Comparative Education

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Bridging East and West educational divides in

Singapore

Prem Kumar

To cite this article: Prem Kumar (2013) Bridging East and West educational divides in Singapore,
Comparative Education, 49:1, 72-87, DOI: 10.1080/03050068.2012.740221

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Comparative Education, 2013
Vol. 49, No. 1, 72–87, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2012.740221

Bridging East and West educational divides in Singapore

Prem Kumar*

Assistant Dean (Curriculum-Community Leadership Development), National Community

Leadership Institute, Singapore

In Asia, we are witnessing an era where the pendulum of power is swaying towards
the East with the rising economic strength of China and India. Singapore is at the
‘crossroads’ between the East and West of these most populous nations on earth.
Although Singapore may appear the most Westernised country in Asia, she is
nevertheless a multicultural Asian society. Having the most open economy in the
world, Singapore is affected by the process of globalisation. This takes on an
added dimension and speed as nations compete for talent and find ways to
internationalise and transform their education for sustainable competitive
advantage. Singapore’s education system, regarded as one of the best performing
in the world, offers a unique opportunity to explore the issues where East and
West culture, values and systems meet. This article discusses and highlights
what happens when East and West converge. In particular, the discussion will
focus on the themes of East and West schism, globalisation and Singapore’s
aspirations to be a global hub, rankings and branding in education, and the use
of the English language.

Where East meets West

The expression East versus West tends to evoke a view of the diversity that resides
within and across continents as a schism. Such diversity could be in areas such as
trade, arts, culture, language, architecture, music, gastronomy, movies, education,
political systems and many others. And it is also in these areas that we find elements
of both East and West intersecting and producing new forms of knowledge and
applications. A majority of papers concerning educational theories and research
tends to view the topic from a Western perspective (such as from Australia,
Europe, New Zealand and North America) as opposed to from an Eastern viewpoint
(India, China, Japan, South Korea, among others). Of late there has been renewed
interest in the West in exploring and analysing alternative approaches to learning
and education from Eastern traditions that predate Western philosophical thought
(Kumar 2012). For the purpose of this paper we will view the East as seen from
the Asian perspective and the West as representing Anglo-Saxon countries. The
terms globalising and internationalising will be used inter-changeably, although
there are differences in the ways in which they are contextualised and defined.
The article attempts to highlight the issues and raise questions by relating to the
East and West schism, and where East and West meet through the process of globa-
lisation, ranking and branding of education, and the use of the English language in
the context of Singapore.1

*Email: drprem@singnet.com.sg

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

 Comparative Education 73

East and West – a dichotomy?

Are there differences in the ways in which Asians and Westerners learn? Could there be
cultural distinctions in the way we perceive reality and process data? Perhaps, to begin,
we could examine at the cognitive level if there are any differences in our brain struc-
tures. Research in the field of neuroscience and cognition indicates that there may be
some variations in the way Asians and non-Westerners process experiences, and
these are not only due to our social orientation but the differences could be due to
our ethnicity, cultural differences, linguistics, genetics and others.
Chee et al.’s (2011) recent research sought to ascertain if cultural biases were
inherent in the cognitive processes of East Asians (processing holistically) and Wester-
ners (analytically) through differences in their brain structure. They conducted a large
comparative study by cognitively matching young and old adults from two cultural/
ethnic groups, comprising Chinese Singaporeans and non-Asian Americans. Their
initial findings seem to suggest that there were ‘differences in cortical thickness in poly-
modal frontal and parietal association cortex between cognitively well-matched young
adults who differed in ethnicity and culture using two semiautomated brain
morphometric techniques’. They reported with caution that these ‘could have arisen
from cultural (external) as well as genetic (inherent) influences that ultimately could
be inter-related, meriting further investigation’ (1077). Chee et al. contend that

an important point not generally made in more culturally driven explanations of neurocog-
nition is that ‘cultural effects’ are driven by biases that have genetic or environmental
underpinnings. For example, it is possible that there is a genetic basis in individuals of
European descent that favors the formation of associations in sensory information. This
in turn could bias neural circuitry toward an analytic form of reasoning as opposed to hol-
istic processing. Alternatively, a plausible environment explanation for the bias could
stem from the urban crowding characteristic of Asian cities – the 24 most densely popu-
lated cities in the world are in Asia. This could impose selection pressures that favor
paying close attention to context and less to central figures. (2011, 1077)

They quote studies by Miyamoto, Nisbett and Masuda where

Japanese and Americans rated photographs of Japanese cities as more complex than
photos of New York City. Moreover, priming participants with Japanese pictures resulted
in more attention to context, suggesting that the perceptual environment may drive some
of the differences observed in the present study. (2006, 1077)

Other recent developments tend to support the social-orientation hypothesis relating

to cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians (Varnum et al. 2009). The
differences were in the areas of analytic versus holistic and independent versus interde-
pendent social orientations, respectively. In the areas of reasoning, values and beliefs
there appears to be a predisposition for those in the West towards analytic use of
formal logic and individualism and autonomy. For the East Asians they were more dia-
lectical, tread the middle way, and prefer collectivism and harmony. Varnum et al. (2009,
4) enquired further if future studies could examine changes in cultures over time along
the dimensions of social and cognitive constructs, and whether ‘changes in political and
economic systems, and other factors such as globalization, will likely reduce interdepen-
dence in many societies’. Culture is one of the key elements in the East and West
equation. Jarvis (2009, 10) recognises that ‘culture differs from country to country,
although some of the main cultural differences are between those which stem from
74 P. Kumar

the Judeo–Greek–European heritage countries, i.e. Western civilisations, and those that
emanate from Confucian heritage countries, i.e. Eastern civilisation’. Just as we taught
that the World was flat previously, Jarvis notes that Nisbett (2003, xv) had, before he
started his studies into ‘comparative cultures assumed universality and hard-wiring of
the brain, and so he was very surprised when there were major differences between
countries and that individuals could be trained: his studies led to the significant con-
clusion’ that ‘Human cognition is not everywhere the same’ (xvii) and ‘these cultural
groupings have significant differences’ (10). Hence, as Jarvis explains, these have a sig-
nificant impact on learning theory where culture is seen as

society-wide or at least social group- or ethnic group-wide, and the various cultures, be it
British, American, Chinese or Indian, amongst others, have seen a diffusion and increased
interconnectedness in the respective countries. He believes that globalisation and rapid
social change have affected the nature of society, and most societies are now multicul-
tural. (2009, 10)

Such theories may clash when they are translated into praxis, for example, a book written
by Amy Chua titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011 caused a stir in America and
Asia when she shared her parenting style and differences in the way Chinese and Wester-
ners raise their children. Writing in the Asian Wall Street Journal she shared her view that
there were significant differences in the parenting styles between Chinese and Western
American mothers. She mentioned that many studies had been carried out which
showed three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets. Her
work quotes one study where almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that ‘stres-
sing academic success is not good for children’ or that ‘parents need to foster the idea that
learning is fun’. By contrast, roughly 0% of Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead,
the vast majority of Chinese mothers said that they believed their children could be ‘the
best’ students, that ‘academic achievement reflects successful parenting’, and that if chil-
dren did not excel at school then there was ‘a problem’ and parents ‘were not doing their
job’. Other studies indicate that, compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend
approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children.
By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams. Chua does make
the qualification that she was using ‘Chinese mother’ loosely and that the characteristics
may also refer to Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents (Chua 2011).
Some have argued that taking the divergent view tends to be too simplistic and that
we should view the cultural differences along a continuum across the globe. We know
that learning does not occur in a vacuum. The evolution of learning is very much the
product of historical, sociological and cultural evolutions within societies. Hence, under-
standing the various contexts where learning occurs and moving towards a more holistic
learning would be a good start in bridging the distinctions. Culture tends to be a critical
element in the East and West equation and would require a separate discourse although it
is noted that some aspects of culture will naturally overlap and these aspects are presented
where this happens. As a gateway to the East and West, Singapore presents a unique case
for research and analysis in comparative education and learning.

Globalisation
We are entering a period where new realities and narratives are being transformed and
rewritten at a rapid pace, and we do not quite know with certainty how these will pan
 Comparative Education 75

out. From the Arab ‘spring’ to the Euro crisis, we are experiencing unease around
the globe about the effects of capitalism and the impact these events may have on
the lives of people. A search on Google of the word ‘Globalization’ yielded more
than 50 million results, while the British spelling ‘Globalisation’ presented around
16 million, as at November 2011. Is there any difference between the American
and British English? How do we make sense of this phenomenon? What is globalisa-
tion and what does it do? How does it impact upon individuals, organisations, com-
munities and nations? In what way is educational policy and practice impacted?
Some of these questions have been looked at by various scholars (Tikly 2001;
Amaldas 2009; Griffin 2009; Gopinathan and Lee 2011). A number of these are dis-
cussed in the sections that follow.
Globalisation offers opportunities as well as risks, even for countries who may not
be directly plugged into the system. Nations from developed to developing, large and
small, technologically advanced or challenged, with open or closed economic systems,
all are caught some way or another by the driving forces of globalisation. Some of these
forces affect the power dimensions of policy application held by global forces, of
environmental concerns, of populations and concepts of human rights, use of infor-
mation and technology, the widening gap between rich and poor, increases in unem-
ployment, and many more. Bottery (2006, 6) argues that ‘globalisation’, as a
concept, is ‘intimately connected with the way we view our place and meaning on
this planet’, and it also involves processes where the politics of nation affect edu-
cational institutions. He explains that it is the responsibility of educational leaders to
understand the challenges posed as a result of globalisation so that they can be more
effective in responding to them. The categories of globalisation that he identified
were: American, demographic, cultural, economic, environmental, linguistic, political
and technological (Bottery 2006). Put simply, globalisation could be seen as people,
products, services and information moving across borders. Information technology
plays an important role in the way such movements are carried out, impacting upon
individuals, societies and nations. Education is one of the key elements in this flow.
Tikly, for example, contends that ‘implications of globalisation theory for education
is underlined by the crises affecting more traditional ways of theorising education
and “development”, including modernisation, human capital and dependency theories’
(2001, 152).
Amaldas (2009) on the other hand indicated that numerous scholars viewed globa-
lisation as contributing to the erosion, decline or the end of the nation-state. She points
to the argument that

the process of globalization in its various manifestations is increasingly undermining the

territorial boundedness, sovereignty and traditional role of the existing system of the
modern nation-state. These processes, often perceived in terms of disjunctive cultural
‘flows’ as theorized by Appadurai (1996) and others, have necessitated the rethinking
of the nation-state. As a territorially and symbolically bounded ‘imagined community’
(Anderson 1983), the result then is a call to think beyond the nation state, emphasizing
the transnational, deterritorialized and cosmopolitan forms of imagined communities.
The objective of nation building in Singapore was to bring together the heterogeneous
immigrant population under a common and collective banner of the nation-state. The gov-
ernment hoped that through this process a distinctly Singaporean identity would evolve
and that the population would identify with the nation. Later, the government feared
that Singaporeans were becoming too ‘Westernized’ and losing their ‘Asian’ identity. It
responded strongly by asserting and defending Singapore’s identity as an Asian nation.
It began promoting Confucian/Asian values as a counter-discourse against Western
76 P. Kumar

ideas of modernity. Singapore’s territorially delineated national identity gave way to the
articulation of a broad regional-based ‘Asian’ identity.

Gopinathan and Lee (2011) point out that Singapore is a development state where
socio-economic development has been guided by the state since gaining independence
in 1965. Hence, in the process of globalisation we will find overlapping factors that tend
to dynamically converge or diverge. Figure 1 depicts this graphically. The arrows illus-
trate that this may be viewed as a schism or alternatively as a continuum. Some of these
factors are explored in this paper.
What would countries need to do to prepare their citizens for a more globalised inter-
dependent world? What role would the media, internet and technology play? What
would be the changes required in policy and practice where learning takes on a
wider ‘band-width’ in speed and accessibility is in the palm of the hand? How
would these affect learning theories? In this section, I will examine some of these ques-
tions in relation to the educational challenges and responses in Singapore.

Singapore – a global hub?

Singapore aspires to be a global city, a hub for technology, education, aviation and
medical services, amongst others. It aims to be the conduit for each of the sectors to
attain world class status. Education is seen as a means of attracting and retaining
talent, contributing to the revenue potential of the economy, earning income from
the export of education and in projecting soft power. The 2010 Global Cities Index
(a collaboration between Foreign Policy, A.T. Kearney and the Chicago Council on
Global Affairs) revealed that four of the world’s 10 most global cities were in Asia.

Figure 1. Where East meets West.

 Comparative Education 77

They were: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul. Singapore ranked 8th, Tokyo
came in 3rd, Hong Kong in 5th and Seoul 10th. One of the criteria used was the size
of the city’s immigrant population, the quality of the universities, the number of inter-
national schools and the percentage of residents with university degrees. Understanding
Singapore’s vulnerabilities and limitations would help to explain the thinking behind
the policies.
A city-state, Singapore has a total population of 5.18 million (as at the end of June
2011) comprising 3.79 million Singapore residents, of which 3.26 million were Singa-
pore citizens, 0.53 million permanents resident and 1.39 million non-residents. In 2011,
the resident population comprised 74% Chinese, Malays at 13% and Indians at 9.2%.
Since gaining independence in 1965, her per capita gross domestic product has risen 85
times from US$516 per annum to US$43,867 in 2010 (Department of Statistics 2011a,
2011b). To remain relevant in the global marketplace she is constantly learning and
adapting to the changing environmental landscape. As Kumar (2008) notes, Singapore
is a ‘brand’ that is associated with performance. It is a place where things work and a
nation that is constantly reviewing, remaking and refreshing itself. It is viewed as a
technocratic state where the political and expert systems of governance appear to
have merged (The Economist 2011a).
Of the top cities mentioned earlier, Singapore has the lowest population base. This
poses a challenge, as it will limit growth and prosperity. She also has to contend with a
rapidly aging population coupled with a low birth rate. Hence, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, erst-
while Prime Minister and founding father of modern Singapore, has argued that
‘without immigrants and foreign workers, and at the dismal rate Singaporeans are
reproducing themselves, there will be 1.5 working-age people to support two elderly
people by 2050’ (Han et al 2011, 267). For Singapore the choices are limited. Find
ways to increase the birth rate of domestic population while at the same time increase
‘quality’ immigration both of which need careful calibration to ensure social integration
and racial harmony. The Economist recently acknowledged that rich countries were not
so welcoming of immigrants due to the economic challenges and internal pressures
faced by them. They espoused that closing borders to migration was short-sighted
and unhealthy, as ‘migration brings youth to ageing countries, and allows ideas to cir-
culate in millions of mobile minds. This is good both for those who arrive with suitcases
and dreams and for those who should welcome them’ (2011b, 13).
World class learning systems require, as Walters (2009) puts it, ‘new understanding
of the centrality for economic and social development of all forms of learning … for
people of all ages and in all sectors and spheres of family, community and working
life’, the ability to ‘prioritise excellent education and training systems at all levels’, pro-
visions for easy accessibility of ‘information and counselling services to enable citizens
to maximise their learning opportunities’, having excellent systems for ‘collection,
analysis, management and dissemination of information’, creating social capital
through ‘high levels of collaboration, networking and clustering within and across
economic and knowledge sectors’, especially around areas of innovation and learning
that ‘supports high levels of social cohesion (across social class, ethnicity, gender,
ability, geography and age) within a society of limited social polarities’ (2009, 165).
What kinds of learning, values, skills and knowledge do we need to function in a
globalised world? Why is learning and education important? How should countries
and individuals respond? And what about those who are affected by globalisation?
For example, Singapore’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, was one
of the highest in the developed world at 0.472 (Department of Statistics 2011c) as a
78 P. Kumar

result of globalisation. Maintaining and strengthening social cohesion therefore is

especially critical in ensuring that economic growth is balanced with social fairness.
The issue of globalisation therefore takes on an added dimension and importance
where not only Singapore but other countries as well need to manage economic
growth balanced with social development. These two are often regarded as opposites
but are actually interconnected and interdependent. In the Chinese Asian philosophy,
the concept of ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ perhaps best represents this. The Yin and Yang sym-
bolised by the simplified Chinese characters 阴 (signifying the moon) and 阳 (the sun),
are seen as night and day, dark and light, cool and warm, feminine and masculine,
respectively, among others. They are viewed as complementary opposites rather than
opposing each other. Naturally, an increase in the strength of Yin would correspond-
ingly weaken the Yang and vice versa. Gaps appear when the speed of change in econ-
omic activity increases and social development lags behind. Hence, it would help if all
the actors in the system within and across boundaries could engage each other (at
various levels) and find ways to adjust the existing systems and also create new struc-
tures for a more balanced and equitable socio-economic growth.
Singapore is a place where things get done and this is especially important for a
country without naturally endowed resources. Words such as measurement, key per-
formance indicators, value added and the like are typically used as points of reference
or benchmarks for continuous assessment, improvement and growth. The process of
globalising education is therefore not exempt from this appraisal.

Ranking and branding education

It is difficult to detach ourselves from ratings or rankings. We find them in our everyday
lives and in work, as benchmarks for achieving quality standards and achievements, not
only in enabling us to compare ourselves with others but as a yardstick for knowing
how well we are doing and what we need to do to continuously improve ourselves.
The field of education is subject to similar rankings that tend to be used by various sta-
keholders to assess and justify the effectiveness of educational standards and achieve-
ment of outcomes. As such, a number of agencies publish reports of countries on the
level of competitiveness and how well they are doing compared to others. Making com-
parisons based on similar sets of indicators across nations with unique historical and
cultural characteristics will always be a challenge, raising concerns of validity and
reliability. The rankings will therefore vary based on the way in which the measures
are identified, interpreted and assessed. Nevertheless, they do offer a sense of where
we might be in relation to others and the need to make adjustments where required.
In the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings con-
ducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD
2009), Singapore students were ranked 2nd in Mathematics, 4th in Science and 5th
in Reading.
Shanghai, having participated for the first time in the rankings, came out top in all
three subjects. Singapore’s Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, was quoted as saying
that Shanghai outscoring the rest ‘gave the Americans and Europeans quite a shock to
suddenly discover the Chinese in Shanghai were of such a high standard’ and that Sin-
gapore too had to continuously improve its education system (Chan 2011). The
New York Times (Dillon 2010) opined that the results could be due to the educational
culture, a focus on teacher training and time spent studying in lieu of extracurricular
activities. The results also refuted the assumption that the educational system was
 Comparative Education 79

skewed towards rote learning. At a personal level, education is seen as a passport to a

better life, an increase in earnings capacity, realising one’s potential and improving
social mobility, amongst others. Quality of education at the national level tends to be
closely linked to economic opportunities and wealth creation. The rankings appear to
suggest that the West is slipping further in its lead that may affect its ability to
compete and to extend its influence globally in the long run. The quest for top rankings
is a marathon without an end point. One can easily be overtaken by another in the next
cycle. The challenge is to sustain improvements over time and to put in place systems
and the right people, with the right skills and competencies, continuously and seam-
lessly. With the challenges facing the world today, there is a need for knowledgeable,
trained individuals adept at working across disciplines, with the ability to solve
complex problems by connecting the dots, and to be effective global learners and
leaders.
We find that with the intensity of globalisation, universities too are subjected to a
complex mix of the push–pull of internal and external forces when internationalising
higher education. Singapore universities are state funded and as Gopinathan and Lee note

universities in Singapore have become a vital part of the nation’s strategy for economic
reinvention. Though generously funded by the government and given autonomy via cor-
poratisation they seem to have little say in which the environment they operate in is being
transformed; there has probably been much more discussion about Yale–NUS on Yale’s
campus than in Singapore’s three universities. While there is much that can be said for
competition and collaboration, university academics are likely to be troubled by the
scale and speed of the transformation of the university landscape. (2011, 296)

They further opine that

the Yale–NUS collaboration raises another set of issues, which is the extent to which
humanities and social sciences scholars believe that there is sufficient academic
freedom in Singapore to make such collaboration both sustainable and productive.
Some criticisms of Singapore’s various positions on issues dear to liberals is to be
expected; what remains to be seen is, notwithstanding the constraints of Singapore’s
laws, if there would be enough freedom for a full flowering of views and talents rep-
resented by the liberal arts initiative. However, it is not just the social sciences or perform-
ing arts that require space for creativity and innovation. The whole enterprise of scientific
research and experimentation is no less one of questioning assumptions and pushing at the
boundaries of known knowledge. Singapore’s bureaucratic elite are good problem
solvers. (2011, 297)

Critics of the Yale–NUS college, for example Weinberger (2011), have argued recently that

the responsibility for creating great Asian universities lies with Asian countries them-
selves … Setting the right conditions for academic freedom to flourish is something Sin-
gapore and other nations must do on their own. NYU, Yale, and the others can’t do it for
them.

It was not only the lack of academic freedom that was his source of dissatisfaction but
also ‘the intellectual vacuity of the programme’ where the ‘emphasis has been solely on
Yale’s strategic positioning and administrative programmes, appointments and gestures
that make Yale better known worldwide. These are networking rather than policy docu-
ments, from a corporate leader who sees new markets, new projects and new collabor-
ators’ (Weinberger 2011, 15, 17). A rejoinder by Joel Chow espoused that
80 P. Kumar

what the Yale–NUS college will offer, therefore, seems to me to be a difference of degree
and not of kind. Varsities like NUS and NTU have already taken active steps to expose
students to perspectives across a wide range of fields; at Yale–NUS College students
will simply take one step further. Weinberger’s depiction of Singapore simply as trans-
planting a foreign model of education ignores its continual efforts to implement a success-
ful model of Asian-centric liberal arts education … Singapore faces multiple challenges in
creating such a model – not least its reputation for its tough stance on discussion of pol-
itically sensitive issues … That is not to say that Singapore does not have some way to go.
However, there are other potential obstacles to the success of liberal arts education here:
the overemphasis on technical expertise, and the view that a broad-based education can
leave students without crucial specialised skills. (2011, 20)

He concludes that

as more Asian universities seek out partnerships with foreign universities, criticism of both
parties involved is inevitable. But there is a need for careful analysis before making hasty
generalisations that end up obfuscating the real challenges. These new campuses also
point to an important question: what exactly is a liberal arts education? (2011, 20)

At a recent round table discussion of Nobel Laureates (BBC World News 2011), the
panel shared amongst other things their thoughts on competition versus collaboration
and freedom versus restrictions on expression and how these impacted on the quality
of learning and education in the United States. One of the reasons America was able
to produce Nobel Laureates was in part due to having a critical mass of talent enabling
the development of experts in many fields of study. Researchers too had the freedom to
experiment with new discoveries for years without the fear of having to produce results
within a time frame with funds being slashed. The universities had the strength of being
able to compete with each other and collaborate as well across both private and state
universities. This enabled them to get better results by being open, competitive and
collaborative.
With increased competition for students and diminishing university funds, branding
becomes an important endeavour undertaken by universities and countries to differen-
tiate themselves from others in attracting local and international students. Not many
universities have full fledged or sophisticated marketing departments like in the
business sector yet. This is, however, an over-looked and under-researched area. Insti-
tutions in America, for example, are now using the internet as a way to increase their
brand awareness. The Global Language Monitor used a TrendTopper MediaBuzz Inter-
net analysis utilising a mathematical model to measure the ‘brand equity’ of colleges in
terms of their global impact on the Internet and social media during the year (Reuters
2010). The University of Wisconsin at Madison came out top followed by the Univer-
sity of Chicago and Harvard. The survey looked at the perceived value of education and
popularity of various universities in America.
Globalisation and the quest for quality higher education have been going through
tremendous changes. These include, among many other things, access to university
education, on the what and how we learn and where. Singapore is sensitive to the geo-
political and global economic shifts as it has the most open economy in the world.
Andrea Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division for Education at
the OECD and Special Adviser on education policy, whose article was reprinted in
The Straits Times, shared how, as a visiting professor at the National Institute of Edu-
cation (NIE), he learnt how Singapore’s transformation was ‘about political coherence
and leadership, and about policy and practice. It’s about setting ambitious standards in
 Comparative Education 81

everything you do, and about focusing on building teaching and leadership capacity to
deliver vision and strategy at the school level’ (Schleicher 2011, A24). For example, he
was impacted most when he visited one of the campuses of the Institute of Technical
Education (ITE) where he experienced first-hand how the school’s restaurant was

entirely managed and run by students serving dishes from a dozen cultures, I saw that here
is a country that doesn’t see culture as an obstacle but seeks to capitalise on its diversity …
The same amount of public money is invested into every vocational student as the high
school student going to its most prestigious university, and the quality of teaching is
prioritised over the size of its classes. Clearly, Singapore seeks to break the East Asian
mould where academic achievement is revered as the only route to success, recognising
that students learn differently at different stages in their lives. The ITE is now sought-after
by students, with 90 per cent of graduates finding jobs in their chosen fields, up from 60
per cent decades ago.

The challenge for Singapore, he notes, is how she

needs to unleash greatness … the current central discussion is now on ethics, values and
the capacity of students to live in a multifaceted world as active and engaged citizens …
but Singapore, like elsewhere, struggles to find appropriate answers for what students
should learn, the ways in which they can learn these broader competencies, and how
teaching and schooling need to change to achieve this. (A24)

He suggested that

while Singapore does well in maximising public value for money, parents are spending
significant resources on private tutoring. When measured in Pisa metrics, private tutoring
actually adds very little in value to the high-quality education in Singapore schools but it
does take up a disproportionate amount of student learning time. Singapore would make
much better use of the country’s economic and human resources by accepting rather than
ignoring the demand for more personalised learning and perhaps building it into the
regular school days of public schools, as countries like Denmark or Finland have success-
fully done. (A24)

How could universities make full use of the range of competencies of their faculty
and administrators to promote global learning? What are the challenges and how do we
balance the demands of both local responsibilities and global challenges, and how
might the two be brought together into a productive set of outcomes? How might uni-
versities learn themselves from each other? There are no easy answers to these ques-
tions. Each country would need to find ways to navigate through these dimensions
in their quest for quality and quantitative growth in educational outcomes.
For example, students tended to go to the West, with the United States, Britain or
Australia all popular destinations to acquire degrees. Access to quality higher education
becomes much easier as we experience economic growth with higher purchasing
power. Universities are internationalising their higher education by creating partner-
ships with universities abroad, while some universities in the West have established
campuses in Singapore. The London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), in its the
latest World University Rankings, ranked the National University of Singapore
(NUS) among the top 30 universities in the world, while Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity (NTU) jumped 16 places to No. 58. Among the Asian schools, the University of
Hong Kong had the highest placing at 22, followed by Tokyo University at 25 and NUS
at 28. The rankings were based on six indicators: academic reputation, employer
82 P. Kumar

reputation, student–faculty ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty and student
mix. The top three were the University of Cambridge (UK), Harvard University (US)
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US). The Times Higher Education’s (THE)
recent ranking (2011), on the other hand, saw NUS slipping six places in the ranking of
400 universities. NUS now ranks 40th on the list, while NTU climbed five places to
169th for 2011. Japan’s University of Tokyo was highest at 30th and within Asia
NUS was ranked 3rd best under THE rankings while NTU was at 18th. Seven of the
top 10 universities were American while the remaining three were from the United
Kingdom (Channel News Asia 2011).
What we are experiencing is not only where East and West meet, but also where
East and East converge and competition to be the education hub in Asia intensifies.
Also, we have the largest number of educational consumers from India and China.
For instance, a recent newspaper report mentioned that Xiamen University was plan-
ning to open its first overseas campus in Malaysia. The reasons cited were due to the
‘warm relationship between the two countries as one of the main reasons Xiamen
picked Malaysia for its first overseas campus … and will help China’s push to start edu-
cational institutions overseas’ (Teo 2011, A22). Other universities and colleges, such as
Britain’s Southampton University, Newcastle University and Marlborough College,
including the Management Development Institute of Singapore, also planned to set-
up campuses in EduCity, an educational hub in Johor’s Iskandar Malaysia development
region. From the Malaysian perspective, Xiamen University would be able to meet the
demands of more than 60,000 students who are enrolled in Chinese-medium primary
and secondary schools yearly. Foreign students are also expected from the Middle
East as they will be more comfortable there as they tend to share a similar culture,
and as a gateway to China.
Singapore is the only country in the Asian region to have English as a ‘working’
language while complementing the learning of one’s ‘mother tongue’ for the preser-
vation of traditional values. The learning of English cuts through the three main
ethnic groups representing the population profile. These are the Chinese, Malay and
Indians. Malay is the national language while Chinese (Mandarin), English and
Tamil are the other official languages.
The following discussion looks at the bilingual policy and how the meeting of ‘East
and West’ languages has impacted in praxis.

English language
The spread of English has progressed in tandem with globalisation worldwide. It is seen
as the language of access to commerce, information, technology and power as a form of
communication. The use of English has played an important role in Singapore’s mod-
ernisation process, used in both public and private sector organisations. The acquisition
of English language is due to practical and instrumentalist reasons. It enables Singapor-
eans to have access to the language of research, science and technology, and trade, and
the ability to communicate in various settings across cultures.
Pakir notes that Singapore offers an important case as English is the lingua franca of
a multilingual country

where English-knowing bilingualism over an entire population has led it to becoming an

ascendant English-knowing bilingual community. Four decades of instilling English-
 Comparative Education 83

knowing bilingualism in Singapore have resulted in the rise of an English-knowing bilin-

gual community drawing from its local values and multilingual identities. (2009, 231)

However, as Alsagoff (2007) points out, the Singapore political discourse excludes any
cultural or ethnic meanings assigned to the English language and is devoid of culture.
The reason for this is that firstly, ‘English is now increasingly referred to as a global
rather than a Western language. In this way, English as a global language belongs to
the world, to a multiplicity of cultures, but not to any one culture’ (342). Secondly,
English is viewed as ethnically neutral where the other three official languages,
namely Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, are seen as transmitters of ethnic culture, and iden-
tity and as promoting social cohesion amongst the groups (Alsagoff 2007).
The use of the English language has received much attention given the bilingual
education policy affecting all students. A number of authors have looked at the subjec-
tive reactions to Singapore Standard English and Singapore Colloquial English known
as ‘Singlish’ (Cavallaro and Chin 2009); the measurement and comparison of the
rhythm of three varieties of English: British, Singapore and Mainland Chinese
English (Low 2010); discussion on the issues and challenges on the use of English
as a lingua franca (Pakir 2009); translating multilingual policy to classroom linguistic
practice (Hornberger and Vaish 2009); language attitudes of youth towards Mother
Tongue and English (Bokhorst-Heng and Caleona 2009); distinguishing features
between standard and non-standard Singapore English (Schaetzel et al. 2010); and
introduction of a new culturally focused model (Alsagoff 2007). The tension
between learning English and vernacular languages has seen parents opting instead
to send their children to English-medium schools. If we were to leave it to market
forces we might find the use of English increases and the use of one’s own mother
tongue would diminish over time if there was no policy in place to address the decline.
Singapore took the path less travelled with the launch of the bilingual educational
policy that touched Singaporeans’ lives in so many ways, where one is expected to be
proficient in both the English language and their mother tongue while in school. Mr Lee
Kuan Yew, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Singapore and chief architect of the bilin-
gual education policy, shared eight principles governing the policy in his recent book
(Lee 2012). He regards bilingualism to be the key to Singapore’s success story (Toh
2011). Mr Lee believes that the decision regarding a bilingual education system was
correct in essence. The policy was guided by eight principles which were: first, it
was used as a ‘vital instrument for achieving national interest objectives and meeting
the needs of governance’; second, it was ‘a key to economic success’; third, it could
be used as a tool of communication and transmission of values; fourth, based on his
personal experience, language has to be learnt when one is very young; fifth, one
language should be a dominant or master language rather than two at the same level;
sixth, it follows from the fifth principle that ‘it is not practical to master a second
language comprehensively’; seventh, the ‘education system should have different
courses tailored to those of different abilities’; and eighth, the ‘language policy is a
never-ending journey’ (Lee 2012, 224–231). During the launch of Mr Lee Kuan
Yew’s ‘most important book’ (Lee 2012), he also launched ‘The Lee Kuan Yew
Fund for Bilingualism’ to help children learn their mother tongue and English before
they reach primary school, with the government to match donations dollar for dollar,
up to a cap of $50 million (Toh 2011, 1).
On the fifth principle, he explains how, in the mid-1970s and ‘after more than 10
years of formulating and re-formulating our education policy’, he realised that ‘a
84 P. Kumar

person can only master one language’ although there may be rare exceptions (Lee 2012,
228). He shares that

my mistake was not to realise this earlier. I demanded that our students master their second
language to a level as high as that of their first language, and when students had problems
coping, I put it down to poor teaching. Only years later did I understand that the human
brain is wired such that most people can master only one language and failure to master
another is not a sign of a deficient intelligence. This insight led to a number of changes in
our education system. One was to relax the mother tongue language (MTL) requirement for
admission to local universities. While students must still meet a minimum threshold grade
(S in a-level H1 MTL, Pass in A-level MTL ‘B’ or D7 in O-level Higher MTL), MTL is no
longer a mandatory component of a student’s score for university admission. (Lee 2012, 229)

A article in The New York Times by Klass (2011) explains that

once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer
‘language confusion’, which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often
are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools
market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish – or Mandarin – for every-
one, starting in kindergarten or even before. Yet while many parents recognize the utility of
a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or
trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information. And while
the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and
delay, there aren’t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the
best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child. But there is more and more research
to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of
bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the
earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.

Klass (2011) cites the studies by Ellen Bialystock who has ‘shown that bilingual chil-
dren develop crucial skills in addition to their double vocabularies, learning different
ways to solve logic problems or to handle multitasking, skills that are often considered
part of the brain’s so-called executive function’.
The question of whether we should learn American English instead of British Standard
English was ignited recently when Mr Lee Kuan Yew opined at the launch of the English
Language Institute of Singapore that the American version would prevail against the
British due to the growing dominance of American media (Leow 2011). He shared his
experience of how he had been consciously switching between British and American
English on the computer, and that he saw himself moving towards American English in
a nod to the US being ‘a dominant force’. A Straits Times article interviewing Professor
Koh Tai Ann, at the NTU’s centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, was of the view
that ‘the important thing to keep in mind is that whether it is British, American, or Singa-
porean, each variety of English in its written form, and in formal contexts when spoken,
should be recognisably Standard English’ and that Americanisms have been affecting
British English since they first came into existence (Lee 2011). Learning English, be it
through the formal, informal or non-formal settings coupled with the use of technological
devices, would evolve further within the context of each country.
As Hornberger and Vaish (2009) note, the effect of globalisation has changed the
medium of instruction which concerns sociolinguists in areas of teacher education
and curriculum planning. One of the main tensions they put forth between ‘the
process of globalisation and school linguistic practice is the rising demand for linguistic
capital of English’ while correspondingly there is the ‘challenge to bilingual programs
 Comparative Education 85

to meet this demand by mobilising the child’s mother tongue as a resource … one way
of doing this is pedagogic practice that explicitly valorizes all points along the continua
of biliterate context, media, content, and development’ (315). The learning of two or
more languages poses challenges for educators, parents, schools and the learners them-
selves. The dynamic nature of language policies cannot be viewed simply from a uti-
litarian perspective as we have to take into consideration issues of national identity,
culture and politics, including laws of the land as shown in Figure 1 earlier in this paper.
As to the future of the English language, there does not appear to be a real consensus
on which way it would be heading. Baron (2011) for instance is of the view that the
English language will be able to maintain it’s position as a dominant global language
with native English speakers at 350 million to 500 million and more than one billion
who use English as second or additional language. However, with the changing linguis-
tic landscape, it would be difficult to predict its sustainability, and the debate over and
use of English will continue to be of concern to educators and researchers.

Conclusion
This article set out to highlight the issues and questions relating to the East and West
schism. The process of globalisation has been explored through the ranking and branding
of education and the use of the English language in the context of Singapore. It was not
the intent of the discussion to lay claim to whether the Eastern or Western systems were
superior to each other, neither is Singapore to be seen as the only country where Eastern
and Western systems meet. The process of internationalising education offers us oppor-
tunities for comparative analysis and in developing more effective learning theories, pol-
icies and practices. We could explore further some of the following challenges that relate,
for instance, to a more interconnected and dependent world – how do we learn how to
learn and manage change constantly; to what extent do alternative views and diverse per-
spectives affect our brain activity and actions; what constitutes global education and
hence a global citizen? And just as the physiology of humans, of poverty, of communities
and countries differ so too we find the speed and methods of acquiring knowledge vary,
hence there is a need for more research and applied knowledge to help us to understand,
guide and improve our practice to shape the kind of world we want to live in. Learning
through a broad spectrum of environments and dimensions becomes much more complex
and discontinuous with the advent of the internet and through the increased accessibility
of information with continuous enhancements to technology. This also offers us oppor-
tunities to build networks, broaden our understanding of ourselves and our identity in the
social world that we share with others of different backgrounds. This could bring us
closer together or just as easily divide us.
It would be helpful for educational leaders therefore, to be cognisant of and more
aware of the differences, not only in the East and West approaches to education and
learning but also from within and across local, regional and national boundaries.
Such understanding would enable us to deepen our learning, improve practice and
refine policies continuously.
The process of globalisation has affected Singapore in the way its people live and
work. As I have discussed earlier, Singaporeans are impacted by the changes and chal-
lenges which arise in striking a balance of economic growth versus social development,
changing socio-cultural and economic trends, an aging population versus the need for
new immigrants, among others. There are other equally important driving forces that
are constantly affecting and shaping our reality such as technology, media, economics
86 P. Kumar

and the environment. Learning and living in a globalised world would entail us exploring
ways by which we can be more open to diversity, in understanding global issues and sus-
tainable development, be effectual global citizens and life-wide and life-long learners.

Note
1. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not in any way represent
those of the organisation.

Notes on contributor
Prem Kumar is currently Assistant Dean (Curriculum-Community Leadership Development)
with the National Community Leadership Institute, Singapore. He is a capacity builder, consult-
ant and educator and has written and edited articles and books on organisational and adult learn-
ing. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Surrey, and Master’s degrees in
Tertiary, Adult & Continuing Education from the University of Hull and in International
Relations from The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

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