to negotiate its colonial legacy, without falling into the trap of a
culture of retribution, and navigate the turbulent politics of the Cold
War, without abandoning its ideological preference for developmental
capitalism. Lee understood that, as a port city-state, Singapore’s loca-
tion at the cross roads of civilizations could be used to take advantage
of the opportunities offered by global trade, well before economic glo-
balization became the mantra of the transnational corporate class.
Yet perhaps the greatest legacy of Lee Kuan Yew lies in the role
he played in building Singapore’s state apparatuses and political culture.
Early in his career, he realized that the development of a highly edu-
cated workforce was essential to Singapore’s survival. He set out to
create a world-class education system, emphasizing the need to forge
subjectivities who approached the world in much the same way he did
– as Singaporeans who were able to think strategically about the world,
who were globally oriented but locally embedded. He helped develop
an army of politicians and technocrats who were driven less by ideo-
logy than by the skills of tactical calculation.
The notion of tactical engagement with policy problems has thus
become a key characteristic of Singapore’s political culture. It has been

9
a virtue that has enabled Singapore not only to confront various crises
it has confronted over the years but also to thrive, turning crises into
historic opportunities. As Aaron Koh so eloquently points out, the case
of the current global financial crisis is no exception. Singapore has thus
recovered from the crisis quicker than most other countries, proving
once again that the tactical habits that Lee Kuan Yew instilled in
Singaporeans have served them well.
But how were these habits developed in Singapore and are now
sustained? This, in my view, is the key question explored in this excel-
lent book by Aaron Koh. Koh insists that a well-planned and executed
set of education policies has been central to Singapore’s success. These
policies have responded to changing circumstances in ways that are both
globally oriented and locally sensitive. Singapore’s experiment, as Koh
calls it, has placed education policies at the heart of its tactical engage-
ment with the contemporary processes of globalization.
In presenting an analysis of this engagement, Koh rejects a view
of globalization that treats it as a pre-given thing, representing a set of
natural inevitable processes, with its own developmental logic. He refuses
to privilege the economic over the political and the cultural. Instead,
calling globalization tactical, Koh underlines the importance of paying
attention to the subjectivities of people. He provides an account of how
these subjectivities are formed, and how groups of people develop their
sense of global interconnectivity and interdependence. In this way, he
emphasizes agency, as linked to structures in a range of contingent and
complicated ways. His use of the term ‘tactical’ is thus designed to high-
light a dynamic view of globalization as an ever-changing product of
human practices and calculations.
Of course, this view of globalization has been suggested by a
number of recent theorists, but what is distinctive about Koh’s work is
that it presents a theory of globalization that is beyond conceptual ab-
stractions. He does this through an account of an important case of
the ways in which a nation-state has exercised political agency in in-
terpreting and negotiating global pressures. Highly compelling in this
account is the view that education policy plays a key role in Singa-
pore’s calculations of the ways in which it should respond to the chal-
lenges of globalization and work with the opportunities it offers.
The descriptions Koh presents of the cultural politics of education
in Singapore are as interesting as they are nuanced. His analysis shows

10
how Singapore has navigated the complex relationship between the
global and the local, crafting a dialectic between cosmopolitanism and
patriotism. This book, however, does not only provide a story of Singa-
pore’s experiment but serves as an illustrative case of a new theory of
globalization. In this way alone, this book is both accessible and original,
and will I am sure be widely used to understand not only Singapore but
also the role of education in the emerging narratives of globalization.

Fazal Rizvi
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign USA
University of Melbourne Australia

11
12
Introduction
New Narratives of Globalization

At the time of writing the introduction to this book, Singapore (and

the whole global economy) was hit by an economic and financial tsu-
nami. In the global economic landscape, in January 2009 alone, over
90,000 jobs were lost in the US and Europe. What is significant to note
about the spate and scale of lay-offs is that many of these companies
were big players in the global economy. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer,
for example, shed as many as 26,000 jobs. So serious was the extent of
the economic crisis that President Obama persuaded the US Congress
to support his US $ 825 billion stimulus package to save and create jobs
(Garekar, 2009). The “global” reach and contagious effect of such a re-
cession of course did not spare smaller economies such as Singapore
whose economy is very much export-oriented and dependent on big-
ger markets in the West. It was therefore not unexpected that the viru-
lent effect of such a recession would hit the shores of Singapore.
While Singapore has survived many cyclic economic recessions of
the past (e. g. the recession of 1985, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the
recession brought about by the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US in 2001
and SARS in 2003), the 2008–2009 economic doldrums would go
down in the records as one of the worst in Singapore’s history. In 2009,
a statistical projection of its economic growth forecasted a negative
projection ranged between -6% and -9% while a record of 16,000 jobs
were lost in 2008 (Hussain, 2009). Newspaper reports carried further
unwelcoming news such as Seagate relocating to cheaper sites in off-
shore locations such as China, Malaysia and India because of the global
economic slump (Low, 2009a; Kor, 2009). There was anxiety, pressured
by increasing operating costs in Singapore as compared to more attrac-
tive locales (in terms of cost of production) elsewhere, for more com-
panies to take flight and relocate, thereby contributing to more unem-
ployment.
So bleak was the Singapore economy that in an unprecedented
move, the Singapore government decided to draw on its much treas-

13
ured national reserves, amounting to a total of S $ 4.9 billion, primarily
to fund two special schemes to help companies cut costs and eschew
retrenchment as a solution. In addition to tapping on its national re-
serve, the 2009 Budget also saw the government come up with a “Re-
silient Package” worth S $ 20.5 billion aimed to tide Singapore over one
of its toughest recessions.
To appreciate the efficacy of the Singapore government, and the
control and calculation that it is reputed for, it is worthwhile laying
bare the constituents of the colossal stimulus package. To arrest the es-
calating number of retrenchments, a budget of S $ 5.1 billion, called
the Jobs Credit Scheme, was set aside to help companies pay for the
cost of retaining an employee. This scheme helps employers pay the
Central Provident Fund (CPF) of their employees which is currently
pegged at 20%. In addition to this, a Special Risk-sharing Initiative
Scheme budgeted at S $ 5.8 billion was set up to offer loans to small to
medium-sized companies who may otherwise have difficulties in se-
curing bank loans to tide them through the economic crunch. Through
this scheme, the government was willing to bear as much as 80% of
the risk through trade financing and unsecured loans so that compa-
nies that were in dire financial straits would not go bust and add to the
already increasing pool of retrenchment. The third component amount-
ing to S $ 2.6 million, also to help businesses with cash flow and com-
petitiveness related problems, was a generous property tax rebate of 40%
for landlords of factories, offices and shops. The giving of direct cash
payouts to families during economic recessions is contrary to the anti-
welfare policy that the government has hitherto espoused; indirect cash
payout were made in the form of Goods and Services Tax (GST) cred-
its and rebates on Housing Development Board (HDB) service and con-
servancy charges and rentals were given to every Singaporeans and
households. These provisions cost the government S $ 2.6 million. Lastly,
in view of the economic downturn, a budget of S $ 4.4 billion was to
be spent on public infrastructure, education, health care and sustainable
development projects.
There is something to be admired about the decisive way the Sin-
gapore government has acted to harness resources to work against the
risks that come with courting with globalization which it cannot do
without. Indeed, one could predict a triumphant account of how de-
spite its economic plunge, technocrats of Singapore seem to have

14
hatched strategies calculated with such precision that could possibly turn
the economic crunch around. As I tracked the developments of the
global economy and how Singapore was performing in relation to other
economies, in August 2009, there were already signs that Asian econo-
mies were on the mend.
The Singapore Straits Times, for example, carried news that Hong
Kong was out of the recession registering a 3.3% growth while Singa-
pore reported a surprising 20.7% growth in the second-quarter GDP
(The Straits Times, August 15, 2009). By the time this book is in print,
it would not be surprising to read official reports of Singapore’s victo-
rious emergence from the pits of another round of economic meltdowns
just as it has done before. The Singapore government’s glowing report
card of “fixing” previous rounds of economic downturn is legendary
enough to generate confidence in its leadership in spite of the fears
that globalization brings. Admiration aside, however, my purpose in nar-
rating the global state of the economy and local responses to the rami-
fications of globalization is to gesture to new narratives of globaliza-
tion that I argue are emerging.
As a point of departure that understands globalization as a “phe-
nomenon” and “process” – this being a dominant trope in the many
early literatures on globalization (see for example, Giddens (1990),
Robertson (1992), Featherstone (1995), Tomlison (1999) and Scholte
(2000)), I suggest that there is now a turn to globalization as a “prob-
lem space” (Collier & Ong, 2005). This new narrative of globalization
presents globalization as a “problem”, “challenge” and “risk” that re-
quire not only government leaders and authorities to resolve at the level
of nation-state, but also at the level of supra-national authorities. A few
examples of “global” problems that have become translated as a “prob-
lem space” that which involves not only the intervention of national
government leaders but also the concerted effort from other nation states
readily comes to mind. The global war on terror is one, and the global
spread of the H1N1 pandemic is another.
What I am postulating here is that the “problem space” that glo-
balization engenders is – to borrow a technical term from Michel
Foucault (1979), a heralding of an era of governmentality, where the
state actively directs the “conduct of conduct” on individuals and col-
lectives for a teleological end (Foucault, 1979; Dean 1999; see also Inda,
2005). In other words, apart from mobilizing its power and authority

15
to rationalize, strategize, formulate, experiment and engineer ways to
offer up multifold “solutions” to the plethora of “problems” brought
by globalization, the state also engages in a social experiment through
its extensions of ideological state apparatuses and disciplinary techno-
logies to mold subjects with the right kind of dispositions and ethics
for a global economy that is filled with uncertainties and risks. This
new era of governmentality therefore questions the prognosis of the
weakening state and its demise in the early literature on globalization
(See Ohmae, 1990; Weiss, 1998). What we are witnessing instead is an
ever-increasing relevance of the state and its power in mediating the
“problem space” that flows from the global to the local.
The “problem space” of globalization is, however, not a neutral
space. Depending on how narratives of globalization are spun, the prob-
lem space of globalization can engender feelings of fear and anxiety, or
if it is manipulated tactically, emotions of confidence, hope and aspira-
tion. This is the affect of globalization – which is a new narrative of
globalization that I want to allude to. Arjun Appadurai (2009) calls this
new dimension of globalization “affective globalization”. His thesis is
that (narratives of) globalization evokes emotions as varied as positive
emotions, such as hope and confidence, and their antithesis, negative
emotions such as fear, despair, anger, humiliation and misery.
We need not look too far to think of examples of how affective
globalization works. One can think of the many “global” events in
recent times that have provoked emotional responses such as fear,
shock and sadness, principally through the circulation and flow of
images in and through mediascapes and new media technologies such
as YouTube. For example, the king of Pop, Michael Jackson’s sudden
death in June 2009 led to a global mourning, and the 9/11 terrorist
attack in America with the iconic ghastly visual image of the hijacked
plane crashing into the twin towers has become a media spectacle that
provokes irreconcilable emotions of fear, shock and terror. Therefore,
alongside the five-scapes that Appadurai (1996) coined to describe the
disjunctive characteristics of global cultural flows, namely, ethnoscapes,
mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes, “emoscape” is
the new conceptual “scape” that contributes to a new perspective on
globalization: that emotions are embedded in the discourses of globaliza-
tion (Kenway & Fahey, 2011, forthcoming). The potent mix of emotions
and discourses should not be sidestepped because the non-neutrality

16
of discourses and “strategic emotional rhetoric” (Svasek & Skrbis, 2007,
p. 370), when deployed, can be mobilized to distort and simplify po-
litical realities as well shape the way people “feel”, “think” and “act”.
Therefore, an analysis of “emoscape” is also an analysis of how power
relations work, in particular, questions related to who generates those
discourses, and the attendant effects of the emotions that are produced
for a teleological end.
This new plane of thought about the affect of globalization is an
important perspective not to be dismissed although it is easy to cri-
tique that emotions are subjective, irrational and fleeting as compared
to reason and logical thinking. There is, however, something compel-
ling and persuasive in the way discourses of globalization provoke emo-
tionally, particularly when the media relentlessly propagates a deluge of
bad news about a global economy that is spiraling out of control. The
corresponding ubiquitous emotion of fear and worry is instantaneously
evoked. While every bad news is “newsworthy” enough for the media
to “manufacture” news from, the news of the global economic meltdown
is chanced on and recontextualized to quite contradictory levels as ex-
emplified by the repetitive coverage of the Singapore economy.
When I was closely following the news coverage of the Singapore
economy in relation to the global economic recession in the Singa-
pore Straits Times (at the same time looking for something “newswor-
thy” to write for this book project), it was noticeable that the prime
news section had literally become something like a “problem space”
embodying the ills of globalization waiting for a “cure”. More than
“showing” (with statistical evidence of jobs made redundant) and “tell-
ing” that the Singapore economy was not doing well, the articles in
toto were performing an ideological work of sculpting a landscape of
fear; that a crisis has struck the Singapore economy so much so that it
had to tap into its treasured national reserves. It is not my intention
here to get into a textual/discourse analysis of a corpus of newspaper
articles, nevertheless Chapter 1 will analyze a few news headlines from
the national press to make the point that emotions are embedded in
discourses and they move people to “think”, “act” and “feel” in a cer-
tain way.
However, to perpetuate a climate and “emo-scape” of fear with-
out any sort of intervention is uncharacteristic of the Singapore govern-
ment as unattended fear can paralyze the Singaporean populace and

17
destabilize the confidence Singaporeans have of their leadership. Al-
though the economy was shrouded in gloom and fear of further job
retrenchment and more bad news about the global economy, when the
aptly named “Resilient Package” was announced on Budget Day, a spar-
kle of hope and confidence was ignited. It was felt that at least the Sin-
gapore government had hatched a plan to experiment and cushion off
what could have been an even worse situation.
How Singapore responded to the global economic downturn
presents as an interesting case study. For one, it showed how one small
city-state, said to be the most globalized city in the world, experimented
with the vagaries of globalization. It did this by turning the discourses
of globalization into a problem space that concomitantly stirred up the
affect of globalization to its own advantage. How well it performed or
managed the economy was often constructed for the consumption of
the Singaporean body politic, for political self-representation, and thus
showcasing the sound and wise economic calculations of its political
leaders, thereby earning the legitimacy to govern and rule.
In suggesting that discourses of globalization evoke the contradic-
tory emotional responses of “fear” and “hope”, I am not suggesting that,
by and in themselves, discourses of globalization have the power to pro-
voke emotions without any recourse. As the Singapore government has
shown, the problem space of globalization necessitates recourse to cal-
culated measures of “solutions” often dressed up as policy initiatives of
various kinds. In their most recent work on globalizing education policy,
Rizvi and Lingard (2010, p. 6) explain that “policies are (sic) often as-
sembled as responses to perceived problems in a field”. In Singapore’s
case, I argue that policies are more than responses to the perceived prob-
lems that globalization poses. Rather, they are instruments of tactics as-
sembled in reaction to the problem space of globalization. By suggesting
that policies are instruments of tactics, I am alluding to the characteristic
way technocrats in Singapore whip up narratives of crises from time to
time about the state of the Singapore economy, and of globalization, in
order to perform the ideological work of constructing new policy ini-
tiatives and their implementation (e. g. the Foreign talent scheme (see
Chapter 7); the Baby Bonus policy; the Biopolis hub (see Ong, 2006a);
the Global Schoolhouse project (see Olds, 2007) and etc).
What needs foregrounding, however, is that along with policy ini-
tiatives of various measures, the state also experiments with the project

18
of engineering a new generation of Singaporeans through the state ap-
paratus of schooling and education in order to reproduce modern
Singaporean social subjects who have the dispositions and sensibilities
to engage with the global (in all its manifestations). Whilst Singapore is
a small city state with no natural resources of its own – a narrative that
is often played up as Singapore’s vulnerability – this social experiment
with schooling is seen as a vehicle to incubate, train, transform and re-
produce a populace of human capital capable of sustaining Singapore’s
economy in the years to come. “Education” then becomes “the answer
to most, if not all, of the questions raised by the global knowledge-
based economy” (Farrell & Fenwick, 2007, p. 13) and “the best eco-
nomic policy, necessary to ensure the competitiveness of the national
economy” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 18).

Focus of the book

This book then is about the social experiment of a small city state with
globalization. It examines how Singapore conducts its globalization ex-
periment through the state apparatus of schooling and education policy.
The intensification of globalization has created a level of anxiety coa-
lescing around the need to enhance human capital resources, and around
the need to ensure that national regional economies continue to sus-
tain their growth engines and their competitiveness. Singapore tech-
nocrats are cognizant of what Singapore has: human capital – its only
natural resource. That is why it invests heavily in the provision of edu-
cation. What needs to be pointed out, however, is that the provision of
education is steered towards the needs of the economy; so tight is this
alignment of education and training systems with state-determined eco-
nomic policies that one analyst of Singapore’s education calls the
Singaporean model of education “schooling for economic growth”
(Spring, 1998).
Indeed, in the face of global economic competition, the Singa-
pore government attempts to read and re-interpret the shifting needs
of the economy from time to time and responding with the “right”
doses of education reform in the hope of engineering a populace of

19
students who on exiting the education system will requisite the required
skills for the economy. The 1985–1986 economic crisis and the educa-
tion reform that followed illustrates this clearly. While there were “glo-
bal” factors that contributed to the recession at that time, a high level
government-appointed Economic Committee set up to troubleshoot
the local economy, assessed that Singapore’s labour force was under-
educated (Gopinathan, 2009). This identified “problem” of the economy
saw two major education reforms established principally to “solve” the
problem of the education level of the workforce. One was the Improving
Primary School Education Report in 1991 which recommended that
all students have access to 10 years of general education and that there
be provision made for post-secondary alternative educational pathways
through the establishment of the Institute of Technical Education. One
could reasonably conclude that in Singapore’s case, its experimentation
with globalization is looking to its education and schooling system, to
get the right mix of reform to counter the challenges of the economy.
This book examines what is arguably one of the most influential
education policies in Singapore called the ‘Thinking Schools, Learning
Nation’ (hereafter TSLN) education policy and education reform. Briefly,
the TSLN policy mandates the teaching of Critical Thinking, the use
of Information Technology (IT), and National Education (which is a
form of citizenship education) in Singapore schools. Its overarching aim
was to equip students with thinking and IT skills to “go global”, yet
emotionally obligated to “stay local”. This policy is given analytic at-
tention because the “problem space” of globalization has yielded new
challenges for the Singapore economy which required, at the meso level,
a reinvention and makeover of its education system. Yet I argue in the
book that this mix (“critical thinking”, IT, and “values” education) has
generated potentially irreconcilable tensions and paradoxes around the
role of education. It challenges issues of national identity formation,
the knowledge economy, and questions what it means to shape “crea-
tive” and “critical” citizens in the context of the local (disciplinary so-
ciety) and the global (economic imperatives). The TSLN policy must
then be read, as this book argues, as a tactical response to globalization
as schooling and education change is looked at as a mammoth labora-
tory to experiment and reproduce Singaporean subjects who will have
the skills and sensibilities to engage with the global yet staying rooted
to Singapore.

20
 While globalization is a noticeable theme, this book sets out to
avoid reinventing the wheel. By that I mean I have avoided duplicat-
ing research on Singapore vis-à-vis globalization, which is primarily,
though not exclusively, centred on the geo-economic (regional) glo-
balization (notably, Yeung, 1998a; Yeung, 1998b; Yeung & Olds, 1998;
Yeung, 2000a, 2000b) and the intersection of globalization and Singa-
pore culture in general (e. g., Brown, 2000; Chua, 1998; Khondker, 1997;
Kong, 1999a, 1999b; Velayutham, 2007; Wee, 2007). This book is the
first to address a recognized “space” – the unexamined discursive strate-
gies of how a small city state experiments with the geopolitico reali-
ties of globalization by deploying schooling and education policy as a
tactic for shaping the Singaporean subjectivity and identity, all in order
to support the new economy. What is illuminating and instructive about
the way Singapore engages with globalization is that as much as glo-
balization persists in generating new risks and challenges, it does not
leave these to fate or chance or to the prevailing market mechanisms,
but anticipates the “problem space” of globalization with calculated ac-
tions and experimentation, what I prefer to term as “tactics” and “tac-
tical globalization”. As I have argued earlier, it is precisely the fear of
uncertainty and imagined crises that have continuously been utilized
as a resource (Thrift, 2005) for arousing the affects of globalization in
the public sphere.
Globalization for Singapore is therefore not just an abstract con-
cept, but a concept taken up seriously and layered with (disciplinary)
discourses that “seek to shape, normalize and instrumentalize the con-
duct of institutions and persons in the name of making ‘globalization’
more manageable” (du Gay, 2000, p. 116). Here I contribute to the lit-
erature on globalization by coining the term “tactical globalization” as
indicative of a new narrative on globalization that is emerging using
Singapore as an illustrative case study.
Contrary to the popular but misconceived view that globalization
is an uncontrollable animal out to create havoc, tactical globalization
suggests a more promising empirical reality that the effects of globali-
zation are manageable if effectual policies are assembled to circumvent
the uncertain and sometimes destructive elements of globalization. Tac-
tical globalization signals a conjunction of diverse practices, governmental
practice, and administrative calculations to counter the fluidity of glo-
bal flows, and when new global conditions arise, new elements are re-

21
assembled to respond to the contingency of the “problem space” of glo-
balization. In essence, one could say that “tactical globalization” is theo-
retical shorthand for foregrounding the agentive role of the state (at
least in the Singapore case) to intervene and reinvent new moves to
make globalization more amenable to local conditions.
While the book essentially focuses on schooling and education
policy as the (disciplinary) site to showcase how a small city-state expe-
riments with globalization by shaping a new Singaporean global/local
subjectivity in order to sustain Singapore’s capital embedding, Chap-
ter 2 will take up the full essence of “tactical globalization” with an
exemplification of the tactics that the state has deployed to “discipline”
and “shape” the Singaporean subjectivity and habitus. National cam-
paigns (e. g., the Speak Good English Movement; Speak Mandarin Cam-
paign; Courtesy Campaign), legislation (e. g., Religious Harmony Bill),
public policy (e. g., the Foreign Talent Policy), and even the govern-
ment’s clarion call for Singaporeans to “go global but stay local”, which
has become something of a national slogan, are quintessential examples
of tactics, meant to regulate the conduct of Singaporeans.
Methodologically, this book presents a significant contribution to
the analysis of education policy. To date, such forms of critical analysis
have largely been confined to written documents, and the analytical
framework used has been broadly discourse-analytic (Bowe, Ball, & Gold,
1992; Luke, Nakata, Singh, & Smith, 1993; see also Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard,
& Henry, 1997, chap. 3). My book takes an innovative approach to policy
analysis by using a blended analytic toolkit that is traditionally applied
to popular cultural texts. This blended analytic approach is drawn from
semiotic and media studies and applied to the visual components of
the TSLN policy documents. So far, there has been scant attention to
the importance of analysing visual media/ted education policy docu-
ments, and there is an urgent need to do so. Increasingly, education
policy documents rely on new textual media such as the Internet, and
new modes of representation such as the use of semiotic systems to
convey meanings. These new modes and media are inherently visual
and signal an apparent “linguistic turn” to “visual” turn. Therefore, in
addition to the Critical Discourse Analysis of the TSLN policy-speech
document, this book will include semiotic analysis of the visual compo-
nent of a nationally televised segment of an eight-week documentary
called Learning Journeys.

22
The chapters: A network of concepts

The chapters are thickly intertextual and are organized around recur-
ring “concepts”, in a Deleuzian sense. As the book unfolds, it will be-
come evident that these concepts are used to establish “new connec-
tions for thinking”, and offer whole new “planes of thought” (Deleuze,
1994, p. 139, cited in Colebrook, 2002, p. xix) on the discursivity of
Singapore’s globalization – a discursivity which I argue is tactical. In
what follows, I shall explain the concepts, not to generalize or label,
but to transform and rethink issues about globalization, about Singa-
pore and about education policy. The synopsis of each chapter is also
woven into the explanation of the concepts.

Strong State

In post-colonial countries, the concept of a “strong state” has often been

discussed in relation to its role in stabilizing and mediating the process
of decolonialization or in reference to the active engagement of the
state in spearheading its economy (de Jesus, 2002). Despite the post-
1997 economic crunch, what was then touted as the East Asian Mi-
racle of South East Asia, it is still widely accepted that the agency of
the state has been responsible for the economic transformations within
the East Asia and Southeast Asia region (Rodan, 1989; 1993b; see also
Rodan, Hewison & Robinson, 2001; Wee, 2002). In addition, “strong
states” are known to have the support and backing of the military estab-
lishment or are characterised by a one-party political regime (de Jesus,
2002).
Politically, Singapore can be described as a strong state because of
the dominance of its one-party political regime. The political party, the
People’s Action Party (PAP), has been in power since 1959. This is
not to suggest, however, that the PAP has not been uncontested dur-
ing General Elections. There has been contestation, but the opposition
parties were too “weak” and ineffectual to challenge the PAP estab-
lishment. Furthermore, the opposition political candidates have to date

23
been less than credible (e. g., Tang Liang Hong and Chee Soon Juan
(see George, 2000, chap. 10 & 11)). In contrast, the PAP regime has
gained the legitimacy to rule, and has gained a popular mandate dur-
ing elections because they have been illustrious in managing Singapore’s
economy, in bad times and good times (Brown, 2000). Because of its
one-party dominance, and its repressive legislation in suppressing its
political oppositions, Singapore has also earned the reputation for be-
ing an authoritarian regime (Chua, 1995; see also Mutalib, 2000; Rodan,
1993b). Thus, in this book, “strong state” refers to the dominance of
the longstanding historical and political power of the PAP government
regime.
As a strong state, the political power of the PAP government has
not confined itself exclusively to control the market and its economy.
It is the transcending power of the state to extend into the social and
ideological realms of the Singaporean society that distinctively defines
it as “strong” (Rodan, 2001). In a similar vein, Aihwa Ong (2000) ges-
tures to the concept of a “strong state” with the term “graduated sov-
ereignty” to describe other forms of state power like control, surveil-
lance and regulation in relation to markets, populations and external
agencies; but for Heng and Devan (1992), it is the state’s intervention
in the biological and reproductive life of Singaporeans that epitomizes
the term “strong state”. They have referred to the Singapore state as
“state fatherhood” to suggest the patriarchal and paternalistic role of
the PAP government, particularly in light of the government’s inter-
vening role in a large-scale social and eugenic reproduction project in
1983.
The focus of this book, however, is on another intervention, in a
different disciplinary site, using another form of ideological manage-
ment – schooling and education policy. Throughout this book, the no-
tion of a “strong state” (that Singapore is) is frequently made reference
to, to show how it attempts and demonstrates its power by turning the
tides of globalization in its favour, and crafting preferred identities so
as to support its capitalist embedding.

24
Governmentality & Tactics

Governmentality is a Foucauldian (1979, 1991) concept, inextricably

linked to the (strong) state. It is not used in the book as a descriptor
but as an analytical concept to understand the practices through which
government takes place in Singapore. It is interesting to note that
Foucault’s conceptualization of governmentality suggests a patriarchal
and paternalistic state when he says,
the art of government [...] is essentially concerned with answering the ques-
tion of how to introduce economy, that is the correct manner of managing in-
dividuals, goods and wealth with the family (which a good father is expected
to do in relation to his wife, children and servants) and making it thrive [...]
(Foucault, 1979, p. 10).

Foucault’s reference to the disciplinary power of the state and its sphere
of intervention is not restricted to the economic domain, but includes
the management of its population through what he calls “a range of
multiform tactics” (1979, p. 13). Dean (1999) further explains that to
analyse the practices of the government, the analysis should include
“those practices that try [to] shape, sculpt, mobilize and work through
the choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and lifestyles of individuals
and groups” (p. 12). In the context of this book, the practices/tactics
used by the Singapore government include campaigns, social/economic
policies and education policy. It is instructive to note that these tactics
are not merely “methods” of governmentality. They are tactics that
have been essentially carefully conceived, calculated and re-worked in-
to rationalized practices. Therefore, they have disciplinary and power
effects.
Chapter 2 demonstrates the enduring power of the Singapore
(strong) state by referring to specific examples of how the state deploys
a consorted range of social, economic, public policies and campaigns as
tactics of governmentality. The examples will show that these instru-
ments of governmentality are invariably masked as rationalized prac-
tices for the good of the Singaporean citizenry. In relation to the over-
all argument of the book, this chapter introduces the concept of “tactical
globalization” to argue that globalization does not undermine state
power. On the contrary, the Singapore case exemplifies that through

25
strategic and calculated moves (read: tactics), the effects of globaliza-
tion are re-worked and localized through regimes and practices of
governmentality.
Education policy is, by extension, a form of governmentality. Chap-
ter 3 examines the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (TSLN) edu-
cation policy and recent educational reforms in Singapore. The chap-
ter uses the term “prescriptive experimentation” to understand the
educational changes that have taken or are still taking place. Essentially,
the chapter argues that the TSLN policy and the subsequent educa-
tional changes are framed by global/local imperatives. Of course, these
education policies are directed from above, and are symptomatic of the
untiring intervention of the state to remake local subjects with an eye
to “contain” the dangers and benefits of globalization. Because of its
“prescriptive experimentation” with schooling and education, however,
the chapter also discusses some of the unintended consequences that
have resulted. Thus, in the Singaporean context, education policy is an
extension of the disciplinary arms of governmentality and hence, ex-
emplifies Singapore’s tactical response to globalization.

The Singaporean Habitus

Bourdieu (1977) uses the concept “habitus” to refer to the unconscious

dispositions, attitudes, and values that human beings acquire as they move
through various “fields” and by being located in their cultural trajecto-
ries such as in the family, in school or in a religious institution. In this
book, the shaping of the Singaporean habitus refers to the ways in which
Singaporeans are predisposed towards certain attitudes, values and ways
of behaving because of the cultural shaping and forms of govern-
mentality and tactics employed by the state. There is a tendency for the
Singapore government to generate narratives of crisis, depending on
which problem the state wants to address, thus shaping simultaneous
dispositions and ethics that it wants the populace to cultivate. There-
fore, in the creation of a Singaporean habitus, not only does power get
exercised through forms of governmentality, but power is also diffused
to regulate the conduct of Singaporeans in order to achieve certain ends.

26
 In relation to the shaping of the Singaporean habitus, the TSLN
policy is the “field” analyzed in this book. The school, the target for
such policy, is an example of an institutional site where modes of
governmentality can be effectively applied to engineer new subjectivities.
In Chapter 4, the TSLN policy-speech document is analyzed. Because
of copyright, only a selection from the TSLN policy-speech has been
extracted for analysis. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a
methodological and analytical framework, the micro-textual linguistic
features, as well as the macro-structures of the social formations, insti-
tutions and power relations embedded in the policy-speech document
are deconstructed.The analysis shows how discourses in the TSLN docu-
ment work to construct an impeding economic crisis that confronts
Singapore. To counter this crisis, a timely intervention that takes the
form of education reform has been rolled out. My analysis will show
how dominant discourses of globalization and knowledge economy are
cleverly woven in the policy text to normalize the education pathway
of Singapore and preferred schooling identities.
Moving from the verbal to visual, Chapter 5 analyzes an episode
of a documentary titled Learning Journeys (2000), which documents an
uptake of and for the TSLN policy in Singapore schools after the policy
came into effect in 1997. My analysis draws attention specifically to
the concept of “visual design”, which I argue works ideologically to
constrain the semiotic meaning potential of visual texts to a preferred
reading path, and that “design” textually contributes to an ideological
closure as opposed to an open, multiple or contradictory reading of
the text. Any critical reading of visual policy texts, I argue, must un-
derstand that “design” in visual policy texts is situated and intertwined
in the complex interplay of institutional constraints, ideological under-
pinnings, political assumptions and priorities. My textual analysis of the
design of Learning Journeys will show that the televisual images in the
documentary are managed to prioritize the construction of preferred
schooling identities and to build consensus of what schooling ought to
be and why new imperatives of education change are necessary in
changing economic conditions.

27
Flow (Deterritorialization)
& Counter-Flow (Reterritorialization)

Flow is a metaphorical and semiotic concept that refers to the rela-

tively easy movement of goods, images, ideas, monies and people across
geographical and spatial boundaries. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) no-
tion of the rhizome is a useful parallel to understand the concept of
flow. By nature, rhizomes grow and proliferate in haphazard connec-
tions. Similarly, flows are like rhizomes, they spread and do not follow
a deterministic pathway or direction. As such, flows do not have be-
ginnings and end-points. According to this conception, flows do not
respect territorial boundaries and by implication, the discipline of
the nation-state (Ong, 1997). Therefore, the concept of deterritorializa-
tion is also used to refer to the general weakening (or “disembedding”;
cf. Giddens, 1990) of the ties between “culture”, “place”, “identity”,
“home”, to the dislodging of cultural subjects and objects that are con-
fined within conceptions of a fixed (territorial) location (Appadurai,
1996; Inda & Rosaldo, 2002; see also Tomlinson, 1999).
This book argues that where there is flow, there is also counter-
flow. I caution here, however, that thinking along the lines of flow and
counter-flow invites the trap of binary thinking. Therefore, I argue that
where there is flow; there will also be modalities of counter-flow,
whether these flows are visible or subterranean. Terence Chong (2008),
in a recent edited volume of essays on globalization in Southeast Asia,
gives an incisive account of the operation of different modalities of
counter-flow. He identifies these modalities of opposing flows as ac-
tions, processes and behaviours motivated by different social actors,
which could be the state, institutions, social groups, both marginal and
dominant, or even creative individuals, whose effort is to disrupt domi-
nant ideologies like capitalism, feminism, or national identity. Chong
further explains that the discursive manifestation of counter-forces “can
result as unintended consequences of economic growth, public policy
implantation, political interest-bargaining or even manifesting as the
contradictions of neo-capitalism (p. 9)”. I argue here that in the Singa-
pore case, counter flows emanate from the (strong) state, where dis-
courses of nationalism are mobilized by the state to counter the ero-

28
sion and fragmentation of its cultural/national identity in consequence
of the “disembedding” effect of global flow.
Conceptually, the tensions and disjunctures of flow and counter-
flow are explored in this book in general. Chapters 6 and 7 deal spe-
cifically with the tensions of reterritorialization and deterritorialization.
Chapter 7 examines the implementation of National Education (NE),
which is a form of citizenship education, as part of the TSLN educa-
tion policy. The chapter argues that NE has been developed and imple-
mented as a national curriculum to construct Singapore’s nationhood
and identity. The ideological thrust of NE is to be understood as a pro-
cess of (re)localization or counter-flow and as a process of re-embed-
ding in response to the fears that globalization brings; that it will
destabilize and fragment place-bound identity. The chapter, however,
concludes by raising some of the challenges that beset the construc-
tion of a place-bound identity.
Chapter 7 problematizes the construction of a place-bound iden-
tity by examining a state-initiated policy called the Foreign Talent Policy
that encourages people with the right skills and talents to take up resi-
dence or work in Singapore. The chapter examines the ambivalences
and discords that enshroud the Foreign Talent Policy and argues that
the transmigrational flow of people in Singapore’s ethnoscape has the
potential to disrupt and unsettle the essentialised construction of “iden-
tity” and “culture”’ that is drawn according to a nationalist framework.

“Writing” & “Reading” Singapore

As noted above, this book is driven by a network of concepts, which

attempts to explicate the operation of “tactical globalization” in the Sin-
gapore city-state. In this regard, the book does not offer a grand theory
on globalization. In Chapter 1, an attempt is made to delineate pat-
terns of knowledge and practices of globalization that are in circula-
tion in the literature on globalization. I organized these as “discourses”.
In mapping out the various discourses on globalization, Singapore is
the contextual reference point often invoked. This is deliberate because
the aim of this book is to show how Singapore experiments with glo-

29
balization. Therefore, it is interesting to begin with a critical analysis of
how as a discourse, globalization is venacularized and re-worked in the
Singaporean imaginary.
In terms of a theoretical framework, this book does not rely on a
unifying theoretical approach to pursue the line of inquiry that I have
set out, for I believe there is no one theoretical framework that can
adequately address the complexity (not forgetting the dynamics of ) in
the (inter)related “fields” of Singaporean “culture”, education policies
and globalization. Thus, the argument in this book is sustained and wo-
ven together by a network of concepts.
In closing, I feel compelled to restate the intention of my line of
inquiry in this book, as I am well aware that the textual politics of read-
ing is always dynamic, multiple and contentious. Therefore, there are
counter-practices and counter-discourses in the textual space of read-
ing and writing Singapore. Despite positioning my “voice” clearly as a
Singaporean, my intention has not been to politicize or make norma-
tive judgements on the politics of governance in Singapore. Instead, in
writing this book, I have positioned myself in the Singaporean habitus
to understand how a small city-state experiments with globalization
through the disciplinary site of schooling and education to address the
problem space of globalization, and it seems Singapore has done well
in this regard. Therefore, Tactical Globalization presents a grounded ac-
count of Singapore’s courting with globalization that could well be in-
structive for other small city-states and countries to learn from the Singa-
pore experiment.

30
1. Contextualizing discourses on globalization
A view from the “East”

Introduction

“Globalization” is by now an all-too-familiar word that has been made

durable in the media, in academia, in government organizations and in
business circles. Yet the familiarity of “globalization” is contested and
obscured by an increasing proliferation of competing discourses on glo-
balization, evidenced by a now considerable academic debate regard-
ing the phenomenon of globalization (e. g., Robertson, 1992; Woods,
1998; Schirato and Webb, 2003), the ramifications it has on “culture”
(King, 1991; Featherstone, 1996; Jameson and Miyoshi, 1998; Crane et
al., 2002), the “nation-state” (e. g., Evans, 1997;Weiss, 1997; Brown, 2000),
“education” (Suarez-Orozco & Qin-Hilliard, 2004; Apple et al., 2005)
inter alia. There is indeed no lack of literature on globalization.
In view of the broad scope of literature on globalization, this chapter
provides a synoptic reading of some of the globalization literatures, or-
ganized as “discourses”. I use “discourse/s” with some oversimplification
to delineate patterns of knowledge and practices of globalization that
have emerged. While I acknowledge that there are further configura-
tions of discourses on globalization, for the purpose of this book, I have,
however, confined my analysis to three overlapping discourses, and they
are regional, ideological and economic discourses. Specific references
and examples of local uptake of globalization will be drawn from Sin-
gapore and the wider Asia Pacific region, as Beck (2002) has reminded
us that we cannot even think about globalization or discuss it effec-
tively without the reference to specific locations and places. Hence the
subtitle of this chapter, “a view from the East” is deliberate, not to set
up the binary trap of the “East”/“West” divide but to signal to the of-
ten forgotten fact that Singapore, as well as the wider Asia Pacific re-
gion is “part of the ‘global’ sphere that the West has dispersed itself into”
(Wee, 2004, p. 122).

31
 The chapter is organized into four parts. In the first section, my
investigation of globalization as a “discourse” begins with a critical read-
ing of a Straits Times article, which boldly declares that “S’pore tops in
globalization” (Branson, 2001) to provide a local “uptake” of what glo-
balization means in Singapore, and then, in the wider regional (Asian)
context. In the second section, I frame the proposition that globaliza-
tion is an ideological discourse, utilizing the “globalization” versus “in-
ternationalization” debate. Next, I critique the often misguided view
that understands globalization in purely economic terms with its im-
plicit claim that economic forces tend to flow from an epicenter (i. e.
the West) to the rest. Following Robertson (2001) and others (notably,
Jameson, 1998a, 1998b; Tomlinson, 1999; du Gay & Pryke, 2002), it will
be argued that the forces of economics are increasingly intertwined with
the commodification and the circuitous flow of culture from multi-
centers and nodes. In the last section, I highlight the disjuncture be-
tween the global and the local, or what is now known as “glocalization”
as a core concept that informs the discourses on globalization.
This critical review of literature on globalization is, nevertheless,
incomplete, not unless new narratives on globalization are further ex-
tended to current scholarship on globalization. In the concluding bit
of this chapter, I will take up where I have left off in the introductory
chapter where I suggested that a new narrative on globalization centers
on the confluence of the “problem space” of globalization and emo-
tions. I argue that the affective dimension of globalization works to-
gether with discourses of globalization to construct a social imaginary
of, on the one hand, the harsh realities of the risks, dangers and fears
of the unpredictability of globalization, and on the other, a well-man-
aged globalized city-state which is capable of overcoming the odds of
globalization with calculated experimentation. My brief analysis of the
discourses of globalization in the media (more specifically, the national
press, the Singapore Straits Times) will show how “strategic emotional
rhetoric” (Svasek & Skrbis, 2007, p. 370) is used to generate a mixed
emotion of “fear” and “hope” in the Singaporean imaginary about and
of the global/local Singaporean economy.

32
Globalization discourse in Singapore

In January 2001, The Straits Times, the principal English newspaper in

Singapore, boldly declared on the front page that “S’pore tops in glo-
balization” (Branson, 2001). This claim is based on a report published
in a leading American political magazine, Foreign Policy (Kearney, 2001),
which ranked 50 countries using data drawn from the cross-border flow
of goods and services, capital, people and communication. Data obtained
from the movement of money, international travel and international
phone calls were also used to calculate the Globalization Index. This
index reveals the extent of the openness of a country’s economy and
its integration with other countries, and hence, measures how globalized
the country is.
While it could be critiqued that using a single derivative news-
paper article to argue that Singapore is the most globalized place in
the world may seem empirically weak, and that the crude and unde-
fended indicator could, in reverse, be used to argue that Singapore is
one of the least globalized given the levels of both official and self cen-
sorship, this newspaper article is, nevertheless, newsworthy enough to
warrant analytic attention because it must be understood that the “Straits
Times” is politically also the government’s mouthpiece and “an agent
of consensus” (Birch, 1993, p. 6) used to shape and acquiesce its audi-
ence to government policy and rhetoric (Birch, 1999). The significance
that “S’pore tops in globalization”, I argue, is used to showcase, on the
one hand, how well the Singapore government has managed globaliza-
tion and, on the other hand, to generate a crisis discourse about the
forces of globalization that Singapore has to contend with.
I offer two contradictory readings of Singapore’s rank as the world’s
most globalized country. Firstly, from a triumphalist perspective, it marks
Singapore’s economic success in “the voyage in” on the waves of glo-
bal capitalism. Said (1993, p. 216) originally uses “voyage in” to locate
the possible sites of resistance against dominant, imperialistic narratives.
In similar ways, I have used the phrase to suggest that Singapore has
successfully positioned itself as a significant “Other” in what is com-
monly perceived to be a global capitalism and modernity dominated
by a Western hegemon. Thus, Singapore can now also be considered as
located in a transnational frame. Symbolically, from a semi-peripheral

33
region, Singapore is engaged in a discourse of “writing back” to the
imperial centre, asserting its self-identity as a non-Western nation and
disrupting the kind of economic triumphalism associated with the West.
The term “writing back” is used in relation to the way intellectuals
from the colonies appropriate the language of the coloniser/imperial
centre to dismantle essentialist and imperialistic views and (mis)represen-
tations of the colonized (Ashcroft, et al., 1989). Unlike India and other
post-colonial contexts, however, it needs to be pointed out that Singa-
pore’s “writing back” through anti-western rhetoric can be interpreted
at one level as just noise, to whip up some kind of nationalist senti-
ment for domestic consumption. At another level, the symbolic act of
“writing back” works ideologically to disguise Singapore’s deep depend-
ence on and engagement with the Western world. This is the contra-
dictory bind that Singapore is caught in. While it is anti-West because
of Western liberal values, Singapore cannot renounce the West prima-
rily because the West is the hub/nodal point where technologies, in-
dustrial expertise and financial capital emanate (Yao, 2001). In order
to partake in global capitalism, Singapore has to plug itself into the nodal
point of global capital flows.
Secondly, lest its achievement is taken as hubris, there is, however,
an overriding anxiety about being the world’s most globalized country
because Singapore is now even more open and vulnerable to the va-
garies of global capitalism. Each time its economy experiences a down-
turn, the government would form high power committees to strategize
and make calculated moves to re-invent Singapore’s economy. Such was
the case when the Singapore economy slowed down due to the “glo-
bal war on terror” in 2001. A high level Economic Review Commit-
tee led by the then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, was
formed to “reinvent the Singapore economy” (L. Low, 2001).
My purpose in offering a critical reading of what seems to be a
“newsworthy” article at the beginning of this chapter is to provide a
local “uptake” on the discourses of globalization, given that by and large
the discourses of globalization are derived from and grounded in a West-
ern orientation and epistemology. In doing so, I am departing from a
universalist perspective and Eurocentric grounding by arguing that the
effects of globalization vary across and in specific historical, cultural and
political contexts. My book, in general, uses globalization as a conceptual
framework to examine how Singapore experiments with globalization

34
through forms of governmentality, education policies and schooling to
shape a “creative” and “critical” citizen in the context of the “local”
(disciplinary society) and the “global” (economic imperatives).

“Globalization” in “Other” Tongues:

“Segyehwa”, “Kokusaika” & “Logapiwatana”

Singapore is not the only country that “indigenizes” globalization.

The aim of this part of the chapter is to show that as a discourse,
the discontinuities of the indigenization of globalization within the
wider Asian region are evident (Robertson and Khondker, 1998). For
example, in Korea, globalization or Segyehwa does not only mean eco-
nomic liberalization, it also conveys a sense of open-mindedness that
takes place in the political, cultural and social realms (Kim, 2000). In
the Korean political and cultural contexts, Segyehwa also contradicts
the Western conception of globalization as a deterritorialized phenom-
enon, stateless and uncontrollable. Instead, Segyehwa is understood as
a top-down, state-led initiative where the government plays a pivotal
role to “tame” the fluidity and mobility of capitalism in this state-led
globalization.
In contrast, the Japanese language does not have an equivalent word
that means “globalization”. Instead, the closest word is kokusaika, which
literally means “internationalization” (Iwabuchi, 1994; Hashimoto, 1999).
Although “internationalization” and “globalization” are not synonymous
terms, the way the Japanese understand and appropriate “globalization”
reflects a wider political ideology insofar as Japanese participation in
the globalization process is concerned.Theirs is a cautionary/strategic “take”
on globalization where globalization is balanced by “Japanisation”
(Iwabuchi, 1997). On the one hand, the Japanese government recog-
nizes that globalization enables Japan to partake in an integrated global
economy. On the other, Japan insists on maintaining its distinctive his-
torical legacy, culture and identity. This explains why Japan interprets
“(inter)nationalism” in the western sense of globalization, but paradoxi-
cally sets itself apart from the rest of the world by promoting national
interests (Iwabuchi, 1994).

35
 Conceptually, globalization in the Japanese context is seen as a dia-
lectical process that balances globalism with nationalism or localism.
More importantly, Japan’s approach to globalization challenges an a apriori
assumption that globalization leads to the demise of the nation state
(Ohmae, 1990; Reich, 1991; Miyoshi, 1993; Ohmae, 1995) and the
weakening of national identity (Amin and Thrift, 1997).
In the case of Thailand, an official translation for “globalization”
had to be commissioned, which saw “logapiwatana” coined as the new
word to mean “the expansion of the world, spread around the world,
and change and effect all over the world” (Robertson & Khondker, 1998,
p. 35; cf. Luke and Luke, 2000), but this attempt to “fix” the meaning
of globalization was not readily accepted by the local business elites and
academics who widely perceived globalization in purely economic terms.
This goes to show that even within a similar geographical region “glo-
balization” is a contested term that precludes essentialism.
The above account of the local (regional) “uptake” of globaliza-
tion reveals that globalization is “an untotalizing totality” (Jameson &
Miyoshi, 1998). That is to say, while globalization is taken to be a uni-
versal phenomenon, the (re)appropriation of globalization at the “lo-
cal”’ is far from a uniform and uncontested process. Rather, tension or
antagonism characterizes the indigenization of globalization even within
the so-called peripheral and semi-peripheral region. This variegated
indigenization process is a further counter claim that “Asia” is a ho-
mogenous entity, for indeed there are differences even in their political
uptakes on globalization. Therefore, any meaningful discussion on glo-
balization must bear in mind the local engagements with the micro-
histories, cultures and politics of local practices.

“Globalization” as Ideological Discourse(s):

The “Globalization” versus Internationalization Debate

Although “globalization” has gained currency as a form of rhetoric to

explain the current world economic (dis)order, many scholars do not
subscribe to the globalization thesis (Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Weiss,
1997; Weiss, 1998). Instead, they dismiss it as a “myth” and argue that

36
internationalization is a more appropriate concept. In this section, I draw
a conceptual distinction between “globalization” and “internationaliza-
tion”, for two reasons. Firstly, I want to examine the limitations of the
internationalization thesis, and secondly, my intention is to elucidate
the notion that proponents of the internationalization and globaliza-
tion theses use these terms to advance different ideological standpoints
and interests.
To the skeptics who champion the internationalization thesis (as
represented by Ruigrok and Tulder et al. (1995)), their argument is that
the current world economy demonstrates a trend towards a flourishing
of national economies with increasing emphasis of cross-border eco-
nomic flows, “regionalization” or “triadization”. This argument is in-
variably backed up with empirical data. It needs to be pointed out, how-
ever, that appealing to quantitative data per se does not reveal whether
the current economic condition illustrates globalization or internation-
alization (Dicken, Peck et al., 1997; Tickell, 1998). This is because for
every set of quantitative data produced as evidence of internationaliza-
tion, there are similar quantitative data available to show the contrary
(i. e. the trend of transnationalism (see Miyoshi, 1993; Miyoshi, 1996;
Sklair, 1998)).
Moreover, the internationalization thesis does not take into con-
sideration the qualitative dimension of “internationalization” (Tickell,
1998). That is to say the social and cultural dimension of internation-
alization has been ignored. For example, the international thesis would
take account of the export of American street fashion from one na-
tional border to another and record the transaction only as a change in
the U.S. balance of payments, but what goes unrecorded and untheorized
is the cultural impact of the way the “sign-value” of the object is con-
sumed and materialized locally (Baudrillard, 1983; Featherstone, 1991).
In semiotic terms, that is to say, the flow and consumption of economic
goods also precipitates the flow of the signifying effects of the com-
modity. Therefore, the internationalization thesis is limited as it cannot
account for the cultural dimension of the economy.
To reiterate the distinction between internationalization and glo-
balization, I find the conceptual nuances made by Dicken et al. (1997)
more useful and incisive. Unlike Hirst and Thompson who differentiate
the two terms only from an economic perspective, Dicken et al. in-
clude the political as well as the cultural viewpoints. They point out

37
that the processes of internationalization and globalization are sui generis,
and are motivated by quite different processes. The former involves the
extension of economic activities across national boundaries whereas the
latter suggests functional integration across geographically dispersed
“space”. With regards to the organization of political relationships, na-
tion states are the primary agent of change. In contrast, globalization
implies the demise of the nation state, but privileges market forces and
footloose capitalism. In the cultural domain, internationalization facili-
tates cultural interchange between and around nations, while globali-
zation takes a more complex re-articulation of cultural forms on a much
larger scale and space.
What is more important, and therefore must not go unexamined,
is that conceptually the internationalization thesis and globalization thesis
are in themselves ideological discourses used to shape a particular in-
terest and standpoint. For example, collectively, Weiss’ (1997, 1998),
and Hirst and Thompson’s (1996) views are representative of anti-neo-
liberal perspectives on market policies which draw on the discourse of
globalization to advocate further liberalization and de-regulation of the
domestic economy. In other words, they are arguing that “globaliza-
tion” is often used ideologically to justify and promote a more “open”
and “liberal” market for the benefit of all. Cox (1996), Kelly (1999) and
Kelly and Olds (1999) have similarly argued that the deployment of
globalization discourse is political and ideological, often tagged with
the agenda of neo-liberal economic policies.
This neo-liberal-nuanced discourse of globalization has evidently
crept into the language of politicians and also shaped (global/local) edu-
cation policy formation. In his analysis of the political language of New
Labour, for example, Fairclough (2000b) foregrounds the ideological use
of globalization as a discourse to project a certain “truth” about the global
economy, one that thrives on change. His analysis reveals that, politically,
“globalization” and “the new economy” are constructed as if they are
“real” social categories and are the direct consequence of contemporary
social processes. More significantly, Fairclough argues that the discourse
of globalization is informed by a normative premise that promotes (glo-
bal) neo-liberal economic policies for capitalist embedding.
Likewise, in their analysis of global education policy, Rizvi and
Lingard (2010) have also pointed out a distinctive neo-liberal imagi-
nary of globalization that is characteristic of most education systems.

38
What this means is that education systems and institutions now oper-
ate on the principles of market efficiency and consumers are at liberty
to choose from the educational market place, but what belies a neo-
liberal shaping of education systems is that educational institutions
now have to operate on a lean-and-mean budget, and work in a more
competitive regime. A pervasive “audit culture” which rewards and
also punishes those who do not perform is also a consequence. How
governments, international organizations and transnational corporations
promote this neo-liberal view of education is to draw on “ideologi-
cal notions such as ‘global imperatives’ and ‘demands of the global
economy’, which discursively position contemporary rationales for edu-
cation policy” (p. 186). This neo-liberal discourse is widely used as the
logic to how education systems should operate in globalizing circum-
stances.
My own analysis of the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” policy
documented in Chapters 3 and 4 will similarly reveal the ideological
discourse at work, and the (intended) consequences that globalization
discourse has on schooling and identity formation. Therefore, as a dis-
course, globalization is not neutral but is often constructed and repre-
sented as an inevitable process, necessary for the working of global capi-
talism (Cox, 1996). In this section, I have also tried to show that
globalization, however used and however defined, has many ideologi-
cal inflections. It matters who defines it, what the perspective is and whose
interest it serves.

Disciplinary Discourses on Globalization:

Culture and Economic Globalization

Within the discourses on globalization, one dominant perspective

equates globalization with capitalist expansion. Robertson and Khondker
(1998) have noted that in disciplinary related discourses on globaliza-
tion, the conceptualization of globalization is exclusively in economic
terms. In this section of the chapter, I argue that it is problematic to
study globalization purely from an economic perspective, and to assume
that capitalism/economic forces are unidirectional, and are the principal

39
motivating forces that shape the cultural, social and political changes
that have accompanied them.
The view that globalization is inherently and exclusively a capital-
istic phenomenon is inspired by a Marxist tradition. World-system
Theory, for instance, remains one of the most influential theories that
account for the expansion of a capitalist system around the globe (Wa-
ters, 1995; Lechner and Boli, 2000). Hobsbawm (1975), and Lechner
and Boli (2000) charted this capitalist trajectory as a nineteenth cen-
tury phenomenon, while Wallerstein (1974) argued that historical eco-
nomic/capitalistic expansion was integrating the world, originating
around the sixteenth century in Europe. Fundamental to World-system
Theory is the claim that a distinct structural division in the world
economy is organized into centre/semi-periphery/periphery. Follow-
ing Wallerstein, the association of capitalism with Europe and a “west-
ern” modernity has led to a Eurocentric conceptualization of globali-
zation as Westernization, and a view that globalization is a direct
consequence of modernity (Giddens, 1990).
The claim that the world economic system is organized into a uni-
directional flow, from the centre to the periphery and/or North to
South, West to East has, however, come under attack. Amongst these,
are postcolonial critics (Dirlik, 1994; Paolini, 1999) who view the
centre/periphery distinction, as well as other binarisms such as North/
South and East/West, as asymmetrical power relations and inequalities
that disadvantage those located at the margin. Abu-Lughod (1991) and
Abou-El-Haj (1991) challenge the centre/margin binary trope and ar-
gue that flows are emanating from “multiple cores” and are simultane-
ously flowing in a “cross-current”. Similarly, Appadurai (1996) repudiates
the claim that flows are monolithic and unilateral. Instead, he contends
that the global interactive system is characterized by polycentric disper-
sion, and characterized by “a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order”
that defies any claim of “existing centre-periphery models (even those
that might account for multiple centers and peripheries) (p. 32)”.
Japan is clearly one nation that illustrates what Iwabuchi (2002)
calls “recentering globalization”. Conceptually, “recentering globaliza-
tion” encapsulates the reversal and repositioning of what is assumed to
be a monolithic, unidirectional (transnational) economic and cultural
flow that emanates from West to East, North to South. Citing exam-
ples of the popularity of Japanese popular culture such as Pokemon and

40
its related commodified paraphernalia, Iwabuchi (2002) argues that what
is often perceived as the worldwide spread of Western, in particular,
American popular culture is increasingly being challenged by the con-
comitant infiltration of Japanese popular culture in the West.
In addition to the circulation of American popular culture in East
and Southeast Asia, Japan has undoubtedly also become the competing
“centre”, where not only American, but simultaneously, Japanese popular
culture is continuously making inroads into East and Southeast Asia.
Whether it is Japanese popular music, computer games, comic books
(manga) or television drama such as Tokyo Love Story and Long Vocation,
these transnational flows are indeed big business in Japan, and a big hit
in (regional) Asia (Allison, 2000; Iwabuchi, 2002). While some have ar-
gued that Japan’s global-cum-regional influence is tantamount to Japa-
nese imperialism, what is most important, I argue, is to recognize that
these global and intra-regional flows are rarely in sync, but are disjunc-
tive, determined by uneven power relations in the region, as well as
the reception of the flows in specific sites and locales (Iwabuchi, 2002).
Therefore, the success story of Japanisation can be taken to illustrate
that modernity is neither a “western” nor a single-track uniform path,
but a path that transcends across multiple modernities and capitalisms
(Pieterse, 2000).
The example of the transnational flow of Japanese popular culture
further exemplifies that globalization is not exclusively an economic
process, but involves what has been termed “the circuit of culture” (du
Gay, Hall et al., 1997) and “cultural economy” (du Gay, 1997; du Gay
& Pryke, 2002). In essence, these terms conceptualize the intricate re-
lationship between the economic production of goods on the one hand,
and the cultural on the other hand, as embedded. Put simply, economic
production is not only quantified materially, but also inscribed with
meanings and values (du Gay & Pryke, 2002). For example, the ubi-
quitous Sony Walkman (by now, the mini Discman) is clearly a made-
in-Japan “global” commodity, but it is also a multilayered cultural arte-
fact that embodies the hallmark of “Japaneseness”, a widely acclaimed
brand name that denotes technical sophistication and high quality (du
Gay, et al., 1997).

41
“Glocalization”, “Third Space” & “Hybridization”

In much of the literature on globalization, the global-local nexus has

increasingly been a developing focus. Wilson and Dissanayake (1996),
for example, conceptualised the global and the local as a “counterlogic
of both/and” (p. 5). Ang (1998, p. 24) uses the metaphor of “the cross-
roads” to conjure the unstructured and asymmetrical exchange that goes
on in the interstitional spaces between the global and the local. The
essence that the global is imbricated in the local is further conceptual-
ised as “glocalization” by Robertson (1995, p. 26) and Featherstone
(1995, p. 118).
An important principle that underpins “glocalization” is adapta-
tion or what is also known as indigenization. It is in this shade of mean-
ing that “glocalization” was first used in the business context (Robertson,
1992, 1995; Featherstone, 1995). “Glocalization” thus alludes to the way
transnational corporations adapt themselves to local conditions so as to
cater to the differentiated tastes and needs of local consumers (cf. Beck,
2000; Robertson, 1992; Featherstone, 1995). My example of the “lo-
calized” consumption of McDonalds in Singapore in the next section
will illuminate the “glocalization” process.
In discursive terms, “glocalization” creates an imaginary “third
space” (Bhabha, 1994) where the global meets the local. It needs to be
emphasized that “third space” is not a separate space, independent of
and resulting from the fusion between the global and the local. Con-
ceptually, it is a discursive space, a hyphenated space, a contact zone
where the global and the local intermingle and produce new cultural
hybrid forms. As the “third space” is unstructured and asymmetrical or,
as Massey (1993, p. 61) would say, embedded in an asymmetrical “power-
geometry”, the heterogeneity of “the local” is bound to retard the pro-
cess of homogenization, and at the same time, be co-opted by the lo-
cal. Therefore, the (third) space between the global and local is also the
space for hybridization (Pieterse, 1995, 2004).
The premise of globalization as hybridization is strongly advocated
by Pieterse (1995, 2004). Unlike the globalization as homogenization
thesis, which valorizes the global over the local, Pieterse (1995, p. 45)
proposes that the point of contact between the global and the local
enhances “a process of hybridization which gives rise to a global

42
mélange”. In a sense one could argue that globalization is, and will al-
ways be, an immanent and incomplete process, at least in cultural terms,
because hybridity is a condition of globalization. I do not use “hybridity”
normatively to describe the unproblematic fusion of the global and the
local, or what is commonly described as a harmonious process of cross-
cultural borrowing and exchange. In those terms, hybridity has a cele-
bratory rhetoric that glosses over the disruption, disjuncture, rapture,
antagonism and difference that also constitute the unsuccessful and failed
account of cultural exchange (Bhabha, 1994; Young, 1995; Ang, 2001b).
It is in this latter vein that I use the term and thus highlight the (dis)con-
tent, (in)compatibility and (dis)harmony that characterize the global/
local disjuncture.
By this reasoning, hybridity challenges any conception of an
essentialized organic “culture”. That is also to say that “the local” can-
not be represented as “pure” and “authentic” (Dirlik, 1996). Neither is
it confined within a neatly and clearly demarcated state boundary. It
further disavows the suggestion that culture, and by implication, iden-
tity, are tied to a place, for hybridization transgresses any form of bound-
ary and essentialist absolutism. Pieterse (1995, 2004) gives examples of
the manifestations of hybridity such as Thai boxing by Moroccan girls
in Amsterdam, Asian rap in London, Irish bagels, Chinese tacos and
Mardi Gras Indians in the United States. Luke and Luke (2000) also
observe similar signs of hybridized culture in Thailand, where the con-
sumption of youth fashion, popular music and even cars are indigenized
with “local” flavour. These hybrid cultural manifestations serve as
grounded examples of the indigenization of cultures in their various
sites of reception.
As an analytical concept, hybridity also undercuts the imperial he-
gemony and Americanisation/McDonaldization thesis (Watson, 1997).
The discourse practices at McDonalds worldwide are examples par ex-
cellence of the indigenization or “glocalization” of what is quintessen-
tially held to be the homogenization, massification and standardization
of McDonaldization (Ritzer, 1996; Ritzer, 1998; Kellner, 1999; Chua,
2000b). It is to this that I now turn.

43
“Glocalizing” McDonalds in Singapore

Similar to Watson’s (1997) ethnographic studies at various local sites in

East Asia, the consumption of McDonalds in Singapore also affirms
the glocalization process (Chua, 2000b). The spatial location of
McDonalds is one distinctive example of localization. Rather than lo-
cating McDonalds exclusively in major shopping centres and Central
Business District areas in Singapore, it has extended its other branches
into the hearts of high-rise apartments, also known locally as Housing
Development Board (HDB) estates. In terms of its spatial relocation,
this sheds its global image as a fast food restaurant, catering to a spe-
cific lunchtime crowd and one that stands for a “familiar and familial”
(Chua, 2000b, p. 191) haunt for the HDB dwellers. Even the market-
ing strategy has also undergone “glocalization”. To promote McDonalds
as a family restaurant, and a favourite haunt for the Singapore family,
McDonalds meals come with collectable soft toys that are only on sale
exclusively at McDonalds. These toys have become popular collectable
items for many children and young adults. The ‘localized’ image of
McDonalds is therefore one which symbolically constructs a warm and
pro-family restaurant as opposed to a de-personalized global image of
McDonalds as Americanization.
The indigenization of McDonalds is further exemplified by the of-
ferings which have taken on a local flavour (Chua, 2000b). The choices
of dips to go along with Chicken McNuggets are of Asian flavour. Con-
sumers are spoilt for choice with a wide selection of dips such as curry,
sweet chilli or sweet and sour dip, other than the standard chilli and
tomato ketchup. From time to time, McDonalds also attempts to cre-
ate “localized” burgers such as those that come in satay sauce (Peanut
sauce used as a dip for Satay – akin to Kebab) or “pork chop” (Chi-
nese style) in addition to global and standardized offerings available any-
where in similar McDonalds chains all over the world. The “pork chop”
offering, however, was abandoned later in consideration of religious sen-
sitivities in multicultural and multi-religious Singapore. Therefore, the
consumption of McDonalds in terms of “space” and “taste” challenges
the simplistic claim of the homogenization thesis. It further argues against
the suggestion that consuming a product that is associated with the West
is tantamount to the consumption of the culture and values of the West

44
(Chua, 2000c). The diversity of offerings is an instance of transnational
capitalistic strategy where flexible specialization is used to harness local
culture.
What this everyday practice of the consumption of McDonalds il-
luminates is that the global is realized materially by the local. The cul-
tural, political, and social practices of the local can re-shape and diver-
sify what appears to be a global and homogenous consumption. As
Featherstone (1996, p. 64) rightly argues, “global resources are often
indigenized and syncretised to produce particular blends and identifi-
cations which sustain the sense of the local”. It is widely acknowledged
now that the global is realized only through the engagement of the
local and its materiality, without which the global exists in the virtual.
While these three discourses on globalization remain important in
the literature on globalization, I suggested in my introductory chapter
that as a discourse, “globalization” is now vernacularized and re-worked
in government circles to become a “problem space”. It is noticeable
that in the media the lingo of globalization (for example, the frequent
references to “the global economy”, “globalization”, “greater competi-
tion”, and etc) have become standard tropes in speeches and policy
documents. Government leaders and politicians draw on this discourse
to depict the inevitable embrace of globalization and the many “prob-
lems” it brings. Ideologically, the construction of the “problem space”
of globalization serves the interest of government leaders and techno-
crats as the “problems” that globalization brings call for “solutions” that
only government bodies and its representations can provide. This is no-
tably the case in Singapore as was discussed earlier, and will again be
taken up in Chapter 2.

Geographies of emotion and globalization

The circulation of discourses of globalization needs to be examined in

relation to the emotional geographies of globalization. This is a new
gap in the literature on globalization that is gathering critical attention.
In a special issue for the journal of Identities, the nexus between glo-
balization and emotions is examined for the first time. In their edito-

45
rial introduction titled “Passions and powers: Emotions and globaliza-
tion”, Svasek and Skrbis (2007) provoke a discussion on the “emotional
dynamics in the context of globalization” (p. 371). Their view is that
mobility – this could be the movement of people, objects, images, ideas
and practices – involves “emotional processes” (p. 368).
This can be taken to mean that the circulation of the many facets
of globalization also provokes a whole register of emotional response,
but more importantly, they argue that the way people understand and
make sense of the world is shaped by “emotional dynamics”, not just
reason per se. In other words, emotions shape and influence the way
people think, act and feel. This is even more so when “strategic emo-
tional rhetoric” (p. 370) is deployed to manipulate complex political
realities. Therefore, there is a whole level of power relations at work
when discourses of globalization circulate and move because emotions
can be mobilized at a collective level for a teleological end.
The emotional impact of globalization and how this is affecting
international affairs is an issue taken up by Dominique Moisi (2009)
in his provocative book The Geopolitics of Emotion. Moisi argues that in
order to understand how globalization works, it is necessary “to map
globalization in an emotional way” (p. 7). This proposition suggests un-
equivocally that there is an emotional dimension to globalization. Not
unlike Svasek and Skrbis’ (2007) argument that mobility involves emo-
tional responses, Moisi contends that the geopolitics of today is now
characterized by a “clash of emotions” – the West is shrouded in a cli-
mate of fear and humiliation, whereas in the East, emotions of “hope”
and “confidence” are rising because this region is managing globaliza-
tion far better. While Moisi’s thesis can be easily critiqued for its lack
of empirical evidence and invoking the East/West binary trap, the point
to take away from his work is that the reception of globalization pro-
vokes collective emotional response depending on how well a region
is managing globalization.
Moisi’s call “to map globalization in an emotional way” squares
with Jane Kenway and Johanna Fahey’s (2011) conceptualization of
“global emoscapes” which they define as “the movement of emotion
across various spatial scale...involving intersections of the social, cul-
tural, spatial and psychic realms’ (p. 5). They make a few relevant theore-
tical points which I think contribute to a better understanding of the
confluence of emotions and globalization.

46
 Firstly, they assert that “emotions are mobile, mobilized and mo-
bilizing”. That is to say emotions are not static; they travel. They can
also be harnessed to provoke responses. All this is possible because new
communication technologies facilitate the movement of ideas, objects
and images as well as the emotions that move along with it. Secondly,
their point that “emotions are mobilized by various discourses” (p. 5)
tells us that emotions do not emerge out of a clean slate but work in
conjunction with discourses (whether this be ‘words’, ‘images’, ‘print’
or ‘visuals’) to “create a cultural context for certain ideas” (p. 5). Finally,
and an important point that illuminates why we need to pay critical
attention to discourses of globalization and emotions, is emotions much
like the operation of discourses do things to people, which is why, cit-
ing the work of Harding and Pribram (2009), they argue that we need
to understand what emotions do.

Emotions and Globalization Discourse in Singapore

At this junction, I refer to one example of the circulation of globaliza-

tion discourses (about the global/local economy downturn) in the Singa-
pore media and the “strategic emotional rhetoric” deployed to illustrate
how the contradictory emotions of “fear” and “confidence” are attached
to news discourses and mobilized for effective political use. At the height
of the global economic recession, there was a predominant discourse
pattern that could be traced in the newspaper article related to the state
of the Singapore economy. In many of the articles that carried the alarming
news of job retrenchment, there was always a reassuring note that the
Resilient Package rolled out by the government was working.
The “problem-solution” rhetoric is apparent. For example, the news
headline on 31 January 2009 proclaimed that “16,000 lost jobs last year”.
This discourse about the state of the local economy is enough to cir-
culate with it emotions of fear about the impact of globalization and
the virulent impact it has on the local economy; however, to check the
contagious effects of fear, for fear can unsettle Singaporeans and the
confidence they have of their government, the news article also reported
how the Jobs Credit Scheme, which is part of the Resilient Package

47
aimed at off-setting the number of retrenchment, is helping companies
to retain their employees. This positive news about what the govern-
ment is doing to counter the economic downturn is illustrative of how
the circulation of such a positive discourse and the embedded emo-
tions does things in the Singaporean imaginary: they give Singaporeans
a sense of hope and confidence that the government is always in con-
trol even in bad times.
This example suffices to exemplify the theoretical points made
above. The circulation of discourses of globalization and the attendant
emotions are mobilized with the help of the media to perform an ideo-
logical work of representing on the one hand that embracing globali-
zation can invite trouble, and on the other, that the resourceful Singa-
pore government always has “solutions” up its sleeves to counter the
problem space of globalization. It does this, by negating fear with confi-
dence, gloom and doom about the economy with rays of silver lining.

Conclusion

I have proposed in this chapter to read and organize globalization as

“discourse”, and presented in a modest way to make sense of globali-
zation by framing it as three inter-related discourses. The emotional geo-
graphy of globalization is further extended to fill in the gap on the
literature on globalization. It is argued that emotions are integral to dis-
courses of globalization and, like discourses, emotions can be mobi-
lized to motivate people to think, feel and act.
There are advantages to understand globalization conceptually as
three inter-related discourses. For one thing, such a conceptualization
does not vacillate between what Best and Kellner (2001, p. 207) have
called “globophobic” theories that oppose globalization or dabble in
the “globophiliacs” celebratory rhetoric of globalization. Instead, the
three overlapping discourses serve as a schematic overview that will pro-
vide a convenient point of entry into what is an intricate and complex
body of knowledge about globalizing processes.
This schematic overview further opens up the possibility for in-
vestigating the multiple interrelations between cultural and political prac-

48
tices in global capitalism, and the disjunctures – the flows and counter-
flows that occur between the global and the local. While this chapter
does not claim in totality that such a synoptic reading of globalization
as discourse is not without limitations, it argues that this conceptual
framework is, nevertheless, a useful heuristic device for understanding
that the effects of globalization are not uniform but always situated, un-
predictable, and re-worked within local political and cultural agendas,
historical (postcolonial) legacies and forms of governmentality. In the
next chapter, I will demonstrate how state discourses on globalization
are deployed as “tactics” to enact forms of tactical globalization to work
with and against globalization.

49
50
2. Tactical Globalization
The Metapragmatics of Globalization in Singapore

Introduction

Globalization is a geo-politico reality however we define it. While there

is a tendency to generate a “grand narrative” and discourse about glo-
balization and its ramifications, I have argued in Chapter 1 that the nu-
ances of globalization preclude essentialism and totalization, but must
be situated and embedded in a local terrain. Singapore presents itself as
an example par excellence of a contextual space to understand the dis-
course and the operation of tactical globalization.
In managing its economy, whether in good or bad times, the gov-
ernment leaders in Singapore are always vigilant of the performance of
the economy and ready to arrest the first sign of fragility, as was the
case of the spiral effect of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 that also
impacted Singapore’s economy. Likewise, when Singapore’s economy
was hit by a global economic slowdown during and in the aftermath
of the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001, a number of belt-tight-
ening fiscal as well as financial measures were implemented to stimu-
late the local economy. So serious was the sluggish local economy that
a high power committee called the Economic Restructuring Review
Committee chaired by the then Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong was set up in 2002 to prevent the economy from spiraling down-
wards and maintain at least sustainable growth. Despite the cyclic eco-
nomic slumps that Singapore experiences periodically, what is signifi-
cant to note is that the government leaders of Singapore have always
come up with “an ensemble of quite specific governmental “hows”,
embedded with a “range of rationalities and techniques” that would
turn the economy around (Perry and Maurer 2003, p. xi). It is there-
fore no surprise that the overriding concern of the political leaders for
Singapore is that of the “metapragmatics of globalization” (Perry and
Maurer, 2003).

51
 In other words, the logic that drives Singapore’s management of
globalization is about making the Singapore economy tick in the cur-
rent tides of (global) economic competition, at whatever cost. Men-
tion needs to be made that governmental decisions are also motivated
by an instrumental rationality and obsession with “things that work”
and a “doom-and-gloom” apocalyptic prognosis of the adversities that
would strike the Singapore nation if the economy underperforms. Above
and beyond its calculated pragmatism, which has been an enduring ideo-
logical instrument of governance and control, a “culture of excess” (Yao,
2007), a playing-up of impending crisis and anxiety, also keeps Singa-
poreans in check of their complacency and discipline – ethics that would
prevent the nation from social and economic collapse. This is another
aspect of the metapragmatics of globalization in Singapore I am allud-
ing to in this chapter.
“The metapragmatics of (Singapore’s) globalization” is, as I will ar-
gue in this chapter, ineluctably linked to state discourses and practices.
These discourses are not free-floating, but produce teleological and ideo-
logical effects. Its telos, is to regulate the Singaporean habitus, and cre-
ate new subjectivities suitable for the new economy. Drawing on
Foucault’s (1979) notion of “governmentality” and its related concepts,
this chapter aims to make explicit some of the operation of state dis-
courses that functions discursively as disciplinary technologies to regu-
late the Singaporean habitus and the formation of the Singaporean sub-
jectivity to work with and against the forces of globalization. These
Foucauldian theoretical vocabularies also illuminate Singapore’s response
to new geo-politico-cultural-economic realities, which I argue, is to
experiment with globalization tactically.

The art of government in Singapore:

A Foucauldian perspective

Singapore’s style of government has attracted the critical attention of

political and social scientists. Summarily, they have variously described
Singapore as an authoritarian regime (Rodan, 2004), managed by a “cul-
ture of elite governance” (Barr, 2006) who exercises a “culture of con-

52
trol” (Trocki, 2006) on its people. Such discussions merely function, on
the one hand, to give the Singapore government a bad name, and on
the other, to foreground a model of political structure that is often nor-
malized against a Western conception of democracy thus revealing the
inadequacy of its political culture and systems of governance (read: pe-
joratively as “oppressive”, “a police state”, “illiberal”, “totalitarian” and
etc.). The limitation of such a binary reading that I am alluding to: that
“Western model is good/non-Western model is illiberal”, can however,
be reversed to reveal the inadequacy of Western models of democracy
in accounting for Singapore’s mode of governance. Further, implicit in
the reading of Singapore’s culture of governance is of course the sug-
gestion of a heavy handed “top-down” approach in micro-management.
This limited reading of Singapore’s style of government does not re-
veal the inner recesses of how the Singaporean society is governed as a
whole and through what means. In this chapter, use is made of Foucault’s
seminal work on governmentality to understand Singapore’s art of gov-
ernment which, I argue, illuminates the operation of the capillaries of
power through an assemblage of authorities, knowledges, and techniques
with a teleological end of shaping a discipline Singaporean society for
the ideological (national) project of keeping the Singapore economy
vibrant and competitive.
A basic definition of what constitutes governmentality is neces-
sary to begin with. Foucault (2000) makes it clear in his public lecture
on “governmentality” that the art of government is not confined nar-
rowly to the jurisdiction of managing a territory, but what takes prior-
ity is the management of “men and things” (p. 208). By that he means
the intricacies of
[. . .] men and their relations, their links, their imbrication with those things
that are wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the territory with its specific
qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility, and so on; men in their relation to those
other things that are customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking, and so on
[. . .] (p. 208–209)

This is a more discursive way of saying the art of government involves

the active intervention of the government in caring and managing a
spectrum of things in relation to the well-being of men. In this regard,
the art of government includes managing a country’s wealth, providing
health care, creating jobs and a host of other duties and obligations,

53
but what is significant to note is that this intervention encompasses even
influencing one’s dispositions of thinking and behaving. Understood this
way, governmentality has a psychological dimension which involves the
cultivation of a certain mind-set and habitus conducive in guiding the
conduct of human beings.
Simply put, the art of government is about managing people’s con-
duct, and this takes precedence over all other aspects of government
because once people are moulded into a way of behaving and thinking
it would be easy to marshal resources for the ideological purposes of
the state. This is achievable because governmentality is deployed not
only through administrative apparatus such as the use of laws but also
“a range of multiform tactics” (Foucault, 1979, p. 13) that are carefully
re-worked and translated into rationalized practices. Significantly, these
rationalized practices are drawn from expertise knowledge and “episte-
mological regimes of intelligibility” that showcase the art of govern-
ment as an exclusive problematizing sphere of activity that is the pre-
rogative of the government (Inda, 2005, p. 8). In other words, the onus
is on the government to present “solutions” and “plans that work” to
the “problems” identified, and when it does so successfully, it reflects
positively the managerial skills of the state. This in turn enhances its
legitimacy to intervene and rule.
There are two important points pertaining to governmentality
which also resonate in Singapore’s political structure. First, the art of
government in Singapore centres on maintaining Singapore as an eco-
nomic powerhouse. Indeed, the narrative of how well the Singapore
economy performs is repeatedly reported in the media. For example,
in the month of May 2006, one news article reported that “S’pore has
bounced back: PM” (Chua, 2006), another boldly declared that “S’pore
ranked third in world competitiveness” (Aggarawal, 2006) and a third
predicted that “the (Singapore) economy could grow by as much as
7% this year” (Lee, 2006). These examples are enough to attest to the
national priority that the government places over its economy.
Second, the art of government is related to how Singaporeans are
managed towards the support of its economy. Several examples related
to this aspect of governmentality will be discussed later. At this point,
it suffices to note that the art of government in Singapore is realized at
two levels; it “is both an individualizing and a totalizing form of power”
(Rabinow, 1984, p. 14). In what follows, the chapter will refer to speci-

54
fic examples of rationalities and techniques, what I call “tactics” and
“tactical globalization” in this book, that are used to manage its economy,
and relatedly how the Singaporean habitus is regulated to craft new
subjectivities amenable for the new economy.

Economic Policies as Tactics

In the Singapore context, the “totalizing form of power” is revealed

through public policies. Instead of being at the receiving end of glo-
balization, the Singapore government, through its public policies, be-
lieves that it can anticipate and turn the tides of globalization to its
advantage (Bellows, 1995). The way in which the Singapore govern-
ment charts out its economic trajectories is revealing in the way it works
with globalization to its advantage.
Indeed, economic management has been a forte of the Singapore
government and also its means of gaining legitimacy and sustaining
governmentalization. Because Singapore lacks indigenous entrepreneurs
to claim a stake in the global economy, it has to rely on what Yeung
(2000b, p. 145) calls “political entrepreneurship” to spearhead business
opportunities overseas. As has been well documented, 60% of Singa-
pore’s GDP is contributed by the public sector and Government Linked
Companies (GLCs) (Yeung 2000a). This act of “political entrepreneur-
ship” is representative of the principle of “governmentality” in that the
government takes the lead to develop its economy. More recently, a high-
powered research council – again the embodiment of the leadership of
the government – has been set up to identify key niche research areas
that will boost Singapore’s economy. A mammoth sum of $ 1.4b has
been set aside to spearhead research in biomedical sciences, environ-
ment and water technologies, and interactive and digital media. The
government rationalizes and calculates (in a Foucaldian sense) that an in-
vestment in R & D will bring about significant returns in terms of job
creation (an estimate of 86,000 jobs and $ 30 billion in value added by
2015), as well as attracting talented researchers in these niche areas to
Singapore (Chang & Loo, 2006).
Apart from localizing its economy, going global for Singapore is sin
qua non and also necessarily tactical.This is principally because in terms of
economics, relying on domestic or even regional markets is insufficient

55
to support the demand for locally manufactured products. It is only by
promoting direct foreign investments and bilateral trade that Singapore
can enlarge its share of the global economic pie and, hence, sustain its
economy. Mention must be made here that the Senior Minister, Goh
Chok Tong and Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, both of whom were
Singapore’s first and second premiers are often the representative top
government ministerial officials who seal such bilateral economic initia-
tives. This must be seen in the large scheme of embedding Singapore
into the many centres of capitalism’s presence given its limited resources,
small domestic market, physical and geographical constraints.
The embodiment of governmentality is even more revealing in the
way Singapore is quick to assemble new strategies to re-engineer growth
for its economy. Its government leaders recently worked out that it must
re-formulate its economic success as “East + West plus” in order to stay
ahead in a more competitive global economy (Lee, 2007). That is to say
in the past Singapore has relied quite successfully on the old strategy of
embracing foreign investments and technology from the West and East,
and a host of other amenable conditions such as an educated workforce
and political stability, inter alia to give its economy a cutting edge, but
other economies have caught up with Singapore’s economy with their
cheaper factors of production seducing the flight of capital to cheaper
sites of production.To counter this “problem”, technocrats in Singapore
have re-worked its economic formula by including “the plus”, which
refers to the creation of qualities unique to Singapore. This re-assem-
bling of a new economic formula includes promoting Singapore as a
city of networks from transport, to people and cutting-edge research
and industrial links. The recent heavy weight investment and set up of a
biopolis hub, which is a concentration of bio-medical related industries
and research complex, is a case in point. The “plus” also comes with the
promises of living in cosmopolitan lifestyle and conditions.
Therefore, the way in which Singapore has so far successfully en-
gaged with globalization demonstrates that globalization is not uncon-
trollable, but a process which the policies of nation states can promote
and guide (Brown, 2000). In addition, the case of Singapore also testi-
fies, contrary to the popular claim of the demise of the nation state
(Hirst & Thompson, 1996; Miyoshi, 1993; Ohmae, 1995), that the na-
tion state has the power to influence the global economy to its own
advantage, but I would argue that this is achievable only through tactics.

56
Public Policies as Tactics

The Singapore way of participating in global capitalism is tactical be-

cause it uses a range of social, economic and education policies and
translates them into national imperatives or into discourses of crisis.
These state discourses function ideologically as administrative appara-
tuses and are formally rationalized in programmatic statements, policy
documents, political speeches and national campaigns (Rose, 1999). In-
deed these discourses are shaped by a survival rhetoric and/or a dis-
course on crisis, which has by now become a familiar ideology in the
Singapore body politic (Chua, 1995; Heng and Devan, 1992).
In Chapter 7, I will analyze the Foreign Talent Policy as an exam-
ple of a “technology” of governmentality for generating a crisis of a
lack of talent in the Singapore economy. At this junction, it suffices to
say that the Singapore government is ever ready to defend this policy,
and repeatedly reminds Singaporeans of the need to welcome foreign
talents. For instance, in 2006, the issue of Foreign Talent made a come
back and received subsequent media attention when Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong addresses the “problem” of brain-drain in his Na-
tional Day Rally Speech – note the problem-solution oriented nature
of political reasons and governmentality (Dean, 1999; Inda, 2005). Lee
argues matter-of-factly that many Singaporeans are increasingly targeted
and recruited as talents to work overseas ironically as Singapore also
embarks on a global search for talents. The “solution” is to promote
immigration into Singapore to compensate for those leaving.
What needs to be given analytic attention is that the articulation of
a problem is met almost with immediate ready solution as a Citizenship
and Population Unit has been set up in the Prime Minister’s Office to
promote Singapore’s immigration programme overseas, in addition to a
new scheme called the “Work Holiday Programme’ (WHP) initiated by
the Ministry of Manpower to draw young foreign talent (Li, 2007).This
scheme allows young potential “foreign talents” to holiday and work in
Singapore for six months on a special visa. Notwithstanding the conten-
tion of the pied-a-terre in Singapore, whose “mutating citizenship” – a
term used by Aihwa Ong (2006b) to describe global professionals whose
mobility challenges the obligatory ties and deep commitment to a place/
nation, Singapore’s Foreign Talent policy must be understood as a politi-
cal ambition to attract mobile talents whose cultural capital are valued as

57
symbolic capital necessary to keep Singapore’s economic engine accel-
erating at a notch above others (Ong, 2007).
Moreover, education reform has also proceeded at an unprecedented
pace in recent years. In tandem with the exigencies of the new economy,
this has led to a nation- wide curriculum intervention in the form of
Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) policy which has become the
blueprint for schools in Singapore (Gopinathan, 2007). An analysis of
the TSLN policy will be the focus of the next chapter. For now, it suf-
fices to say the ideological project of the TSLN was conceived to en-
gineer the kind of ideal students with the right dispositions and requi-
site skills required for a knowledge-based economy.
Seen from a critical perspective, the TSLN education reform is
symptomatic of the kind of calculations that occurs at the level of gov-
ernance. Ong (2005, p. 338) uses the term “reassemblage” to refer to
the way in which technocracts and political elites seek to reassemble
new elements to reproduce subject-citizens for the global economy. The
TSLN education policy is an example of “reassemblage” where new
education initiatives are assembled to ensure that whilst Singaporeans
go global (with creative/critical thinking and IT skills), they remain
rooted (through National Education) in Singapore, and what better site
to begin the inculcation of such skills necessary for the new economy
than in the disciplinary site of schooling.

(Language) Campaigns as Tactics

Another tactic of governmentality is through the disciplinary technology

of campaigns. Here I refer to two specific language campaigns that have
disciplinary effects on the Singapore populace. One is the Speak Manda-
rin Campaign (SMC) and the other, the Speak Good English Movement
(SGEM). Essentially these two campaigns must be seen as ideological
projects of training and implantation of habits that shape Singaporeans,
especially the younger generation of Singaporeans, with the linguistic
capital necessary for communicating and making connections in the
multiple centres of global capitalism located in the “East” and “West”.
The SMC is a national campaign that started in the late 1970s with
the objective of persuading the Chinese population to speak Mandarin
instead of their home dialects. The SMC therefore aims to gel the Chi-

58
nese population in Singapore together using Mandarin as a unified lan-
guage. Before the official launch of the campaign in the media, it was
rationalized as fulfilling three important national objectives (Hill and Lian,
1995; see also Bokhorst-Heng, 1999). First, from an educational point
of view, the SMC strengthened the bilingual policy in schools. Second,
the cultural rationale was that the SMC endorsed a sense of Chinese-
ness that results from having a single official language, and lastly, it had
the pragmatic rationale of using Mandarin as a national lingua franca for
the Chinese population in an attempt to gel an otherwise fragmented
Chinese community together.
This cultural rhetoric and rationalization of “mandarinising Sin-
gapore”, however, took a significant shift when the use of Mandarin
begins to be laden with economic motifs and utilitarian value (Teo,
2005). Since China opened its economy in the 1980s, the Singapore
government has been quick to identify the huge economic potential
in the Chinese market. The ability to speak Mandarin is recognized as
the language that will open (economic) doors and establish what is com-
monly known as “guan xi” (i. e. connections) for business dealings in
China. With China’s economy booming, the SMC is now promoted as
a “high language” similar, if not of equal importance, to English, espe-
cially for the Chinese Singaporeans (Teo, 2005). In fact, the call is not
only for Chinese Singaporeans to be bilingual but bicultural; that is,
people who are not only proficient in Mandarin but who also have
the cultural knowledge and understanding of the Chinese way of think-
ing and doing business. While bilingualism has always been the core
foundation of Singapore’s education/language policy, it was Lee Kuan
Yew (2005) who first mentioned that Singaporeans also need to be
bicultural. In the context of China’s resurgence, he points out that “bi-
lingualism gets us through the front door, but it is only through
biculturalism that we can reach deep inside China and work with them”.
Interestingly that same year, the Ministry of Education also introduced
a new 4-year Bicultural Studies Programme (Chinese) in three selected
elite schools with the view to nurture students who are not only highly
competent in Chinese, but who can also engage China because of their
knowledge and understanding of China’s history, culture and contem-
porary developments (see Ministry of Education, 2007). Such is the ex-
tent to which the Singapore government works to capitalize on new
centres of capitalism.

59
 To add on to the SMC, April 2000 saw another linguistic cam-
paign called The Speak Good English Movement in Singapore. This
campaign arose out of a perceived popularity of “Singlish”, which is a
more widely spoken variety of English in the everyday life of Singa-
poreans, seen to be a linguistic blight to the more “proper” Standard
English “crucial to Singapore’s economic success, especially in provid-
ing Singaporeans with the ability to access scientific and technological
knowledge, and in allowing them to better compete globally” (Rappa
and Wee 2006, p. 94). Whether rightly or wrongly, the popularity of
“Singlish” was attributed to be fazed by a local successful situation com-
edy called Phua Chu Kang (PCK), which was broadcast on national TV
at that time. In the sitcom, the central character, named Phua Chu Kang,
a working class renovation contractor, speaks “Singlish” affectionately
and in abundance. It is opinioned that the humor generated by PCK’s
abundant use of “Singlish” seemed to have projected the image of speak-
ing “Singlish” as “cool” for Singaporeans.
If we argue from the point of view that language is an identity
marker, as sociolinguists would tell us, arguably, “Singlish” is a linguistic
marker of Singapore’s identity and culture. Such an argument, how-
ever, does not sit comfortably in the more pragmatic line of argument
that the government pursues – an argument that centers on using Stand-
ard English so as to be connected linguistically to the world of busi-
ness, technology and (Western) knowledge. To the government leaders,
“Singlish” is a linguistic handicap that would be a hindrance to the suc-
cessful participation of a global economy, where English is predomi-
nantly spoken and used.
My point in using the SMC and the SGEM is to show how a
language oriented campaign lends itself to the “metapragmatics of glo-
balization”, as I have demonstrated the overarching goals of SMC takes
a dramatic turn from one which was initially socio-politically moti-
vated to one which is now motivated by “entrepreneurial pragmaticism”
(Teo, 2005, p. 126). Likewise with the SGEM, Singaporeans are disci-
plined to speak good English or risk being disconnected from the glo-
bal English speaking world. More importantly, both campaigns and the
discourses embedded must be seen as “rationalized practices” (Rose,
1999, p. 4) inherent in forms of governmentality. In the larger frame of
thinking along the line of Foucault’s concept of governmentality, the
SMC and SGEM project the Singapore government to be what

60
Foucault (1979, p. 15) calls “reason of State” – a hegemon which thinks,
deliberates, rationalizes on behalf of the good of Singaporeans.

Disciplining “Generation M” as Tactics

While Singapore works with globalization by adopting a metapragmatic

approach as discussed in the preceding sections, concomitantly, it also
creates new modalities of ideological narratives to “inoculate” the Sin-
gapore body politic against the ills of globalization, and it does so by
taking on the paternal role of providing pastoral care to its population,
which is another tactic of governmentality (Dean, 1999; Foucault, 1979;
Rose, 1999).
A current observable trend in government rhetoric and in the me-
dia is the recurring ideological discourse and criticisms directed at “Gen-
eration M”. This is a term used by former Prime Minister Goh Chok
Tong to describe the younger generation of Singapore as the genera-
tion of the millennium. As this generation of youth was born after post-
Independence Singapore, and also at a time when Singapore was al-
ready experiencing economic wealth and political stability, many young
people today bask in material comforts. They are perceived to be either
oblivious to, or nonchalant about, the history of Singapore. Therefore,
“Generation M” is, in a sense, disconnected from Singapore’s history
and nation-building ideology which is framed around an ideology of
survival, embodying the ethos of thrift, discipline and diligence (Chua,
1995). Not only is this ideology too distant and unfamiliar to them,
“Generation M” is ironically acculturated in a competitive culture and
consumerism where the accumulation of material wealth and success
is measured in terms of the 6 ‘Cs’: Cash, Car, Condominium, Credit
Card, Country Club membership and educational Certificates.Yet they
are often admonished for the excessive consumption of rapacious capi-
talism, indulging in materialism and also exhibiting a westernized life-
style, symbolically or otherwise (Chua & Tan, 1999).
The frivolous behaviour of “Generation M” has also been peri-
odically subjected to public criticisms in the media. First, they are chided
for displaying amnesia of Singapore’s history (18 July 1996, p. 41). In
another media report, there are those who unabashedly profess that they
prefer a Caucasian identity rather than their own ethnicity (Lau, 1999).

61
Then, it is reported that young Singaporeans are uncertain about what
constitutes a Singaporean national identity (Teo, 2001a). More recently,
the Straits Times published the finding of a survey which revealed that
as many as 53% of Singaporean teens indicated that they would con-
sider emigrating (Lim, 2006, p. H4). What is one to make of such me-
dia constructions of Singaporean youths?
I argue that all these media representations work to associate
Singaporean youth with liminality and position them as “deviants” with
a moral/cultural dilemma. They are constructed as a generation devoid
of national roots and patriotism for Singapore, and therefore in need
of “parental” discipline. In a time of globalization, what is also feared is
that “Generation M” is enticed by a sense of individualism, especially
that which is associated with the liberal West. Whether the frivolous
behaviour of young Singaporeans is prevalent as it is reported in the
media, the Singapore government clearly does not condone these val-
ues, which it perceives as antithetical to the Asian values and ethics that
it zealously guards and promotes. A case in point is the response to the
high percentage of Singapore youths seeking to uproot to other coun-
tries reported in the press. A Minister, for example, is quick to raise the
alarm that there is an urgent need for “dialogue with the sons and
daughters of our country, to understand and work with them to build
a home they would call their own” (Lim, 2006, p. H4).
Sociologist, Chua Beng Huat (2000a), contests the politicized re-
presentation of “Generation M”. He argues that the construction of
Singaporean youth as manifesting an identity crisis is based on “a back-
ground assumption that identity formation and stability is entirely de-
pendent on a notion of unchanging ‘tradition’” (Chua, 2000a, p. 16).
The consumption of popular culture further provides youths with an
image bank from which they can draw their identities. To them, observ-
ing the latest fad and fashion is not only “funky” and “cool”; it is also
their expression of belonging and their construction of an image of a
“new generation”, which, as Chua (2000a, p. 16) argues, is drawn from
“a globalized image of youth”. Ang (2004, p. 306) further qualifies that
their identity bank may not be some generic “globalized image of
youth”, which is often mistakenly equated with American or western
youth culture, but significantly a more culturally specific one represented
by the cultural image of regional Asia such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, South
Korea and Taiwan. Whatever their source of identity-making is, Chua’s

62
argument nevertheless suggests that the image of the “Generation M”
is perhaps a hype, which serves ideologically to pathologize the “dis-
ease” of globalization and legitimize a reinvention of the Singaporean
identity. From a Foucauldian (1979) perspective, the discourse surround-
ing the wayward “Generation M” is a disciplinary tactic used to regu-
late and discipline Singaporean youth.
I concur with Chua’s view by citing a recent study conducted by
the Institute of Policy Studies to measure Singaporeans’ attitude towards
Singapore in terms of their national pride and psychological ties to the
country (G. B. Lee, 2000). The finding reveals that Singaporeans are by
and large proud of being Singaporean and feel a strong attachment to
their country. This survey is also benchmarked against 23 other coun-
tries, and Singapore is ranked number 2 against the others. If this sur-
vey is anything to go by, perhaps there is no cause for concern that
young Singaporeans are unpatriotic; and if the survey is representative
of Singaporeans, it can be concluded that the construction of “Gen-
eration M”, as a generation with no cultural and national moorings, is
a form of ideological management that justifies the need to usher in a
form of citizenship education to inculcate and revive the Singaporean
identity and patriotism. Chapter 6 will later focus on the latter topic.

Civic Nationalism as Tactics

Not unrelated to the promotion of National Education, the Singapore

state elites also capitalize on their economic management to construct
what Brown (2000, p. 93) calls “civic nationalism”. Brown’s “civic na-
tionalism” refers to the way in which the Singapore state elites pro-
mote a sense of pride and patriotism through the country’s well-sus-
tained economic growth, and the provision of material comforts for
Singaporeans. The materiality of Singapore’s success and wealth, through
its engagement with global capitalism, is evident in the list of acco-
lades that Singapore has attained, such as having the world’s best air-
port, its world-class transport, the most competitive workforce, the
cleanest city, and its top rank in international Mathematics and Science
Olympiads. All these economic and material achievements have taken
on symbolic values as they are used as “a system of cultural representa-
tion” (Hall, 1992, p. 292) to anchor and construct Singapore’s national

63
identity. In the words of Benedict Anderson (1991), a national “imag-
ined community” is created, and to this I add, grounded by the effi-
cacy of the state elites in creating wealth, managing resources and mo-
bilizing a sense of collectivism through a communal ownership of
symbolic materiality and success. These national discourses are in es-
sence acts of governmentality that aim to produce appropriate subjects,
biopoliticised and localized within the national territory (Ong, 1997).
This motif of a national imagined community is constantly recast
as an ideology of homeland in the Singaporean popular consciousness.
Creating an ideology of homeland is, as Robertson (1995, p. 35) points
out, “partly in respon[se] to the constant repetition and global diffu-
sion of the claim that we now live in a condition of homelessness and
rootlessness”. In efforts to prevent Singaporeans from being displaced
by the current tide of globalization, the resonance of “Go global, but
stay local” has become something like a national imperative in the lo-
cal mediascape and ideoscape to encourage Singaporeans to venture
forth to find new economic opportunities in the world, but remain
emotionally rooted to Singapore. This slogan is also a direct admission
of Singapore’s paradoxical response to globalization, which is a subliminal
anxiety and fear that globalization may lead to a condition of rootless-
ness and homelessness should those who have ventured forth decide
not to return. Singaporeans are further exhorted to develop “the Sin-
gapore heartbeat” so that:
[. . .] regardless of where we live and whatever our diverse origins, we must have
a strong sense of belonging to this country. Wherever we might venture, our
hearts should be emotionally rooted to Singapore. We should have an instinc-
tive sense of shared values, shared history and shared destiny, simply because we
are Singaporean. We must embrace a common vision of Singapore as a home
always worth returning to and if need be, fighting and dying for (Singapore 21
Committee, 1999).

This quotation unequivocally expresses Singapore’s way to globaliza-

tion through a culturalist assertion that valorises traditions and values,
and “a production of locality” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 178) that centres
on the construction of “place”, “home” and “roots”. This ideology of
“home” and “place” is further emphasized by Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong in his 2006 National Day Rally speech where he spoke at length
about developing the “Singapore Heartware”. Lee says that

64
 Because our people are all over the world and because we are bringing in peo-
ple from all over the world and because of the digital age, bombarding us with
new ideas, and all kinds of new communications, it becomes all the more im-
portant that we strengthen our heartware, our emotional ties which bind
Singaporeans to Singapore and to one another.

Here Lee pointedly singles out the challenges of connecting Singaporean

diasporas as well as “talents” that come through Singapore to a sense of
belonging (emotionally) to the nation. Whether Singaporeans leave or
“talents” come, they have a destabilizing effect on citizenship building. In
a sense, at the heart of Lee’s speech is a direct admission that “ambitious
cities (like Singapore) are becoming spaces of mutating citizenship” (Ong,
2006b, p. 499). Said otherwise, the mobility of people and new techno-
logies are challenging “the notion of citizenship tied to the terrain
and imagination of a nation-state” (Ong, 2006b, p. 499). Singapore must
manage this tension of de-territorialized market and de-terroritorized
nationalism. To this end, it has set up the Overseas Singaporean Unit
(OSU) to keep the Singaporean diaspora connected. In sum, the dis-
courses on “developing the Singapore heartbeat” and “Singapore heart-
ware” must be seen as tactical discourses used to shape the Singaporean
habitus with the disposition of feeling for the (Singapore) nation.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have presented an analytics of how a small city-state

managed and experimented with the vagaries of globalization through
a range of tactics assembled and reassembled to work with and against
globalization. The metapragmatics of Singapore’s globalization illustrates
on the one hand that the nation-state is well and truly alive, at least in
Singapore, contrary to the speculation of the thesis of the demise of
the role of the state; on the other hand, it also reveals that the unpre-
dictable effects of globalization calls for a diverse assemblages of tactics
to ‘tame’ and ‘fix’ the fluidity of flows.
As much as the world is characterized by flows and deterritorializa-
tion, nation states are actively involved in a “politics of fixing” (Meyer &
Geschiere, 1999, p. 1) and grasping how to capitalize on the flows and

65
use these flows in their own interests. Furthermore, as I have illustrated,
the Singapore state achieves this through tactics, or more specifically,
through forms of governmentality as disciplinary measures to regulate
and script the Singaporean habitus for the necessary conditions of capi-
talizing on the “good” but castigating the symbolic “ills” of globalization.
In this chapter I have used Foucault’s notion of “governmentality”
and its related concepts to explore how the Singapore state re-works
the effects of globalization within local political and cultural agendas.
In doing so, I have made explicit how state discourses are embedded
within forms of governmentality for the direction and reform of con-
duct in the Singapore habitus. In other words, governmentality is an
enactment of state power, where a regime of “truth” and rationalized prac-
tices are engaged as technologies of discipline to shape the rationality
and dispositions of Singaporeans to participate in globalization that Sin-
gapore can clearly do without. Therefore, it has to experiment with
globalization tactically.
In the larger argument of this book, tactical globalization is a dis-
cursive act of re-territorialization rather than de-territorialization. The
task of re-territorialization, however, requires boundary construction.
This is where the nation-state intervenes in the reconstitution of na-
tional identity. In the Singapore case, scripting the Singaporean habitus
and the “Singaporeanized subjectivity” is its raison d’etre and reason of
state, and there is no better place to perform this ideological role than
through schooling in Singapore.
In the next chapter, I will explore the recent education changes in
Singapore since the launch of the nation-wide TSLN policy in 1997.
These changes, I shall argue, must be understood in the larger context of
the global-local interplay.Through curriculum intervention, re-structur-
ing and state-initiated education policies, the focus of the next chapter
will show how a “strong state” contends with the exegesis of globaliza-
tion, at the same time circumventing the threat of the de-territorializa-
tion of place-bound identities. Despite the claim that globalization threatens
national culture and identity, the Singapore case exemplifies to the con-
trary that nation-states invariably will continue to retain and enact the
constitution of a preferred national identity over other identities.

66
3. Schooling and Education for Globalizazion
Prescriptive Experimentation of Education Change
in Singapore

Introduction

This book is about Singapore’s experimentation with the risks and un-
certainties of globalization. As with experiments and experimentation,
there are many pathways to go about “testing” and finding “solutions”
to a problem. While the nature of experiment and experimentation is
such that there is no guarantee of success, even if there is, there could
be unintended consequences or failures, the argument presented in this
book is that Singapore’s experimentation with globalization is performed
with calculation what I call “tactics” and “tactical globalization” to work
with the benefits that globalization brings and against the risks and dan-
gers of globalization.
Beginning this chapter, the focus is on schooling and education as
the site of experimentation, and education policy as a tool for harness-
ing the experiment. Because schools are disciplinary institutions where
behaviors, dispositions, ethics are regulated, cultivated and shaped, ex-
perimentation with the cultivation of the kind of subjectivities an edu-
cation system works to produce is one “calculated” way of preparing
young generation of Singaporeans for the new globalized economy.
Contradictory as it may sound, Singapore’s experimentation with
schooling and education for globalization can be described as “prescrip-
tive experimentation”. This is because in Singapore, the way education
policy is formulated and implemented has always been top-down and
uncontested. There is an uncompromising, authoritative and mandat-
ing aspect to education policy-making where policy articulation car-
ries with it disciplinary effects for subject formation and the economy.
In this chapter, I attempt to study the “prescriptive experimentation”
of the working of education policy in constituting education change

67
in Singapore. It would be far too ambitious, however, to detail every
single education policy that has contributed to Singapore’s education
landscape in a chapter. Hence, I narrow the focus to the Thinking Schools,
Learning Nation (TSLN) policy implemented in 1997 and a few other
significant education changes that follow on after the TSLN policy im-
plementation.
The TSLN policy embodies a new paradigm shift in the concep-
tion of education policy-making where “globalization” shapes the ar-
ticulation of values in the TSLN policy. Put in another way, the TSLN
policy is a situated response to globalization – situated because global
processes alone do not account for education policy-making. As Rizvi
and Lingard (2010, p. 44) have pointed out, there is “the danger of
reification. . . in considerations of globalization in education policy stud-
ies”. What needs to be factored in are the “micro-histories, – cultures,
and – politics of local practices of educational restructuring as they are
implicated in the multiple flows of globalization” (Lingard, 2000, p. 79).
Therefore in analyzing the “prescriptive experimentation” of education
policy in Singapore, I deploy the “global/local” dialectic to capture the
“global considerations” and “local practices” of policy making and im-
plementation.
The chapter is organized in the following directions. I begin with
a descriptive account of the TSLN policy by drawing attention to the
context (i. e. how the policy came about), the premises (i. e. why such
a policy is needed) and its “illocutionary intent” (Luke & Wood, 2009,
p. 197) (i. e. what the policy sets out to do). Next, I offer a critique of
the policy and tease out some of the pedagogical problems and con-
tradictions embedded in the TSLN curriculum intervention. This is fol-
lowed by a section that documents the significant changes that have
hitherto occurred in the education system. Finally, I gesture to some of
the unintended consequences of the “prescriptive experimentation” of
schooling and education policy that are emerging in the Singapore edu-
cation landscape.

68
“Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” policy articulation

Any form of educational change does not work from a clean slate; as
Taylor et al. (1997, p. 16) have argued, “there is always a prior history
of significant events, a particular ideological and political climate, a so-
cial and economic context”. In other words, the form and content of
education change are invariably driven by a (global) desired outcome
to address the (local) needs and/or problems of the larger society (cf.
Taylor et al., 1997). The articulation of the TSLN policy is no different.
It is put together because of a perceived “global future” that is question-
ing the relevance of the state of education in Singapore.
The articulation of the TSLN policy and the education changes
that followed was literally spoken into existence when Goh Chok Tong,
the then-Prime Minister delivered a keynote speech at the opening of
the 7th International Conference on Thinking titled, “Shaping our fu-
ture: Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” in June 1997. What began as
a speech became formulated into a policy that opened up a new wave
of education change in all domains of Singapore’s education system. In
that speech, the PM gave a few reasons why Singapore’s education
needed to change. These reasons provide the “context” for the policy
making of TSLN.
The context for the TSLN policy making is primarily in response
to a “global future” that is characterized by intense competition, where
“knowledge and innovation” will be absolutely essential if countries want
to keep up with the competition, and where change will be the order
of the day. Because of these reasons, the PM argues that “education and
training are central to how nations will fare in this future” (p. 1). In a
sub-section of his speech, Goh then presented another context for the
formulation of TSLN policy, which is in tandem with a global reas-
sessment of other education systems, namely the United States, the U. K.
and Japan. He admitted to the need for “policy borrowing” when he
said that “as we prepare for the future, we will draw valuable lessons
from how the US, Japan and other nations reform their educational
systems to meet their needs” and “. . .learn and adapt from foreign ex-
periments” (p. 2).
That, however, is the “global” context for the articulation of the
TSLN policy. There is an unspoken “local” context nonetheless impor-

69
tant for the formulation of the curriculum emphasis of the TSLN policy.
This has to do with the culture of rote learning amongst Singaporean
students. Although students in Singapore have achieved first place in
public and international Mathematics and Science Olympiads, the preva-
lent view is that they are merely used to “spoon-feeding” and are only
“exam-smart”. Government leaders are thus concerned that Singapore
runs the risk of losing its competitiveness in the global economy if its
work-force lacks creativity and the ability to invent and innovate be-
cause the education system is moulding them into passive learners. This
is why under the TSLN policy, “creative and critical thinking” becomes
a core curriculum initiative in Singapore schools. This “unspoken” con-
text of exam-smart, passive Singapore students must be taken into ac-
count as the micro history of an education system that is attempting to
undo things.
Before I make explicit the premises of the TSLN policy, it needs
to be made known three curriculum priorities that constitute TSLN
policy. The TSLN policy prioritizes the inclusion of three core cur-
riculum areas that was previously not given attention to. This includes
Critical Thinking, using IT in the classroom for teaching and learning,
and National Education. Critical Thinking is not taught as a stand-alone
subject, but infused in all subject areas, whereas the use of IT in the
classroom is mandatory. Teachers are expected to conduct 30% of their
lessons using IT. The use of IT in teaching and learning has been made
possible under the IT Masterplan which saw the provision of “soft”
and “hardware” in all schools. Lastly, National Education (NE) is citi-
zenship education in a new name. As I have devoted an entire chapter
on National Education (NE) (see Chapter 6), I will only mention in
cursory here that NE aims to cultivate a strong sense of belonging and
national identity.
The premise for TSLN policy is that “old” ways of doing educa-
tion were for an old economy. It was time for change, and rightly so.
As Kress (2000, p. 133 & 139) has succinctly argued, “in periods of re-
lative social and economic stability, it is possible to see the curriculum
as a means for cultural reproduction”, where education works to re-
produce “the stabilities of well-defined citizenship or equally stable
subjectivities as a participant in stable economies”. A new globalized
economy, however, demands that education systems explore new ways
to cultivate dispositions such as creativity, innovativeness, adaptability,

70
while at the same time, coping with these changes comfortably (Kress,
2000). This explains the operative trope in the TSLN policy: “think-
ing” and “learning”, which endeavors to promote a culture of thinking
in schools and life-long learning to keep up with change. Therefore, in
view of a competitive global economy, Singapore has to re-make its
education system with a national curriculum intervention that incor-
porates a (global) skill-oriented curriculum that emphasizes ‘critical’
thinking and ‘IT’ skills and a (local) ‘national’ education to foster na-
tional/cultural identity.
It is therefore not difficult to see the “illocutionary intent” of the
TSLN policy: the whole schooling system becomes something like a
mammoth laboratory – taking on my argument made earlier of how
Singapore experiments with globalization – to reproduce subject-citi-
zens who have the “right” skills to go “global” yet with their hearts
rooted to the “local”.

TSLN: A critique

Yet I argue, the mix of “critical thinking”, IT, and ‘national’ education
has generated potentially irreconcilable tensions and paradoxes around
the role of education in the formation of national identity, the knowl-
edge economy, and the shaping of “creative” and “critical” citizens. While
“critical thinking” and “IT” are ostensibly skills orientated towards the
global economy, ‘national’ education is, to the contrary, a parochial vi-
sion that focuses on the “local”. In an era of globalization where iden-
tities are up for grabs, maintaining an organic or essentialized identity
such as “national identity” will be increasingly difficult. As argued in
Chapter 1, globalization leads to the fragmentation of identities. A hy-
brid culture and hybridized identities are the new cultural formations
in globalizing circumstances. The following sections briefly engage in a
critique of TSLN.

71
Thinking, but thinking in what ways?

In an education system where hierarchical structures and an examina-

tion culture are the pillars of its system, how does one teach or learn
thinking in an environment where such discursive structures are always
in place?
I argue that creativity will not blossom to its fullest as long as
governmentality is normalized in the Singaporean habitus. That is to
say, Singaporeans are “conditioned” in an environment where its lead-
ers are always coming up with the solutions to problems, and setting
“safe” pathways rather than encouraging and accommodating “alterna-
tive” trajectories. Ironically the Singapore government has also “condi-
tioned” themselves to lead and provide for fear of losing its track record
of uncontested political legitimacy.
Elsewhere, I have argued that critical thinking has pedagogical li-
mitations (Koh, 2002). It is primarily concerned with “methods” and
the “how-to” of problem-solving framed by procedural skills such as
analyzing, synthesizing, extrapolating, evaluating etc (Bailin, Case,
Coombs & Daniels, 1999a, 1999b). Instead of a preoccupation with
problem-solving, I argue that what is of more immediate concern is
the ability to critique the kinds of symbolic systems and semiotic mean-
ings that are inherent in the new semiotic economy (C. Luke, 1997).
In a semiotic economy, issues of power structures and relationships,
and the discourses that advocate a particular ideological position are
important as they position us and construct a preferred meaning over
others, but critical thinking is disenabling and acritical of such con-
cerns. The “criticality” of critical thinking, I argue, lies in questioning
the “given”, not just solving problems. This will include questioning
the power structures and the ideological constructions of “truth”, “be-
lief ” and “values”. The concern with methods rather than analysis of
the semiotic and symbolic structures and meanings in discourses, I ar-
gue, may have limited purchase in the new semiotic economy.

72
IT as skills or a critical tool?

The IT Masterplan is not without limitations. While I do not wish to

temper the enthusiasm of this “techno-evangelism” (Snyder, 1996) in
Singapore schools, I feel it is necessary to critique the incorporation of
IT in schools with appreciation and understanding. While the objec-
tive of integrating IT into the curriculum is to promote independent
learning and critical thinking, what seems to be a central preoccupa-
tion is computer competence, or what Lankshear, Snyder & Green
(2000) call “competency”, rather than the use of IT as a critical tool.
That is to say, students will have skills to perform computer-related tasks
such as saving and retrieving records, designing web pages, and surfing
the Internet, among other things. While the acquisition of such skills is
important, the potential for a critical orientation to reading hypertexts
must not be overlooked. What this means is that as well as being skilled
in the operation of computer-related tasks, students must develop tech-
nological literacy (C. Luke, 1997), which I argue will have greater trans-
fer in the new techno-environment workplace.
Developing technological literacy will preclude a simple consumer
orientation to the Web. Instead, a critically oriented literacy recognises
that no matter how ‘World Wide’ the Web is, the information gleaned
is far from complete; there is information that is inaccessible to the
learner, and most of the time this is done intentionally for ideological
reasons. In this way, the information privileges certain voices and per-
spectives (Burbules, 1997; Burbules & Callister, 2000; McConaghy &
Snyder, 2000). Further, students who are taught a critically oriented tech-
nological literacy will be able to question the meaning systems and the
socio-cultural context in which the text is produced. Moreover, they
will have the critical framework to question and critique the power
relations embedded in social relations and institutions (C. Luke, 1997;
Burbules & Callister, 2000). Developing technological literacy, there-
fore, moves from an understanding of IT as tool to an understanding
of IT as a critical social practice.
In essence, I am arguing that an effective IT curriculum is one
that incorporates a literacy practice, enabling students to deal with hy-
brid textualities rather than giving them a mastery of computer skills
or being computer literate. With the onset of new information tech-

73
nologies, students are exposed to a range of multi-media texts with
graphics and sounds that generate new languages and symbolic systems
(C. Luke, 2000). This means that the practice of reading and writing
has to be transformed. The ‘hybrid vigour’ generated by new informa-
tion technologies demands new textual practices of reading and writ-
ing (Synder, 1996; C. Luke, 2000; Snyder, 2001). Classroom pedagogies
must therefore address “silicon literacies” as a new genre of reading and
writing in our information age (Snyder, 2002).
The IT Masterplan that the Ministry of Education has charted and
implemented is essentially well-funded in terms of the provision of in-
frastructure and the availability of “soft” and “hardware”, but it will have
greater success and purchase for the new semiotic economy if it re-
conceptualizes technology from a functional perspective to a critically
oriented technological literacy. By offering a critique of the integra-
tion of IT in schools, I have noted the contradiction in outcomes that
the IT Masterplan endeavors to reproduce: a workforce that is skilled
in IT, but lacking in the kinds of critical skills needed for “new times”.
Indeed, while IT is paving the trajectories of economies, we need to
remind ourselves that technology per se does not bring about change;
it has to be complemented by a change in educational practices
(Burbules & Callister, 2000).

National Education: What’s the catch?

National Education (NE) constitutes part of the package of TSLN. Es-

sentially, NE is citizenship education, but rather than a stand-alone sub-
ject, it is infused into other subject areas. I make no attempt to outline
the ideological context that underpins NE here, as Chapter 6 will pro-
vide the details and a critique. I will briefly allude to its pedagogical
contradictions. In its ideological ‘take’, NE embodies “a production of
locality” (Appadurai, 1996 p. 178). In other words, it is a curriculum
design that re-articulates culture within its national boundaries in the
form of citizenship education. Its pedagogical outcome is, as Deputy
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (1997) told teachers at the launch of
NE, “to equip. . . (the young) with the basic attitudes, values and in-

74
stincts which make them Singaporeans”. This “common culture”, he
continues, is the “DNA to be passed from one generation to the next”.
Lee’s assertion of creating a common, unified culture through NE
should be understood as a direct admission of the cultural anxiety and
moral panic of the state – a subliminal fear that Singapore’s experimen-
tation with globalization may bring about the erosion of cultural and
national identity. However the view of a “common, unified culture” and
by implication, a homogeneous, organic identity, which can be trans-
planted from one generation to another, is problematic. Such a view
presupposes that ‘culture’ can be transmitted in its purity without being
shaped and reshaped inter-generationally and by global and local forces.
As I have argued in Chapter 1, the intermingling of the global and the
local will produce cultural syncretism and hybridized identities.
Hall (1991, p. 34) contends that globalization will see “the emer-
gence of new subjects, new genders, new ethnicities, new regions, [and]
new communities”. As it is, Singapore’s ethnoscape is increasingly com-
plicated by the flow of migrant workers. It will become evident that
with the global flow of migrant workers in Singapore’s ethnoscape, what
is envisioned as a “common culture” will be complicated by the for-
mation of new diasporic communities and new ethnicities. Chun (1996,
p. 67) is therefore not wrong to observe that:
Given the integrative and divisive tendencies of globalization, one could per-
haps argue then that the celebrations of difference and re-inscriptions of space
which have given rise to national solidarity and cultural homogeneity within
one global context might also be seen in other global contexts to produce func-
tional disjunctures, diasporic sentiments and multiple identities.

Therefore, a focus on national culturalism, which NE aims to do, is

contradictory to the logic of global cultural flow, which is about living
together-in-(uneasy)-difference (Ang, 2001b). A curriculum that takes
this as a pedagogical focal point, I argue, will dislodge the myopic and
inward-looking construction of a national (local) identity.
Nonetheless, these criticisms aside, the TSLN policy marks Singa-
pore’s experimentation with globalization as both a process of (global)
material flow and a basis for meaningful localization within a (local)
socio-political and cultural-ideological framework.
TSLN is at most a “prescriptive experimentation” for globalization,
an experimentation that ostensibly prepares Singaporean students to “go

75
global” yet cultivating their heart and mind to “stay local”. Since the
launch of TSLN, more changes in the education system have ensued.
These changes are ineluctably motivated by a sense of urgency to match
up to global imperatives without compromising its local agenda. In the
next section, I shall document what I consider as important changes
since the launch of the TSLN policy. I will make evident that these
changes are framed along the global-local axis before providing a com-
mentary on the unintended consequences to the prescriptive experi-
mentation in schooling and education policy that has emerged in the
Singapore education landscape.

After TSLN: Recent changes

in the Singapore education system

1. Curriculum Reduction

The Ministry of Education (MOE) has embarked on a major curricu-

lum reform in the form of curriculum reduction for all subjects and
across all levels following the recommendations of the External Re-
view Team1. This is a high level committee appointed to review school
curriculum in line with the technological, social and future needs of
the economy. The committee observed that the school curriculum was
overcrowded and there was too much teaching and drilling (Ministry
of Education, 1998a). In other words, the “banking concept” (Freire,
1972) of education was still largely evident in Singapore schools. Be-
cause of the mandatory public examinations that students have to sit,
teachers are pressed to complete examination syllabi and to prepare stu-
dents for the examinations. Hence, in terms of pedagogy, there is no
time for developing cognitive processing skills. Along with the vision
of creating “thinking schools”, the committee recommended that schools

1 The report, “Learning, Creating, Communicating: A Curriculum Review” is ac-

cessible at the Ministry of Education website,<http://www1.moe.edu.sg/speeches/
1998/Curry%20Revue%20Report.htm> (Ministry of Education, 1998b).

76
should reduce their curriculum by 30% for all subjects and across all
levels. The purpose of the curriculum reduction is to free up space and
time in the school curriculum to promote thinking and self-directed
learning; these are considered as important skills required for the new
globalized economy.

2. Assessment

Although examinations remain in the system, how students are tested

and assessed has taken on different forms. Students are no longer tested
on factual recall. Instead, the emphasis is on higher order thinking skills
– hence the use of less predictable and more open-ended questions
(Ministry of Education, 1998a). Open-book examinations have also
made their way into the Cambridge Examinations, and are increasingly
used as a new mode of assessment at tertiary level. One other mode of
assessment is Project Work (PW). Ministry of Education (2001) recog-
nised that PW is a valuable learning activity. It extends students’ crea-
tivity, independent learning, curiosity to explore beyond the bounda-
ries of the classroom and textbooks, research and presentation skills and
learning to work in teams. These are the so-called “high-value know-
ledge” and skills required in the new workplace (Gee, Hull & Lankshear,
1996; Green, 1997; Sweeting, 1998; World Bank, 1999; compare Gee,
2000). So important is PW taken as a new mode of assessment that
Ministry of Education (2001) has decided to include it as one of the
admission criteria into local universities from 2005.

3. Inclusion of Life Sciences in curriculum

Touted as the next “big thing”, Life Sciences is said to be an industry

that may surpass the Internet industry. As a potential growing field, the
Economic Development Board has already identified Life Sciences as a
niche industry alongside electronics, chemicals and engineering. The
government has since injected S$ 1b to push for Life Sciences and to
attract top-notch R & D projects to Singapore. While Science educa-
tion has traditionally been an important curriculum area in the national
education system, a curriculum “revamp” to include life sciences edu-

77
cation has already begun in 2001 (Ministry of Education, 2000b). MOE
is taking an integrative approach by infusing Life Sciences in every curri-
culum area and at all levels (Davie, 2000). More importantly, the over-
arching objective of integrating Life Sciences in the school curriculum
is to equip students with in-depth knowledge and skills so that they
can continue to pursue a career in Life Sciences or apply Life Sciences
knowledge in other fields (Ministry of Education, 2000b). This in turn
will contribute to what is now a (local) small industry in its infancy
stage to a potential (global) hub for Life Sciences.

4. Diversifying Ssecondary-School
and Junior-College programme

Following a review of the Junior College2 and Upper Secondary edu-

cation system3 in 2002, a more broad-based curriculum is now offered
in the “A” levels. Instead of a narrow pathway of either “Science” or
“Arts” stream, students now have to take a contrasting subject to broaden
their knowledge base; whereas the review of Upper Secondary educa-
tion saw the birth of new types of schools which offer more choices
and pathways for the more able and academically inclined students.
Called the Integrated Programme or IP schools, students in this track
can skip the traditional pathway of taking the public examination,
G. C. E. “O” Levels Examination and proceed to exit via the G. C. E.
“A” Levels or the IB Diploma route. Added to IP schools, there are
also specialist schools such as the NUS High School of Mathematics
and Science, Singapore Sports School, School of the Arts and the newly
established School of Science & Technology.

2 A Junior College system is equivalent to Years 11 and 12 in Australia. At the

end of the two-year JC system, students sit for the Cambridge G. C. E. “A” level
Examination.
3 Upper Secondary education refers to Secondary 3 and 4 in the Singapore sys-
tem. This is equivalent to Years 9 and 10 in the Australian system. At the end of
Secondary 4, students sit for their Cambridge G. C. E. ‘O’ Levels. They have the
options of continuing in the JC system or furthering their studies in a poly-
technic, depending on how well they have performed in the examination.

78
 Indeed, there is now diversity in terms of choices and pathways in
Singapore’s education landscape although mention needs to be made
here that while this diversification is in response to an Ability-Driven
education which aims to identify and develop the talents and abilities
of every child to the maximum, ideologically these choices and (elite)
pathways contribute to the formation of an elite group whose path-
ways are predetermined to win prestigious government scholarships and
eventually absorbed into leadership positions in government ministries
and bodies (Barr & Skrbis, 2008).

5. Teach Less, Learn More (TLLM)

This sloganized initiative came about after Singapore’s third Prime Min-
ister, Lee Hsien Loong, commented on the state of education in Sin-
gapore in his 2004 National Day Rally Speech that: “We have got to
teach less to our students so that they will learn more” (Lee, 2004).
This was picked up immediately by Ministry of Education and trans-
lated into the TLLM initiative in 2005. The then-Minister for Educa-
tion, Tharman Shanmugaratnam (2005) interprets TLLM as a “soft” re-
form to the quality of teaching and learning in Singapore classrooms.
He explains this “soft” reform as:
[. . .] a call to educators to teach better, to engage our students and prepare them
for life, rather than to teach for tests and examinations. This is why TLLM re-
ally goes to the core of quality in education. It is about a richer interaction
between teacher and student – about touching hearts and engaging minds.

In essence, TLLM emphasizes curriculum reduction to give students

classroom space for investigative and independent learning. It also chal-
lenges teachers to re-think their pedagogy and curriculum construc-
tion as well. While the TTLM has been turned into something like a
policy, it must be seen as an initiative that is addressing an old problem
in the education system; that is, teachers are teaching to the test (be-
cause of the public examinations) whereas students are learning by rote.
It is also an indirect admission that since the launch of creative and
critical thinking under the TSLN policy, things have remained status
quo. Of course the greatest unspoken fear is that if students continue
to be dispassionate about their learning or are proving themselves to

79
be again “exam smart”, Singapore might not have the kind of creative,
critical knowledge workers to sustain its economy. Seen from this per-
spective, TLLM is therefore a re-assessment of the Creative and Criti-
cal Thinking Programme for globalization and the economy.

6. New Universities

2000 saw the establishment of a third university, called the Singapore

Management University (SMU) in Singapore. SMU is affiliated with
the top-ranking University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School.
Unlike the two ‘older’ comprehensive universities, SMU offers predomi-
nantly business courses. It also follows an academic structure similar to
the American system. Another niche fourth university called the Sin-
gapore University of Technology and Design (SU) will be opened in
2011. Like SMU, SU only offers highly specialized degree programmes
in the disciplines of Architecture and Sustainable Design, Engineering
and Product Design, Engineering Systems and System Design and In-
formation Engineering and Design (Tan, 2009). Looking at the highly
specialized niche degree programmes offered by SU, it is apparent that
university students are “streamlined” and “mass-produced” to meet the
niche areas identified to be potential areas of growth and development
in the Singapore economy.
Another interesting point to note about the set-up of SU is that
its establishment is in collaboration with MIT and Zhejiang Univer-
sity. Traditionally, Singapore universities have always been in some form
of collaboration with Ivy League universities from the “West”. This is
the first time, however, that Singapore has openly courted the collabo-
ration with a university from China. This can be interpreted as a stra-
tegic move to have the China-Singapore connection (read: guanxi) as
China is re-centering globalization to become another nodal point of
(global economic) flows. It is therefore in Singapore’s (economic) in-
terest that SU must have the China-Singapore connection.

80
The unintended consequences
of prescriptive experimentation

Despite Singapore’s relative success with its prescriptive experimenta-

tion with education change – if we were to measure this success by
the many international accolades that its education system has been given
recognition – there are, however, unintended consequences that have
emerged as a result of these various reforms. In this last section, I ges-
ture to some of these unintended consequences of a prescriptive ex-
perimentation with schooling and education reform in Singapore.

The burden of Project Work

While the educational purposes of PW is to train students to problem

solve, work in teams and be creative – the kind of skills valued in to-
day’s globalized economy, the reception of PW has, however, gener-
ated unwanted stress for, and negative sentiments from, teachers and
students alike.
Because students have to keep a Group Project File as “evidence”
of participating in the whole process of PW, they have resorted to fil-
ing indiscriminately all sorts of materials in the file for fear that they
would not get a good grade if they do not present a bulky Group Project
File (Bryer, 2006). This presents an administrative nightmare for teach-
ers as they have to spend an inordinate amount of time going through
these files as part of assessment. What is disconcerting about the whole
accountability process is that the whole objective of implementing PW
seems to have back-fired. Instead of demonstrating critical thinking skills,
students work with a mentality that by presenting more they would be
more successful than others. Such is the kiasu Singaporean culture (read:
fear of losing out) evident also in the culture of schooling in Singa-
pore that could be a hindrance to the kind of critical/creative thinking
workers that schools aspire to reproduce.
Because schools are inevitably comparing themselves with regard
to how their students are performing in PW with other schools, there
is now a reported trend that some over-zealous schools are resorting to
hand-holding their students in their PW. This takes the form of pro-

81
viding students with “templates and school-dictated structured approach”
(Bryer, 2006, p. 8) and detailed correction of drafts. Not only is such a
practice symptomatic of an unintended consequence of kiasuism (read:
fear of losing out), it also runs contrary to the spirit of investigative
learning and creative problem solving that PW is supposed to cultivate
in Singaporean students. While the PW implementation has undergone
fine-tuning, it remains to be seen if the educational endeavor of PW
will materialize given the competitive schooling culture that Singapore
schools are and their proclivity to over-teach and instruct in order to
achieve academic results.

Elitism and stratification of schools and students

There is unacknowledged sentiment that it matters what kind of schools

one attends in Singapore. Those who come from elite schools are held
in high regard and are generally thought to be more successful in their
chances of winning government scholarships and also later in their ca-
reer paths. Schools in Singapore can generally be categorized as
“neighborhood schools” which are schools located in housing estates
attended by a mixture of working and middle class children. “Autono-
mous schools” comes next. These are schools which have produced con-
sistent good public exam results over the years and have applied suc-
cessfully to the Ministry of Education to function semi-independently.
The last category is “independent schools” which attracts the brightest
of students and are well-attended by children from affluent families.
The recent diversification of Secondary Schools and Junior Col-
lege programs while appears to show flexibility in its system has, how-
ever, contributed to a social stratification of schools in Singapore, for it
is only the independent schools that are given the privileges (translated
as generous funding from the Ministry of Education, better school fa-
cilities and differentiated curricular programs in addition to the recog-
nized prestige of attending such a school) of running the Integrated
Program and through-train system. This has meant that students in these
schools are perceived to be the crème de la crème. They therefore en-
joy the privilege of skipping the traditional “O” Level Examination
meant for all Singaporean students. Such a scheme breeds elitism and
creates a class divide between elite independent schools and govern-

82
ment schools, as well as those who are academically inclined and those
who are not.
Ironically, this unintended consequence also puts the doctrine of
meritocracy in question – meritocracy being an enduring value that
the PAP hegemon espoused: that one should only be rewarded based
on individual hard work and merit. This is because the level of playing
field is obviously to the advantage of elite students, who by virtue of
their affluent family background and cultural capital, have already been
given a head start compared to their mediocre peers (Barr & Skrbis,
2008; see also C. Tan, 2008; Mok & Tan, 2004). Therefore, meritocracy
has come to mean bigger rewards for this group of students in the IP
programme and is ironically responsible for a systematic division be-
tween the trajectories of the elite students and those who are “the
ordinaries”.

Intensification of teachers’ work

Teachers are often at the receiving end of education reform. Talk to

any teachers in Singapore and they would have similar stories to tell
how their work is not just teaching, but often, they have to wear many
hats. From doing administrative work as a form teacher, to running a
co-curricular activity and shouldering departmental duties, as well as
other ad hoc duties, teachers’ work have been intensified with new add-
ons introduced by reforms such as TSLN, TLLM, PW and etc. Many
experienced what has been called “the stress of role overload” (Fried-
man, 1991 cited in Liew, 2008, p. 111) and competing demands at work,
although it is often difficult to gather concrete evidence as such narra-
tives are often dismissed as “whinging”; hence, they are left undocu-
mented in the spaces of staffroom and corridors. The add-ons brought
about by various reforms, “pedagogical and curricular ‘innovations’ such
as differentiated teaching, service learning, and project work have in-
creased the pressures on teachers’ time” (Liew, 2008, p. 107) as one re-
search has documented.
Apart from the demands of teaching and performing other duties,
teachers also have to contend with politics in the staffroom which of-
ten goes undocumented. Yet the reality is that many staffrooms are rife
with open and hidden conflicts triggered by education priorities, dif-

83
ferences over workload and management, and politics of patronage and
personal ambitions. It does not help that teachers are subjected to a
regime of performance management system where they are appraised
annually, adding to their already stressed working condition.
While the Ministry of Education has come up with ameliorating
measures such as the introduction of a 5-day working week in schools
and the hiring of more teachers, it is unlikely that the pressure that
teachers face will be offset given that there are other enduring meas-
ures, often regulative in nature (e. g. the School Excellence Model which
is the treasured prize that every school strives to achieve), that schools
will have to continue to live up to.
The (unintended) consequence of education change then has meant
that teachers are working in more stressful conditions. While official
data on the attrition rate of teachers are not easily available, anecdotal
evidence suggests that when the economy is in good shape, the attri-
tion rate of teachers is relatively higher than usual. The intensification
of teachers’ work has made it harder to retain good teachers who truly
want to teach and also put into question the meaning of “teaching”
and “education”.

Conclusion

Singapore’s pursuit of globalization is relentless, and it does this with

experiments and experimentation. As with every experiment, however,
some are more successful than others; there are also experiments that
either fail or succeed but with unintended consequences. As I have ar-
gued, Singapore’s experimentation with globalization is performed with
calculations because it is driven by a survivalist mentality that it must
overcome all odds to succeed. In the domain of schooling and educa-
tion, its experimentation is also “prescriptive” as is made evident in this
chapter that all matters of education change are directed towards the
training and “habitus” forming (in a Bourdieuian sense) of a nation’s
human capital for globalization.
In Singapore’s “prescriptive experiment” with education reform,
the global/local dialectic is evident. The call to go “global” on the one

84
hand is supported by its Critical Thinking program and the infusion of
ICT in the classroom to cultivate the required skills such as problem-
solving, creativity and entrepreneurialship in the Singapore habitus. On
the other hand, the call to go “global” is conditioned by a reciprocal
call to “stay local”. The National Education curriculum is aimed to-
wards this end. The TSLN policy, in short, is an ideological package
that demonstrates Singapore’s experiment with globalization, and that
is working with and against it. It does so by appropriating (global) capi-
talism to (local) particularities and institutional structures.
Another point I wish to make with regard to the characteristic
style of schooling and education reform in Singapore is that its pre-
scriptive interventionist style reveals the enduring role of the state in
globalizing circumstances. The intervention of the state in education
reform affirms the power that the nation-state wields to “tame” the un-
certainties of economic development brought about by globalization.
This is because the state has the resources and capacity to support the
infrastructure and materials needs of school reform. In this light, “the
myth of the powerless state” (Weiss, 1997) must be weighed and
contextualised in specific historical, social, cultural and post-colonial his-
tories of “strong state”, as its prescriptive “ultra-state policies” (Ang,
2001a) are the weapons of “strong state” to mediate and trans-rupt global
cultural flows.
To put the TSLN education policy in broader perspective, educa-
tion policy is an enactment of polic(y)ing and control, and a technique
of governmentality to mould and shape the Singaporean habitus and
subjectivities. The Singapore state has for a long time played a key part
in mediating “global” capital flows to “local” context, and has demon-
strated its efficacy and success. Its style of government and policy im-
plementation, while noted to be technocratic and top-down, has, how-
ever, received popular mandate and legitimation. This is because its policy
formulation is normalized by “the reason of State” and is invariably trans-
lated and rationalized as for the good of Singaporeans.
Yet, as I have pointed out, a “prescriptive experiment” with edu-
cation change is not free from problems; there are unintended conse-
quences as discussed in the preceding section. Notwithstanding these
unintended consequences, state-led education reform such as the TSLN
policy projects “the sanctioned images of the attitudes, dispositions, and
capabilities of the “citizen” who is to contribute and participate in the

85
process of globalization (sic)” (Popkewitz, 2000, p. 170). On this note,
the next two chapters proceed to analyze policy documents related to
TSLN. I am interested in examining how the use of language, narra-
tives and images are used to create preferred schooling pathways and
schooling identities in the TSLN education policy.

86
4. The Texturing Work of “Thinking Schools,
Learning Nation” Speech
A Critical Discourse Analysis

Introduction

This chapter and the next focus on analysis of education-related policy

documents. These documents include a political speech, and an epi-
sode of a TV documentary from Learning Journeys. I have chosen to
analyze these education policy documents as “data” because each of these
documents constitutes a stage in policy implementation. The Thinking
Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) speech was delivered in 1997 at the
opening of the 7th International Conference on Thinking. The speech
is significant because it was at this conference that the TSLN policy
was first publicly announced. It was then translated as a policy for mak-
ing education change in Singapore.
In 2000, a documentary entitled Learning Journeys comprising eight
episodes was produced and broadcast on national TV. In each of the
episodes, schools showcase what they had done or understood the TSLN
policy from the ground up. Taken together, my analysis of these two
documents constitutes a “multi-modal” discourse analysis that involves
a blended analytic approach that draws from Critical Discourse Analy-
sis and Visual Semiotics.
I begin the chapter by discussing the relevance of Critical Dis-
course Analysis (hereafter CDA) as a “toolkit” for policy analysis. While
CDA is widely used as a methodological and analytical resource for
conducting policy analysis (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; see for example,
Taylor, 2004; Thomas, 2005; Adie, 2008), I argue that CDA analysts have
overlooked the importance of context for doing CDA. In reviewing
the relevance of CDA for policy analysis, I argue that there are inher-
ent “risks”, and that doing CDA in authoritarian contexts can be a risky
enterprise.

87
 Taking the Singaporean context and the practice of CDA together,
the second section leads into a discussion of the politics of risks in-
volved and the barriers to CDA as a critical practice. This is followed
by a third section that provides a narrative account of “the Catherine
Lim saga” – an example used to show the latent risks involved in cri-
tique of government discourses.
In the final section, I propose “academic activism”– a term I bor-
row from Lazar (2007, p. 146) as a way of working around the risky
terrain of doing CDA in Singapore. It is also in this section that I analyze
the texturing work of the TSLN document. My analysis is driven by
an overarching mission, and in the broader argument of this book, to
find out the ideological work that TSLN speech does as Singapore ex-
periments with globalization through the apparatus of schooling and
education policy.

Using CDA in policy analysis: Context matters

CDA has reached a certain degree of canonical status, as it is widely

used and applied as a research and analytic tool (Luke, 2002; Morgan
& Taylor, 2005). Rizvi and Lingard (2010) have identified the use of
CDA as a common approach to policy analysis amongst other ap-
proaches. There are a few reasons why CDA is useful and relevant for
policy analysis.
Firstly, CDA pays analytic attention to “discourses” and how they
are used in a text in context, and in its discursive context. Norman
Fairclough (2001) argues that it is important to pay analytic attention
to discourses because the many changes that we are witnessing in so-
cial life in late modernity are “discourse-based” (p. 231) driven social
change. This is a relevant point made in relation to the mediatization,
and hence, analysis of education policy. Policies are made known through
various modes of textuality and they are discourse constituted. This could
be in print or visuals or a combination of both.
Fairclough’s point is that because social change is discourse driven,
it is important that we do not take for granted the use of discourses as
an innocent practice, particularly in the context of policy articulation

88
where there is “a technologization of discourse” (p. 231). In other words,
discourses can be ordered and/or manipulated for ideological ends.
Lenore Adie’s (2008) analysis of the Australian State of Queensland’s
“Smart Start” policy is one example that analyses how discourses are
used in a policy document in combination with linguistic and gram-
matical analysis. Her analysis reveals a network of discourses (for ex-
ample, lifelong learners, creative and critical thinkers, innovative and
entrepreneurial workers and collaborative work skills) used to construct
a “regime of truth” about “the welfare and survival of the “Queens-
land lifestyle” (p. 262) in order to present a justification for a radical
reform of Queensland education. CDA is therefore useful in yielding
up the formation of discourses and its construction of “truth” state-
ments about a state of affairs.
Secondly, specific analyses of policy texts can be geared at using
CDA to uncover “the material effects of discourses and the way dis-
courses position players across the policy cycle” (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010,
p. 60). In other words, a nuanced analysis that focuses on what discourses
do to people, and how they position people to take on certain identi-
ties and roles can be made explicit. In this approach, analytic attention
is directed at the lexico-grammatical resources, micro-linguistic analy-
sis at the word and sentence level, and also the larger organization of
the text.
Sue Thomas’ (2003) CDA analysis of education policy shaping in
response to the media’s crisis construction of the state of Queensland
schools and its teachers is illustrative of a fine-grained linguistic analy-
sis of media texts. Her analysis focuses on a repertoire of linguistic items
both at sentence and word level (e. g. deictic categories, over-wording,
use of oppositions, and sentence types) in a corpus of newspaper arti-
cles to find out how prominent linguistic items in the text work “to
construct a preferred public discourse about Queensland schools” (p.
30), and how teachers and parents are positioned in the articles. Her
analysis reveals that “the paper claimed the authoritative voice on cur-
riculum matters in Queensland schools, positioning itself as the voice
of Queensland parents” (p. 31). Such textual positionings, Thomas ar-
gues, has consequential effects on education policy formation and edu-
cation reform that specially deals with teacher quality. CDA can there-
fore make transparent and foreground the material effects of discourses
and the way text is crafted to position readers.

89
 But is CDA purely a critical textual practice? What does one do
with the analysis? What is the relevance of a CDA-oriented analysis for
policy analysis? These are important questions to ask in relation to the
relevance of CDA for policy work. This leads me to the third point – a
point made by Sandra Taylor (2004), a policy analyst in Queensland,
Australia. She argues that “CDA, with its emphasis on the discursive
construction of power relations and its commitment to progressive so-
cial change” is useful for “policy activism” (p. 445). In explicating the
connection between policy activism and CDA, and hence, the useful-
ness of CDA for this kind of critical work, Taylor points out that if
policy researchers want to participate in policy debate, their arguments
must first and foremost be informed by the politics of discourse em-
bedded in policy making processes, which a CDA-inspired analysis of
policy text can uncover. She goes on to say that:
Through an understanding of the language of policy, policy activists can help
to keep social democratic discourses and language on policy agenda and ensure
that they are not marginalized or silenced during implementation processes. Us-
ing CDA as a tool, they can find spaces for strategic discursive interventions,
and subvert repressive policies by reading them ‘against the grain’ (p. 446).

Therefore, CDA is no ordinary toolkit for conducting textual analysis;

it has a political commitment geared towards some form of activism to
bring about social change. It is also this political aspect of CDA which
I think can invite trouble in authoritarian contexts where activism is
frowned upon.
In reviewing the usefulness of CDA for policy analysis, I want to
point to a gap in the literature on CDA and that is, CDA practitioners
overlooked that there could be politics of risks involved when CDA is
applied in an authoritarian context. The specific context referred to is
Singapore – a context widely known for its conservative political culture
where dissents and any talks of activism sit uncomfortably in its political
arena.Therefore, strategies and modes of expression must be adapted for
the kind of critical work that CDA does in such a context. Before I
propose how CDA can be adapted and applied in an authoritarian con-
text such as Singapore, I turn to the Singaporean context and discuss the
risky enterprise of CDA and its barriers, for an awareness of the difficul-
ties (read: politics of risks) can be a starting point of working out a more
amenable approach to conducting CDA in an authoritarian context.

90
The politics of risks and the risky enterprise of CDA

The critical goals of CDA for policy analysis are both unsettling and
disruptive. The “political” dimension of CDA and the discourses associ-
ated with it are, I argue, incommensurable discourses in the Singaporean
context, bearing in mind the conservative political culture I mentioned
earlier. CDA is potentially unsettling and disruptive because the dialogical
aspect of CDA, particularly if it is targeted at government discourses,
may be perceived as transgressive, and in Asian culture, challenging au-
thority and/or talking back is (mis)construed as no respect for author-
ity. What is perhaps even more unsettling, however, is the politics of
risks involved.
While recognizing the need to provide examples/incidents of such
punitive accounts, the documentation of such accounts are, however,
far and few in between, and for good reasons. It would only attract
adverse media publicity and serve to reinforce the illiberal and authori-
tarian image of the ruling regime. Yet anecdotal accounts of the back-
lash of critical researchers abound. In some countries, the researcher
may be thrown into prison, be deported or be placed under some sort
of “control orders”; in others, the risk may involve a quiet dismissal,
being transferred or missed out on promotion or tenure.
The lack of concrete evidence notwithstanding, what needs to be
further pointed out is that because these risks are not made known pub-
licly, the ambiguity of what can or cannot be critiqued in the public
sphere contributes to the politics of risk involved. This ambiguity, I ar-
gue, also masks as invitation to self-censorship, which in itself curtails
the kind of critical work that CDA engages in. Furthermore, any kind
of consultation or dialogue must be made on the government’s terms
or negotiated within its shifting discursive boundary. This discursive
boundary is given a local term called the “OB markers” (i. e. out-of-
bound markers). At this point, it is worthwhile recounting the Catherine
Lim saga to illustrate the trapping of the “OB markers” and how read-
ing and writing against the grain can potentially be a risky business in
the Singaporean context.

91
The risky trapping of “OB markers”:
The Catherine Lim saga

In brief, Catherine Lim, a local novelist and linguist, contributed a poli-

tical commentary entitled “One Government, Two Styles” to the na-
tional newspaper, The Straits Times (1994). Lim expressed the view that
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong’s promise of a more open, consultative
approach to leadership had come under the influence of his predeces-
sor’s, Lee Kuan Yew’s no-nonsense style. Lim (1994, p. 12 cited in Lee,
2002, p. 109; Ho, 2000; George, 2000) argued that:
Over the years, a pattern of governance has emerged that is not exactly what
was envisaged. Increasingly, the promised Goh style of people-orientation is being
subsumed under the old style of top-down decisions.

What was to be a critique of state discourses and local politics, exactly

the kind of “writing back” CDA encourages, was, however, subjected
to open rebuke. Lim’s comment did not provoke dialogue. On the con-
trary, her comments incurred the wrath of the Prime Minister. Her com-
ments were not only treated as a personal attack on the government
and its leadership, but also deemed as “disrespectful” and inappropriate
“in the Confucianist “Asian context” (Chua 1994, p. 1 cited in Lee,
2002, p. 109)”. As a consequence, the Prime Minister himself defined
the parameter for political debate, which later became conceptualized
as the “OB markers” or “out-of-bound markers”:
If a person wants to set the agenda for Singapore by commenting regularly on
politics, our [the Government’s] view has been, and it is my view too, that the
person should do this in the political arena. Because if you are outside the poli-
tical arena and influence opinion, and if people believe that your policies are
right, when we know they are wrong, you are not there to account for the
policy (Goh, cited in Chua 1994, p. 1, cited in Lee 2002, p. 109).

The dispute over Lim’s transgression of the “OB markers” illustrates a

number of aspects of CDA and the trapping of risk involved. First, the
respect for authority is potentially a barrier to the operation of CDA.
The respect for a hierarchical structure and authority will only en-
courage reticence and a timorous acritical spirit. This is incompatible
to CDA, as it has no respect for authoritative discourses. Instead, the

92
contentious agenda of CDA calls for questions and critiques, and poli-
tically argues and fights for social justice.
Second, in relation to Catherine Lim’s transgressive act, and the
way she was subsequently rebuked, this episode would serve as deter-
rence to anyone who might wish to comment or engage in public dia-
logue with the government on matters pertaining to policies and its
style of government. Indeed, a culture of fear has been widely perceived
to be the political culture of Singapore. This spells another barrier which
serves to impede the kind of “criticality” that CDA advocates.
Third, the elusive and ambiguous “OB markers” are by themselves
a threat to critique and dialogue, especially when the “out-of-bound”
perimeters are “politically defined from above” (Ho, 2000, p. 443). Fur-
ther, Ho’s point that ‘any issue or policy loosely defined might fall into
the category of “political issues’” is yet another suggestion that doing
CDA in the Singaporean context is potentially a risky business.

Barriers to CDA

The politics of risk aside, there are also barriers that work against the
criticality of CDA in the Singaporean context. In the discursive space
of Singapore, there is an entrenched instrumentality and rationality that
underpins the political and social structure. The logic of instrumental-
ity argues for things practical and beneficial to “national interests”, and
in the Singaporean context, this is invariably linked to the state of the
Singapore economy. Chua (1995) calls this the pragmatic logic and ide-
ology that governs the Singaporean consciousness. It is to this prag-
matic logic that Ismail Talib, a local university professor at the National
University of Singapore, accounted for the lukewarm reception of CDA.
In a rejoinder to an editorial commentary on the barriers to teaching
CDA in Discourse and Society, Talib (1995, p. 567) remarked that “the
growth of CDA . . . may be hampered, rightly or wrongly, by the belief
that it is not really necessary for economic growth and the general well
being of the country, and that it may bring more harm than good”.
While Talib does not explicitly direct his comments to the Singa-
porean context, it would not be presumptuous to conclude that the

93
kind of “criticality” that is valued as cultural capital in the Singapore
political economy is one that recognizes “criticality” as a skill, as well
as one that is transferable and adds value to its economy. Talib’s point
that “CDA may bring more harm than good” may be taken to refer to
the political dimension that CDA advocates. By this reasoning, from
the perspective of ruling groups and government, CDA has a limited
value in the political economy and discursive space of Singapore. Yet
one could argue that ironically it is in such context where CDA might
be needed most. In other words, even if CDA is perceived as not use-
ful for the Singapore government, CDA should not be taken as not
useful in Singapore.
There is a further reason why CDA is prevented from being a fer-
tile analytic tool in the Singaporean context. This has to do with the
way Singaporeans are conditioned to think, act and behave – what
Bourdieu (1977) calls “habitus” through forms of governmentality and
state apparatus employed by the state. While state discourses are used as
“tactics” to discipline and regulate the Singaporean habitus (see Chap-
ter 2), Singaporeans seem conditioned to comfortably inhabit that ha-
bitus. This explains why doing CDA may end up reproducing domi-
nant meanings.
Cherian George (2000, p. 15), an ex-political commentator with
The Straits Times, aptly uses the “Air-conditioned Nation” metaphor
to evoke the “odd” political culture in Singapore, which as the meta-
phor implies, is a paradoxical blend of material comfort and central con-
trol. This appositely explains the political apathy of Singaporeans, as
George (2000, pp. 19–20) argues that Singaporeans in general “have
been tolerant of several aspects of politics that should rest uneasily on a
nation’s conscience” as long as their material comforts were well pro-
vided for.
Rodan (1996) also observed similar sensibilities among the grow-
ing middle-class in the Singaporean society. He argues that it is not more
political power and autonomy that the middle-class seeks, but more
“autonomy as consumers, especially of cultural products” (Rodan, 1996,
p. 19; cf. Chua & Tan, 1999). It is precisely this odd combination of
“comfort” and “control” that, I would argue, constraints and impedes
the “criticality” of CDA; for “comfort” cultivates complacency and pro-
motes the acceptance of the “given” without questioning, whereas “con-
trol” resists opposition and critique. Moreover, it becomes even more

94
difficult to “see through” and read the “gaps and silences” of hegemonic
discourses when these discourses are translated as rationalized practices.
These are some of the challenges that beset CDA practitioners in Sin-
gapore. They have to learn to work with and around the discursive dis-
ciplinary structures in strategic ways so that they do not trespass and
transgress the “OB markers”.
Does this mean the adaptation of CDA to the Singaporean con-
text is a different critical practice? I argue not, as “academic activism”
– a term I borrow from Lazar (2007, p. 146), which she defines as a
way of “raising critical awareness through research and teaching” is in
no way dissimilar to the pedagogical commitment of CDA. I also take
the point from Dominique Maingueneau (2006, p. 229) that “one can
speak of a basic critical orientation for much of the research in dis-
course analysis, even when scholars do not intend to transform soci-
ety” to argue that as much as CDA envisions to bring about social trans-
formation through a critique of discourse/s, one need not necessarily
achieve or pursue the transformative agenda to be considered doing
CDA. Given the risky terrain of doing CDA in Singapore, one needs
to find concession and more importantly, adapt a less risky (note: not
less useful) take on doing CDA.
Hence I suggest a few points to observe when doing CDA in
Singapore. For one, in relation to the choice of text, I suggest that
analyzing a text (whatever mode this may take) outside the regime or
from media or advertisements would be less risky unlike political com-
mentaries. Another point for the discourse analyst to bear in mind is
to avoid commenting on issues related to race, religion and/or ques-
tion the integrity of government leaders, for government elites are
known to fiercely uphold the value of incorruptibility. They also zeal-
ously guard matters related to race and religion because of a brief his-
torical episode of racial riot in the early 60s, and because of Singa-
pore’s multi-racial and multi-religious composition. Third, of significance
to observe is to pursue a less acrimonious agenda of “raising critical
awareness” rather than a more contentious position of “activism”. It is
on the ground of “raising critical awareness”, and in the name of “re-
search”, that I argue CDA can work around the risky terrain of Singa-
pore. It is in this spirit or what Rizvi and Lingard (2010) term
“positionality” that I embark on a critical discourse analysis of the TSLN
document.

95
How text means: The texturing work of the TSLN speech

This section of the chapter is an analysis of Goh’s speech, “Shaping Our

Future:Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”1. In this part of the analysis,
by asking how rather than what a text means, I am more interested in
investigating and foregrounding the way grammatical resources in a
text are used to construct meanings. Following Fairclough (2001, p. 244),
I will demonstrate in the analysis the types of textual work Goh’s speech
performs, in relation to “representing, relating, identifying, and valuing”.
In other words, my analysis primarily serves to show how Goh’s speech
constructs the representations of economic change, and the material
effects of his political speech on the way schools and schooling identities
are represented and conceptualised in the TSLN rhetoric. In effect, Goh’s
speech, I argue, constructs preferred ways of schooling and identities in
the new global economy. Another important focus of analysis also draws
attention to the voices of the representations of education. By foreground-
ing the embedded voices, we will be able to see the textual effects of
power relations hidden in policy documents and policy formation.

Genre strategies in Goh’s speech

I begin my analysis by making explicit the genre features in Goh’s

speech. The genre of a text refers to the way a text is structured and
organised according to the generic conventions and function of a text
(Goatly, 2000; cf. Martin, 2001). That is to say, specific text-types have
a specific text format and organisation. For example, the whole-text
organisation of a fairy tale is different from that of a recipe. A fairy tale
generally follows the narrative structure of story telling typified by a

1 Goh’s TSLN speech is available at <http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/

1997/020697.htm>, last retrieved 4/2010. Because of copyright, I have not re-
produced the entire document in the book. In analyzing the document, how-
ever, it is necessary that I refer to specific chunks of text as corpus of data for
analysis. In the name of scholarship and research, I hope this will not be taken
as an infringement on copyright.

96
setting/orientation-complication-resolution discourse schema, whereas
a recipe is organised in a discourse schema which constitutes step-by-
step procedural instructions. The structure of Goh’s speech, “Shaping
Our Future: Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”, displays a more com-
plicated text structure than a clearly formulaic one. My analysis will
show that Goh’s political speech is embedded in “a network of generic
strategies” (Fairclough, 1995a, p. 86) to accomplish social purposes.
The first section, “Future Wealth Will Depend on Capacity for
Learning”, (paragraphs 1–6) is organised around a discourse schema
identified as a problem-solution structure. Here, Goh first presents “the
future” as a problem which is characterised by “intense competition”,
“rapid change” and unpredictability before he goes on to prescribe “edu-
cation and training” as the solution to the uncertain future. Embedded
in this problem-solution structure is also a stack-like discourse schema
similar to those of an argument (Goatly, 2000). The section begins with
a general statement about the need to foster learning in order for a
nation to sustain economic growth. Then it proceeds to give a stack of
amplifying reasons why the key to a nation’s wealth in the 21st century
is to learn. The amplifying reasons are clearly marked by the enumera-
tors “First”, “Second” and “Third” before restating the claim that “we
have to prepare ourselves for a bracing future. . .”.
The problem-solution structure in the first section of the speech
works ideologically to present the instrumental rationality and efficacy
of the government in solving problems (even if the problems are an-
ticipated and formidable). Next, the stack-like discourse schema is evi-
dently one of constructing a logical argument in support of a timely
education reform, and the shaping of a policy document. The discourse
schema of an argument is made even more obvious as the overarching
structure of the second section, “Education: A Global Reassessment”
(paragraphs 7–13), presents examples or supporting evidence of educa-
tion reform in other countries such as the US, UK and Japan. The text
structure, however, takes a generic shift to a discussion format where the
education system of the US, UK and Japan are evaluated for their
strengths and weaknesses. The discourse markers, “however” (para-
graph 9) and “like” (in paragraph 9) and “yet” (in paragraph 12) are
used to balance up the strengths and the weaknesses of each of the (US,
UK and Japan’s) education systems. In conveying what other countries
are doing to their education systems to meet new economic demands,

97
Goh’s speech takes a balanced approach to show that no one country
has a ‘perfect’ education system, but the way forward is to take stock
and manage education to suit the demands of the new economy.
Having established the argument for change and education reform,
following a discussion and evaluation of what other countries are do-
ing, the next sub-section, “Education for the Future: Thinking Schools,
Learning Nation”, (paragraphs 14–16) begins with the formation of a
policy statement. This section takes on an expository discourse schema
as Goh begins to put forward his new vision of schooling and learning
for Singapore. The expository generic structure works well as part of a
discourse schema for the formulation of a new education policy. In-
stead of a mere suggestion that a new vision of schooling is needed in
new times, the expository genre works to mandate the vision as neces-
sary because “we cannot assume that what has worked well in the past
will work for the future” (paragraph 15), and “the old formulae for suc-
cess are unlikely to prepare our young for the new circumstances and
new problems they will face” (paragraph 15).
In projecting the vision of “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”, Goh
goes on to explain what he means by “Thinking Schools” (paragraph 17–
23) and “Learning Nation” (24–32).These two sections therefore contain
descriptions and explanations of the policy, which is in itself an important
part of the process of policy formation. The text structure in these two
sections therefore follows the generic conventions of an explanation – the
what, why and how of doing things – so that policy is made known and
understood. In making the network of generic strategies in Goh’s speech
explicit, it can be surmised that Goh’s speech works ideologically as a
policy document, albeit this was delivered orally as a keynote address at
a conference. The generic shift from argument, exposition to pedagogy
constitutes part of the promotional nature of a policy document.

Wor(l)ding the future as “crisis”

This section of the analysis focuses on Paragraphs 1 to 6 of Goh’s speech.

What may not at first seem obvious in a text is that the choice of voca-
bulary classifies things, people and the abstract into categories and sub-

98
groups to construct a representation of the world and its belief system
(Goatly, 2000). Fairclough (1989) refers to the patterning and wording
in a text as “classification schemes” (cf. Kamler, 1994; Goatly, 2000,
p. 64 & 65). These schemes are grouped for patterns of co-occurrence,
semantically related lexical items, denotations and connotative mean-
ings, grammatical metaphors and other distinctive semantic patterns
(Fairclough, 1989, 2001). My analysis of Goh’s speech is drawn to the
representation of the “21st century” or “the future” as the “text popula-
tion” (Talbot 1992, cited in Goatly, 2000, p. 64) points semantically to
this classification scheme. The lexical items associated with this category
(apparent in Table 4.1) are charted below.

Table 4.1 Lexical Classification

The 21st century

an intensely global future
Diminishing barriers
Competition between cities . . . will be intense
No guarantee
Knowledge and innovation will be absolutely critical
Human innovation
Organised human mastery of technology
Companies and nations organised themselves to generate, show and apply new
technologies and ideas . . .
It will be one of change
. . . increasingly rapid change
. . . change as a permanent state
Change will be unpredictable
A future of intense competition and shifting competitive advantages
A future where technologies and concepts are replaced at an increasing pace
A future of changing values
A future that we cannot really predict
The world today is very different from the world 10 or 20 years ago
Change will occur at even a faster rate
The world in 10 or 20 years times . . . radically different

The inherent “properties” of the “21st century” or “the future” are out-
lined in this classification scheme. Here, the 21st century is presented as
intricately related to a borderless world, a competitive economic en-

99
vironment, the use of new technologies, rapid change and innovation.
In fact, the intrinsic properties of the future are itemised in the con-
struction of the future. The discourse marker, “first”, “second” and “third”
discursively lists the 21st century as partly actual and partly potential.
There is no attempt at exploring this representation of the 21st cen-
tury through a systematic explanation of why, what and how the fu-
ture is or could be (Fairclough, 2000a). For example, in the assertion
that “no country or region will have permanent advantage”, the cause
and effect are omitted.The textual effect of such a representation presents
the 21st century not as a mere conjecture but as ‘truth’, particularly as
this claim to the ‘truth’ is authenticated by the authority of the Prime
Minister himself. Correspondingly, the 21st century also demands spe-
cific skills and knowledge, and these are also itemised as “knowledge
and innovation”, the ability to “apply new technologies”, to display a
“mastery of technology” and to “generate ideas”. Indeed, these lexical
choices point to the language of new capitalism which Fairclough claims
works ideologically to impose a new representation of the world. New
discourses are therefore used to project new social identities and knowl-
edge about the new work order (cf. Gee et al., 1996; Fairclough, 2000a).
In the construction of “the future”, there are no explicit agents.
Instead of attributing the agency to managerial elites or transnational
corporations, the agents are nominalised as abstract entities and things,
identified as “human innovation”, “increasingly rapid change”, “mas-
tery of technology” and “competition”. Nominalisation works to trans-
form a process into a thing or noun (Fairclough, 1989, 2000a; cf. Goatly,
2000, p. 76). For example, instead of attributing “competition” to a spe-
cific multinational corporation, ‘nouning’ the clause “competition be-
tween cities, countries, sub-regions will be intense” leaves the agency
unclear. There is no specification of who is doing the act of compet-
ing. Hence, “competition” becomes a real, material phenomenon of the
future.
As well as constructing the future as a real, material phenomenon,
what is striking about the construction of the future is the representa-
tion of the future as an era of ‘crisis’. The transitivity pattern alludes to
this negative construction. According to Halliday’s (1994) systemic func-
tional grammar, “transitivity” is a semantic concept that shows us how
meaning is represented in a clause. Briefly, Halliday identifies three types
of processes that are used to project the experience of the world. These

100
processes are actions (i. e., material processes), states of mind (i. e., mental
processes) or simply states of being (i. e., relational processes). In other
words, the “wor(l)ding” of text conceptualises and represents the social
world, as well as tells us who the participants are and what they are
doing to each other. These processes can be further grouped into two
broad categories belonging to actional and relational processes (Oktar,
2001). The former deals mainly with material, mental and verbal proc-
esses, whereas the latter establishes a relation between two entities or
between an entity and a quality.
My analysis of the transitivity pattern in relation to the construc-
tion of “the future” shows predominantly relational processes. For
example:

Table 4.2 Relational Processes

. . . it (referring to the future) (Carrier) will be an intensely global future (Attribute),

with diminishing barriers (Attribute) . . .

Competition between cities, countries, sub-regions and regions (Carrier) will be

intense (Attribute).

[ ] country or region (Carrier) will have [no] permanent advantages (Attribute)

There (Carrier) is no guarantee (Attribute) that . . .

. . . it (Carrier) will be one of change (Attribute), and increasingly rapid change

(Attribute).

Significantly, the representation of the future is underscored by the negative

connotations of the attribute in the clauses. There is a sense of ‘crisis’
suggested, brought on by the unpredictability of the future and the va-
garies of change. The “overwording” of the lexical item “change” (which
occurs six times) and “the future” (used repeatedly five times) further
shows a “preoccupation with some aspect of reality – which may indi-
cate that it is a focus of ideological struggle” (Fairclough, 1989, p. 115).
The overwording foregrounds that change is an inevitable process which
will be a characteristic of the future; however, constructing the future as
a crisis works ideologically to legitimise the intervention of the govern-
ment and its managerial role in managing crisis. Politically, generating
narratives of national crisis has been a form of “governmentality”, in a

101
Foucauldian (1991) sense, in the one-party dominated political hege-
mon of Singapore. As Heng and Devan (1992, p. 343) have pointed out:
[. . .] by repeatedly focusing on the fragility of the new nation, its ostensible
vulnerability to every kind of exigency, the state’s originating agency is periodi-
cally reinvoked and ratified, its access to wide-ranging instruments of power in
the service of national protection continually consolidated.

Here in the context of Goh’s TSLN speech, the fragility of the state is
again cast in the narrative of crisis (cf. Rodan, 1993a). This crisis is en-
twined around the sustainability of Singapore’s economic growth, es-
pecially when intense economic competition poses as a greater threat
for a small nation like Singapore. What belies the representation of cri-
sis is the anxiety that Singaporeans may become lukewarm and com-
placent, hence lagging behind other more competitive economies. As
with every invention of crises such as the crisis of graduate women
not reproducing enough (Heng & Devan, 1992), moral crises of the
Singapore society (Kuah, 1997), the crisis of a lack of foreign talent
(see Chapter 7), these crises offer opportunities for the PAP govern-
ment to intervene as state managers and showcase its strength of man-
aging and resolving problems of every kind. This is turn grants them
the legitimacy to rule. The crisis of the uncertain and competitive fu-
ture, as Goh begins in his introductory speech, is nevertheless given a
quick ‘fix’ in a matter of five paragraphs. The “administrative appara-
tus” (Foucault, 1991) used to counter this crisis is a new “education
and training” policy that is packaged to meet the new economic im-
peratives.

Discourses at work

Before articulating his vision of “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”,

Goh builds up his case for education change by giving a snapshot of
what the US, UK and Japan are doing to their education system. There
are specific discourses that are drawn upon in his global reassessment
of education and later, the conceptualisation of TSLN policy. As I will
illuminate through the analysis of the policy document, the discourses

102
used have productive and discursive effects (Carabine, 2001; Foucault,
1980; Hall, 2001; see also Luke, 1997). First, it produces knowledge on
and about “global” education reform that is closely aligned to economic
realities. Second, this knowledge then works through “local” discursive
practices to construct preferred schooling identities and professional iden-
tities.
In what follows, I want to analyse how Goh’s speech represents
education systems in the US, UK and Japan, and the discourses that
are used in this construction.
First, in relation to the strengths of the American education sys-
tem, we note that:

Table 4.3 Identifying Discourses

Paragraph 8 The Americans . . . produce highly creative, entrepreneurial individuals.

Their best schools produce well-rounded, innovative students . . .
Their academic institutions and research laboratories . . . infused with
entrepreneurial spirit.
They have developed strong links between academia and industry,
society and government.

Here, the American education system is infused with an economising

discourse that valorises the inter-relations between educational priori-
ties and economic concerns (cf. Ozga, 2000). In other words, educa-
tion is concerned with producing attributes and dispositions that are
of service to the economy. The economising agenda is clearly suggested
by the tropes of “creative, entrepreneurial individuals”, “well-rounded,
innovative students”, “entrepreneurial spirit”, “academic and industry”
linkage.These noun phrases, while patently identifying selective attributes
and schooling dispositions, also reflect and constitute the language of
new capitalism (Gee et al., 1996).
Despite their strengths, the American education system is cast in a
discourse of “crisis”. The same can also be said of the UK and Japan.
What is striking is that there are no explanations or logical accounts
that detail how the crisis comes about. The crisis merely emerges out
of nowhere and is treated as a factual occurrence. In the US, the crisis
is the result of “the low average levels of literacy and numeracy among
the young”, the “watered-down curriculum” and “a tyranny of low

103
expectations”, whereas in the UK, they are faced with “a drift in stand-
ards” nation-wide. For the Japanese it is a case of a conjectural “worry”
that its current education system is not keeping up with what is re-
quired of the new knowledge-driven industries.
These layering of discourses embody particular ideologies (Fair-
clough, 1989). The crisis discourse on education works ideologically
with the discourse of management to legitimatise state intervention and
education reform. In other words, a discourse on state-led management
and organisation of education reform is complicit with the crisis con-
struction of the education system. The overlapping of discourses
foregrounds the relevancy and efficacy of an education policy that is
intertwined with economics and the state. Thus in the US, the agency
of education reform is attributed to “President Clinton’s Call to Ac-
tion for “a bold national plan” that “introduce(s) national standards and
national tests” and the provision of the Internet in every classroom. In
the UK, it is also “the new Government” that sets the education agenda
of “levelling up” and “not levelling down”. As for Japan, it is an educa-
tion policy that looks into “strengthening post-graduate education “ and
a “revamp” of university education.
In sum, discourses are productive as they produce the objects spo-
ken of as real (Carabine, 2001). In the context of the speech, a certain
truth about the “crisis” of the economic realities of the world and the
necessity to re-align education priorities to meet new economic im-
peratives are produced. As well as constructing regimes of truth, dis-
courses are also fused with power/knowledge that are re-worked to
produce discursive effects in ‘local’ institutional settings and cultural fields.
The build-up throughout Goh’s speech, from the construction of “the
future” as crisis to the global “crisis” of education, has discursive and
material effects on the specific education trajectory for Singapore edu-
cation. In addition, the flow of discourses within the institution of
schooling has regulatory and disciplinary effects on the formation of
specific subjectivities and social identities (Danaher et al., 2000; Foucault,
1980; see also Hall, 2001; Ranson, 1997). These preferred subjectivities
and social identities can be easily mapped out according to classifica-
tion schemes (as in the previous section) as Goh explains his con-
ceptualization of “Thinking Schools” and “Learning Nation”. I have
identified these schemes as vision of schooling and schooling identi-
ties.

104
Table 4.4 Vision of Schooling and Schooling Identities
Vision of Schooling
Learning will not end in the school
The task of education must provide
core knowledge and skills, and habits
of learning
Critical difference that education will
make
Relook education system
Assessing their strengths and weaknesses
Place reforms to better prepare for . . .
the future
Total learning environment
Develop future generations
Undertaking a fundamental review of
its curriculum
Develop the creative thinking skills and
learning skills required for the future
Cut back on the amount of content
knowledge
Use IT widely to develop
communication skills
Strengthen National Education
Develop stronger bonds between pupil
and a desire to contribute to something
larger than themselves
Thinking schools must be the crucibles
for questioning and searching . . . to
forge this passion for learning among
our young
Thinking schools will also redefine the
role of teachers
Every school must be a model learning
organisation
Teachers and principals will constantly
look out for new ideas and practices,
and continuously refresh their own
knowledge.
Schooling Identities
The capacity of its people to learn
Their imagination.
Ability to seek out new technologies
. . . and apply
Collective capacity to learn
Education and training are central
How people learn and adapt
Learn continuously throughout their life
Can think for themselves
Thinking and committed citizens
Capable of making good decisions to
keep Singapore vibrant
Teachers and students to spend more
time on projects that can develop
(creative thinking and learning skills)
Retain mastery over the core
knowledge and concepts
Retain high standards to stretch all our
pupils and keep them striving for
excellence
A passion for learning
Have the desire and aptitude to
continue discovering new knowledge
...
The capacity to learn will define
excellence in future
105
 Teaching will itself be a learning
profession
Teachers must be given time to reflect,
learn and keep up-to-date
Give more autonomy to schools
Teachers and principals can devise their
own solutions to problems.
Thinking schools will be sites of
learning for everyone.
Schools will provide lessons on how
policies are working on the ground, and
give feedback on whether policies need
to be changed.
Knowledge spiralling up and down will
be a defining feature of education for
the future.

As mentioned, discourses produce subjects, and more specifically, sub-

jects that embody particular forms of knowledge embedded in the dis-
course (Hall, 2001). By charting out the lexical resources and classify-
ing them into schemes, we can see the way in which discourses are
institutionalised to produce and construct subject-positions within the
disciplinary boundary of the school and education policy. From the
analysis, it is not only preferred schooling identities that are spoken into
being, but what constitutes schooling, and the professional identities of
teachers are also defined and imbricated in the global discourses on
economic change and education reform.
What we can deduce from the analysis of the document is the recon-
stitution of schools, and more importantly, the selected subjectivities that
constitute and govern the Singaporean habitus. In the name of “reform”,
the Singaporean subject is constructed as having multiple identities, pos-
sessing attributes of creativity, thinking and applying knowledge. Added
to these are the tenacity and passion for learning not for selfish gains but
for the benefits of the larger Singaporean community and society.Through
the construction of schooling identities, the governing practice of the
state is clearly exemplified by the “administrative apparatus” of a national
education policy to steer and shape the Singaporean consciousness for
social action and as participatory citizens in changing economic condi-
tions. Next, my analysis is directed at the use of language to assert control.

106
Language of bureaucratisation and control

One striking observation of Goh’s speech is the recurrent use of the

first person pronoun, “we”. This is not uncommon as it has been pointed
out that spoken discourse involves greater use of the first person pro-
noun to create a sense of personal involvement and solidarity, which is
evident, in particular, in political speeches ( Johnson, 1994; Wilson, 1990).
The use of the first person pronoun in Goh’s speech is, however, not
so straightforward as the exact reference of “we” can often be difficult
to identity (Schaffner, 1997). This is because “we” can be used as the
“inclusive” we and/or the “exclusive” we (Fairclough, 1989; Wilson,
1990; Goatly, 2000). Fairclough (1989) explains that the use of “inclu-
sive” we makes an implicit authorial claim on behalf of the addressee(s)
and others, at the expense of the fact that there could be divisions of
interest. In a sense, the “inclusive” we functions as the hegemonic “we”,
normalizing differences, oppositions as well as conflicts. “We” can, how-
ever, also be used strategically to signal exclusivity. In other words, when
the “exclusive” we is used, the reader/addressee is not part of what is
spoken of or referred to (Goatly, 2000; Fairclough, 1989).
In the analysis, I illustrate how the Prime Minister constructs shift-
ing meanings of “we” to express ideological stances. More than just to
express political alliances and solidarity, my analysis of the document
shows that “we” is used for constructing social identities through the
assigning of responsibilities and roles to specific target social groups and
institutions. In that regard, the use of “we” reflects power relations and
hence functions ideologically as a bureaucratic language of control (as
befits that of a policy document).
There are two instances where “we” is used differently. First, the
inclusive “we” is used to refer to the conference participants at the In-
ternational Conference on Thinking, whom one would expect, con-
sists of academics, teachers, principals and conference presenters. The
pronoun “we” also has a broader reference to Singaporeans in general.
This is because “we” is used to construct common ground and goals
about the future of Singapore. Hence, the “we” is used to co-construct
the shared responsibility and partnership of nation building. Some ex-
amples are:

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Table 4.5 The “Inclusive” We

Paragraph 5 We have to prepare ourselves for a Inclusive “we” =

bracing future. the government +
Singaporeans
Paragraph 14 As we prepare for the future, Inclusive “we” =
the government +
Singaporeans
Paragraph 14 But we must devise our own solutions, Inclusive “we” =
to preserve our own strengths and the government +
overcome our own limitations. Singaporeans
Paragraph 14 We must chart our own future. Inclusive “we” =
the government +
Singaporeans
Paragraph 15 But we must ensure that our young Inclusive “we” =
can think for themselves the government +
Singaporeans
Paragraph 25 Our collective tolerance for change . . . Inclusive “our” =
will determine how we cope with the nation
an uncertain future.
Paragraph 25 We must make learning a national Inclusive “we” =
culture. the nation

Here the duty of preparing for the future is not just the government’s.
There is the implicit construction of specific identities and roles in terms
of partnership and active citizenship as the use of inclusive “we” as-
signs Singaporeans the responsibility of preparing Singapore’s future.
Therefore, we can surmise that the collective “we” is used to spread
the load of responsibility whenever implicit reference to nation-build-
ing is suggested.
This partnership is, however, not constructed as equal. It is directed
from the centre as evinced by the use of the “exclusive” we. The ex-
clusive “we” is used when the division of labour for instituting educa-
tion change is clearly set up. For instance, the “we” in the following
examples refer to the government and the Ministry of Education (MOE)
as the agency for instituting change. Schools and teachers are also im-
plicated as the “exclusive” we. They are the ones with the resources
and expertise; hence, “we” signifies the exclusive powerful agent.

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Table 4.6 The “Exclusive” We

Paragraph 14 We will learn and adapt from foreign Exclusive “we” =

experts where useful . . . government + MOE
Paragraph 23 We will also give more autonomy to Exclusive “we” =
schools . . . the government +
MOE
Paragraph 19 Whichever way we cut back and Exclusive “we” =
redefine the curriculum, we will ensure MOE + the
our students retain . . . government
Paragraph 22 We will take into account in reviewing Exclusive “we” =
our school curriculum. the government +
MOE
Paragraph 23 We will also give more autonomy to Exclusive “we” =
schools . . . the government +
MOE
Paragraph 18 We will use IT widely to develop Exclusive “we” =
communication skills . . . MOE + the
government + schools
Paragraph 18 We will also strengthen National Exclusive “we” =
Education the government +
MOE + schools
Paragraph 20 What is critical, however, is that we fire Exclusive “we” =
in our students a passion for learning . . . schools + teachers

The “exclusive we” implicitly sets up a hierarchical power relation and

points to the top-down approach in instituting change. Semantically,
the authorial “we” is further realised by the declarative mood of the
sentences/utterances. Declaratives are statements that make categorical
assertions (Fairclough, 1989, 2001). Bearing in mind that the text ana-
lysed is a speech, the Prime Minister is positioned here as the giver of
information, and symbolic leader of change explaining the course taken
in preparing for the future. This establishes him in a position of power.
The asymmetrical power relationship is further realised in terms of the
modality of his utterances. Fairclough (1989, 2001) explains that mo-
dality tells us the authority of the speaker/writer and, clearly, the use
of present tense verbs and the strong modal “will” demonstrate and as-
sert both the power and the commitment of the “exclusive” we.
There are further textual examples of the asymmetrical power rela-
tions exemplified in the following utterances:

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Table 4.7 Implications of modality

Paragraph 19 We must also retain the high standards needed . . .

Paragraph 19 Whatever we do, we must not abandon these fundamentals as some
others have done.
Paragraph 19 We must not level down.

Here the “must” signals more than obligation. It functions almost like
a command, an imperative that leaves one with no alternatives. In
this way, the assertions become non-dialogical instructions, imposed
from “above”. The discourse structure of asymmetrical power relations,
rationality, and the imperatives of “must-do-this”, “must-not-do-that”,
“will-do-this” and “ have-to-do-this-and-that” clearly reflect a mana-
gerial discourse that is embedded in the bureaucratic process of
polic(y)ing that is directed from a centre – a polic(y)ing that mandates
preferred ways of schooling and constructing the Singaporean habitus
and subjectivities. Therefore, following Fairclough (1989) and others,
I would argue that the use of language is not neutral, and that the
textual effects of bureaucracy and social control are constituted in lan-
guage (Sarangi & Slembrouck, 1996).

Summary of analysis

On the whole, my analysis shows that discourses can be analysed at

various levels, from the basic constituents, such as the micro-linguistic
features of the text, to the discursive formations, such as the way power
is exercised in the socio-political structure of the Singaporean society.
More importantly, my analysis illuminates that discourses are associated
and embedded with “games of truth” in specific fields of knowledge,
discourse structure and social institutions (Foucault, 1997). For exam-
ple, the micro-textual analysis of the lexical choice of Goh’s speech il-
luminates the textual construction of wor(l)ding the future as “crisis”.
In effect, Goh’s TSLN speech constructs a certain “truth” about “the
future” and about the economic realities that confront the Singaporean
society. His statements operate as “truth” by virtue of the scientific dis-

110
courses that are alluded to, such as the discourse of the economy, glo-
balization and education. Furthermore, because Goh is the embodiment
and symbol of the government, his discourses have “truth effects”. There-
fore, the “crisis” representation of globalization and education are not
crises in themselves until they are spoken in a discourse and tied within
the discursive practice of social institutions.
In addition, my analysis points to the power effects of discourses. It
is easy to point to a central source of power, and argue that power is
linear and flows from a direct source. Ostensibly, Goh’s speech follows
the linearity of traditional political and bureaucratic power structure, but
my analysis of Goh’s speech points to the contrary. Instead of a central
source of power, power is disseminated and diffused into discursive flows
(Danaher et al., 2000; Ranson, 1997). Thus, power does not reside in a
“fixed” locale. It circulates between and within different fields, institu-
tions, and other discourse formations. This is evident in Goh’s speech in
that while he exercised his power as a bureaucrat steering the education
pathway through education reform, this power is in turn transferred to
associate fields, such as the curriculum planners, principals and teachers.
After all, his speech functions primarily to announce his TSLN vision
without the intricate details of how this is going to be achieved.
In relation to power effects, there is another sense in which dis-
course is productive. It disciplines the Singaporean habitus and the
(re)making of the social subject. It is through social practices on the
subject(s) that the subjectification of the attributes such as the “think-
ing” Singaporean, the “creative” and “entrepreneur” Singaporean and
the like are premised. At the macro- and micro-textual level, Goh’s
speech establishes the norms about education pathway, schooling and
schooling identities. In other words, normalization establishes a preferred
pathway of doing school and producing preferred schooling identities.
In a sense, Goh’s vision of schooling has regulatory effects in that prin-
cipals, schools and students are to aim and work towards the desired
outcomes in the TSLN vision.
My analysis also shows that there is notable “silences” as opposed
to the dominant voices in Goh’s speech. In the first place, the con-
struction of the future is cast as an economic “crisis”. It does not say
how the uncertainty of the future will affect individual lives, the wid-
ening gap between the rich and poor or the environment for that matter.
The dominant ideology is about building the Singapore economy. An-

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other notable “absence” is the discourse of “crisis” about the Singapore
education system. In assessing the global education system, Goh men-
tions the educational crisis in the US, UK and Japan, but when it comes
to the Singapore case, he says matter-of-factly that “Singapore has a
strong education system, one that is widely recognised for having pro-
duced high levels of achievement among pupils of all abilities”. While
it is true that there are strengths in the Singapore’s education system,
its system is by no means perfect. Ideologically, this absence about the
“crisis” of the Singapore education works to “correct” the commonsense
assumption that every education reform is premised on some funda-
mental flaws. In the case of Singapore, it is the global condition that
requires a new emphasis and vision in its education system.
Finally, teachers are an important part of education policy but their
voices are not heard. This notable “absence” reiterates exactly whose
views are privileged, and the top-down/prescriptive technocratic ap-
proach to education policy formation in Singapore as was argued in
Chapter 3.

Conclusion: A post-reflection on CDA

Given the discussions on the risky enterprise of doing CDA in the Sin-
gaporean context, by way of conclusion I reflect on my own dilemma
and “struggles” in using CDA as the analytical framework to analyse
the Prime Minister’s speech on “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”.
I am constantly reminded of my own subject positioning and reader
position when analysing Goh’s speech. For me, reading Goh’s speech
was for a while “beyond reason” (Janks, 2002)2 in that my own critical
sensibilities and training in CDA were momentarily suspended because

2 Janks (2002) critiques Fairclough’s three-layered approach to Critical Discourse

Analysis, namely, text analysis, processing analysis and social analysis. She argues
that what is glossed over is the territory beyond reason. By that she means the
dimension of “desire and identification, pleasure and play, the taboo and the
transgressive” ( Janks 2002, p. 9). I use Janks’ notion of “beyond reason” nar-
rowly to mean the affective identification with the text that had somewhat para-
lysed my critical sensibilities.

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Goh’s speech examined and presented issues that were of relevance to
me. As a Singaporean citizen, an ex-teacher, and now an academic re-
searcher on Singapore education, the cultural proximity of Goh’s speech
affected my reader position. My immediate response was that it all made
sense, and seemed so transparent that there was nothing at all to dis-
pute about what Goh had to say. It is this level of identification that
had somewhat limited my reasoning.
Moreover, I was resisting a political reading that would invite risks.
Admittedly, my fears of the elusive and discursive “OB markers” had
somewhat unconsciously arrested my critical sensibilities. Yet I was not
ready to compromise my engagement in a critical analysis that reflects
“dominant deconstructions” ( Janks, 2000, p. 18). It was in this quan-
dary that I began my analysis.
As I reflect on the relevance and usefulness of CDA, I anticipate
that the “space” for its use will be contested and has to be negotiated.
This is because CDA is not just another technique for doing textual
analysis. Fairclough (2001, p. 230) asserts, CDA “seeks to discern con-
nections between language and other elements in social life which are
often opaque” and “is committed to progressive change”. This is where
I locate potential problems with the use of CDA in the Singapore con-
texts. How will a political structure that constantly imposes its authori-
tarian views respond to a CDA analysis that sheds insights on say the
operation of political power that imposes an ideological viewpoint at
the expense of popular consensus? Is there a possibility or is it permis-
sible all to seek redress and social action? What if “academic activism”
is taken into the public sphere? What if Singaporean students who used
to be passive observers begin to speak and write against authority? Will
this “speaking and writing back” be considered as valuable in the cur-
rent education paradigm of promoting independent thinking in schools
or will this be frowned upon as being disrespectful? If there are discur-
sive limits, where does one push the limit to?
These are troubling and unsettling questions that I have no an-
swer for. One can only hope that the political culture of Singapore will
change with time. In any case, any kind of “critical” analysis without
the ‘political’ dimension is better than nothing at all. At least, one is
aware of the social and cultural construction of “knowledge” and
“truth”, and the operation of “power”. Knowing how discourses work
is a step closer to social emancipation and transformation.

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114
5. The Visualization of Education Policy
A Videological Analysis of Learning Journeys

Introduction

This chapter continues the analysis of the TSLN education policy docu-
ments. The visual education policy document analyzed in this chapter
is an episode of a documentary entitled Learning Journeys that was broad-
cast on the national TV in Singapore. Briefly, Learning Journeys, which
was produced in 2000, documented how schools in Singapore were car-
rying out the mandates of policy initiatives spelled out in the TSLN
policy three years after it came into effect.
The attention to the visualization of education policy is an area of
study yet to be developed and explored. As Sandra Taylor et al. (1997)
have carefully traced the trajectories of research in policy analysis, there
is no analytical work done related to the visual component in policy text
that increasingly mediates the process of policy formation and dissemina-
tion. While a recent special issue in Journal of Education Policy: Education
Policy and the Media (2004) assembled seven articles that investigate the
nexus between the media and the politics of education policy-making,
the analytic focus of these papers are, however, largely confined to print-
based media. Situating this chapter in the larger argument of what Fair-
clough (2000b, p. 3) has called the “‘mediatization’ of politics and govern-
ment” – where he argues that the media is instrumental in the production
and dissemination of public policies – this chapter advances the schol-
arship of “media-ted education policy production” (Thomson, 2004,
p. 252) by developing a visual methodology, what I call “videological
analysis”, that deals with education policy texts that are mediated visually.
In my analysis, I am interested to find out how the work of poli-
tics or government is done in the visualization of education policy, par-
ticularly when the media in Singapore is state-controlled. My analysis
specifically draws attention to the concept of “visual design”, which
I argue works ideologically to constrain the semiotic meaning poten-

115
tial of visual texts to a preferred reading path, and that “design” textually
contributes to a closed rather than an open, multiple or contradictory
reading of the text.
My textual analysis will point out that the televisual images in the
documentary, Learning Journeys, prioritized the construction of preferred
schooling identities and what schooling ought to be in the imperatives
of changing economic conditions. More importantly, my analysis will
show that the packaging of the design of the documentary precludes
any form of public scrutiny and critical debates about the unevenness
and disjuncture between policy articulation and practice. Therefore, this
chapter argues that an understanding of the concept of visual design in
education policy documents and materials is significant in the way
visual-related policy texts are read, as any oppositional readings must
first recognized that the design in visual policy texts is situated and in-
tertwined in the complex interplay of institutional constraints, ideo-
logical underpinnings, political assumptions and priorities.
This chapter is organized in the following directions. First, I con-
ceptualize visual design as it has significant implications for the prac-
tices of looking at visual-related documents. Second, I provide a con-
textual understanding of the production of the documentary, Learning
Journeys, before outlining a visual methodology for conducting televisual
images. Finally, I proceed to analyze the Learning Journeys documentary.

Conceptualizing Visual Design

In technical terms, ‘design’ has to do with the pre-production stage in

visual communication, where ideas are tentatively planned and con-
ceived. The task of visual design is usually the province of specialists in
creative industries, whose creative and artistic sensibilities are much
sought after (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). For example, the art direc-
tor in an advertising firm shoulders the responsibility of conceptualiz-
ing the visual design, complementing the work of the copywriter in
the production of an advertisement.
While the design and production of visual images remain the do-
mains of the specialists in creative industries, it must not be taken for

116
granted that their so-called creative sensibilities and their knowledge of
design are intrinsic to their vocational talent and intuitive knowledge.
I argue that their inventory of design knowledge, whether consciously or
unconsciously, is always a motivated practice, and a practice that involves
the selection from a wide repertoire of semiotic resources. Hence, “de-
sign” also has a semiotic dimension. It follows that “design” in visual
culture and communication is a production of sign system and meaning,
vested with ideological interests. As a sign system, the design of visual
communication is contingent on the choice and transformation of the use
of semiotic materials (Barnard, 1998; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001).
With the advent of new imaging technologies, the design of visual
images has become increasingly more complicated and sophisticated than
ever before. The production of monomodal visuals has become some-
thing of the past, unless its use is intended to achieve a specific mean-
ing. In many areas of public communication, multimodality has become
the tapestry of visual culture (New London Group, 1996; Kress, 1997;
Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). In textual terms, multimodality is the de-
sign of visual images that incorporates a combination of textual modes
such as audio, visual, linguistic, computer animation and graphics. The
notion of design has therefore wider implications in the multimodal
textual landscape. It implies choice, “a deliberateness about choosing
the modes for representation, and the framing for that representation”
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 45). In other words, in the conception
of a visual design, the practitioner might ask: “what modes to use for
what segments. . .how to arrange the content. . .how to arrange the
ensemble of modes in the structure. . .” (Kress & van Leeuwen 2001,
p. 51). These decisions are by no means arbitrary or purely a reflection
of visual aesthetics and taste, but are always embedded in wider ideo-
logical interests and semiotic practice.
Relatedly, that design means choice tells us that visual culture and
communication is a selective tradition – a tradition that mediates “par-
tial vision” ( Jenks, 1995, p. 8). That is to say, from the production point
of view, there are many possible ways of designing an image. For
example, the design of an educational brochure or promotional mate-
rials of a university would entail basic decisions such as colour schemes,
the choice of framing and staging the mis-en-scene. My point is that
selection ultimately focuses on particular aspects of social reality ( Jenks,
1995) and shapes a preferred way of reading.

117
 Correspondingly, the many choices of visual design have wider im-
plications on the practices of looking. Although visual images are en-
coded, in a sense, with dominant or shared meanings, they can also be
contested and used in ways that do not conform to these meanings
(Sturken and Cartwright, 2001). Because the selection of design is not
innocent, we need to ask who we see and who is omitted; who is privi-
leged within our scopic regime and who is disadvantaged; and whose
interests the visual representations serve? (Robins, 1996; Rogoff, 1998).
These are important questions to ask in our visually text-saturated land-
scape.
Significantly, the technology that enables the design of visuals has
not only enhanced design but also the social meaning of visuals. The
recourse to the history of visual technologies would show how “de-
sign” has evolved with modern technologies. From the heydays of an-
cient art – the primary mode of (ancient) visual culture – to our present
time of electronic technology, computer and digital imaging, the con-
cept of design has changed from re-presenting reality to one of reproduc-
tion (Sturken & Cartwright, 2001). In other words, the notion of “real-
ism” in the traditional and historical modes of representation has been
reconfigured to “fake realism”. Take the invention of the digital cam-
era or the scanner as a case in point. As mentioned earlier, because digi-
talized images can be stored, retrieved, “doctored” for perfection and
reproduced, the malleability of visual images raises important questions
about photographic truth, realism and authenticity (Lister & Wells, 2001;
Mirzoeff, 1999; Price & Wells, 2000; Sturken & Cartwright, 2001).
What all this means in visual culture and communication is that
firstly, the boundary between seeing and believing is increasingly be-
coming blurred. As Lyotard (1993, p. 77) has also argued: “Modernity,
wherever it appears, does not occur without a shattering of belief, with-
out a discovery of the lack of reality in reality – a discovery linked to
the invention of other realities”. Secondly, visual design reproduces
a reality that has no referent. Baudrillard (1983) describes such a world
as a “simulacrum” and a “hyperreality”. In other words, visual culture
creates models of a real world without origin or reality. The simulacrum
is a way of visualizing what we want reality to be, rather than what
reality is. This is also the line of argument I take in relation to the
televisual images in the Learning Journeys documentary. I argue that
the televisual images project a hyperreality of schooling as a way of

118
envisioning and charting the trajectories of education change in “new
times”.
The effect of simulacrum in visual culture and communication must
be referred back to the concept of design, where the design of visual
images can be objectified in a dominant narrative representation, and
the viewer, positioned to take a preferred reading path. What I am sug-
gesting here is that design follows a set of conventions and rules or
what Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001) refer to as “visual gram-
mar”. They observe that these rules of design may be unconsciously
formulated as a result of habitual practice or consciously applied as a
codified design practice (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).
My own “take” is that visual design is a codified practice where
technical codes of visual design are learned and applied to achieve the
intended visual effect or communication outcome. For example, the
design and production of Learning Journeys follows a set of generic con-
ventions and format that is typical of documentaries. One could imag-
ine the stages of design prior to and after the production stage, and the
many levels of planning and decisions that go into such a production.
The visual techniques of the production of a documentary are for ex-
ample highly generic. It replicates the format of news, where a pre-
senter and/or use of voice-over offers direct commentary to the visual
images, as Wilson (1993, p. 145; cf. Hartley, 1982) explains, “the task of
the presenter is to ‘presence’ the text’s significances in the time and space
of the audience, mediating them through discourses of narration and
description”. More importantly, the role of the presenter must be un-
derstood as performing an ideological closure of the televisual text,
where the voice-over controls the preferred path of viewing. My analysis
later will draw attention to the reading path that is set up by such a
visual technique in the visual segments of Learning Journeys Episode 1.
The importance of visual design must therefore not be taken for granted
to be a domain of aesthetic practice, but understood as a way of putting
together semiotic resources to re-present a particular version of the world.
Given that there are many broad approaches to visual analysis, I
make clear and foreshadow here that my analysis does not focus on
the intrinsic instructional values of the tele-images in the documen-
tary, Learning Journeys. Neither is the focus directed at the criticisms of
the supposedly ideological or hidden messages. Instead, my analytic fo-
cus is on the design of these images. I ask how design in visual culture/

119
documents is instrumental in re-presenting an unproblematic education
reform and setting up preferred reading pathways as well as meanings
of schooling and schooling identities in the Learning Journeys documen-
tary. Before I begin my textual analysis of the Learning Journeys docu-
mentary, the following section will provide the context of Learning Jour-
neys and the methodology for conducting visual analysis.

Learning Journeys: Context and Visual Methodology

Learning Journeys is a documentary that was broadcast on the national

TV in July 2000. Comprising an eight-episode series, this documen-
tary features the “context of practice” (Bowe, et al. 1992, p. 21) of the
“TSLN” education reform. In other words, after a span of three years
following the launch of the nation-wide “TSLN” education reform, it
was time to feature the “local” uptake of how schools have recon-
textualised and put the “TSLN” initiative into practice.
Other than to showcase how schools have put the policy into prac-
tice, this documentary performs a wider “public pedagogy”. According
to a Ministry of Education press release statement (Ministry of Educa-
tion 2000a)1, the aim of producing the television series, Learning Jour-
neys, is “to enable parents and public to better understand the changes
that are taking place in educational institutions”. Clearly, the role of
TV as a cultural agent (Fiske, 1987), and as the preferred medium to
“educate” and “inform” underscores the important role of cultural tech-
nologies in mediating education policies for a wider “consumption” and
viewership, especially when watching the documentary each week
comes with enticement.Viewers can participate in the weekly Viewers’
Quiz where they could stand the chance to win cash vouchers and other
prizes. Significantly, the documentary is also broadcast in English and

1 The press release statement, “MOE to take the public on Learning Journeys into
schools”, dated 13 Jul 2000, can be retrieved online from http://www1.moe.sg/
press/2000/pr13072000.htm. Included in this press release statement are the
synopses for the eight-episode Learning Journeys. On last check the url was no
longer active.

120
Mandarin, the lingua franca of Singapore. In the study of media audi-
ences, these are strategies for audience maximization especially when
the documentary informs the public of the “in-progress” of a new para-
digm shift in education.
It is instructive to note that the choice of translating an education
policy into the media/ted genre of “documentary” is by no means ar-
bitrary. In television studies, the generic properties of documentary en-
able a privileged dominant culture and worldview to be transmitted.
For example, the truth claim in documentary often serves the purpose
of political and social management, in that the recorded images and
diegetic sounds provide the viewer with a privileged way of “seeing”,
“hearing” and “knowing” (Corner, 1996, 2000). As with Learning Jour-
neys, the “sensory evidence” (Corner, 2000, p. 208) of “context of prac-
tice” depicts (unproblematically) how schools manage education change
from the ground. Because of its “reality” effects, and because documen-
tary describes and exposes, the genre has been used for a promotional
and didactic purpose (Corner, 1996). As my analysis of Episode One
of Learning Journeys will show, the documentary offers an authorial view
of the education changes taking place in some Singapore schools fol-
lowing the “TSLN” education reform. I underscored “some” because
which schools are selected and featured in the documentary has clearly
undergone a process of selection for ideological reasons not stated. Also,
the schools featured could manage the disjuncture between policy and
practice far better than others, and would therefore serve better as rep-
resentatives of schools which manage education change close to the
vision articulated in the TSLN policy.
Yet it needs to be pointed out that the documentary is essentially
a filmic practice that re-presents and constructs a particular worldview
(Corner, 1996; Fairclough, 1995b; Wells, 1999; Pollak, 2008). Corner
(1996, p. 13), for example, argues that “[the documentary] is not sim-
ply a result of any ‘capturing’ performed by the camera. It is thoroughly
and self-consciously aestheticised, a symbolically expressive activity”. In
other words, despite the truth claims and the authorial properties of
documentary, the production of a documentary is subjected to what
Corner (1996, p. 18) calls “creative treatment”, where the documen-
tary project is, in a sense, fictionalized, composed and re-articulated. What
underpins this whole notion of “the aestheticised documentary” reso-
nates with the concept of design, where a strategy of representation

121
and of visualization is the result of deliberate decisions on what, how
and who to film (Corner, 2000).
Next, I outline the methodological approach for the analysis of
televisual images in the documentary, Learning Journeys. Learning Jour-
neys was recorded on video when it was broadcast in Singapore2. The
delayed transmission in time and space has, however, not affected my
viewing. Instead, the recorded program provided the advantage for re-
peated viewing and “freezing” the frame. Unlike written texts, how-
ever, moving images, particularly televisual images are uncitable, not
unless the visual narrative is paraphrased. Nonetheless, organizing the
visual narrative into segments makes what is essentially a multimodal
text accessible for close analysis. Following Mishra’s (2002) methodol-
ogy for analyzing Bollywood movies, I have organized the visual nar-
rative of Learning Journeys into segments. The segments not only pro-
vide the viewer with a useful textual unit for citation, it is also a useful
methodology for detecting patterns of repetition and emphasis (Mishra,
2002).
Next, I have added to the description in each visual segment the
salient design in terms of its technical codes such as camera angle, framing,
editing, and sound. With the added information of the design in each
visual segment, a “videological analysis” of the documentary is made
possible (Hartley, 1992, p. 28). Hartley (1992, p. 38) explains “videological
analysis” as a technique where the analyst “select[s] from television’s dirty
texts and social relations those that reveal what television is up to”.
A videological analysis will, therefore, enable me to focus on the design
in each segment, and understand how through design, the ideological
closure of the visual text is performed. In my analysis, I will argue that
the design of Learning Journeys in Episode 1 naturalizes a dominant read-
ing and precludes an acritical spectatorship that can be aptly described
as “lazing viewing” (Corner, 2000, p. 51). Before I proceed with the
analysis, the next section paraphrases the visual narrative of Episode 1
and organizes it into segments.

2 The transcript of Episode 1 is provided in the Appendix at the end of this chap-
ter. I thank Chua Chee Howe for recording the entire eight episodes when the
documentary series was broadcast in Singapore.

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 Episode 1 of Learning Journeys can be divided into three visual seg-
ments, each demonstrating how schools in the new millennium are re-
sponding to educational change. The first visual segment features the
infusion of creative/critical thinking in the school curriculum at Ru
Lang Primary School as the theme. This theme is supported with three
examples. The first example shows a nine-year-old primary school stu-
dent giving a PowerPoint presentation in the classroom. The second
example further illustrates a group of students working collaboratively
on Project Work, where they build robots out of Lego bricks. The final
example features students engaging in experiential learning in the field.
Students are seen armed with digital data loggers examining how their
plants are growing.
The theme for the second visual segment is technology. Schools
demonstrate how they incorporate the use of IT in the classroom. The
first example is provided by a demonstration of how IT is used in the
English and Science lessons at ZhongHua Secondary School. Next,
Primary School students at Radin Mas demonstrate what “cyber-
schooling” is. The clip shows students participating in a video confer-
ence via the Internet with students in Hong Kong. In addition, IT is
used as a tool for counselling at Radin Mas. Instead of the traditional
face-to-face counselling, Radin Mas pioneered the creation of a “cyber-
Aunt”, “Aunt Stephanie” as a cyber counsellor to whom students
can email their problems. In short, what is featured in this segment is a
visual illustration of the borderless classroom where technology has taken
centre-stage as the mode of instruction.
The final segment features schools of the new millennium, with
an emphasis on the design of modern classrooms and the provision of
state-of-the-art facilities. There is an overall sense of school as “home”
depicted in this segment. Students are provided with personal lockers
to ease the load of their school bags. A beautiful garden, complete with
fishpond, is featured. Schools of the new millennium are also livened
up with bright colour schemes and neon signs, creating an upbeat am-
bience for schooling. The idea of school as “home” is further encapsu-
lated by the practice of democratic classrooms. Students at Swiss Cot-
tage Secondary have a say over how they want their classrooms to be
decorated. As a result, students feel at home and claim to have a sense
of belonging to the school.

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Analysis of Learning Journeys Episode 1

The oral mode as “bardic function”

If we were to compare the modality of the reality effect of visual im-

ages, one could argue that representational realism in televisual images
is more pronounced than photographic images. This is arguably so be-
cause as a textual medium, television combines the visual and oral modes
to “show” and “tell” aspects of contemporary life. Through the power
of speech and narration, television is likened to perform what Fiske
and Hartley (1978, p. 87) have called a “bardic function”. That means,
akin to the traditional bard, television exploits the oral/aural mode to
guide and make sense of the inner world of television for the
“unknowable audience” (cf. Ang, 1991).
The “tele-ological” effect this has on the imaginary audience is
that the oral narration disciplines and proffers the viewer with familiar
categories, and points to appropriate identifications of an empirical rea-
lity, thereby creating the sense of having been there (Hartley, 1992). As
such, it has been argued that despite the polysemic nature of TV texts,
the aural narrative nevertheless asserts some form of control over the
semiotic imperatives and meanings, whether one is watching a sitcom
or simply the in-between fillers of TV commercials.
The “bardic function” in Learning Journeys is provided by the om-
niscient narrator and presenter, Ida Bachtiar. To begin with, the viewer
is already, in a sense implicated as part of the narrative claim that “every-
one agrees” and that “most of us should be in agreement” (see sub-
segment 1a) that educational change should be structured in a certain
pathway. In sub-segment 1a, the viewer is also drawn to the familiar
category of the “sight” and “sound” of a school through an establishing
shot in the school compound, which shows students moving in an or-
derly line to the classroom. The familiar “sight” of school is further aug-
mented by a cacophony of diegetic “sound” of disembodied student
voices heard faintly in the background. The camera then slowly pans
to the right as the camera focuses on the presenter while she begins
the “bardic function” of televisual story-telling.
It is significant to note that the framing of the presenter is a me-
dium close-up (MCU) and from a frontal angle. This same framing and

124
angle is used at the opening and closing of the documentary (see sub-
segments, 1a and 3s in Appendix). In addition, each time when she ap-
pears on-screen (in sub-segments 1a, 2i, 3a and 3s), natural lighting is
used and her image on-screen is in sharp focus. The design of the frame
establishes her as the figure of authority yet familiar and at a comfort-
able social distance. Her clear diction and well-paced narrative voice
all add to set up a friendly communication relationship with the viewer.
Her role, in short, is to produce “a kind of triangle of relations – speech/
viewer; image/viewer; speech/image” (Corner, 1999, p. 41).
My analysis of the video segment foregrounds the predominance
of the speech/image and speech/viewer relation, as the presenter’s voice
is heard both on-screen and as voice-over to anchor the meaning of
the images almost throughout the entire flow of the televisual images.
Her “voice of God” narration is a production decision designed to regu-
late the viewer to follow the narrative event, as well as to control the
meaning and point of view of the televisual text. On the use of voice-
over, Hartley (1992, p. 83) observes that:
Voice-overs are not unmotivated by the picture/ambient sound, but they are
external to them [. . .] so they claim a “higher” level of correspondence to ac-
tuality than mere synchronicity. Because they “help-fully” explain the pictures,
voice-overs both encourage and benefit from the viewer’s sense that there is
unity of picture and sound. This “unity” is then cashed ideologically, as it were,
since the explanations appear to arise “naturally” from the pictures with which
they are united.

In Learning Journeys, the extensive reportage performs two ideological

functions. First, to counter the ambiguity and polysemous televisual signs,
the helpful voice-over explains the images. In the course of it, she pro-
vides an ideological closure to the text. Second, as the institutional voice,
her “bardic function” provides an indexical bond to its source object
in the “real” world (Kilborn & Izod, 1997). In effect, the viewer is given
an “objective” account as well as an “authentic” picture of reality of
the inner world of schools, and because she embodies the institutional
voice, it is a reliable voice that we hear as she unfolds Learning Journeys.

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Who’s talking?

Apart from the presenter’s full commentary, the program’s point of view
is also shaped by the “accessed voices” that comprise interviews with
school principals, teachers and students. While these “accessed voices”
give us an insider’s point of view, their voices also function ideologi-
cally as institutional voices to provide a vicarious experience of the “real”
because of their role as “eye-witness”. With the design of these inter-
views, there is the option that the interviewee addresses questions di-
rectly at an in-shot interviewer or directly at the camera and the viewer
(Corner, 2000). In the video segment, however, these “accessed voices”
address the viewer directly to create the “speaker-viewer” bonding. This
bonding is significantly reflected in the framing, where the mid-shot
(MS) is invariably used when a teacher or student is interviewed. Take
for example, in sub-segment 1e, a teacher is seen giving an explanation
of how Project Work is carried out. She is framed mid-shot (MS), and
looks directly at the camera. She also takes on the role as a voice-over
when edited cuts illustrate her explanation of Project Work. Thus, we
see repeated images of students working collaboratively on the robot
project, which is seen earlier in sub-segment 1d.
Taken together, the presenter and the “accessed voices” provide a
complementary account of school reform from the ground. There is
no conflicting point of view or any hint of disagreement. It can there-
fore be said that the voices we hear are institutional voices that privi-
lege a dominant construction of schooling in changing economic con-
ditions. It also reproduces an unproblematic ‘truth’ about school reform,
and that the reception of education policies is even and uncontentious.
Of course, when we take into account the institutional constraints (for
example, the scripting and production of the documentary are authored/
authorized by the government’s brief, and have to be subjected to its
stamp of approval), it is understandable that Learning Journeys is pro-
duced and framed by underpinning ideological, political assumptions
and priorities that serve dominant interest.

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Framing “identity”, “place” and “space”

Returning to the point on framing, my analysis of the video segment

affirms that the choice of framing is encoded with social meanings and
power relations. I observe that the choice of framing depends on who
and what the camera wants to frame and what the frame is intended to
achieve. A few examples from the video segments will illuminate the
ideological design of framing. When school principals are interviewed
(see for example, sub-segments 1f, 2h, 3i, 3l and 3o), the medium close-
up (MCU) and frontal angle are consistently used. The choice of MCU
is to align them as figures of authority. The use of the low angle shot
in sub-segments 3i and 3l, with the principal looking down, further
accentuates the power and authority of school principals. The framing
used to construct the principal’s professional identity is noticeably dif-
ferent from that used for the teachers’. As opposed to the MCU, the
medium-shot (MS) frames the teachers in the interviews (see for ex-
ample, sub-segments 1e, 2a, 3k and 3q). As the MS connotes a more
comfortable social distance, this framing constructs teacher identities as
friendly and personable.
The constant shifts of “place” and “space” of the location shooting
of schools are also meaningfully manipulated by framing. The “exte-
rior” and “interior” of the school and the significance of their visual
space is realized by two distinct framings. When the purpose is to es-
tablish a change of location, the mid-long shot (MLS) is used. For ex-
ample, in sub-segment 2a, the establishing MLS of the school building
is designed to orient the viewer to a different story space, which is lo-
cated at “ZhongHua Secondary School”. The camera also moves fur-
ther at a horizontal axis, imitating the movement of the viewer’s eyes,
as it surveys the school surroundings.
By contrast, when the camera invites the viewer to participate in
a voyeuristic gaze of the activities in the classrooms, the framing is in-
variably a mid-shot (MS), medium close-up (MCU) or close-up (CU).
The extensive use of MS, MCU and CU creates familiarity, proximity
and a sense of everydayness in the social dimensions of school life. The
continuous use of CU is used, for example, in the segment that fea-
tures students participating in a video conferencing (see sub-segments,
2c–2g). The CU shows a computer screen, a teacher helping students
at a computer terminal, a keyboard, and a projector screen. In the

127
economy of semiotics, these CU images are metonymic and they col-
lectively represent the post-industrial model of “cyberschooling”. There-
fore, the design of framing through the positioning of the camera is
part of a signifying system that lends meaning to visual images.

Editing: Suturing Television Flow

Another important aspect of the “design” of Learning Journeys that con-

tributes to television flow is editing. What is important about editing is
it is usually a post-production process, where the film strip is literally
cut and pasted to provide textual unity, coherence and flow. Through
editing, the viewer enjoys a continuous viewing regime produced by
the logical and linear manner of motivated editing (Fiske, 1987). Edit-
ing is essentially a motivated practice, as edits of visual images connect
spaces and times, themes and moods, sutured together to produce a
seamless continuous flow (Turner, 1999; Corner, 2000). For example,
in sub-segment 1b, a rapid succession of edited shots, which resembles
that of a montage, transports the viewer to three different locations. This
continuous editing cues and prepares the viewer for changing context
and location before the narration confirms it.
The dominant editing style in Learning Journeys is the simple cut.
This is characteristic of documentary, as the expository documentary
images are often employed as illustrations that authenticate the narration/
voice-over (Kilborn & Izod, 1997). There are many instances of the
use of the simple cut to illustrate the narration in the video segment.
One example is the interview with a principal in sub-segment 3i. While
the principal explains the importance of creating a conducive, cheerful
and welcoming school environment to the school clientele, her on-
screen commentary is at the same time juxtaposed with edited cuts il-
lustrating aspects of the cheerful school environment. In this way, the
image as illustration establishes and maintains the rhetorical continuity
of her discourse on creating a conducive learning environment.

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“Sounding” and “hearing” affiliation identifications

The use of sound deserves attention in Learning Journeys. There is a ten-

dency to treat sound in television productions and in cinemas as mere
“add-ons”. Indeed, in a sense non-diegetic sound is usually added on
in the post-production stage, but to dismiss the use of non-diegetic
sound as peripheral and an “add-on” is to undermine the importance
of sound as a signifying system. The choice to include a particular sound
track or music is an essential component of design, as the sound tech-
nician has to venture into a production music library such as Network
Music to select appropriate music or sound effects to accompany visual
images (Kassabian, 2001). The point I am making is that the choice of
non-diegetic sound is in itself a semiotic code designed as a conven-
ient shorthand to evoke meanings, moods and identifications.
In Hearing Film (2001, p. 1), Anahid Kassabian argues that music
works and “conditions identification processes”. In other words, music
provides the conduit for story identifications and cues the viewer to
respond emotionally, whether it is to empathize, cry, laugh, or to pro-
voke excitement, fear and horror. All these emotional responses depend
on the use of non-diegetic sound. On the use of non-diegetic sound,
Kassabian makes the distinction between composed and compiled scores
used in Classical Hollywood movies. The former is used to produce
“assimilating identifications”, whereas the latter for producing “affiliat-
ing identifications” (Kassabian, 2001, pp. 2–3). To put it simply, com-
posed scores draw the viewer into the imaginary world of movies. It
also creates a sense of being socially and historically situated in the movie
world. In contrast, compiled scores provide a kind of intertextuality to
the viewer as the familiarity of the songs enables the viewer to bring
external associations and meanings into the engagements with the film.
While Kassabian’s analysis of non-diegetic sound specifically refers
to contemporary Hollywood movies, I find her analysis applicable to
Learning Journeys. In Learning Journeys, the non-diegetic sound is taken
from what Kassabian (2001) would identify as “compiled scores”. In
other words, the music that is added on is either taken from a produc-
tion music library or from familiar tunes of popular music. In my analysis,
non-diegetic music is designed to create a variety of semiotic effects. It
evokes mood and also symbolic meanings. For example, in sub-segment

129
1b, the up-beat techno music synchronizes with the rapid edit of a suc-
cession of shots and also symbolically conjures an atmosphere and cli-
mate of schooling as “different” and “alternative” (after all, it is the
schools of the new millennium that are featured and not the old in-
dustrial model of schooling). This same tune is repeated in sub-seg-
ment 1c to show the “alternative” model of schooling, that primary
school students are making use of PowerPoint in their class presenta-
tion.
A change in the use of non-diegetic music occurs in sub-segment
1d, where cartoon-like music is used. The change of music at this seg-
ment functions as a transition between scenes, and also illustrates the
narrative. This is the segment where a group of boys (symbolically a
gendered image) are working collaboratively on their Project Work,
which is a robot constructed out of Lego blocks. The cartoon-like music
seems to create some sort of an affiliation that directs the viewer to
identify with the boys, as they are brain-storming and trying to over-
come the difficulties of getting the robot to work. The same music re-
curs in sub-segments 1e and 1f, as thematically, the narration is still on
Project Work.
The “affiliating identifications” of non-diegetic music is even more
evident in sub-segment 3k. The scene shows a teachers’ lounge, and
teachers are seen comfortably relaxing themselves enjoying a karaoke
session. A slow, soft and soothing oldie is heard in the background. This
blends in with the atmosphere that the scene tries to create, particu-
larly when a segment of the song lyric, “make yourself feel comfortable”,
becomes more audible.
The synchronicity of the non-diegetic music and visual is used not
only as a narrative cue, but also serves as an intertextual reference to
affiliate identifications. In other words, the viewers are made to feel con-
nected and believe that teachers are indeed “comfortable” and not
stressed out in schools. In the same segment, an interview with a teacher
who claims that “for my school, I think everybody loves to come to
school. . .to do our work” is even more revealing. Such affiliation works
to create professional teacher identities and counter the negative stere-
otyped portrayal of the teaching profession, and of teachers as always
under stress. Clearly, the use of non-diegetic sound must not go unno-
ticed, as music is a significant semiotic code employed to create identi-
fication processes.

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 To sum up, the production and post-production of Learning Journeys
are institutionally designed to reaffirm the unproblematic contextualiza-
tion of the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” education policy, and
because it is institutionally designed, I argue that the production of the
documentary is not only a selected representation of schooling, but fol-
lowing Foucault (1995), the visuality of these images produces ideologi-
cal effects that normalize and regulate schooling identities.

Conclusion: A Meta-summary of TSLN Policy

At this point, I want to consolidate and integrate the linguistic analysis

(Chapter 4) of the TSLN speech – policy document with the visual
analysis conducted in this chapter, and situate the TSLN education policy
in the larger argument of Singapore’s experiment with schooling and
education in globalizing circumstances.
Singapore is faced with Hobson’s choice in its strategic move to
globalize. Decidedly, for reason of survival and pragmatism, it has to
plug itself into the nodal point of capitalism’s flow. As I have argued in
Chapter 2, however, Singapore embeds itself into capitalism’s flow in
strategic moves or in a move that I call “tactical globalization”. Singa-
pore’s experiment with globalization is tactical because it operates in a
contradictory way within the logic of capitalism by cooperating and
resisting globalization.
In Chapter 3, I alluded to the contradictory bind of cooperating
and resisting globalization as articulated in the TSLN education policy.
The main thrust of TSLN is an emphasis on “globalizing”, as knowl-
edge and information technology are fundamental to the development
and reorganization of the world’s economy. This has also been the rea-
son why new initiatives continue to be implemented in Singapore’s edu-
cation system.
I take a step further by asking what the TSLN policy does, and
what this ideological package contains. Chapter 4 deconstructs the
speech-policy document in the attempt to answer these looming ques-
tions vis-à-vis globalization and education policy. Using Critical Dis-
course Analysis (CDA) as an analytical tool, my analysis of the docu-

131
ment reveals that education policy constructs problems, and in Singa-
pore’s case, education reform is motivated by the “crisis” construction
of globalization. Furthermore, the discourse on globalization and edu-
cational change are layered with power effects, as the discourses alluded
to are scientific ones about the economy, globalization and education.
Therefore, a regime of “truth” is produced within this power/knowl-
edge nexus, and a “truth” that legitimizes preferred constructions of
subjectivities and of schooling.
It is not words alone that direct the policy trajectory of TSLN.
This chapter has been concerned with the ways in which education
policy is increasingly visualized, and in response, develop ways forward
to fill the dearth of research and analysis of education policy documents
that has so far neglected the visual mode. The Learning Journeys docu-
mentary analyzed in this chapter is one example of how education policy
is visualized and mediated in the form of a TV documentary for pub-
lic consumption. Significantly, the media, as well as a TV format/genre,
has been mobilized to construct, or in this instance, visualize a particu-
lar reading both of and for the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”
education policy.
Also of significance to note is that because the media is centrally
controlled by the Singapore government, the media suitably assumes
symbolic control over the making of the Learning Journeys documen-
tary, which lends a top-down, selected perspective of how the TSLN
policy is realized at the ground. In other words what I am alluding to
is that a dominant interpretation of the policy is imposed, glamorizing
that all is well and in line with the TSLN policy initiatives. Arguably it
is almost impossible to contest this truth-telling that is visually medi-
ated and that which also works in combination with the characteristic
of the documentary genre. This is because such mediated “truth” is visu-
ally appealing and supplemented with the “sensory evidence” (Corner,
2000, p. 208) of the documentary genre; the old adage that says “what-
you-see-is-what-you-get” works powerfully to dissuade us from believ-
ing otherwise. This is why this chapter conceptualizes “visual design”
as an important consideration insofar as the analysis of visual educa-
tion policy is concerned because the design of the visualization of the
TSLN education policy deflects attention away from the often messy
and uneven uptake of policy practice and exemplars where schools fail
to deliver or measure up to policy articulation.

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 In summary, the visual images in TSLN, I argue, are designed and
mobilized to showcase how Singapore’s education is re-making itself
as a way of experimenting with and for globalization, but to globalize
is to open the Pandora’s box of globalization. I identified in Chapter 1
that one of the fears of cultural globalization is the erosion of national
identity. To counter the underside of globalization, however, as part of
the TSLN education reform, National Education (NE) is implemented
in Singapore schools as a form of citizenship education. Therefore, the
other ideological thrust of the TSLN education policy is to foster na-
tional identity to counter fears that globalization may contribute to the
weakening of national identity. In the next chapter, I take up the argu-
ment that National Education is a situated response to globalization and
that NE is an attempt to “balance” globalization with localization.

133
 Video segments: Learning Journeys Episode One Appendix

134
Segment 1: Infusion of Creative / Critical Thinking in the school curriculum

Sub- Transcript of Sound Description of image Type(s) of framing Sequence

Segment Direct Commentary/Voice-over/Accessed Voices Duration
1a On-screen commentary (Presenter):

Everyone agrees that education is important for the future, and as work Diegetic sound: Establishing shot of students moving in an Establishing Shot = MLS 39secs
and competition changes, education must therefore change too. But how Echoes of student orderly line to the classroom. Camera
exactly should education change? Well, what most of us should be in voices in the slowly pans to the right to focus on the Focus on presenter = MCU;
agreement with is that we hope children today will grow up with the background presenter, Ida Bachtiar. frontal angle
right skills and values systems and find ways of contributing to their
family, community and society. Hi, I’m Ida Bachtiar. And I’m here in
one of the schools of the new millennium. And over the next eight
weeks, I’ll be showing you examples of how our schools are embarking
on a learning journey and to a future of endless possibilities.

1b Voice-over (Presenter):

Welcome to the schools of the new millennium. All prime working Non-Diegetic A rapid succession of shots achieved via Exterior of buildings = MLS; 1m 59secs
environments for the kind of learning necessary today for the use of sound: Techno, continuous editing showing parts of school
tomorrow. Strong Hi-hat beat building, school compound, students at Interior of
play and in the classroom buildings/classrooms = MS
Schools today are where every child can get equal access to all the tools
and opportunities he or she needs to develop their own potential. And all
across the nation, schools are undergoing visionary reforms, moving
towards ability driven education.

Where every talent counts and every child is allowed to learn at their own
pace. The traditional idea of schools where students are passive recipients
of knowledge could not be further from reality today in the schools of the
new millennium. The efforts to harness the human potential starts right at
the beginning when the child forms his or her own view of the world.
And a strong commitment has been made to ensure that each is equipped
well on his/her learning journey into the future. This is Ru Lang Primary
School, one of the many schools in Singapore dedicated to the provision
of stimulating programs to encourage children to think. Ru Lang Primary
is part of the series of reform in schools today that is fearlessly in pursuit of
creative ways to encourage thinking and learning. Only nine years old
and children today are not only learning the facts, but also how to present
them well in this case, through the use of powerpoint presentation.
 1c Accessed Voice (Student):
How many stations are there in a (inaudible) Same as above Classroom scene. A Primary School MS on the student and 27secs
student is giving a Powerpoint camera zooms out to show
Voice-over (Presenter): presentation. Shows her asking questions the entire class.
Project work like this, which combines several disciplines, encourages at the end of the presentation.
children to apply thinking principles in several areas, the research and the
comprehension of the facts and the use of technology.
MCU on student interview
Accessed Voice (Student):
It is easier to present my project using a computer.

Voice-over (Presenter):
Learning to think is now a continuous process, applied even in the
children’s’ leisure hours.

1d Voice-over (Presenter):
These children at Ru Lang Primary School for example spent long Nondiegetic sound: Shows a group of students doing Project CU on students’ robot and 20secs
afternoons after school learning to build robots out of Lego bricks. By music change to Work. They are modelling a robot out of their hands working on the
applying themselves to the learning of computer programs, they have cartoon like music Lego blocks. Students are also seen project.
turned traditional toys into a remote control slave, which they hope working round a computer notebook. MS and high angle to show
would obey their every command. students working
collaboratively in a group on
the floor

1e Accessed Voice (Teacher, Janice Beh), also as Voice-over:

They form their own groups. They decide on who their group members Same music as Edited cuts to show juxtapositions of shots MS when teacher is giving 38secs
are. They decide on their own rules. They can decide whether they want above at the showing the teacher explaining how the explanation;
to make a robot with a remote control or they want to make a robot that background Project Work is carried out and students MS on students working on
is programmed by it. They work as a group, collaborative skill, the working on the robot project. the project;
project management skills, will later help them when they are doing CU on the robot
project work in class, and also this will er ( ) because we are talking about
an ability driven education and these kids they have a passion and they
have enthusiasm for towards the robotics, so we allow them to explore
em to be more creative.

135
 1f Accessed Voice (Principal, Lee Lai Yong):

136
It is a learning process. It is not the outcome; it is not the project itself that Same music as Principal explaining the rationale of MCU 14secs
is the main objective but rather the process of reaching the outcome. above at the Project Work
background

1g Voice-over (Presenter):

The greatest area of change in schools today occurs beneath the surface Nondiegetic sound: Outside the classroom. A continuous MLS; 1m 3secs
within the hearts of mind of teachers and students even in watching plants Music change to edited shots of students nurturing their CU to show students doing
grow, the students are encouraged to apply thinking to the process of techno music with plants in their school garden. weeding and planting; CU is
growing plants from the ground. Armed with digital data loggers, the strong beat; same as taken at high angle
students are encouraged to constantly find better ways of nurturing segment 1b.
healthier plants combining different gardening techniques to achieve the
results they want. They are not just looking at the leaves, they are looking
at results for the efforts they’ve put in to achieve a desired outcome. And
again they are encouraged to do this as much as they can on their own Flashback of previous shots showing
relying mostly on their own minds and those of their teammates. Call it students modelling a robot out of Lego
experiential learning, call it cooperative learning, call it thematic teaching, Blocks and a repeated shot of a student
the labels do not matter as much as the results the schools today are after. giving a powerpoint presentation
Creating a generation of thinking peoples who know how to feed their
own minds and quench a growing thirst for knowledge.
 Segment 2: Technology

Sub- Transcript of Sound Description of image Type(s) of framing Sequence

Segment On-screen commentary/Voice Over/Accessed Voices Duration
2a Voice-over (Presenter):

Thinking things through has become even more important in the wide Nondiegetic music Establishing shot of ZhongHua Secondary MLS on school buildings; 1m 13secs
new millennium. School building and camera pans to
Diegetic Voice “SURVEY” the school compound. MS on the English teacher
The floodgates of information have opened for schools and students. The (Teacher): okay, This is followed by an edited cut to a scene conducting the lesson.
question now is how best to navigate your way in a world of infinite remember what I in a computer laboratory, where an
information to find what you need, when you need it, the process that told you about English lesson is being conducted. CU on computer screen
requires thinking through and a sense of focus. At ZhongHua Secondary teamwork. Okay, Students are also seen seated in pairs in
School for example, English Comprehension goes beyond the this is pair work. front of one computer terminal.
understanding of English words, but also understanding the methods of Right, if you have
acquiring the information you want. not gotten to the
passage and your
And both teachers and students have to find the best use for the wide partner has, please
range of tools now made available to them. This Science class, for share the screen
example, uses CD ROMs to make it possible for students to learn at their together and do the
own pace, in the way that is also stimulating and challenging. worksheet, all right.

Diegetic Voice
(Teacher): When
you set your own
questions, I told
you before (...)

2b Accessed Voice (Student):

You can have more animations and instead of using one sense you can use Same music at the Edited cut showing student in a computer CU on student interview 27secs
both your senses both sides of (inaudible ) hearing and you’ll be able to background laboratory having a Science lesson.
understand the concepts more better.

Voice-over (Presenter):

By the year 2002, IT-based lessons will take up a large portion of

curriculum time with $2 billion dollars spent over 5 years to help students
find their place in a wired world.

137
 2c Voice-over (Presenter):

138
In the world of children today lies the seeds of the future. At Radin Mas Nondiegetic sound: Two primary school students walking MLS on the two primary 44secs
Primary School, it is a future already sowed with the beginnings of a techno music with along a corridor towards the direction of students.
connected world. These Primary One children are taking part in a project tribal beat the camera and shows them entering a
called “It’s a small world after all”. With their forming ties with kids in room with a logo and “Future Kids”
countries like the UK, the US and India through email and websites. For sticker on the glass door.
the students here in a video conference with the students in Hong Kong, This is followed by a continuous shots
this is the world they have come to understand. showing students in the same computer lab MS of classroom
doing project work Cu on computer screen
CU showing teacher helping
students with computer

2d Voice-over (Presenter):

And these are the sorts of networks they have to form. Diegetic sound: A classroom scene showing students in a CU on keyboard 2secs
(Students in video video conferencing. CU on projector screen
conferencing):
Hello, Yes I can
hear you.
Can you please sing
us your school
song?

2e Accessed Voices

(Student A): Hmm, you can see what’s happening over there without No music used. A closed-up on computer screen showing CU on computer screen 12secs
going there. on-line chatting going on with students MCU on student interviews
(Student B): This project will cover our English, our Mathematics, our from Hong Kong. Then, “cut” to student
Science and our Social Studies. interviews.

2f Accessed Voice (Teacher, Pang Kong Eng):

They will plan an itinerary, for a particular country, a 4-day itinerary No music used Teacher explaining the details of the MCU 23secs
where they are given a limited budget and of course limited time and they
have to plan a trip there to collect information about the culture, about project work.
Science and using the whatever Maths knowledge they have to work
within the budget
 2g Voice-over (Presenter):

The curricular content has been reduced since 1991 in Singapore. Diegetic sound: A repeated frame of video-conferencing CU on video-conferencing 46secs
Children are learning through much more powerful means the simulation Voices of going on
of real life situations like this life video conference with students in Hong video-conferencing
Kong. Students in Singapore are now learning to make sense of their at the background
surroundings and to get ready for the technology-driven internationally
competitive world. But the use of technology is only a means to an end,
not the end to itself. Its purpose is to learn better how to respond to a
changing world. And that includes making it easier for those who need to
cope on all levels.

2h Accessed Voice (Principal, Jenny Yeo):

I have been telling my students that err… although Radin Mas is an IT Nondiegetic sound: Interview with Principal is juxtaposed MCU on Principal 1m 26secs
demonstration school, we do not want just to excel in computer skills; we soft, slow plucking with shots of students and teacher in MS on classroom
must also pay great attention in character development. of harp music at the classroom.
I strongly believe that the heart of education is education with a heart. background Also shows shots of a teacher walking MS
And we need to help our children especially when they have problems together with a student along the corridor.
and in Radin Mas we have started projects like project families where we
assign students to teachers who volunteer to take these students at risk
under their care to help them and counsel them and these teachers will
meet up with them informally and regularly to help them with their “Cut” to a final shot of student typing on a CU on computer keyboard
problems. We have also used IT to help students who may not want to computer. and monitor.
speak to someone face to face. We have created an icon call “cyberAunt”,
“aunt Stephanie”, and be able to email to this “cyberaunt” about their
problems and form feedback from this group of professional counsellors
who are helping me to manage this. They have been saying that my
children have been writing regularly to them and they are able to help
many of the students.

2i On-screen Commentary (Presenter):

You know it has been said when you stand on the shoulder of a giant, you No music used Presenter offering direct commentary. She MS; fade out 17secs
end up seeing even further then the giant himself. Well, in the schools of is seated in a front of a computer in a
the new millennium, children are learning to fearlessly stand on the computer lab, but facing the camera as she
shoulders of technology to get their own unique view of a changing speaks.
world.

139
 Segment 3: Schools of the new millenium

140
Sub- Transcript of Sound Description of image Type(s) of framing Sequence
Segment On-screen Commentary/Voice-over/Accessed Voices Duration

3a On-screen commentary (Presenter):

In the dew of little things said the poet, Kayok Bryan, the heart finds its No music. Camera pans from right to left showing a MS, sharp focus on presenter. 28secs
morning and its refresh. Well, there is refreshing in the schools of the new Diegetic sound: few students in the background before Frontal angle
millennium. From the architectural design that allows the flow of light Faint echoes of focussing on the presenter Fade out.
and grease to the comfort built into chairs and tables. Schools of the new noises from
millennium have become more and more like home for students, a place classrooms
where they can fill their hearts as well as their minds.

3b Voice-over (Presenter):

Concord Primary Schools is a brand new school. Nondiegetic sound: A series of continuous shot showing the LS on school facilities, space 51secs
jazz music, strong facilities, space and design of the school and design
Spacious and filled with all the necessary facilities to provide children percussion beat and building. MS on students sitting by the
with an optimal learning environment. There are extensive facilities for saxophone solo Shots showing: pond.
the use of technology, project work, group performances, culture and the i. students looking at a fish tank; MS on classroom interior,
arts. The school may be only a few months old, but it is prime for a ii.fishpond; computer lab and dance
conducive learning environment. iii. computer lab; room.
iv. dance room. MLS on school building
Exterior shot of school building taken from a low angle;

3c Accessed Voice (Student):

This is a suggestion box. We are given a chance to put a suggestion into No music used. Shows a Malay student standing beside a MS taken at oblique angle 7secs
the box to improve our schools. Thank you. suggestion box and explaining the purpose
of the suggestion box.

3d Voice-over (Presenter):

Built into its new facilities are lockers for the children to ease their load. Nondiegetic sound: Shows a student unloading his bag and MS taken at oblique angle 5secs
jazz music same as putting it in his personal locker.
segment 3b.
 3e Accessed Voices (Students):

(Student A): It makes me feel that’s very convenient to have lockers Nondiesgetic Student interviews. Focus on three kids MCU 34secs
because I don’t need to take all my books home and back to school again. sound: jazz music expressing the benefits of having a personal
I can just leave it in the lockers and lock it up. same as segment 3b, locker, and the beautiful school
but diegetic sound environment.
(Student B): I feel happy that I have my own locker because er…
nobody
of water fountain
can take my things somehow and I have my own key.
can also be heard
(Student C): The school equipment garden is very beautiful with a lot of faintly.
cactus and a fishpond. I like to sit there and read storybooks.

3f Accessed Voice (Principal, Chee Seng Leong):

Outside the classroom is very important, the school hall I think is quite Nondiegetic sound: Interview with Principal is juxtaposed MS on the Principal 28secs
unique as compared to the other schools I especially like the hall which is fainter jazz music; with edited cuts highlighting the unique MLS on the interior of the
rather spacious and the the colour scheme of the ceiling is something only the drumset features of the school. hall.
which many teachers have the stress you know the love of the colours and beat is heard.
its also got a spiral staircase and that adds a kind of unique feature to the Hand-held camera showing students MLS oblique angle.
school hall. standing in order ready for the school
assembly in the hall.

3g Voice-over (Presenter):

This is Tampines Primary School, and all school where their teachers Nondiegetic sound: Establishing shot of school building. LS on school building; 37secs
have added their own personal touches like these signs here to create an The Song “My MS to MCU on school
Followed by a series of continuous shots
inspiring learning environment. baby don’t care for interior;
showing aspects of the school building,
show” playing at
from the school pouch, bulletin board to
The walls may be old but there are bright neon signs welcoming you to the background
the classroom.
different corners all round. And there are bulletin boards found MS from an oblique, low
Camera slowly zooms in on signs taken
everywhere displaying both the opinions and the artwork of the children angle zooming in on the sign
from a low angle.
of the school.

3h Accessed Voice (Student):

Last time is like the colours are not as attractive and all we come to school No music used; Interview with students; background of MS 14secs
is just study study then when they paint it to other colours we feel much Diegetic sound: the neon sign “Discovering Mall” is clearly
more we study more creatively. Student voices visible.
heard faintly in the
background.

141
 3i Accessed Voice (Principal, Ng Ai Lin), also as Voice-over:

142
We are dealing with children who are in their formative years and not Nondiegetic sound: Interview with Principal juxtaposed with MCU from low angle 1m 2secs
only must you look at the academic performance and achievement, but a song is heard in shots showing aspects of school ground.
we have to also look at other means in which we can develop them in the the background
character and the values. We want all our children to come to school and
to love to come to school. They come from the neighbour and we create
the school into a very welcoming, cheerful, conducive environment for
them and we use a lot of colours, a lot of lights and displays of their work
and so on And we are happy to share that in our 1999 survey of our
customers who are mainly our parents and our pupils, more than 90% of
the survey results show that our customers are delighted with the school.
And in fact in the same survey, 98% of the students indicate that they are
proud of the school and they enjoy coming to school, and I think that is
very important.

3j Voice-over (Presenter):

At Tampines Primary School, the efforts to make its community feel a Diegetic sound: Students helping their teacher with filing. MS at an elevated angle 12secs
sense of belonging extend towards the teachers. Here it is believed that Voice of teacher at
the way to have teachers treat students like their own children to the background
discipline and to guide with love is to make teachers feel right at home. giving students
instructions.

3k Accessed Voice (Teacher, Zayton Otshman):

For my school I think everybody loves to come to school. (Laughter) Nondiegetic sound: Shows the teachers’ lounge. Camera pans MS 12secs
Because even though we are in different morning or afternoon sessions slow, soft and and shows the interior of the teachers’ CU on teaching singing into a
we come very early to do our work. soothing song lounge and a group of teachers relaxing mic
playing in the and having a karaoke session.
background. Loud
enough to hear
parts of the lyrics
“make yourself feel
comfortable...”
 3l Accessed Voice (Principal, Ng Ai Lin):

I feel that my role here is not as somebody to actually dictate to them Same as segment 3k Interview with Principal. MCU from low angle 13secs
what to do. I feel that if the teachers are well taken care of, my role here is
actually only to facilitate them to make them do their work better.

3m Voice-over (Presenter):
Shows the interior of a classroom.
Every year the different classes of Swiss Cottage Secondary school put in Nondiegtic sound: MS on classroom interior 39secs
their best efforts to turn their room into their very own, to give it a stamp Pop song at the Camera zooms in on the brightly CU on decorations.
of their personality and identity, and makes them that they belong. This is background. Loud decorated classroom. Camera pans and
an act of empowerment that allows the students to make a statement and enough to pick up zooms in on the decorations.
have a stake in their school environment. parts of the lyrics:
‘A place I can call
my home...’

3n Accessed Voice (Student):

With this type of classroom, I actually enjoy being in being in it and I Same as segment Interview with student. MS 7secs
study more in the classroom than at home actually. 3m but fainter

3o Accessed Voice (Principal, Ou-Yang Geok Cheng):

We want them to have ownership of the place, so we have constantly No music used Interview with Principal, juxtaposed with MCU on Principal 49secs
encourage them to suggest what they want for themselves. So, in last classroom shots.
year’s WITs project we talk about classroom ownership to cut down
vandalism and we took up on that idea. We say we will give you your
own classroom this year and then from then onwards they say we want to
decorate our classroom er it’s a way to express creativity er we want a
place of our own each one that is different from the others, so we because
it was quite a popular request we allow it and students have full control of
the classroom. There were some guidelines given but they are just really
broad guidelines so that it is done in good taste.

143
 3p Voice-over (Presenter):

144
Like many of the schools today, Swiss Cottage Secondary believes that Diegetic sound: Edit “cuts” to show shots of judo class and MS of Judo class/Band 48secs
the school must provide the total environment for the maturity of the School Band band practice. practice taken from an
child and shape not just its mind but also its character. This judo class for playing oblique angle
example is used to teach students to have confidence in themselves to
learn how to defend themselves both physically and also mentally. And
joining the band is not just about making music, but also about having the
discipline to attend rehearsals, look after their equipment and reach for
competitive excellence in their performance. It’s a paradigm shift that
counts; a paradigm shifts that filters through every activity in the school
and cause teachers to consciously built character to whatever they do.

3q Accessed Voice (Band Instructor, Anthony Chew):

My Band leader drum major..well, they are like general managers of the No music used. Interview with the Band Instructor. MS frontal angle 29secs
band. And have their own band counsel, and many decisions are left to
Band Instructor explains the set up of the
the kids to make. I encourage them to speak up and to question and think
band.
outside the box. So by so doing, er. they have the freedom to challenge
authority provided that when they challenge authority, they are thinking
ahead of authority and they can see the big picture.

3r Voice-over (Presenter):

Teachers today have an unprecedented amount of freedom to try out Nondiegetic sound: A continuous shot showing students in a MS 29secs
ideas and propose solutions whether for individual classes or for projects Pop song is played; queue outside a classroom; followed by a
across several schools and the effort to encourage individual contribution same as segment shot of the school’s “innovative corner”, a
and fresh ideas have made schools today a place that understands that 3m repeat shot of the earlier video
there is room for growth of everyone and that each must be allowed to conferencing scene
grow at their best pace.

3s Voice-over (Presenter):

More and more schools are learning to operate like professional firms Nondiegetic sound: Presenter narrating, offering closure. MCU with sharp focus on the 22secs
providing the best educational services in the market and at every point pop sound is heard presenter.
educators are asking themselves if this is the best way that the child can faintly.
learn and that if anything else can be done to improve it and on this
endless journey everyone is part of the learning community.
6. Working against Globalization
The Role of National Education in Singapore

Introduction

Despite arguments that the forces of globalization contribute to the

deterritorialization and fragmentation of “culture”, “place”, “homeland”
and “identity” (Appadurai, 1996; Tomlison, 1999), I have argued at vari-
ous points in the preceding chapters that the management of culture
and identity politics in Singapore, through varied forms of govern-
mentality, are the very embodiment of the modalities of re-territoriali-
zation and localization. In Chapter 2, I gave examples of state discourses
and practices that were employed to regulate the Singaporean habitus.
Whether it is through the means of state-initiated social, economic, and
education policies or public campaigns, these tactics of governmentality
are layered with discourses of nationalism, nationhood, homeland, and
national identity. Importantly, discourses of nationalism have power ef-
fects. They work to impel Singaporeans to “stay local” while taking up
the challenge to “go global”.
The implementation of National Education (NE) curriculum as
part of the TSLN education reform is an example par excellence of a
state-led curriculum intervention infused with discourses of national-
ism1. This chapter examines the pedagogical intent of NE and argues
that NE is the creation and maintenance of a national culture, and the
repackaging of its past, and is symptomatic of what Appadurai (1996,
p. 178) has called “a production of locality”. The curriculum frame-

1 In an interesting parallel, Anderson (1991) also alluded to the explicit teaching

of European national histories in colonial classrooms. The Vietnamese children,
for instance, were taught the philosophies and the revolution; the Indian chil-
dren, the principles of Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution; and Belgium’s
independence struggle against Holland was a core history lesson for the chil-
dren in Congolese (cf. Gandhi, 1998).

145
work of NE, as I will elucidate, is to be understood as a state-promoted
experimentation with cultural education that ostensibly aims to foster
a more robust national identity as Singaporeans participate in global capi-
talism. This, I argue, also deals covertly with the Singapore government’s
anxiety and nervousness over the absence of loyalty in the national im-
aginary as Singapore experiments with globalization.
Yet it needs to be pointed out that the explicit teaching of na-
tionalism, which is what NE aims to do, does not herald the triumph
of the Singapore state in crafting a territorial bound national identity.
Rather, I argue that discourses of “homeland”, “nation” and “place” will
be de-territorialized, contested and dismantled by the forces of globali-
zation and transnationalism. As Kenneth Paul Tan (2007, p. 296), a local
political scientist has also pointed out, “globalization has made it in-
creasingly possible for Singaporeans to rethink their national identities,
and consider themselves as inhabiting the multiple, complete, shifting
and overlapping identities and moral communities that do not all fit
together in coherent ways, and certainly may not sit comfortably with
the static and clear-cut roles . . .” as imagined by the state such as the
pedagogical intent of NE.
This chapter begins by focusing on the role of the media in imag-
ining the (complex) Singapore nation. I argue that Singapore constructs
its sense of nationhood and identity by representing its lack in the me-
dia. Ideologically, this representation works, on the one hand, to raise
the consciousness in the Singaporean imaginary about its impoverished
identity, and functions, on the other hand, to moralize the lack of its
identity. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s (1991) famous dictum that
“a nation is an imagined community”, I critique his concept of the
nation to argue that Singapore’s nationhood is in the process of being
imagined, and NE has been developed to f(ill)uel that process. In other
words, my contention is that Singapore is that “state that is not a na-
tion” (Wee, 1995, p. 139), and it is working towards the goal of nation-
hood through education. Next, I provide a detailed description of the
context and content of the National Education curriculum before I
turn to offer a meta-commentary on how NE constructs the Singa-
pore ‘nation’ and its ‘identity’. Finally, I examine some of the criticisms
of and resistance to, the reception of NE, and reflect on some of the
challenges that unsettle the construction of a place-bound identity.

146
Imagining the (complex) Singapore “nation”

Singapore’s nationhood and identity have long been a matter of public

interest and debate. The disputes over what constitutes a Singaporean
“nation” and identity have repeatedly been a subject of much media
attention and academic research2. Interesting enough, this “newswor-
thy” debate crops up periodically, and is either raised by the politicians
themselves or Singaporean youths (also known ambivalently as “Gen-
eration M”; cf. Chapter 2). In May 1999, Prime Minister Goh urged
Singaporeans to become “a Singaporean tribe”3. The oblique reference
to “a Singapore tribe”, explained the PM, was not to urge Singaporeans
to return to primordial times. The purpose, as I see it, is to rekindle
the loss of an “authentic” Singapore “culture” and “identity” through
nostalgia. Thus, what was originally an anthropological concept has been
redefined and (re)contextualized metaphorically to create a sense of a
unified Singaporean identity bound by a common vision and core val-
ues despite its multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-religious composi-
tion. Here Goh’s call for Singaporeans to be “a Singaporean tribe” must
be understood as a “motivated discourse” and “a public culture text”
(Birch, 1999, p. 19) that aim to define collectively who Singaporeans
are in the public domain and national imaginary.

2 Because my intent in this section is to point out that the media plays an instru-
mental role in propagating and creating a national consciousness of Singapore’s
lack of a national identity, it should suffice to mention selected research that
has been carried out on Singapore’s national identity. Most of this research was
carried out by local Singaporean academics, including Siddique (1989), Mutalib
(1992), Ang & Stratton (1995), Rahim (1998), Chua (1998a), Quah (2000),
Kluver & Weber (2003) and Velayutham (2007).
3 Despite Goh’s clarification of his usage of ‘tribe’, his use of ‘the Singaporean
tribe’ is a contradiction in terms. In the anthropological sense, a tribe is an or-
ganic community bounded together by a common ancestry, but the history of
Singapore tells us that Singapore’s early immigrants came from diverse places
and are of diverse ethnic backgrounds. It is for this reason that in a rejoinder to
Goh’s commentary, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew contended that this is not
easily achievable as there are tribal elements in Singapore society that said,
“I want to be myself,” (“Will Singapore become one tribe“ 1999). Lee is re-
ferring to the distinctive racial composition of the Singapore society which is
organised along ethnic, religious and language boundaries.

147
 Later in the same year, Singaporean youths voiced their preference
for a Caucasian identity rather than their ethnic identity (Lau, 1999).
This blatant expression of wanting an identity not of their own raised
the eyebrows of the political leaders of Singapore. To the political lead-
ers, this denial of their ethnicity as a marker of their identity is a direct
admission that this generation of young Singaporeans lacks a national
identity.
In another media incident, Singaporean youths raised an identity-
related question, which sparked a flurry of debates over the lack of a
Singaporean identity (Teo, 2001a)4. This time the issue was over what
constitutes a Singaporean identity (The Straits Times, 20 February 2001).
Most recently, in the 2002 National Day Rally, Prime Minister Goh
(2002) asked Singaporeans to decide if they are “stayers” or “quitters”
in times when the country needs them. The provocative label was meant
to arouse Singaporeans to ruminate and question their level of emo-
tional commitment and patriotism for Singapore. The use of the ei-
ther/or rhetoric of “stayers” or “quitters” – no in-between options – is
symptomatic of the monopolistic right of the state in demarcating the
boundary between “us” and “them”. Demanding unequivocal allegiance
and exclusive fidelity to the state is, as Bauman (2004) also pointed out,
the discourse of national identity.
These media examples indicate Singapore’s preoccupation with
national identity or its lack in the national imaginary. In doing so, new
levels of representations about the Singaporean nation are played up. It
can also be taken to indicate that, like most post-colonial countries, Sin-
gapore has a weak national identity, and is in search of one. My re-
sponse to this long-standing impasse over the elusive status of Singa-
pore’s nationhood and identity is that Singapore’s national identity is
still very much “work-in-progress” and the agents who are driving the
imagining of Singapore into a nation are its political leaders.
I further pursue a more interesting line of argument in relation to
the crisis construction of the Singaporean identity and nation in the
Singapore media. I argue that ideologically the media are instrumental

4 See also related articles in the Straits Times, L. Teo (2001b, February 21). Iden-
tity crisis? Singaporeans abroad respond. The Straits Times, p. 4, and P. Tan (2001,
February, 22). National identity needs no concrete definition [Letter to the edi-
tor]. The Straits Times, p. 20.

148
in invoking a sense of (self )-reflexivity so as to raise a national con-
sciousness about the importance of having a national identity, and at the
same time, to moralize the lack of it. It is also significant to note here
that the media is, to use Foucault’s (1979) term, a “technology of power”
used to disseminate a regime of truth about Singapore’s fragile national
identity, particularly when the media in Singapore is state-controlled.
The instrumental role of the media in constructing the nation has
been a core conceptual argument in Benedict Anderson’s (1991) semi-
nal work on Imagined communities. He argued that print technology such
as the novel and newspaper enable the dissemination of the idea of the
nation. In similar vein, Bokhorst-Heng (2002) argued that newspapers
in Singapore play an important role in imagining Singapore. She lik-
ened the reading of newspaper in Singapore to a shared, ritualized “ex-
traordinary mass ceremony” within which the Singapore nation is im-
agined” (Anderson, 1991, p. 560), but as I have argued, this imagination
is in terms of a lack, a way of raising national consciousness and imag-
ining the Singapore nation.

A brief critique of Anderson’s concept of the “nation”

Although in the above discussion on imagining the Singapore nation,

I have alluded to Anderson’s (1991, p. 6) widely quoted concept of the
nation, which he defined as “an imagined political community”, there
are limitations to his conceptual definition of the nation which do not
apply to the Singaporean socio-cultural and political context. First, in
suggesting that the nation is “an imagined political community” [italics
added], the implication is that the process of imagination is already com-
pleted. In the Singapore case, however, I argue that the process of im-
agination is on-going, incomplete, a lack that demands the continuing
effort of imagination. The various media incidents that I have discussed
above are a case in point.
Secondly, and more importantly, Anderson (1991) does not tell us
the process of imagining, how it is carried out and sustained (McCrone,
1998). While I have shown how the press (re)mediates and contributes
to that process of imagining the Singapore nation, it is through the ap-

149
paratus of schooling and curriculum intervention that recourse to pa-
triotism and nation-identity making are sustained. The documentation
of the National Education program in the next section will illuminate
how the imagination of the Singapore nation is sustained. NE as a state-
initiated curriculum intervention is therefore illustrative of the insist-
ent and enduring political power of the Singapore state in wielding
the Singaporean subjectivities through the discipline of a national cur-
riculum intervention. David Brown (1998, p. 2) has also argued to the
effect that promoting nationalism is “the ideological clothing of state
power” and in the Singaporean context, this power is exercised and le-
gitimized through the state disciplinary apparatus of schooling and edu-
cation policy.
While I suggest in this chapter that National Education functions
ideologically as the process of imagining the Singapore nation, it should
also be pointed out that NE does not signal the triumph of the Singa-
pore state in resolving its fragile national identity. Instead, I argue that
NE is to be taken only as a process, and because it is only a process, the
efforts of crafting the Singaporean identity can be dismantled by acts of
what Appadurai (1996) and Tomlinson (1999) have called ‘de-territoriali-
zation’. This will be a core argument that I will return to in the next
chapter. What I want to put forward at this point is that the crisis of
nationalism and national identity will be articulated around an irreconcil-
able tension through the processes of globalization (celebrated as multi-
ple identities) and localization (perceived narrowly as national identity).
One other criticism, and perhaps more relevant to the Singaporean
case, is articulated by Chatterjee (1993). He challenged Anderson’s
conceptualization of the nation, which he claims is Eurocentric,
reductive and tantamount to a colonization of the imagination. While
he does not dismiss the cultural importance of the nation, Chatterjee
argues that Anderson’s conception of the nation is prescriptive and does
not allow alternative forms of nationalism other than the modular forms
that had been developed and derived from the historical experience of
Western Europe, America and Russia. Thus, he asked, “Whose imag-
ined community should postcolonial nations base their imagination on?”
His rhetorical question is meant to project the view that the concept
of nation must take into account the specificities of (postcolonial) his-
tories, socio-cultural and political context within which the nation is
constructed. While his argument specifically relates to the case of In-

150
dia’s nation-ness, nonetheless, his argument is equally applicable to Sin-
gapore, which was also once a colony of the British Empire5. There-
fore, Singapore has to contend with its postcolonial legacies, experi-
ment with inventing and reinventing its national identity, and negotiate
its concept of the Singaporean nation. It does this through the ideo-
logical state apparatus of school and education. It is to this other disci-
plinary site for the construction of a national identity that I now turn.
In what follows, I provide the context and the content of National Edu-
cation. As a “national” curriculum intervention, NE did not emerge
out of a void. As mentioned in Chapter 3, education policy or any form
of educational change is invariably informed by a significant history of
prior events that justify and legitimize a policy or curriculum change
(Taylor et al., 1997).

National Education: The Context

In September 1996, the idea of National Education was first announced

at the Teachers’ Day Rally6. Prime Minister Goh claimed that there
was a “serious gap in knowledge” among the younger generation of
Singaporeans who knew little about the country’s history. His claim was
based on a survey conducted by a local newspaper and the Ministry of
Education that quizzed students on Singapore’s post-war history. The
survey revealed that students had little knowledge of important post-
war history such as the Hock Lee bus riots, the state of emergency

5 I am not in any way suggesting that India’s postcolonial history is similar to

Singapore’s, as I am aware of Hall’s (1996b, p. 245) reminder that “it need not
follow that all societies are ‘post-colonial’ in the same way”. I have argued in,
A. Koh (2004). The Singapore Education System: postcolonial encounter of the
Singaporean kind. In J. Matthews & A. Hudson-Hickling (Eds.) Disrupting Pre-
conceptions: Postcolonialism and Education (pp. 155–172). Brisbane: Postpress, Flaxton,
that Singapore’s postcolonial experience is locked in a contradictory bind; it
desires yet denies its colonial past, which is why, in my opinion, it cannot con-
struct its national identity out of its colonial history.
6 Excerpts of Prime Minister Goh’s speech, “Equipping our young for the fu-
ture” was published in The Straits Times, 8 September 1996.

151
from 1948 to 1960 and important historical figures such as Plen and
Dr. Albert Winsemius.
Prime Minister Goh translated this “serious gap in knowledge” as
a “problem” that needed to be addressed, as a significant 47% of the
population was born post-Independence. The fear is that the post-In-
dependence generation may not appreciate and understand Singapore’s
vulnerabilities and constraints, as these are the important messages that
may be gleaned from the episodes of Singapore’s post-war history. Im-
portantly, Goh argued that a shared past would serve to provide a com-
mon bond for nation-building. It was in this context of a knowledge
deficit about Singapore’s history that National Education was conceived.
The implementation of NE was officially launched in May 1997.
At the launch, then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong contin-
ued the rhetoric of “a serious gap in knowledge”, mentioned the pre-
vious year by Prime Minister Goh, and reiterated that:
This ignorance will hinder our effort to develop a shared sense of nationhood.
We will not acquire the right instincts to bond together as one nation, or main-
tain the will to survive and prosper in an uncertain world. For Singapore to
thrive beyond the founder generation, we must systematically transmit these in-
stincts and attitudes to succeeding cohorts. Through National Education, we
must make these instincts and attitudes part of the cultural DNA which makes
us Singaporeans.

Earlier in Chapter 3, I briefly critiqued Lee’s essentialized view on the

cultivation of an organic “culture” and “identity”. I will return to this
critique in the next chapter when I examine the state’s contradictory
pro-globalization “Foreign Talent” policy. I argue that cultivating an iden-
tity within the boundary of the “national” is increasingly hard to main-
tain, as competing identities are the order of the day in transnational
geographies and spaces (Cohen, 1997; see also, Gilroy, 1997;
Papastergiadis, 2000; Wong, 2002). Concepts of “home”, “nation”, “iden-
tity”, “culture” and “place” are therefore always evolving, resulting in
new configurations.
I am, however, not suggesting that cultivating a national identity is
not entirely possible or not important. What I oppose is the absolute
sense that identity-making can be fashioned without taking into con-
sideration the influence and intermingling (read hybridization) of other
contested sources of identities. In other words, I am alluding to what

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Robertson (1992), Featherstone (1995), Albrow (1996) and others have
collectively argued for: the destabilization and relativisation of identities
in the global-local nexus. Stuart Hall’s (1996a, p. 4) argument on iden-
tity best sums up the flux and fluidity of identity formation:
[. . .] identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly frag-
mented and fractured: never singular but multiply constructed across different,
often intersecting and antagonistic, discourse, practices and positions. They are
subject to a radical historicization, and are constantly in the process of change
and transformation.

The critique of NE aside, in my view, the pedagogy of NE has a mana-

gerial function of “narrating the nation” (Bhabha, 1990). It tells the
story of how Singapore overcomes its odds, and like all other stories,
the Singapore story also has a moral, didactic intent. Its moral charge is
a clarion call for Singaporeans to remain a loyal and patriotic citizenry
in the tides of globalization and the perceived state of a lack of emo-
tional attachment to the country.
Commenting on Singapore’s periodic construction of a national
culture and identity, Wee (2000), a cultural critic, observes that the Na-
tional Education program has been repackaged and given a renewed
focus on the “national” instead of its previous dictum of the “Asian re-
gional identity”. He also observes that “there was no discussion of the
state’s socio-cultural engineering role in the national amnesia” (Wee,
2000, p. 140). Here, Wee gestures to the selective tradition of curricu-
lum knowledge and the construction of what counts as Singapore’s “his-
tory”. Wee’s point that NE re-emphasises the “national” implicitly sug-
gests a retrospective memory re-construction of a buried past that is
distilled to build a national consciousness. As such, NE is akin to the
narration of the nation, as it will become evident in the next section
that the pedagogical objectives and curriculum structure of NE re-im-
agine and construct a sense of Singapore’s nationhood and national iden-
tity.

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National Education7: The Curriculum structure

The overarching objective of NE is to develop national cohesion, the

instinct for survival and confidence in Singapore’s future. To achieve
this objective, the NE curriculum has been designed with a pedagogi-
cal focus that can be summed up as:
(a) Cultivating a sense of identity, pride and self-respect as Singaporeans;
(b) Understanding how Singapore battled the odds and emerged as a
nation;
(c) Understanding Singapore’s challenges, constraints, and vulner-
abilities;
(d) Instilling core values, the will to persevere and continue to main-
tain the success of Singapore.
The curriculum structure and pedagogy of National Education takes a
new form. Instead of implementing it as a curriculum subject, National
Education is infused across the formal curriculum in subjects such as
Social Studies, Civics and Moral Education, History, Geography and
the General Paper. A revised curriculum for Social Studies and History
has been introduced, with a greater emphasis on issues pertaining to
the formation and the struggles of Singapore as a nation. The thematic
and pedagogical focus is, however, different at each level. At the Pri-
mary level, the theme is “Love Singapore”, whereas at the Secondary
level, the theme is “Know Singapore” and finally, at the Junior College
level, “Lead Singapore” is the core thematic focus. There is an evident
hierarchical pedagogical outcome which focuses on the affect at the
Primary level, moving on to knowledge at the Secondary level, and
finally, action for the Pre-University students.

7 All aspects of the National Education program can be obtained from the Min-
istry of Education (2002a) website: <http://www.ne.edu.sg/>, last retrieved
5/2010. I have chosen to emphasise certain aspects of NE for the purpose of
the argument in this chapter. I have also not provided in-text citation in this
section because the same reference is referred to throughout this section.

154
 In addition to the thematic focus at each level, there are six mes-
sages that National Education aims to promote8. These six messages are:
1. Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong. Singapore’s
heritage and way of life must be preserved.
2. Racial and religious harmony must be preserved. Despite the many
races, religious, languages and cultures, Singaporeans must pursue
one destiny.
3. Meritocracy and incorruptibility must be upheld. This means equal
opportunities for all, according to ability and effort.
4. No one owes Singapore a living. It must find its own way to sur-
vive and prosper.
5. Singaporeans themselves must defend Singapore. No one else is
responsible for the country’s security and well-being.
6. Singaporeans must have confidence in our future. United, deter-
mined and well-prepared, Singaporeans shall build a bright future
for themselves.
To include a more participative and meaningful dimension to an other-
wise textbook-based knowledge of Singapore’s history, important histo-
rical events are observed in schools to re-experience, in a conscious
way, the birth of a nation. These key events include Total Defence Day
(15 February), Racial Harmony Day (21 July), International Friend-
ship Day (Term 2 in the Singapore School Calendar) and National Day
(9 August).
Each of these events has an entrenched historical meaning and is
therefore didactic. The Total Defence Day commemorates the day when
Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. The observance serves to re-
mind every Singaporean that they have a role in defending Singapore.
Next, the Racial Harmony Day marks the day when racial riots broke
out in 1964. It serves to remind Singaporeans not to take racial har-
mony for granted but to work on maintaining it. Further, the Inter-

8 Because these six messages convey the ‘essence’ of the National Education pro-
gram, I have reproduced them verbatim from the Ministry of Education (2002b)
website, <http://www.ne.edu.sg/>, last retrieved 5/2010. The six messages have
since been re-worded on last check. The agentive inclusive “we” is used instead
of its original passive form. For example, “racial and religious harmony must be
preserved” is now re-worded as “we must preserve racial and religious harmony”.

155
national Friendship Day serves to remind Singaporean students of the
need to build and maintain good relations with Singapore’s neighbouring
countries. Lastly, National Day commemorates the independence of Sin-
gapore, along with its success and achievements as a nation thus far.
To further instil a sense of pride and belonging in students, they
also embark on a “learning journey”. At the launch of “Learning Jour-
neys”9, the Minister for Education, Teo Chee Hean (1998) explained
that the purpose of “Learning Journeys” is “to incorporate activities
outside the classroom, for these link experience with theory and inject
life and meaning to what is taught in class”. Thus, schools organize trips
to key public and private institutions and economic facilities. These
metaphorical journeys are meant for students to discover and reflect
on how these key public and private institutions battled the constraints
and became successful.
National Education also has a practical, “hands-on” component.
Called the Community Involvement Program10, this program requires
students from Primary to Junior College level to perform a minimum
of 6 hours of community service each year. The purpose of the pro-
gram is to inculcate a sense of citizenship, whereby students learn the
importance of contributing to their own community, the society at large
and to the nation. By doing community service, students will also de-
velop a sense of civic duty and commitment to the nation. This sums
up the curriculum structure of National Education.
In addition, what began as a school-based curriculum also became
a public event. In July 1998, NE was staged as an MTV-style, multi-
media exhibition at the Suntec City Convention Hall (The Straits Times,
11 June 1998 cited in Kwok and Low, 2002, p. 161). Besides the simu-
lated multi-media presentation, visitors at the exhibition were able to
take away replicas of Singapore’s history as souvenirs. The parapherna-
lia that was up for grabs included banana money, ration cards issued
during the Japanese occupation, and documents on the Malaysia-Sin-
gapore merger and separation.

9 The Education Minister’s speech can be obtained from <http://www1.moe.

edu.sg/speeches/1998/280298a.htm>, last retrieved 4/2010.
10 The Community Involvement Program was launched by the Director-General
of Education on 1 October 1997 as part of National Education. His speech
can be obtained from <http://www.ne.edu.sg/>, last retrieved 5/2010 (Minis-
try of Education, 1997).

156
 Kwok and Low (2002, p. 161) interpreted this public spectacle as
“the art of Singapore’s governmentality”, as the state relied on “erasing
memory, inventing tradition, and rewriting history to support the con-
struction of a national identity and ensure a loyal and cohesive elector-
ate”. In line with Kwok and Low’s argument, schools would then ide-
ally be the right place to “govern” and “normalize” the Singaporean
national identity. From this perspective, National Education as a state-
initiated curriculum has normalizing tendencies that assert and estab-
lish a cultural boundary which serves to frame the wandering subject
in the name of ‘national’ interest.
It is perhaps self-evident that the discourses of nationalism are writ
large in the National Education program, but primarily what warrants
attention are the concepts of nationalism that have been mobilized to
construct the Singapore ‘nation’ and national identity. In the next sec-
tion, I explore how NE mobilizes the concepts of nationalism to re-
territorialize the fluidity of identities that is proffered in the circuit of
global cultural flows.

A Meta-commentary on National Education:

Constructing the Singaporean “nation” and “identity”

To begin, NE privileges Singapore’s post-war history. That is, its birth

as a nation historically began when Singapore separated from Malaysia
to become an independent state in August 196511. This historical mo-
ment has become something like a myth to mark and celebrate the
strong political will and the tenacity of a small, young nation, with no
natural resources of its own to press on and succeed. More importantly,
it is also in response to this “crisis” of being abandoned and to fend for
itself that the survival rhetoric has been repeatedly mobilized as the motif

11 For political and economic reasons, Singapore merged with Malaysia in 1963,
but shortly after in 1965, Singapore departed from its counterpart due to an
unresolved clash of political ideologies. For a more detailed account of this epi-
sode in Singapore’s history, see Lau, A. (1998) A Moment of Anguish: Singapore in
Malaysia and the Politics of Disengagement. Singapore: Times Academic Press.

157
in the discourse of Singapore’s nation-building (cf. Chua, 1995; Birch,
1993).
In a sense, Singapore has never quite recovered from the trauma
of being ousted by its Malaysian counterpart. Thus, the ‘return of the
repressed’ continues to haunt the Singaporean imaginary, but the rhetoric
has changed. Now, Singaporeans are constantly reminded of the con-
straints, vulnerabilities and challenges that beset their country, which is
also a core message of National Education. It is this drive to stay com-
petitive, be innovative, go global and the constant reminder not to take
Singapore’s success for granted, which are, I argue, an example of the
“not-good-enough” syndrome that continues to govern the Singaporean
habitus. In short, Singapore’s nationalism is mobilized in terms of “cri-
ses” and “crisis management”. Ideologically, crisis construction works
to mobilize a collective will and a concerted effort of a nation coming
together to absolve crises, while “crisis management” remains the pre-
rogative of the political elites, since the success to absolve and crisis
manage continues to give the political elites the legitimacy to rule
(Brown, 2000). Imagining Singapore as a nation is therefore cast in an
imagination of crisis.
One could, however, argue that Singapore’s sense of nationhood
and identity can be constructed out of the remnants of its colonial his-
tory. If Singapore’s history must have a definite beginning, then it must
begin when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles first set foot on the tiny and
deserted island in 1819. Although there are other historical accounts
that pre-date Singapore’s history to pre-1819, historical documents are,
however, too scarce and fragmentary to provide any concrete evidence
(Lim, 1991). Thus, if, as Gellner (1983, p. 49) suggested, a country’s na-
tional past is invented out of the “raw material the cultural, historical
and other inheritances from the pre-nationalist world”, then the Raf-
fles story and the colonial architecture and monuments that dot Singa-
pore’s landscape could lend Singapore rich cultural deposits that nar-
rate Singapore’s sense of nationhood and identity.Yet it is ironic that in
positioning itself as a “global city” and a postcolonial cityscape, Singa-
pore’s urban and natural landscape has undergone “a process of
Disneyfication” (Kwok & Low, 2002, p. 158), as the interventionist state
continues to re-write and re-embed a preferred social and cultural
memory through its numerous heritage conservation projects (Yeoh &
Kong, 1999).

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 Although the cultural memory of Raffles’ founding spirit is viewed
favourably, celebrated, romanticized and glorified as virtues to be emu-
lated, he cannot be the anchor or the foundation on which Singapore’s
national identity is built. If he is, it would be a direct admission of the
bastard complex of Singapore’s “Western” parentage (Ang & Stratton,
1996) and hence, its Westernized identity. This suggestion is incompat-
ible with the political ideology that Singapore subscribes to, as it has
always identified itself as “non-west”. In fact, in the discursive realms,
Singapore’s identity is constructed out of self-orientalizing and differ-
ence, by ‘Othering’ and valorizing the ills of the “West” and “West-
ernization”.
Another reason why the Raffles story can only be documented as
constituting a fragment of Singapore’s history is the multiple meanings
that have been inscribed on ‘Raffles’. In his reading of ‘Raffles’ as a
colonial sign, Holden (1999, p. 94) argues that Raffles has become “a
floating sign without a referent”. What Holden means is that the ‘Raf-
fles’ legacy does not have a stable indexical cultural reference, its meaning
is variegated and appropriated to suit different contexts and purposes.
For example, Raffles is used as a brand name in Singapore to suggest
quality and tradition. Three elite schools, Raffles Institution, Raffles Girls’
School and Raffles Junior College, have appropriated the name, although
there is no obvious underlying connection between the schools and
Raffles himself (Holden, 1999). In the economic realm, Raffles’ body
embodies “a totem for the market” and “the self-discipline required of
Singaporeans in order to build the nation” (Holden, 1999, p. 93). Thus,
the shifting and polysemic meanings of ‘Raffles’ do not provide the sta-
bility for the construction of a national identity. He is at most com-
memorated as a statue standing tall outside the Victoria Theatre.
As argued above, it is difficult for Singapore to craft its national
identity out of its colonial history, and as such Singapore’s brand of na-
tionalism and identity construction must be cultivated out of the ideo-
logical habits of practice and belief, especially in the disciplinary and
embodied site of schooling. Of course, besides schooling, the resort to
public campaigns and the participatory national events such as the Na-
tional Day Parade celebrations, as mentioned in Chapter 2, are the state’s
ideological tools to interpellate Singaporeans into habitual practice and
belief. Importantly, these ideological habits of practice, whether it is to
“Speak Mandarin”, “Be Courteous”, “Speak Good English”, amongst

159
others, work to become naturalized as part of the everyday life of
Singaporeans. Likewise, the National Education program also requires
students to participate in numerous rituals and practice that serve as
“continual ‘flagging’, or reminding, of nationhood” (Billig, 1995, p. 8).
For example, observing the Racial Harmony Day, Total Defence Day,
and National Day are symbolic tokens and bodily practices that con-
sciously “localize” and create emotional bonding necessary for the con-
struction of a national identity. The effect of observing these official
narratives of “rituals” and “riots” in school must be seen as an act of
“disciplining difference” (PuruShotam, 1998) within its management
of ethnic pluralism and social cohesion (Lai, 2004).
Furthermore, to cultivate a sense of belonging and identity, Na-
tional Education takes students on a metaphorical learning journey to
institutional sites that have historical, cultural or economic significance
in Singapore. Some of these institutions include the Chinese Heritage
Centre, Singapore Technologies, the Trade Development Board, the Port
of Singapore Authority of Singapore, to name but a few. The purpose
of these visits is to instil patriotic pride and confidence in Singapore.
David Brown (2000, p. 98) calls this “the development of a civic na-
tionalist sense of identity based on [a] collectivist ideology. . .” that cel-
ebrates and cultivates patriotic pride of a nation’s achievement. I fur-
ther argue that these “learning journeys” do not only cultivate the affect
and emotional bonding to Singapore, but they are also symbolic acts of
demarcating territoriality. That is to say national identity or any form
of identity making is produced through practices of boundary making
in and within the materiality of cultural resources and territorial bounda-
ries (Penrose, 2002), and as I have pointed out earlier, the state contin-
ues to engage in the process of eradicating and re-inscribing its history
onto the materiality of its cultural resources.
In summary, National Education can be regarded as a national
project with the aim to work against globalization – contradictory as it
may sound. It has to work against globalization because globalization
has destabilizing effects on the construction of a national identity. NE
therefore is an ideological project that attempts to reconcile the need
for Singaporeans to “go global” yet stay connected and feel for the na-
tion. My account of the implementation of National Education would
be incomplete if I do not include how NE has been received on the
ground. It is to this that I now turn.

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National Education: Reception on the ground

Despite its carefully conceived and methodical planning in terms of peda-

gogy and intended outcome, National Education has nevertheless met
with resistance and criticisms. One criticism is that the focus of NE
presupposes that only students who are academically inclined would be
able to take on more important social and political roles in the society
(Han, 2000). This is evident in the learning objective prescribed for the
different academic and vocational streams. For example, the NE program
assumes that students in the junior college, polytechnics and universities
will play a significant role in leading and shaping Singapore’s future.
By contrast, for the less academically inclined students, (usually those
who are enrolled in the Institute of Technical Education), NE aims to
help them “understand that they would be helping themselves, their
families and Singapore by working hard, continually upgrading them-
selves and helping to ensure a stable social order” (Ministry of Educa-
tion, 1999b). This disparity points to an evident reproduction of social
inequality in the education system, where students are already assigned
specific social roles based on their academic ability, even in a ‘national’
curriculum that is aimed at cultivating a national consciousness and pa-
triotic citizenry.
Critics have also voiced concern over the syllabus design of Na-
tional Education. The criticism is that being a state-initiated curricu-
lum, the curriculum design has been heavily influenced by politicians
and well-meaning educationists who tried hard to second-guess, in the
name of political correctness, what the government wanted schools to
teach rather than what students should learn (George, 1997). Comment-
ing on the propagandistic role of NE, Cherian George (1997, p. 83), a
political commentator, argued that “students should not learn only the
PAP’s version of controversial periods and personalities, lest some truth
or perspective be sacrificed and flavour lost”. Because NE reflects a
dominant political ideology, it is argued that the narrow conception of
its syllabus design may produce conformist thinking. Instead of pro-
ducing students who are capable of making informed judgement about
long-term changes in the country and the world, it is feared that NE
may produce parochial citizens who reproduce current government
policy and ideology.

161
 In addition to these criticisms, the reception of NE at the school
level has experienced quite contradictory outcomes. When National
Education was first introduced to schools in Singapore, it led to a flurry
of activities at the school level (Koh, 2001). Many schools translated
the objectives of National Education to slogans as evidenced by the
many murals in the school canteens and classrooms. As a result, Na-
tional Education gets promoted like another form of public campaign.
Because of the publicity and curriculum emphasis given to National
Education, it became associated pejoratively with jingoistic propaganda
of the government.
One further criticism is that NE has not been taught and received
with the level of enthusiasm that was expected because many of the
teachers in the profession were born post-independence. Like the
younger generation, they may also find the Singapore story historically
distant. Secondly, there is a less than enthusiastic response from the stu-
dents as National Education is not taken seriously as an examinable
subject even though a National Education test has been devised as a
quiz. Therefore, students perceive and treat National Education as an
add-on.

Conclusion

Reflecting on NE as an ideological package, a few closing points are

noteworthy. Firstly, NE in its larger ideological thrust embodies a na-
tionalist agenda that aims to cultivate a sense of cultural mooring, be-
longing, and a place-bound identity. As Singapore experiments with glo-
balization, it also has to experiment with schooling and education to
foster a more robust national identity to work against the fear of a
destabilizing effect globalization has on national and cultural identity.
The concept of flow, however, transcends the disciplinary bound-
ary of the nation-state (Ong & Nonini, 1997). This entanglement is
further complicated when “strong states” like Singapore wield and ex-
ercise the power to “contain” the unpredictability of global cultural flows,
mediate, and adapt them to local conditions. Thus, what we are pre-
sented with is an irreconcilable tension, where globalization and

162
(re)territorialization are in fact mutually complementary processes that
dismantle any holistic conceptualization of a fixed, territorial bound
identity (Bauman, 1998). Instead, competing sources of identities and
interests located in the “in-between” spaces of the global and local will
result in new configurations of identities.
Secondly, we are witnessing an accelerated pace of global popula-
tion movements in our contemporary trans/postnational time. Admit-
tedly, the former Prime Minister, Goh himself mentioned in his 2002
National Day message that there are an estimated number of 100 000
to 150 000 Singaporeans currently living overseas. This global flow of
people, what Appadurai describes as “ethnoscape”, challenges and un-
settles nationalist discourses and bounded territories giving way to what
is now known as transnational and diasporic networks (Appardurai,
1996). Therefore, it would not be irrelevant to ask these Singaporeans
who are living in a trans/postnational condition, how well the nation-
alist discourse serves them (cf. Sun, 2000).
Thirdly, although the advent of modern technology and electronic
media enable the practice of “long-distance nationalism” (Anderson,
2001; Appadurai, 1996; see also Tomlison, 1999), communication tech-
nologies at the same time also enable the adoption of flexible subject
positions and identities (Ong, 1997). By this argument, the discourse
of nationalism, although observed to be on the rise, has consequential
effects on claims of territorial-bound identity. The next chapter will
bring these global/local ruptures and disjunctures to the fore by ex-
amining the influx of foreign talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape.

163
164
7. Global Flows of Foreign Talent
Identity Anxieties in Singapore’s Ethnoscapes

Introduction

Globalization poses new problems, risks and uncertainties. Indeed as

I have pointed out in the introductory chapter, globalization has be-
come something like a “problem space” where governments persist to
assemble and reassemble resources to experiment with globalization,
performed with a calculated rationality what I call tactical globalization
in this book. Given the unpredictability of the success of experiments,
and also the vagaries of globalization, calculations, however, are at best
only calculations. They can fail and/or result in unintended conse-
quences as I have argued.
This chapter focuses on another form of experimentation, associated
with a neo-liberal instrumental logic of boosting its stock of human
capital to propel a knowledge-driven economy. Called the “Foreign
Talent” policy, Singapore has made generous provisions in the form of
incentives (such as the expediency of employment pass applications, per-
sonalized employment pass which allows foreign professionals to stay
in Singapore for up to six months while between jobs, subsidized state
accommodation, easing previous restrictions on foreign husbands, de-
pendants and etc) to attract highly skilled and qualified people to in-
ject “skill”, “talent” and “creativity” to Singapore’s economy (Yeoh &
Huang, 2004). Mention needs to be made here though that Singapore
is not the only country that has embarked on an aggressive drive to
recruit foreign talent; many countries (e. g. the U. S, U. K., Australia and
even Hong Kong and China) have also entered the global war for tal-
ent (see Brown & Tannock, 2009). The motivation is simple: many gov-
ernment leaders, including Singapore, recognize that its economic tra-
jectory to continued prosperity lies not only in securing a stake in the
global economy but also having a concentrated pool of talented and

165
highly skilled workers and students to drive national economic growth
and productivity (Tannock, 2009).
In Singapore, politicians and government leaders have repeatedly
made known their stance for the recruitment of foreign talent in the
media. That there is a sharp decline in fertility rate (even state-led ini-
tiatives such as the Baby Bonus Scheme, have failed to “correct” the
declining fertility rate) and a small population with limited local talent
have been the arguments made to justify the importation of foreign
talent. Apart from drawing on demography-related arguments, which
mobilizes scientific discourses to present objective “truth”, a nationalist
self-interest argument that Singapore’s economy will not sustain con-
tinual growth if there isn’t a highly skilled and talented workforce to
generate more growth and jobs is also a recurring argument made and
belabored in many newspaper articles and commentaries.
The fact that this hotly debated issue has preoccupied its national
press, and in the Singaporean imaginary, is an indirect admission that
its experimentation with stocking (talented) human capital has touched
a raw nerve in the Singaporean imaginary, and that Singaporeans need
more than convincing. This is why The Straits Times – its national press –
has been instrumental in “educating” Singaporeans to “embrace talent. . .
[in order] to secure S’pore’s future” as one newspaper headline puts it
(The Straits Times, 21 August 2006) and another, stating matter-of-factly
“more foreign talents critical to boost economic growth (The Straits
Times, 28 August 2006).
This chapter primarily serves to examine the tensions and ambi-
valences that surround the Foreign Talent policy (read as: an unintended
consequence with experimentation with globalization) with a view to
reveal the fragility of the culture and identity politics in Singapore. This
chapter is also situated in the larger argument of the book, read in con-
junction with Chapter 6 as the “strong state” (that Singapore is) trying
to reconcile and maneuver a strategic calculation to work with the
promises of globalization (by tapping on a “global” pool of talent) and
against the perils of globalization (in the form of a loss of national iden-
tity and belonging) – an act of balancing that nevertheless results in
unintended consequences.
I first begin the chapter by analyzing the competing and dissent-
ing discourses surrounding the Foreign Talent policy to point to the
ambivalent social positioning of foreign talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape.

166
In doing so, I will develop a new conceptual vocabulary to describe
this new diasporic social formation of “foreign bodies” whose presence,
while important for Singapore’s national economy, has concomitantly
invited on-going debate and resistance. Finally, I argue that the pres-
ence and pressure of this new diversity and configuration of identities
demonstrate that the mobility of migratory flow has transformative and
disruptive effects on the level of culture and the identity landscape of
Singapore, where its discursive cultural boundaries are drawn accord-
ing to a nationalist framework. This creates challenges for the Singa-
pore state in negotiating difference yet striving towards unity in its na-
tionalist multiracial ideology.

Foreign Talent Policy: A Discourse

on National Survival and Foreign Talent

Singaporeans are constantly reminded of Singapore’s vulnerabilities

through the narration of crisis that repeatedly focuses on the anxiety
and fragility of the nation (Heng & Devan, 1992; Rodan, 1993a). The
narration of crisis is invariably constructed around a discourse of “na-
tional survival” (Chua, 1995). From national campaigns to public poli-
cies, a discourse of “national survival” has been used as a standard trope
and rhetorical device to construct governance. This enables the gov-
ernment to demand a constant vigilance and social discipline from its
population, and in turn, grants the government the legitimacy to rule.
Take, for instance, the most recent narrative crisis that has received much
media attention – the fall in the fertility rate of the Singapore popula-
tion1. The narrative of a drastic fall in fertility rate generates a “crisis”,
one that claims Singaporeans are not reproducing enough, and perpetu-
ates an anxiety that if the trend persists, the shrinking population will
not be able to support the economy thereby affecting its global com-

1 See The Straits Times, More Babies wanted: Bonus for second and third. (2000,
August 26), p. 3. In addition, a feature article on this issue, Chng, R. (2001,
Jan–Feb). ‘Making babies’, appeared in the magazine Singapore.

167
petitiveness. In consequence, state-led initiatives ensued in the form of
a baby bonus for married couples in the hope that the fall in fertility
rate can be “corrected”. Yap Mui Teng (2001), a Senior Research Fel-
low at the Institute of Policy Studies, points out that the “baby deficit”
demography provides legitimate grounds for the argument to use mi-
gration (in the form of foreign talent recruitment) as a demographic
lever to “correct” the shortfall of indigenous workforce.
Not unlike other public policies, the Foreign Talent Policy also
follows a similar discourse pattern. In the media, the foreign talent is
constructed as a crucial economic player in determining the sustainability
of Singapore’s economy in the age of a global competitive economy.
Two newspaper headlines underscore the indispensable contribution of
foreign talent in Singapore’s economy. Significantly, this construction
is endorsed by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who asserts that “For-
eign talent (is the) key to the future” (Chua & Lim, 1999), and in
a separate article, “Top talent needed for firms to compete globally”
(E. Koh, 1999). At a university forum, in October 2001, following the
announcement of a new national imperative to “remake Singapore”,
Minister Mentor Lee persuaded an audience of university students that
“casting its net wide for talent from around the world is the only way
to go if Singapore wants to succeed in areas such as the arts, medicine
or education, where it lacks a critical mass of talent”, and declared in
no uncertain terms that “We will fail if we don’t cast [the] talent net
wide” (2001).
The “crisis” of a lack of talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape is further
argued logically by appealing to demographics. That the small popu-
lation of four million does not produce enough talent is by itself a
legitimate reason to recruit talent from elsewhere. Moreover, Singa-
pore’s national survival in a global competitive economic environment
is cast in doubt because a lack of intellectual capital means that Singa-
pore would not be able to compete with other global players in the
global economy, which is a new economy that relies on innovation and
the creation of knowledge. A discourse of national survival is therefore
cleverly drawn upon to create the kind of impending crisis Singapore
will face due to a lack of foreign talent. This discourse legitimizes and
provides justification for the presence of foreign talent in Singapore’s
ethnoscape.

168
 Apart from the representation of foreign talent in the media, policy
documents2 also construct foreign talent as Singapore’s cultural capital.
Not only do foreign talents bring with them their expertise and spe-
cialized skills, according to the policy document (Singapore 21 Subject
Committee, 2002), but they also provide “powerful motivation (note:
not competition) for us to continually strive for higher standards”. In
addition, foreign talent brings “variety and diversity to Singapore, add-
ing color, richness and spice to our cultural life”. More importantly, it
raises the country’s profile in that talent attracts talent. The positive por-
trayal and invaluable benefits that foreign talent brings cannot be em-
phasized enough. It can therefore be said that the representation of for-
eign talent is intertwined with economics and articulated in a utilitarian
discourse.
What is most interesting is that in the policy document, Singa-
poreans are also positioned as “foreigners” as they are reminded that
historically, the composition of the population of Singapore consisted
essentially of immigrants from all over the world. The report states:
We need only to remind ourselves that foreign talent is not new to Singapore
but has been an integral part of the Singapore story. Historically, Temasek has
been an oasis for immigrants. People from afar, be they Chinese, Indians, Arabs,
Eurasians, Jews or Armenians sailed here seeking a better life. Some fled famine
and chaos while others brought new businesses and ideas, but all were deter-
mined to succeed in a foreign land. All but one of our first Cabinet ministers
were foreign-born and, without them, Singapore would not be where we are
today” (Singapore 21 Subject Committee, 2002, p. 3).

The construction of Singaporeans as “foreigners” and “immigrants”

through notions of nostalgia and an appeal to “collective memories”
further work ideologically to historicize the genealogy of Singapore as
a nation of diasporas. This legitimates the place of foreign talent in Sin-
gapore’s ethnoscape and also dispels the all-too-familiar perception that

2 The two policy documents that I refer to are:

a. Manpower 21 Vision of a Talent Capital. (1999) Singapore: Ministry of Man-
power.
b. Singapore 21 Subject Committee. (2002, October 14). Summary of the de-
liberations of the subject committees to the Singapore 21 committee. Re-
trieved November 14, 2002, from <http://www.singapore21.org.sg/menu_
newsletterarchives02.html>, last retrieved 5/2010.

169
foreign talent are “queue-jumpers” and “opportunists” in the national
imaginary.The positionality of both the local and foreign talent are hence
placed and constructed on equal terms through a shared ‘homeland’ that
belongs to neither.
In another feature article,“Foreign yes, but all talent?” (Chng, 2000),
the role of foreign talent is further highlighted. It reports that the role of
foreign talent is narrativized and constructed as the agency for Singa-
pore’s economic success. It goes on to say that “Singapore’s economic
miracle owes something to Dutch economist Dr Albert Winsemius who
first came in 1959 as leader of a United Nations Technical Assistance
Board team to Singapore” with a forceful conclusion that “without for-
eigners, there would be no Singapore” (Chng, 2000, p. 10). Here the
contribution of such a foreign talent, as represented by Dr AlbertWinsemius,
was not seen merely as a consultancy, but an economic engineering who
also revolutionalized and set Singapore’s economy in the right direction.
The positive contributions of foreign talent are therefore narrated rhe-
torically as unproblematic.The ‘absence’ in the representation of foreign
talent as social and economic ills therefore obliterates the view of foreign
‘bodies’ as ‘Aliens’ or an ‘Other’. Instead, their social positioning as eco-
nomic agents is evident and made abundantly clear in the discourse and
construction of foreign talent in the media and policy documents.
While the state-led Foreign Talent policy deals in pragmatic terms
with the lack of intellectual capital necessary for the maintenance of
the competitive edge of Singapore’s economy, it also exemplifies a form
of “governmentality” (Dean, 1999; see also Foucault, 1979) that aims
to administer a solution to a national/global “crisis” beyond the con-
trol of Singaporeans. This gives the government the legitimacy to ex-
ercise power to manage the economy and to discipline the social body
to accept and accommodate foreign talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape.
As argued earlier, the government does this by constructing a certain
‘truth’ about the vulnerable situation of Singapore’s fragile economy
because of a lack of talent. Therefore, the Foreign Talent policy, in its
overarching objective, aims to “arrest” the uncertainty and anxiety
brought about by globalization with its attendant conjectural future-
orientated discourse about the new economy. It also illustrates how the
“effects” of globalization can be re-worked and combated through forms
of governmentality translated as a “local” national policy called the For-
eign Talent Policy. Despite the economic rational argument of state dis-

170
courses on the need for foreign talent, the social position of foreign
talent is treated with discord and ambivalence.
I now turn to the next section and illustrate the dissenting “voices’’
drawn from popular discourses in the media. The two sources of popular
discourses are letters to the “Forum” published in the national news-
paper, The Straits Times, and messages posted in a chat room hosted by
the Straits Times (ST) Interactive3. My choice of using the messages
posted in the Straits Times Interactive as expressions of dissent has been
deliberate despite the complete erasure of identities (Turkle, 1995). It
is precisely because of the anonymity and/or false personae that one
chooses to assume in this context that I argue that a more authentic
viewpoint on the issue of foreign talent is reflected. Given that a poli-
tical culture of fear discourages Singaporeans from criticizing the govern-
ment overtly (George, 2000), the only “safe” haven for Singaporeans
to openly express dissenting viewpoints is in cyberspace, and because
cyberspace is a deterritorialized space, outside the regime of national
“space” and “place”, it allows dissidents to participate in “cyber-demo-
cracy” (Poster, 2001), which otherwise renders them muted and silenced.

Discord and Ambivalence: The social position

of Foreign Talent in Singapore’s Ethnoscape

Singaporeans are by and large convinced of the economic rationale for

importing foreign talent 4.Yet paradoxically, many are anxious and fearful
over greater competition in the job market, triggered by the infiltra-
3 The Singapore Press Holdings Limited and AsiaOne who host the Straits Times
Interactive are quick to put a disclaimer stating that “Straits Times Interactive,
Singapore Press Holdings Limited and AsiaOne Limited do not associate with
the statements and materials posted by users”. This message board can be accessed
at <http://stchat.asia1.com.sg/>.
4 According to two surveys conducted as part of the S21 project, 76% of those
polled were supportive of the government’s move to attract foreign talent, while
23% did not.The younger Singaporeans polled were demonstratively more suppor-
tive of the policy. 85% of them gave their support.The statistics of the poll is taken
from the report “Attracting Talent vs Looking After Singaporeans”. The website
address is <www.singapore21.org.sg/menu_resources.html>, last retrieved 4/2010.

171
tion of foreign talent. Many see foreign talent as an unwelcome source
of competition, particularly during times of economic downturn when
jobs are found wanting. This was the case in 2002 where unemploy-
ment rate reached an all time high of 4.8% in the third quarter (Singa-
pore Statistics, 2002). In a spiralling economic downturn, it was not un-
expected that anxieties and resentments would run high due to the lack
of jobs which was further compounded by competition from foreign
talent. Such was the sentiment expressed by a message posted in the
ST Interactive chat room:

Komazawa – 10:09pm Apr 29, 2002 SGT (405.)

Country? What country? Where are the jobs??
I will die for my country if there is something to die for. But if the leadership of
the country continue to allow “foreign talent” to compete for jobs, then what
ideals am i dying for?

When it comes to a crunch, what foreign talents will be left to fight for us? Look
at all the troubled nations around the world. Who are the first to leave the coun-
try?

If foreign talent is so highly prized, shouldn’t we also hire the best to govern this
beloved country of ours? Surely there will be no lack of candidates for the mil-
lion dollar jobs?

The only reason I will die for this country is if I truly feel wanted. I don’t feel
wanted in this country. As a citizen I feel second-class. It’s a crying shame. I have
no choice but to remain, as no other country will confer me the royal treatment
that my country confers to foreigners.

We are always told by our leaders “Trust me, whatever we do we do in your in-
terest”. Sure. . . How can a foreigner taking my job be in my interest? It’s the big
picture that matters to the leaders, but for us ordinary folks, it’s the bread and
butter that matters. . .food on the table, books for the kids, mortgage payments,
bills, bills, bills. Call me selfish. The foreign talent may create 10 other jobs, but
hey, he has taken my job, my livelihood, my happiness, my family’s happiness. . .
get the picture??

Let’s talk about living, not dying.

Viewing foreign talent as the usurper of jobs from “local” Singaporeans

is even more acrimoniously articulated by another message. Writing the

172
message in block letters is by no means fortuitous but symbolically a
sign of protest:

Confuscius – 03.18am Apr 19, 2002 SGT (282.)

WHOSE COUNTRY IS IT ANYWAY. . . CERTAINLY NOT MINE

IF YOUR JOB IS BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNER. WHEN U ARE DOWN

AND THOSE PAP SHITHEAD STILL KEEP STEPPING ON U. WHEN U R
BARELY MAKING ENDS MEET. . . AND THEY STILL KEEP INCREASING THE
FEES 4 THIS AND THAT. WHEN THEY GET A SCAPEGOAT TO COME OUT
WITH A PLAN TO CUT THE TAXES FOR THE RICH AND PUT BURDEN ON
THE POOR MAN IN THE STREETS WITH HIGHER GST. DIE 4 MY COUN-
TRY. U GOT TO BE KIDDING. I’LL BE WAVING THE MALAYSIAN FLAG
WHEN THEY’RE MARCHING IN FROM THE CAUSEWAY. LIFE MAYBE
WON’T BE BETTER THEN. . . BUT IT COUNLDN’T GET ANY WORSE THAN
NOW.

While the anger expressed here may not be representative of Singa-

poreans at large, the resentment is nevertheless unequivocally directed
at the government for reinforcing the Foreign Talent policy even in
times of economic recession where jobs become scarce. The sentiment
is that priority for jobs should be given to the locals rather than for-
eigners since the government is morally obligated to look after its citi-
zens. This has led to calls to retrench foreign talent:

Ch 1 nswee – 07:44pm Apr 25, 2002 SGT (2629.1)

Retrench FT

It just shows that PAP are humans after all. I think they are caught with their
pants down, and it may be due to the people designing and implementing poli-
cies, such as those in MOM, who are young and inexperienced.

So we have unemployed locals sitting around and foreign non-talents filling up

jobs. We are caught because no one foresaw the deep and prolonged recession –
and we are also caught because we cannot weaned ourselves of the cheap labour,
as operating costs are already so high, in a large part perhaps because of land cost
(Would be interesting if someone can provide some analysis of all the costs com-
ponents to doing business in Spore – labour or land?)

173
 There are many ‘FT’ filling up relatively non-talented jobs, eg radiographer in the
hospitals, and elsewhere all over. One solution is to retrench them and have them
filled up by locals. It has no political costs and you keep faith with YOUR people
– and giving real meaning to citizenship and National Service – only at the
expense of some face and reputation internationally – but these will go away, and
be forgotten. And I dont think someone like Dr. M will have any qualms doing
that. If there is a time to exert crude unfeeling heartless political power, this is the
time!

I think we must know how to better manage risks and opportunities. The Israelis
have no qualms to tell the UN to ‘defer’ the arrival of the Jenin inspection team
on some flimsy excuse. And when interviewed by the BBC the spokesman for
Sharon’s press office say they don’t give a damn to PR when their people are get-
ting bombed all the time.

Following this, controversial questions such as, “Who is the foreign tal-
ent?” and “On what criteria are the selection of foreign talent based?”
were being raised in the Forum of the national press. The implications
of these questions were that there was a lack of transparency over the
selection criteria of foreign talent, and suspicion over the “talent” that
these so-called “foreign talent” were perceived to possess. These views
were borne out by a spate of letters to the national newspaper which
asserted, “Foreign-talent policy lacks clear criteria” (2001); “Foreign-
talent policy needs to be explained” (Cheng, 2001); and “Make clear
criteria on foreign talent” (2001). While the Ministry of Manpower was
quick to reply that a “multi-dimensional criteria” is used to ensure that
the right foreign talent are selected (Tan, 2001)5, these exchanges fur-
ther demonstrated the gulf between public opinions and the authorial
voice behind policy implementation.

5 The Director of Corporate Communications, Ministry of Manpower, defined

the multi-dimensional criteria, which I quote in verbatim: “Apart from the mini-
mum salary criterion, applicants for employment passes must possess acceptable
degrees, professional qualifications or specialist skills. In addition, the applicant’s
working experience and nature of job are taken into consideration”. Despite
the attempt to clarify, what I feel is reflected here are further ambiguities. One
could further query, “Which are considered acceptable degrees?” and “Which
skills are considered professional and which are not?” The “gaps” and “silences”
in the selective criteria therefore warrant each case to be considered indivi-
dually. In a sense, the “multi-dimensional criteria” are discretionary and con-
tingent. There are implicit criteria that are not clearly spelt out.

174
 Because the foreign talent issue is controversial enough to create
divisions, it was capitalized upon by the opposition parties as an issue
for debate during the 2001 General Elections. The opposition parties,
represented by the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) and the Sin-
gapore Democratic Party (SDP), for example, called for a “Singaporean
First” employment policy while the Workers’ Party (WP) wanted the
minimal salary criteria for the employment of foreign talent to be raised
(“Looming clash” 2001). Not unexpected, all their claims were refuted
and dismissed by the People’s Action Party (PAP), which is the ruling
political party constituting the Singapore government. That the For-
eign Talent policy became a point of contention in the political arena
is indicative of the inherent tensions surrounding the figure of the for-
eigner.
Politics aside, Singaporeans have a further bone to pick, as there is
a wide perception that local talent are often not even recognized as
talent in the eyes of local employers. The irony is that it takes the same
local talent to be recognized as a “talent” in another country. In other
words, the claim is that local employers are often blind to the local tal-
ent they have and choose to employ foreign talent over local talent. An
example can be seen in the case of an overseas Singaporean graduand
from Cornell University, whose application to join a top financial in-
stitution, the Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) in Singapore was re-
jected. This became a talking point in the media when this same
graduand was ironically wooed to join the same financial institution
located in New York.6 Arguably this could be an isolated case, and also
an oversight of the human resource organization of the company, which
may well have nothing to do with the Foreign Talent policy. None-
theless, public opinion suggests that the preference for foreign talent at
the expense of glossing over local talent further contributes to the am-
bivalence towards foreign talent. One message posting represents this
view:

6 See They wooed me: S’pore grad, (2001, August 20).The Straits Times. p. H4,
and a letter to the Forum in response to the case highlighted, K. Tan. (2001,
August 25) Are S’pore firms blind to homegrown talent? [Letter to the editor].
The Straits Times, p. 23.

175
 Patriotmale – 04:41am Apr 20, 2002 SGT (102.)

Foreign talents. . .thanks a lot. . .

Since it’s an open topic, I would not return to singapore. why? It really saddens me
when so many of our local talents are not acknowledged. Instead, foreign talents are
much more important than us. Do we have a choice then when we are not given
the slightest chance to prove our capabilities? In fact if Singapore is hunting so hard
for foreign talents, other nations are also competing. Our skills and knowledge are
greatly appreciated by overseas and that certainly makes us a Foreign talent as well!
If anyone is given the chance to practise what he learns and contribute to the
society, why not? :) I personally feel that we should not be blamed for not
returning to singapore because we have been forced to no where. . . If Singapore
really needs us back, something must be done to change the current situation or
else we will still feel really disappointed. . . . .and not our faults. . .

It has been suggested that this unhelpful comparison between ‘foreign’

and ‘local’ talent could have been sparked by the over-enthusiasm of
Singapore firms which have taken the Foreign Talent policy on board to
the extreme (R. Lim, 2002). In consequence, this contributed to the
ambivalent social position of foreign talent, and an “unintended reverse
discrimination” against local talent (R. Lim, 2002, p. 41). Raymond Lim
(2002) further deduced that perhaps calling these professional skilled
worker “foreign talent” is a misnomer as it is laden with the implication
that talent must come from elsewhere, hence excluding “local” talent.
Clearly, pitching “foreign talent” against “local talent” is socially and poli-
tically a conflicting binary, which can potentially spark a cultural clash.
Another prevalent view is that those deemed ‘foreign talent’ are
given special privileges over the locals in terms of opportunities and
employment benefits. Therefore, they are not competing on equal
grounds with the locals. This view is borne out in a letter to the na-
tional newspaper, which asserted that “we welcome foreign talent, but
the playing field must be level” (A. Lim, 1999). The dispute over job
competition between the locals and foreigners and the question sur-
rounding “cheaper foreign talents” was even debated in the Parliament7.
The two issues debated were concerned with regulating the flow of
foreign talent and protecting the locals from cheaper foreign talent. Al-
though the then Manpower Minister, Dr Lee Boon Yang, has explained

7 See Parliamentary Debates, 19 February 1998, Vol. 68, No. 3, Col. 20, p. 406.

176
at great length the need for foreign talent – appropriating the same
scientific and pragmatic discourse of national survival I noted earlier in
the Foreign Talent policy documents, the social position of foreign tal-
ent, does, however, continue to occupy an ambivalent position/space
in Singapore’s ethnoscape.
While the ambivalent status of foreign talent is largely due to the
competitiveness that they bring, a major source of contention that con-
tributes to their ambivalence stems from the asymmetrical treatment
they receive as “foreign talent”. According to the Singapore 21 Com-
mittee Report (2002), many felt that foreign talent, some of whom even-
tually take up permanent residence (PR), enjoy similar benefits as local
citizens even though they are not obliged to report for National Ser-
vice8 (Quah, 2000). Sociologist Jon Quah (2000) argues that, if the gov-
ernment maintains the existing policy of parity between citizens and
permanent residents, not only is the value of citizenship degraded, but
permanent residents may not take up citizenship since they are already
enjoying all other benefits accorded to citizens except voting rights.
By implication, the risk is that permanent residents may treat Singa-
pore as a temporary abode and may migrate to other countries in the
event that economic or political tides turn against Singapore. In other
words, their sense of loyalty and identity are called into question. The
message posted, (cited earlier) by “Komazawa” also gestured to the dis-
loyalty of foreign talent. This is a point I will further develop below
where I argue that the ambiguous and ambivalent position of foreign
talent has to do with their “flexible citizenship” (Ong, 1998).
Thus far, the bone of contention over the ambivalent space of for-
eign talent in the terrain of Singapore’s ethnoscape can summarily be
said to be confined to the level of economics. The “effects” of the glo-
bal flow of people, however, is not stratified and confined at this level
per se. With the increasing visibility of foreign bodies (skilled and un-
skilled) in Singapore’s ethnoscape, I argue that the micropolitics of the
presence of foreign talent is also (dis)located at the dimension of cul-
ture. The collapse of the economics into the cultural sphere or the argu-
ment that culture is embedded in economics is already a point alluded
to by globalization theorists (Amin, 1997; Jameson, 2000).

8 All males in Singapore are conscripted to serve National Service for 2 years.

177
 Although the intermingling of culture can be a source of fascina-
tion, Bhabha (1994) reminds us that “difference”, “displacement” and
“antagonism” are also generated when cultures come into contact. He
goes on to argue elsewhere that the translation of cultures, whether as-
similative or agonistic, produces borderline effects, identifications, and
also culture-sympathy or culture-clash (Bhabha, 1998). His point about
culture-sympathy or culture-clash, evoked as a result of the mélange of
cultures, is increasingly manifesting as a social reality in the social and
cultural landscape of Singapore. This is not surprising as foreign popu-
lation has crossed the one million mark in June 2007, according to one
newspaper report (The Straits Times, 27 September 2007). There have
also been more open confrontations and heated debates in community
dialogues on the foreign-versus-local debate of late, unlike in the past
when the tension is subterranean and a hush-hush (Low, 2009b). What
is even more illuminating is a grounded quantitative study conducted
by cultural geographers Brenda Yeoh and Shirlena Huang (2004) who
investigated the degree of social integration between Singaporeans and
foreign talent in their lived everyday routine and work life. It is in-
structive to foreground some of the findings as their project has signi-
ficant implications on the management of culture and identity politics
in Singapore.
Their project revealed that while Singaporeans are largely convinced
of the need for foreign talents, their level of acceptance is, however, “at
the level of economic functionality” (ibid, p. 323) and confined only at
the workplace. Another interesting finding is that while the locals do
not see them as “outsiders” or as a source of unwelcome competition,
they have a higher expectation of the foreign talent in terms of their
performance at work purely because of their “foreign talent” status. This
can potentially be turned into a source of conflict and politics of envy
if they fail to measure up. Yeoh and Huang therefore argue that “what
appears to define local-foreign interaction within institutions is a mu-
tual co-existence and sharing of routines rather than the development
of deeper social relationships” (p. 326).
If we take up the findings of Yeoh and Huang’s investigation of
the degree of integration of foreign talent and translate it into theo-
retical terms, we might want to speak of their failure to integrate as an
embodiment of “ambivalence”, to use Bauman’s (1991) term. Bauman’s
conceptualization of “ambivalence” is useful here to account for the

178
social positioning of foreign talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape. Accord-
ing to him, nation-states are preoccupied with maintaining social or-
der within their territorial confinement – this being a core feature of
modernity. Through the maintenance of an ordered regime, categorized
division is produced: “There are friends and enemies. And there are
strangers (Bauman, 1991, p. 53; emphasis in original). When applied to
Singapore’s ethnoscape, foreign talent is not part of “us” because they
are rightly “beings-in-transit”, who are in Singapore to work on a short-
term basis. Neither are they “our” enemies for they do contribute to
Singapore’s economy. It is precisely because they occupy what Bauman
(1991, p. 56) calls a “neither/nor” position that individuals classified as
foreign talent are cast as “strangers” in Singapore’s ethnoscape. I further
argue that their “ambivalence” has to do with the cultural capital that
they possess, which sets them apart as economic elites. While they oc-
cupy a minority status in the ethnoscape of Singapore, they are also in
a sense empowered by the cultural capital they possess. Their cultural
capital has high exchange value in the social field and is valued by the
government. This gives them the hegemonic potential to define their
cultural space and positioning in the terrain of Singapore’s ethnoscape.
For the foreign talent who may eventually choose to stay in Sin-
gapore as permanent residents (PR), however, their allegiance to the
country will invariably be questioned – a point also raised by Jon Quah
(2000). Their allegiance to Singapore will remain questionable unless
they have demonstrated some form of “sacrifice” such as performing
National Service, which will then be deemed as patronage and a sym-
bolic gesture to citizenship. Because their “bi-locality” and multiple be-
longings allow them to perform what Aihwa Ong (1998) calls “flex-
ible citizenship”, the social positioning of foreign talent in relation to
citizenship, homeland and national identity is therefore ambiguous. Ong
(1998, p. 136) uses the term “flexible citizenship” to refer to “the strat-
egies and effects of mobile managers, technocrats, and professionals who
seek to both circumvent and benefit from different nation-state regimes
by selecting different sites for investments, work and family location”.
Although she uses the term narrowly in her article to refer to overseas
Chinese, I feel that the term “flexible citizenship” felicitously describes
the foreign talent in Singapore as well. This is because most of these
transnational migrants are guided by economic calculation and a capi-
talist rationality when they decide to relocate geographically. In a sense,

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this group of transnational migrants manifests a postnational ethos, which
Ong (1998) describes as an eagerness to transact their talents to the
governmentality of capital, yet evade state discipline. This further ex-
plains and amplifies their ambivalence. As I would concede with Ong,
their loyalty appears to be limited to their job and not to the country
of work.

From Ambivalent Space to Diaspora Space

While I do not dismiss that there could be those who relocate to other
countries for reasons other than economic and monetary gains, my ar-
gument is that foreign talent are essentially transnational diasporas who,
because of their “double consciousness” and “biculturality”, have the
potential to unsettle essentialized and totalizing conceptions of “citi-
zenship”, “homeland” and “identity” that are defined and understood
within a nationalist framework or tied to a geographical boundary. As
Morley and Robins (1995) have argued, the mobility of people has
potentially disruptive and transformative effects in the “spaces” and
“places” where identities are forged and located. Furthermore, the con-
cept of flow resists fixity and determinism. There is therefore a need to
rethink and loosen the meanings of these conceptual terms. A new theo-
retical vocabulary of “borders”, “hybridity” and “diaspora” has since
gained a new currency to describe the proliferation of these border
crossings and transmigration flows (Ang, 2001b; Brah, 1996; see also
Clifford, 1997; Lavie & Swedenburg, 1996).
Historically, the concept “diaspora” carries the meaning of migra-
tion and colonization. It is also associated with more sinister meanings
such as banishment and exile like the dispersion of the Jews after the
Babylonian exile (Cohen, 1997). The meaning of diaspora has, how-
ever, shifted from its more oppressive definition to a more fluid defini-
tion that is contingent on the socio-economic, political and cultural
conditions (Brah, 1996). One could therefore speak of a variety of
diasporas such as “victim diaspora”, “imperial diaspora”, “trading
diaspora”, “cultural diaspora” or even “overseas student diaspora”. As
Clifford (1997) succinctly argues, to construct an “ideal type” will only

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risk essentializing. Instead, he locates the meaning of diaspora as a trav-
elling metaphor, which he has called “traveling cultures” (Clifford, 1992).
The metaphor of “culture” as “travel” disavows the normalizing ten-
dencies that associate “culture”, “identity” and “homeland” as onto-
logically organic and static. As it is, the current trend of globalization
coupled with the prevalent use of new technologies, enables the for-
mation of a new community of global diasporas (Cohen, 1997).
Through the use of new information and cultural technologies such
as the Internet, video, video conferencing, and others yet to be invented,
many diaspora communities are engaging in what Appadurai (1996,
p. 22) calls “long-distance nationalism”. For example, it has been re-
searched and documented that the Macedonian and Croatian diaspora
communities in Perth, Australia, participated in “symbolic ethnicity” and
“diasporic nationalism” during the civil war and unrest in former Yu-
goslavia through the use of video tapes and VCR (Kolar-Panov, 1997;
cf. Sun, 2000). For them, watching what was going on in their home-
land was not only significantly a form of cultural maintenance, a pain-
ful and horrific experience as it was, but more importantly, it was an
enactment of constructing their own diasporic cultural identities as they
engaged in “long-distance nationalism” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 22) via video
technology.
My point is that the in-flow of foreign talent, regardless of nation-
ality, ethnicity and gender, has transformative effects on the discursive
cultural formation of Singapore, particularly when state discourses and
practices are organized around state boundaries. Cultural anthropolo-
gist Iain Chambers (2001) makes a similar point when he argues that
migratory flow is always accompanied by a translated space, where both
the migrant and the host nation undergo transformation. For the
diasporic sensibility, their homeland and identity is located in this trans-
lated space where it is constituted and reconstituted by both present
and absent (Papastergiadis, 1998). As I understand, the “present” is con-
stantly intertwined in discourses of comparisons between “now” and
“then”, whereas the “absent” is invoked and created through nostalgia.
The identity of the foreigner is in a sense disembodied and discursively
imbricated in what Brah (1996, p. 181) calls “diaspora space” or, fol-
lowing Appadurai’s (1996, p. 21), “diasporic public sphere”. Therefore,
I argue that the frame of reference and discourse must be enlarged from
the national to the transnational terrain.

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 Conceptually, it is not difficult to envision the presence of foreign
talent as a diasporic social formation in the Singapore ethnoscape given
their diverse composition, nationality and multi-subject positionings.
Caution must be exercised, however, of collectivizing and categorizing
foreign talent as a homogenous and organic social formation. Diasporic
communities are by nature heterogeneous, differentiated by class, gen-
der, race, religion and so on, even as they are implicated as a collective
“we” (Brah, 1996). It is precisely their heterogeneity that complicates
and counter-poses the formation of a unitary and collective identity that
is defined within a nationalist framework. As Cohen argues, while na-
tion-states see to it that it is their prerogative to weld the nation by
forging a national identity, the cultural forms of diaspora, by contrast,
imply multiple attachments and belongings. For this reason, they can
only accommodate and not conform to the norms or any forms of iden-
tification that is drawn within the discursive boundary of state prac-
tices, symbolic or otherwise (Cohen, 1997).
While I posit that foreign talent occupies a discursive “diaspora
space” in the social imaginary, this does not suggest that the space is
marginal or signifies the idea of ‘minority’, commonly underpinned
with suggestions of discrimination and racialization. As I have argued
earlier, those representing the foreign talent are empowered by their
cultural capital. Therefore, while they may be a demographic minority
along one dimension of differentiation, they may also be positioned and
constructed as a majority in another (Brah, 1996). In spatial terms,
“diaspora space” discursively embodies the semiotics of diaspora, bor-
der and dis/location (Brah, 1996). This is the meeting point/space where
multiple subject positions are juxtaposed in relation to more clearly de-
fined and demarcated social identities represented by the official ethnic
groups in Singapore: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Others. Significantly,
it needs to be pointed out that this ethnic categorization is itself a co-
lonial construction, and therefore rightly termed an “Orientalist” classi-
ficatory system used to discipline the social body into an essentialized
category based on one’s “race” when Singapore was under colonial rule
(PuruShotam, 1998).
At this point I return to my argument and ask, “How then does
foreign talent fit in an already clearly demarcated racialized society?”
As I would argue, Singapore’s multiracial policy is fundamentally rep-
resented by the convenient image and axiom of unity-in-diversity. This

182
enables the containment of a diverse culture such as Singapore’s, with-
out threatening its national unity that it so zealously guards and up-
holds. This is also where tensions emerge, when the global flow of for-
eign talent disrupts the somewhat exclusive identities or state sanctioned
identities, which have already been enforced hegemonically and nor-
malized as “living-apart-together” – an image suggested by the utilitar-
ian discourse of “unity-in-diversity” multiracial ideology (Ang, 2001b).
Therefore, the presence of foreign talent embodies a configuration of
identities that poses an irreconcilable tension in containing the limit of
difference, yet at the same time achieving unity within the boundary
of the nation, and nationalism.

On the Incompatibility of Hybridity and Multiracialism

Optimistically, the in-between positionality of foreign talent can harness

what Homi Bhabha (1994) calls “third space”. Bhabha (1994) explains
that what is located in the third space is a field of forces that collide and
collude to produce new hybrid cultural forms. It can therefore be in-
ferred that hybridity challenges and dislodges the fixity of identity and
argues for multiple subjectivities. The “third space” is, however, by no
means the space for “happy hybridity” (Lo, 2000), a term which conjures
up an unproblematic productive interaction of cultures, and an allusion
to a harmonious intermingling of cultural differences. On the contrary,
the hybridization process entails a negotiation of differences that is in-
variably underpinned with disruption, disjunction, dissidence and disar-
ticulation (Ang, 2000; Ang, 2001b; Papastergiadis, 1997). In other words,
the synthesis of various components is concomitantly met with “an anti-
thetical movement of coalescence and antagonism” (Young, 1995, p. 22).
While I do not wish to dampen the optimism that “third space”
and “hybridity” offer as a theoretical platform for a more inclusive
ethnoscape – where the presence of foreign talent can be assimilated
or can give rise to new identities – conceptually hybridity also proves
to be yet another source of tension and conflict when mapped onto
Singapore’s ethnoscape. It is incompatible with the ideology of multi-
racialism that has remained an important cultural policy since Singa-

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pore began self-rule. Without retracing the colonial history of Singa-
pore, it suffices to say that Singaporean multiracialism celebrates cul-
tural diversity (read: unity-in-diversity), and also functions in an admin-
istrative way to manage the racial composition of Singapore, comprising
a mix of Chinese, Malay, Indians and Others, left behind by colonial
legacy.
An important axiom that underpins multiracialism is that it does
not privilege any distinct cultural or racial groups. Rather, the social
and economic mobility of each ethnic group is based on the doctrine
of meritocracy (Siddique, 1989). That is to say, the desire to move up
the socio-economic hierarchy is achieved solely through diligence and
individual merit rather than on special privileges extended to any one
ethnic group. Chua (1998b) explains that multiracialism is a mode of
nationalism designed to manage and discipline the social body along
ethnic lines under the rubric of ‘equality’ among the races. This gives
rise to an impression that the national culture of Singapore is frozen
and differentiated along ethnic divisions (Chua, 1998b), and in this nexus,
the tensions between multiracialism and hybridity occur. On the one
hand, hybridity encourages cross-cultural exchange, and multiculturalism,
on the other works to erase the mixing and exchange with distinct
and legislated racial boundaries. Chua (1998b) contends that at most,
where hybridity is allowed to flourish, it is only confined to the cross-
cultural exchanges that take place in everyday life, but at the state level,
cultural policy and activities promoted by the state are inclined to deepen
the divisions of ethnic boundaries rather than encourage hybridity to
breed and fester (Chua, 1998b). Chua cites the example of the forma-
tion of self-help groups along ethnic division to illustrate how state-
initiated policy reshapes the cultural sphere “through the erection of
racialized boundaries in an attempt to erase hybridity, and the subse-
quent homogenization of the racialized population to arrive at a defi-
nition of Singapore as an “Asian nation” (Chua, 1998b).
What we are presented with here is an irreconcilable tension in
the Singapore ethnoscape where a politics of difference (embodied by
“diaspora talent”) and a national cultural framework are organized
around discrete racial boundaries (embodied in the doctrine of multi-
racialism). While Ang (2001b, p. 3) argues forcefully for “the impor-
tance of hybridity as a basis for cultural politics in a world in which
we no longer have the secure capacity to draw the line between us

184
and them, between the different and the same, here and there, . . .” and
if I may add, foreign talent and local talent, I argue to the contrary, that
the semiotics of hybridity has a limiting and limited generative thresh-
old in the Singaporean context. At most, hybridity may be confined to
the level of daily cultural experiences and transactions, but at the state
level, one can expect that national/cultural policies will continue to be
erected and maintained under the aegis of multiracialism. Ideologically,
this will further reinforce and legitimate deep-seated divisions along
racial boundaries in order to promote and sustain ideologies of meri-
tocracy and equality (Chua, 1998b). The emerging spaces of identities
brought about by transnational connections and diasporic linkages, how-
ever, will dislodge and unsettle any essentialist and totalizing concep-
tions of “national identity or national culture” (Ang, 1999), no matter
how powerfully national/public campaigns and policies are promoted.
This scenario will invariably be an endemic source of politics of dif-
ference and identity anxiety in the Singapore ethnoscape. The onus of
the state, then, is to negotiate and disentangle the complicated task of
living “together-in-(uneasy)-difference” (Ang, 2001b, p. 193) rather than
the now passé “unity-in-diversity” in this transnational and globalizing
time.

Conclusion

At the time of writing this chapter, there were new developments on

the Foreign Talent policy. While PM Lee Hsien Loong asserts that “this
[foreign talent] policy will not change. . .Singapore will need new im-
migrants for the indefinite future” he has, however, promised a “sus-
tained, calibrated inflow of immigrants” because of the sluggish perform-
ance of the Singapore economy (Chia, 2009a; emphasis added). Lee’s
use of “calibrate” resonates with the argument made in this book about
the kind of precise calculations that the Singapore government con-
stantly performs as it experiments with globalization. In addition to the
promise of a slower intake of immigrants, the PM also promised to make
a sharper distinction between citizens and permanent citizens, which
has for a long time been a source of contention.

185
 These positive steps taken by the government to address the ten-
sions surrounding the foreign talent policy signals on the one hand that
it is leaning forward to pacify discontented Singaporeans who perceive
they are being disadvantaged by the foreign talent policy. In doing so,
the government portrays itself to be a sympathetic government who
listens. On the other hand, it is acknowledging the unforeseen conse-
quences of an experimentation with stocking its human capital that has
resulted in a less than desirable economic well-being (translated in terms
of job opportunities) and the state of unhappiness for Singaporeans. This
experimentation is given a more ironic twist as the government re-
cently announced a new plan (read: experimentation) to “manage” the
integration between immigrants and citizens (Chia, 2009b). A Com-
munity Integration Fund worth S$ 10 million has been set aside to or-
ganize cultural gatherings, seminar, and social outings to help immi-
grants and Singaporeans to mingle. There are also other measures such
as getting new immigrants to attend basic English courses to enhance
their language ability so that they can communicate better with
Singaporeans, and getting them to visit important historical landmarks
and institution in order to have a deeper understanding of the history
of Singapore. It remains to be seen whether this experimentation will
work and bridge the differences between immigrants and local citizens.
To sum up the main arguments made in this chapter, much as
Singaporeans are convinced of the need to attract foreign talent to Sin-
gapore, they are ambivalent about the presence of foreign talent. My
analysis of popular discourses from the media has shown the subterra-
nean tensions that underlie state arguments and discourses on foreign
talent. I have discussed the possible causes surrounding the ambivalent
and ambiguous status of the foreign talent drawing from economic ar-
guments and on theorized arguments about their cultural dis-location.
Drawing on concepts of “diaspora”, “third space” and “hybridity”,
I have argued that border crossing and transnational migration have com-
plicated traditional meanings of national culture and identity construc-
tion within a nationalist discourse and framework. Indeed, the flexible
subject position of foreign talent as embodied by their “flexible citi-
zenship” will account for their potential resistance against the discipline
and discursive practices of the Singapore state. Thus, as I would agree
with Rouse (1991), the socio-spatial frame derived from the image of
“postmodern hyperspace” is one that is more appositely described by

186
the images of “circuit” and the “border zone”. The “flux”, “instability”
and the “messiness” as conjured by these images may help us to under-
stand the specificities of ramifications of the global flow of talent in
Singapore’s ethnoscape.
As much as the Foreign Talent policy offers the economic solu-
tion to Singapore’s lack of skilled labour, at the level of culture their
presence presents an endemic problem relating to the politics of iden-
tity. In this chapter, I have begun to create a space for the exploration
of identity politics, which has complicated the Singapore ethnoscape.
This space, as I have shown, is filled with complex tensions and con-
tradictory outcomes. It is also in this space that I have charted the tra-
jectories for further work and debate.

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188
Conclusion
Living with Globalization Tactically

Singaporeans need not be told what globalization means. The popular

media, as well as the political leaders of Singapore, have generated a
“local-babble” of the derivative meanings of globalization. That globaliza-
tion means “competitiveness”, ‘innovation”, “creativity”, “entrepreneur-
ship”, and “foreign talent”, has therefore become deeply enculturated
and embedded in the Singaporean consciousness. The Prime Minister’s
2002 National Day address to the nation is one recent example where
the old faithful rhetoric of globalization is again reiterated. In that speech,
he reminded Singaporeans of the “growing economic competition” and
“regional challenge”, and in particular, the competition posed by the
“rising dragon” (i. e., China). At the same time, he also urged Singaporeans
to “welcome international talent”, “be realistic”, “be entrepreneurial”
and be a “creative society”. The Prime Minister’s speech is, in essence,
instructive of how Singapore lives with globalization (tactically).
I prefaced this concluding chapter with the above “local-babble”
on globalization to capture the significance of “globalization” in the
socio-cultural and political matrix of the Singaporean context. It is pre-
cisely because of Singapore’s idiosyncratic socio-cultural and political
conditions, and the significance that it places on globalization, that pro-
vided this book with a fertile ground for study. This book is about Sin-
gapore and the way it experiments with globalization with calculated
strategies which I call “tactics” and “tactical globalization”. More spe-
cifically, education and schooling have been examined in relation to
Singapore’s experiment with globalization; afterall, schools are state ideo-
logical apparatus and disciplinary sites where the shaping of values and
dispositions are cultivated to reproduce the kind of subject-citizens the
small city-state needs in globalizing circumstances.
Although “globalization” lends itself as a useful theoretical and con-
ceptual lens to examine the ramifications of globalizing forces on the
Singaporean “identity”, “culture”, “the state”, and its prescriptive experi-
ment with “‘education policy”, I was troubled that the argument I had

189
made in this book, that globalizing forces and processes are mediated
by local practices, discourses, and institutions, is by now a familiar ar-
gument in the scholarship on globalization. In terms of the contribu-
tion to knowledge, I was thus challenged theoretically and conceptu-
ally to pursue a line of inquiry that would shed new light on
globalization scholarship.
What I want to do in this concluding chapter, then, is to highlight
the specific arguments in the preceding chapters that enabled me to
derive and conceptualize “tactical globalization” as the “new” plane of
thought that has emerged out of this research on globalization, vis-à-
vis education policy and schooling, and the management of culture in
the Singaporean society. In addition, I shall highlight the multiple theo-
retical and methodological approaches this book has generated to elu-
cidate the shaping and re(making) of the Singaporean subjectivity and
identity, via education policy.
This study is therefore significant for three reasons. First, it is a
contextualised study of a geographical location, or in globalization dis-
courses, a semi-peripheral and post-colonial state, where the process of
globalization is the most intense, according to the Globalisation Index
(cf. chap. 1). The case of Singapore’s uptake of globalization reveals that
it works with and against globalisation, a possibility that is at once con-
tradictory, yet seems to generate productive possibilities of “contain-
ing” the forces of globalization. Thus, how Singapore lives with globali-
zation is what I have conceptualized and argued in this book as “tactical
globalization”.
It is necessary that I make explicit and reiterate the multi-discur-
sive levels on which tactical globalization operates. While tactical glo-
balization is conceptually similar to the processes of localization, what
needs to be emphasized is the power relations that accompany the pro-
duction of locality and localization which are unduly asymmetrical and
inextricately linked to state discourses and “the reason of State”
(Foucault, 1979, p. 14). Tactical globalization is, however, in itself a
hegemonic concept since state discourses are invariably translated and
transformed as rationalized practices, or in “local” terms, as discourses
of pragmatism. I demonstrated this in Chapter 2, where I illustrated
through specific examples the workings of institutionalized discourses
that are translated as rationalized practices meant for the common good
of the Singaporean citizenry.

190
 Likewise in the policy documents that I have analyzed in Chapter
4 and 5, the “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” education reform is
driven by a rationality and instrumentality about the normative con-
struction of the global-local Singaporean subjectivities, who have the
“global” skills yet a fortified “local” identity to support what is dubbed
as the new knowledge-based economy. Tactical globalization is, there-
fore, also about specific forms of governmentality or what Foucault
(1991) has called “the conduct of conduct” that cultivates and shapes
the Singaporean habitus.
Tactical globalization departs from what has been theorized on glo-
balization, in particular, discourses that celebrate or demonise the glo-
balization process. Instead, I argued and proposed in this book, using
“tactical globalization” as an enabling concept to suggest the counter
(localizing) strategies (read: tactics) that are conceived to “contain” glo-
balization, however indeterminate the outcome is. It needs to be stressed
that the outcome of mediating globalization with tactics is never cer-
tain as with any form of experimentation; such is the unpredictability
of globalization. As Thrift (2005) has pointed out, that while there may
be the best attempt to steer capitalism in a certain direction, there is
no absolute guarantee that crises generating catastrophes might not oc-
cur. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America is one exam-
ple of a “global” event that has multiple “local” consequences, as global
economic slowdown and the terrorist networks have spread regionally
and locally.
While the “global” indeed has repercussions on the “local” terrain,
what I want to reiterate is that despite the vagaries (and danger) of global
flows, this book has argued and revealed that the tenacity and power
of the Singapore state is enduring. The Singapore state achieves this with
tactics that are, however, shrouded in contradictory tensions. The syn-
thesis of “tactical” and “globalization” in itself articulates and exempli-
fies this tension, as “tactical” suggests calculated measures to “counter”
and “discipline” global flows, while “globalization” encapsulates flows
as wandering, rhizomatic and disjunctive. This irreconcilable tension is
examined in Chapters 6 and 7 where I juxtaposed the construction of
a national identity through National Education to the global flows of
foreign talent in Singapore’s ethnoscape, to illuminate the fragility and
difficulty of maintaining a national identity/culture that is territorial
bound.

191
 The “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” education reform fur-
ther exemplifies a prescriptive experimentation with globalization via
schooling and education policy. Because policies are essentially acts of
governmentality intended with disciplinary and regulatory effects, I have
pointed out in Chapter 3 that the TSLN policy is an ideological pack-
age used to construct a preferred pathway of schooling and identities.
The normative construction of Singaporean subjectivities which
aims to reproduce a citizenry with “global” skills (encompassing criti-
cal, creative thinking and IT skills), and a “local” (national) identity is,
however, inherently a contradiction. While going global transcends
boundaries and opens up the possibilities of adopting multiple identi-
ties and flexible subject positions, the construction of a local (national)
identity, by contrast, is territorial bound and therefore, parochial. Yet
as I have argued, it is also at this level of productive contradiction that
seems to work so well for Singapore.
In sum, I have argued in this book that Singapore’s experimenta-
tion with globalization is tactical and driven by a strong state that at-
tempts to engineer new subjectivities through the cultivation and shap-
ing of “creative” and “critical” citizens in the context of the local
(disciplinary society) and the global (economic imperatives).
Next, I want to draw attention to the second contribution this book
has made, in reference to the methodological tools and framework used
to analyse visually media/ted policy documents. While I want to make
the modest claim that this book has begun to develop and demonstrate
what a critical visual analysis of media/ted education policies might
look like, I caution that the framework I have developed is by no means
“the method” for analysis in the domain of visual culture. Indeed, the
contingency of “methods of textual analysis” is and will continue to
be conditioned by new textual forms and new genres of media which
are yet to be invented, but first, let me recount the difficulties that these
policy documents posed for me, the text analyst.
First and foremost, while policy documents may be treated like
any other texts, in the broadest sense, amenable to various critical ap-
proaches for analysis, I was acutely aware that the texts that I was to
analyse were ‘different’. They are not only institutionalized texts, but
also politically motivated discourses used to achieve certain political goals
(cf. Birch, 1999). Herein I was confronted with a certain risk by en-
gaging in state-authored policy documents, as I was cognizant of the

192
political constraints of critical reading in the socio-cultural and politi-
cal context of Singapore. That means that I had to negotiate a pathway
of reading policy texts, with the help of a critical and analytic toolkit
that would allow me to engage (critically) and lay bare the knowledges
that are validated, assembled and embedded in the TSLN policy text.
Another difficulty that confronted me was the transparency of the
texts analysed. As mentioned in Chapter 4, when I first read the speech-
policy document and viewed the Learning Journeys documentary, my
initial reaction was “it all makes sense”. Admittedly, after watching the
documentary, I felt a certain sense of pride that Singapore’s education
had progressed so far. This, however, is the affect that the policy docu-
ments generate, to conceal and at the same time disable my critical acuity
for a naturalized, apolitical reading and common sense understanding
of what was to be texts meant for public communication. A mixture
of curiosity and intellectual endeavour, nevertheless, spurred me to in-
vestigate how education policy texts work and do what they do. By ask-
ing how, I was committed to a political reading that would interrogate
the “managed” discourses in policy texts that constructed a preferred
reading pathway to secure my hegemonic “reading”. To that end, Critical
Discourse Analysis has provided me with the analytic toolkit for ana-
lysing the TSLN policy documents.
As an analytic framework, CDA has enabled me to map out the
politics of knowledge and the discursive effects that the TSLN policy
document performs. From the synthesized analysis of the micro-lin-
guistic features and the macro structures of the text, CDA has provided
the meta-language and tools to defamiliarize the rationalized practice
of education policy, and reveal the power effects of education policy
discourses that construct regimes of “truth” about the Singapore eco-
nomy and educational change. Furthermore, politically, CDA has en-
abled me, as analyst, to reveal the functioning of education policy in
creating the conditions for the formation of the new Singapore sub-
jectivity and the shaping of the Singaporean habitus.
Methodologically, CDA has illuminated the productive effects of
power relations and challenged the traditional concept of power as sim-
ply top-down, emanating from an asymmetrical power structure. In-
stead, my analysis of the policy document has shown “the productive
nature of power’s modern exercise” (McHoul & Grace, 1993, p. 64),
where power is circulated through the mechanism of education policy

193
as the technology of power and control. This book has therefore focused
on the TSLN policy as an illustrative mechanism through which power
is diffused and exercised to produce particular kinds of citizens and sub-
jects for the new global economy.
The textual analysis I present in this book is a response to Luke’s
(2002) call for a CDA that is “beyond science and ideological critique”
(p. 96). I believe I have achieved that goal, as my textual analysis was
not solely preoccupied with ideology digging and critique or a micro-
textual linguistic analysis of the grammatical resources of the policy text.
Instead, my analysis exposed the political and strategic nature of how
knowledge about educational change is assembled, and to expose how
the mechanisms that enable the flow of knowledge and the power ef-
fects that accompany it, manage to “contain” globalization.
To complete the analysis of the education policy, I turned to the
analysis of the visuals in Learning Journeys, which is a documentary that
illustrated the uptake of the TSLN policy by schools. As mentioned be-
fore, my intuitive response to the visuals was the least critical. Yet I was
convinced by the old adage that “a picture paints a thousand words”.
This led me to anchor my visual analysis in the concept of “visual de-
sign”. I discovered that the visuals in the policy documents were clev-
erly crafted to constrain the meaning potentials of the visuals, and di-
rected instead, a preferred reading path that foregrounds a normalized
vision of schooling and identities, the kind of subjectivities and identi-
ties that are urgently required to support the new economy. In this re-
gard, the tele-visual images in the documentary is a mechanism for the
functioning of institutional power, where the inspecting gaze and nor-
malizing gaze are enacted in visually media/ted policy documents
through the practices of looking (cf. Foucault, 1995). Taken together,
the TSLN visuals work in parallel with the speech-policy documents
to re-craft and reproduce the entrepreneur, the innovative, creative and
thinking patriotic Singapore subject.
While employing a multi-methodological analytic framework to
analyse the TSLN policy documents, I have also relied on a network
of theoretical concepts to understand the fashioning of the governable
Singaporean subject. Foucault’s (1979) notion of “governmentality” has
been particularly useful and insightful, both theoretically and concep-
tually, to understand how the Singapore state “experiment” globaliza-
tion through a multi-form of tactics such as the use of education policy,

194
public campaigns, socio-economic and cultural policies, all with the in-
tent to regulate the conduct and craft the Singaporean habitus and its
subjectivities.
As my analysis of the TSLN policy documents has made evident,
governmentality operates with a certain form of rationality (i. e., the
reason of State) to calculate how best to enhance Singapore’s economic
competitiveness and turn the tide of globalization in Singapore’s favour.
The multi-methodologically framework that I have used complemented
very well the network of theoretical concepts to generate what I have
derived and conceptualized in this book as “tactical globalization” as
the new plane of thought for understanding the way in which Singa-
pore experiments with globalization (tactically). Tactical globalization is
therefore about the mobilization of state power through the construction
of knowledge(s) and discourse(s) that effect the formation of specific
subjectivities as Singapore continues to work with and against globali-
zation.

195
196
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216
Index
Academic activism 88, 95, 113
Affect 16, 17, 18, 21, 111, 154, 160, 193
Affiliation identifications 129
Air-conditioned Nation 94, 202
Albrow, M. 152, 197
Ambivalence 29, 166, 171, 175, 177, 178,
179, 180, 198
Americanization 44
Amin, A. 36, 177, 197
Anderson, B. 64, 145, 146, 149, 150, 163,
197
Ang, I. 42, 43, 62, 75, 85, 124, 147, 159,
180, 183, 184, 185, 197, 198, 207
Appadurai, A. 16, 28, 40, 64, 74, 145, 150,
163, 181, 198
Ashcroft, B. 34, 198
Asian financial crisis 13, 51
Authoritarian 24, 52, 87, 90, 91, 113, 211
Autonomous schools 82
Baby bonus policy 18
Balin, S. 72, 198
Bardic function 124, 125
Barnard, M. 117, 198
Barr, M. 52, 79, 83, 198
Baudrillard, J. 37, 118, 198
Bauman, Z. 148, 162, 178, 179, 198
Beck, U. 31, 42, 198
Bellows, T. 55, 198
Bhabha, H. 42, 43, 153, 178, 183, 198
Bicultural Studies Programme 59
Billig, M. 159, 198
Biopolis hub 18, 56
Birch, D. 33, 147, 157, 192, 198
Bokhorst-Heng, W. 59, 149, 199
Bourdieu, P. 26, 84, 94, 199
Brah, A. 180, 181, 182, 199
Brown, D. 21, 24, 31, 56, 63, 150, 158,
160, 165, 199
Burbules, N. 73, 74, 199, 207, 210
Cartwright, L. 118, 212
Catherine Lim 88, 91, 92, 93
Chambers, I. 181, 199, 203
China 13, 59, 80, 165, 189
Chong, T. 7, 28, 199
Chua, B. H. 21, 24, 43, 44, 45, 54, 57,
61, 62, 63, 92, 93, 94, 147, 157, 167,
168, 184, 185, 200
Chun, A. 75, 200
Civic nationalism 63
Clifford, J. 180, 181, 200
Cohen, R. 152, 180, 181, 182, 200
Colebrook, C. 23, 200
Collier, S. 15, 200, 209
Corner, J. 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 132,
200
Counter-flow 28, 29, 49
Courtesy Campaign 22
Cox, R. 38, 39, 200
Crisis discourse 33, 104
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 7, 22,
27, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95,
112, 113, 131, 193, 194, 201, 206,
207, 209, 213
Critical thinking 20, 58, 70, 71, 72, 73,
79, 80, 81, 85, 123, 134, 198
Curriculum reduction 76, 77, 79
Dean, M. 15, 25, 57, 61, 170, 201
Deleuzian 23
Design 27, 73, 74, 80, 116, 117, 118, 119,
121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128,
129, 132, 161, 173, 198, 207, 209,
213
Deterritorialization 28, 29, 65, 145
Devan, J. 24, 57, 102, 167, 203
Diaspora 169, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 197,
199, 200, 202, 206, 209, 210, 212
217
Diaspora space 180, 181, 182
Dirlik, A. 40, 43, 201
Disciplinary 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26,
30, 35, 39, 52, 58, 63, 66, 67, 95,
104, 106, 150, 151, 159, 162, 189,
192
Discourses 7, 16, 17, 18, 21, 27, 28, 29,
30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 45, 46, 47, 48,
49, 52, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 72, 88, 89,
90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 100, 102, 103,
104, 106, 110, 111, 113, 119, 132,
145, 146, 157, 163, 166, 170, 171,
181, 186, 190, 191, 192, 193, 200,
211, 213
Documentary 22, 27, 87, 115, 116, 118,
119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128,
131, 132, 193, 194, 200, 204, 214
du Gay, P. 21, 32, 41, 201, 203
Economic crisis 13, 20, 27
Economic Development Board 77
Economic Restructuring Review
Committee 51
Economic review committee 34
Education policy 7, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 38, 39, 58,
67, 68, 76, 85, 87, 88, 89, 98, 104,
106, 112, 115, 116, 121, 131, 132,
133, 150, 151, 189, 190, 192, 193,
194, 197, 199, 202, 211, 213, 214
Elitism 82, 198
Emoscape 16, 17
Emotional geographies 45
Emotions 16, 17, 18, 32, 45, 46, 47, 48,
209, 213
Ethnoscape 16, 29, 75, 163, 165, 166,
168, 169, 170, 171, 177, 179, 182,
183, 184, 185, 187, 191
Experiment 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21,
22, 30, 34, 52, 66, 67, 69, 71, 84, 85,
88, 131, 146, 151, 162, 165, 185,
189, 194, 195
Experimentation 20, 21, 26, 32, 67, 68,
75, 76, 81, 84, 146, 165, 166, 186,
191, 192
Fahey, J. 16, 46, 198, 204
218
Fairclough, N. 38, 88, 96, 97, 99, 100,
101, 104, 107, 109, 110, 112, 113,
115, 121, 201
Featherstone, M. 15, 31, 37, 42, 45, 152,
201, 210, 211
Fiske, J. 120, 124, 128, 201
Flexible citizenship 177, 179, 186, 209
Flow 14, 16, 21, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 37,
40, 41, 49, 65, 66, 68, 75, 80, 85,
104, 111, 125, 128, 131, 157, 162,
163, 165, 167, 176, 177, 180, 181,
183, 187, 191, 194, 208, 209, 214
Foreign Talent 57, 102, 152, 163, 165,
166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172,
173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179,
180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187,
189, 191, 200, 206, 207, 213, 215
Foucault, M. 15, 25, 52, 53, 54, 60, 61, 66,
102, 103, 104, 110, 131, 149, 170, 190,
191, 194, 200, 202, 203, 208, 211
Gee, J. 77, 100, 103, 202
General elections 23, 175
Generation M 61, 62, 63, 147, 202
Genre strategies 96
Giddens, A. 15, 28, 40, 202
Gilroy, P. 152, 201, 202
Global capitalism 33, 34, 39, 49, 57, 58,
63, 146, 201, 212
Global economy 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 35,
38, 39, 45, 55, 56, 58, 60, 70, 71,
96, 165, 168, 194, 212, 215
Global emoscapes 46
Global Schoolhouse 18
Globalization 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26,
28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37,
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48,
49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64,
65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 75, 80, 84, 85, 86,
88, 111, 131, 132, 133, 145, 146,
150, 152, 153, 157, 160, 162, 165,
166, 170, 177, 181, 185, 189, 190,
191, 192, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199,
200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207,
208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 215
 affective globalization 16
cultural globalization 133
economic globalization 9, 39
tactical globalization 7, 10, 16, 20,
21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 49, 51,
55, 66, 67, 131, 165, 189, 190,
191, 192, 195
Glocalization 42, 211
Goatly, A. 96, 97, 99, 100, 107, 202
Goh Chok Tong 56, 61, 69, 92, 202, 203
Gopinathan, S. 20, 58, 202, 203
Govermentality 15, 16, 25, 26, 27, 35,
49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61,
64, 66, 72, 85, 94, 101, 145, 156,
170, 180, 191, 192, 194, 195, 201,
202, 203, 210
Green, A. 73, 77, 203, 205
Guanxi 80
Habitus 22, 26, 54, 66, 84, 85, 94
Hall, S. 41, 63, 75, 103, 104, 106, 151,
153, 201, 203
Halliday, M. 100, 203
Hartley, J. 119, 122, 124, 125, 201, 203
Heng, G. 24, 57, 102, 167, 203
Hill, M. 59, 203
Hirst, P. 36, 37, 38, 56, 203
Hobsbawm, E. 40, 203
Holden, P. 159, 203
Homogenization 42, 43, 44, 184
Huang, S. 165, 178, 215
Hybridity 43, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186,
207, 210, 215
Hybridzation 42, 43, 152, 183, 210
Identity 7, 21, 28, 29, 34, 35, 39, 43, 60,
61, 62, 63, 66, 71, 75, 107, 127, 145,
146, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154,
157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165,
166, 167, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182,
183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191,
192, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205,
206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214
Ideological state apparatus 16, 151
Imagined communities 149, 197
Improving Primary School Education
Report 20
Inda, J. 15, 28, 54, 57, 203
Independent schools 82
Indigenization 35, 36, 42, 43, 44
Integrated Programme 78
Internationalization 32, 35, 36, 37, 38
IT Masterplan 70, 73, 74
Iwabuchi, K. 35, 40, 41, 197, 204, 214
Jameson, F. 31, 32, 36, 177, 204, 212
Janks, H. 112, 113, 204
Japan 35, 36, 40, 41, 69, 97, 102, 103,
104, 112, 204
Japanese popular culture 40, 41
Japanisation 35, 41
Junior College 78, 82, 154, 156, 159
Kellner, D. 43, 48, 198, 204
Kelly, P. 38, 204, 205
Kenway, J. 7, 16, 46, 198, 204
Khondker, H. 21, 35, 36, 39, 204, 211
Kim, S. 35, 204
King, A. 31, 197, 203, 204
Kluver, R. 147, 205
Knowledge economy 20, 27, 71
Koh, A. 10, 72, 151, 162, 205
Kong, L. 21, 158, 204, 205, 215
Korea 35, 62, 204, 215
Kress, G. 70, 71, 116, 117, 119, 205
Kwok, K. W. 156, 157, 158, 205, 215
Lai, A. E. 160, 205, 215
Lau, A. 61, 148, 157, 206
Lazar, M. 88, 95, 206
Learning Journeys 22, 27, 87, 115, 116,
118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124,
125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134,
156, 160, 193, 194, 208, 213
Lee, T. 92, 206
Lee Hsien Loong 34, 51, 57, 64, 74, 79,
152, 185, 198, 206
Lee Kuan Yew 9, 10, 56, 59, 92, 147, 168,
206
Lian, K. F. 59, 203
Liew, W. M. 83, 206
Life Sciences 77, 78, 200, 204, 208
Lingard, B. 7, 18, 19, 22, 38, 68, 87, 88,
89, 95, 207, 211, 213
Lister, M. 118, 207
219
Lo, J. 183, 207
Luke, A. 7, 22, 36, 43, 68, 88, 103, 194,
207
Luke, C. 7, 36, 43, 72, 73, 74
Lyotard, J. F. 118, 207
Mandarin 58, 59, 121, 159
Massey, D. 42, 208
Maurer, B. 51, 210
McCrone, D. 149, 208
McDonalization 43, 204, 211
McDonalds 42, 43, 44, 45
Metapragmatics 7, 51, 52, 60, 65
Ministry of Education 59, 74, 76, 77, 78,
79, 82, 84, 108, 120, 151, 154, 155,
156, 161, 202, 206, 208
Ministry of Manpower 57, 169, 174
Mirozoeff, N. 208
Mishra, V. 122, 208
Miyoshi, M. 31, 36, 37, 56, 204, 209, 212
Moisi, D. 46, 209
Mok, K. 83, 209
Morley, D. 180, 209
Multicultural ideology 44, 61, 160
Multiracialism 183, 184, 185, 200
Mutalib, H. 24, 147, 209
Mutating citizenship 57, 65
National Campaign 22, 57, 58, 167
National Day 148, 155, 156, 159, 163,
189, 202, 206
National Day Rally Speech 57, 64, 79,
213
National Education (NE) 8, 20, 29, 58,
63, 70, 74, 75, 77, 85, 105, 106, 133,
145, 146, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154,
155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161,
162, 191, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208
National identity 20, 28, 29, 36, 62, 63,
66, 70, 71, 75, 133, 145, 146, 147,
148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 157,
158, 159, 160, 162, 166, 179, 182,
185, 191, 198, 200, 205, 209, 213
National survival 167, 168, 177
Neighbourhood schools 82
Neo-liberal 38, 39, 165
New London Group 117, 209
220
OB markers 91, 92, 93, 95, 113
Ohmae, K. 16, 36, 56, 209
Olds, K. 18, 21, 38, 204, 205, 209, 215
Ong, A. 15, 18, 24, 28, 57, 58, 64, 65, 162,
163, 177, 179, 180, 200, 209, 210
Overseas Singapore Unit (OSU) 65
Ozga, J. 103, 210
Paolini, A. 40, 210
PAP government 24, 102
Papastergiadis, N. 152, 181, 183, 210
Penrose, J. 160, 210
Perry, R. W. 51, 210
Phua Chu Kang (PCK) 60
Pieterse, J. N. 41, 42, 43, 210
Policy activism 90
Political entrepreneurship 55
Popkewitz, T. 86, 210
Postcolonial 40, 49, 150, 151, 158, 199,
201, 202, 205, 208, 210
Poster, M. 171, 210
Pragmatism 52, 131, 190
Prescriptive experiment 26, 67, 68, 75,
76, 81, 84, 85, 189, 192
Price, D. 118, 210
Problem space 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22,
30, 32, 45, 48, 165
Project Work 77, 81, 83, 123, 126, 130,
199, 208
PuruShotam, N. 160, 182, 210
Quah, J. 147, 177, 179, 211
Queensland 7, 89, 90
Queensland schools 89, 213
Rabinow, P. 54, 211
Racial Harmony Day 155, 159
Ranson, J. 104, 111, 211
Rappa, A. L. 60, 211
Rationalized practices 25, 54, 60, 66, 95,
190
Recentering globalization 40, 204
Regionalization 37, 215
Reich, R. 36, 211
Religious Harmony Bill 22
Resilient Package 14, 18, 47
Reterritorization 28, 29
Ritzer, G. 43, 211
Rizvi, F. 7, 9, 11, 18, 19, 22, 38, 68, 87,
88, 89, 95, 211, 213
Robertson, R. 15, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 42,
64, 152, 210, 211
Robins, K. 118, 180, 209, 211
Rodan, G. 23, 24, 52, 94, 102, 167, 211
Rogoff, I. 118, 212
Rosaldo, R. 28, 203
Rose, N. 57, 60, 61, 212
Rouse, R. 186, 212
Said, E. 33, 65, 212
Scholte, J. A. 15, 212
Schooling 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 30,
35, 39, 58, 66, 67, 68, 71, 76, 81, 82,
84, 85, 86, 88, 96, 98, 103, 104, 106,
110, 111, 116, 118, 120, 123, 126,
128, 130, 131, 132, 150, 151, 159,
162, 189, 190, 192, 194, 207
Siddique, S. 147, 184, 212
Singapore economy 13, 17, 18, 20, 34,
47, 52, 53, 54, 57, 80, 93, 111, 185,
193, 205
Singapore education 7, 68, 76, 104, 112,
113, 151, 205, 208
Singapore government 13, 14, 15, 17, 18,
19, 25, 26, 33, 48, 53, 55, 57, 59, 60,
62, 72, 94, 132, 146, 175, 185
Singapore heartbeat 64, 65
Singapore heartware 64, 65
Singapore Management University
(SMU) 80
Singapore nation 52, 146, 149, 150
Singapore tribe 147
Singapore University of Technology and
Design (SU) 80
Singaporean diaspora 65
Singaporean habitus 26, 27, 30, 52, 55,
65, 66, 72, 85, 94, 106, 110, 111,
145, 158, 191, 193, 195
Singlish 60
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles 158, 159,
203
Sklair, L. 37, 212
Skrbis, Z. 17, 32, 46, 79, 83, 198, 213
Snyder, I. 73, 74, 199, 205, 208, 212
Speak Good English Movement (SGEM)
58, 60
Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) 22,
58, 59, 60, 199, 213
Spring, J. 19, 212
State fatherfood 24, 203
Straits Times 15, 17, 32, 33, 62, 92, 94,
148, 151, 156, 166, 167, 171, 175,
178, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203,
204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212,
213, 214
Strong state 23, 24, 66, 85, 162, 166, 192
Sturken, M. 118, 212
Subjectivity 21, 22, 52, 66, 190, 193, 199,
211
Svasek, M. 17, 32, 46, 213
Sweeting, A. 77, 212
Tactical 9, 10, 57, 65, 131, 191
Tactics 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 49, 54, 55, 56,
57, 58, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 94, 145,
189, 191, 194
Talib, I. 93, 94, 213
Tan 61, 80, 94, 174, 209, 213
Tan, C. 83, 213
Tan, J. 83, 206, 213
Tan, K. P. 146, 213
Tannock, S. 165, 166, 199, 213
Taylor, S. 22, 69, 87, 88, 90, 115, 151,
199, 201, 203, 209, 213
Teach Less, Learn more (TLLM) 79, 80,
83
Teachers’ work 83, 84
Televisual images 27, 116, 118, 122, 124,
125
Teo Chee Hean 156
Thailand 36, 43, 211
Tharman Shanmugaratnam 79, 213
Thinking Schools, Learning Nation
(TSLN) 20, 22, 26, 27, 29, 39, 58, 66,
68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 79, 83, 85,
86, 87, 88, 95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 110,
111, 112, 115, 120, 121, 131, 132, 133,
145, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 202
Third space 42, 183, 186
Thomas, S. 87, 89, 213
221
Thomson, P. 115, 214
Thrift, N. 21, 36, 191, 197, 213
Tickell, A. 37, 201, 214
Tomlinson, J. 28, 32, 150, 214
Total Defence Day 155, 159
Transitivity 100, 101
Transnational 9, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42,
45, 100, 146, 152, 163, 179, 180,
181, 185, 186, 197, 201, 204, 209,
212, 214, 215
Triadization 37
Trocki, C. A. 53, 214
TTLM 79
Turkle, S. 171, 214
Turner, G. 128, 214
Velayutham, S. 21, 147, 214
Videological analysis 115, 122
Visual design 27, 115, 116, 117, 118,
119, 132, 194, 205
222
Visual methodology 115, 116
Visual policy texts 27, 116
Visualization 115, 122, 132
Wallerstein, I. 40, 214
Waters, M. 40, 214
Watson, J. L. 43, 44, 214
Weber, I. 147, 205
Wee, C. J.-W. 21, 23, 31, 146, 153, 201,
214
Wee, L. 60, 211
Weiss, L. 16, 31, 36, 38, 85, 214
Wells, L. 118, 207, 210
Wells, P. 121, 214
Woods, N. 31, 205, 207, 215
World-system Theory 40
Yao, S. 34, 52, 197, 215
Yeoh, B. 158, 165, 178, 215
Yeung, H. 21, 55, 204, 205, 215
Young, R. 43, 183, 215