Arts Education in Singapore: Between Rhetoric and Reality

Study of the trajectory of arts education in Singapore through examination of key policies and government reports suggests that, although the arts and arts education have generally taken a back seat to other national priorities, the government has consistently utilized them for ideological and political purposes. Arts education is typically subjected to the bureaucratic imagination, which assigns to arts education a particular state-sanctioned role. Whether to ennoble students as citizens of a newly independent nation or to endow them with the innovativeness believed to be necessary to a knowledge-based economy, arts education in Singapore has often shouldered the sociocultural aspirations of the ruling elite. This has been true even if the subject has not always been the recipient of unwavering political support.