Parental guidance : development of Singapore's public education system, 1965 - 1997

• Main Author: Mak, Weng Wai
• Other Authors: Park Hyung Wook
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Humanities::History
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/144501
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Since Singapore’s independence, the Singapore government have deployed public education to aid in Singapore’s social and economic development. Thus, the development of public education system in Singapore have often been a top-down narrative rather than of a social perspective. This thesis attempts to reconcile the literature gap through the exploration of the parents’ role in the development of public education and their reactions to education policies. This paper utilizes two conventional educational phases (survival and efficiency) proposed by educationalist Saravanan Gopinathan and asserts that parents played an active role during the development of public education. In addition, the paper discovered that parents’ disagreements with newly implemented policies arose from their difference in the interpretation of societal values such as “equality, meritocracy, and religious harmony” vis-à-vis the Singapore government. Hence, this thesis postulates that as the Singapore government influence the public education to achieve its social and economic goals, parents retain their agency as public consumers by pressurizing the government to alter or remove certain education policies during 1965 - 1997.